ANDREW ISKER | Fatherhood in Trashworld

My name is Will Spencer, and you're listening to the renaissance of Men podcast. My guest this week is the author of the Boniface Option. Please welcome Andrew Whisker. You are the Renaissance. As many of my listeners know, I spent four years traveling overseas between 2016 and 2020. During that time, from the other side of the equator and then the other side of the Pacific Ocean, I got to watch America go through all the convulsions of the Trump presidency from a distance.

Now, by that time, I already understood who Trump was and who he wasnt. He might not have had the best taste in associates and probably had a little issue with his ego, but he certainly wasnt literally Hitler, nor was he even all that orange. But I did know that he and the millions of Americans who supported him had a sense that the country that they loved and treasured was either being eaten away or was already gone.

And that for all of Trump's obvious flaws, he was courageous enough to lead people to do something about it to the unending scorn of the media. Hence the term the deplorables. So I got to watch this process unfold in my home country while traveling through other nations like Peru, Colombia, New Zealand, Mongolia, China, India, and many others. And while watching this, I noticed something strange.

It seemed that in many of the countries that I visited, their own cultures were being eaten away as well. The first sign that something was wrong struck me in September 2016, in a small rural town in a south american country which shall remain nameless. The town was inundated with piles of plastic trash just everywhere. The trash hadnt been imported from America and dumped there either. This was their plastic trash because the wrappers and packaging had spanish words on them.

Roadside stands, basically just wooden shacks, had latin versions of the same kind of bright colored candy wrappers youd find at a local circle k or 711. I was literally hours outside of any major city on a local bus in the middle of nowhere. And yet it seemed that modernity had arrived long before I did. This same pattern seemed to repeat itself wherever I went.

Japan is flooded with american chain restaurants and their own china has fewer chains, but certainly its own massive consumerism in the major cities. Get on Google Maps right now and look up the Altai mountain range in Mongolia. Thats Altai. It is literally in the center of the asian continent. You cannot get more into the middle of nowhere than that. And I saw similar consumerism, though on a much smaller scale in that region as well.

And as anyone who's visited Thailand or Bali can tell you, parsing out authentic thai or balinese culture from the intensely consumerist materialist conditions can be difficult, if not impossible. So I wondered, what's going on? Sometime in 2018, it clicked. Something nameless and faceless was eating these nations from the inside out like a rot. It presents itself as novel, convenient, comfortable, and even friendly, but it's actually insatiable.

Most in the world look at these trends and apply them to America. They call them westernization, or sometimes american cultural imperialism. But I was from America, and what I was watching in my home country had nothing to do with all of that. In fact, Trump and MAGA were the antithesis of that phenomenon. And the word that they used to describe it was globalism.

So as Trump and MAGA were pushing back against globalism, I was actually traveling around the globe and could see the same phenomenon they hated firsthand in my face, in places where it shouldn't be. That's when I realized that these trends have nothing to do with America or the west. They are not our traditions. They only appear that way because whatever is eating the world ate America first. Which brings me to my guest this week.

His name is Andrew Isker, and he's the pastor of the fourth Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, Minnesota, the co author, with Andrew Torba, of Christian Nationalism, a biblical guide for taking dominion and discipling nations. And finally, he's the author of the outstanding book the Boniface Option. More than any other christian author I've read, Andrew has identified the phenomenon I saw with my own eyes. Andrew calls it trash world.

And while he didnt coin the term, if you ask me, hes the one who made it stick. In the preface of the Boniface option, Andrew writes, quote, we are already in the midst of decades of social engineering. The society we have is already an anti human one. It is already designed to remove from you all that made life meaningful and fulfilling. It has torn you from people and place. It is designed to make you isolated, lonely, and above all else, totally docile.

Throughout the pages of this book, I use the term trash world to describe this dystopian society. End quote. Now, not everyone is a big fan of Andrew Isker, but I have to tell you, he's right. We've been living in american trash world for years. If you're generation z, you might not remember a time before it, but there are places in the world that ive been to that the tentacles of trash world are just beginning to reach, and who, at least in 2016, had far less of an ability to put up a fight.

Because affluence is seductive. And once you see that for yourself, as I have the productive, formerly self sustaining local cultures of the world being literally devoured by plastic, high fructose corn syrup, and consumerism, there's only one possible response. It's a word that christians don't like very much.

It makes them feel uncomfortable because it involves them getting down into their bodies and feeling themselves as material beings on a physical planet with all kinds of icky attachments to things and people that it's far easier to spiritualize than take responsibility for. But the word is hate, which Merriam Webster defines as to express or feel extreme enmity or active hostility. And yes to that. But here's iskur again. To love a thing is to inherently hate its opposite.

Indifference is the absence of love, not hatred. Where love is present, you will axiomatically have hatred of the object of that love's opposite. If the Christian has a passionate love for the truth of God's word, the goodness of God's justice, and the beauty of holiness, he will necessarily have an intense hatred of the lies, injustice, and sin. And that captures it.

Because as uncomfortable as it is to acknowledge there is something hate worthy out there, I came to Christ in part because I saw that evil was real, and I couldnt get anyone out there in the religions of the world to talk to me about it. Christianity is the only world religion that does in any sort of credible way. So if evil exists, can we not hate it? If you've seen evil devouring the nations and souls of the world like I have, can I not hate that?

And if I see it devouring my country, my culture, and the souls of my countrymen as well, can I not then hate it? How about if it almost devoured me? Because it did, and God delivered me from that. So this is personal. And that's what Andrew Isker touches on, the feeling that this institutionalized, industrialized evil isn't just eating me, but you too, and your sons and daughters. Heck, even our parents and grandparents.

Are we just going to sit idly by and play nice nice because a schoolmarm preaching hippie Jesus and his fortune cookie platitudes told us to? Or are we going to be men and speak directly into this wickedness and rip it out? Or really cut it down from the trunk on up and try for something better? You're about to get a marathon four and a half hour ren of men classic podcast with the answer.

In our conversation, Andrew and I covered a ton of ground, including the origins of the boniface option, the third rail of evangelicalism. What Paul's writing assumes church as the caboose of culture, the enemy of every christian parent, God's blessing of the barbell, the point of the entire Bible. And finally, while you're not angry because you're fat, if you enjoy the renaissance of men podcast, thank you.

Please leave us a five star rating on Spotify, plus a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode or another one of your favorites with a friend. And if you're new to the show, welcome. I release new episodes related to Christian Virtue, the culture wars, and the family every Friday. And now for another marathon renaissance of men classic. Four and a half hours with the co author of Christian Nationalism and the author of the Boniface option, please welcome Andrew Isker.

Andrew, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. The powers that be are trying to shut us down, but it's not going to happen. That's right. Yes. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. So we just ran it for a minute and found that we got cut off midstream. So we're going to pick up where we were. But hey, we keep fighting on the. So what I had said in the original stream was that how much I enjoyed your book, how much I was really looking forward to reading it.

It was actually a gift from my friend Matt Sider. Thank you, Matt. And he's like, you have to read this. And I was looking forward to it. I thought it was going to be good, but it massively exceeded my expectations because I'm reading it, I'm like, wow, this is really good. This is really good. And so I really enjoyed it. So thank you for this. Yes, thank you. I'm glad you liked it. Thank you.

So I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about the inspiration of the book, where it came from, and sort of how it started maybe in seed form, and then grew into the work that it is. Yeah. So I originally started thinking these ideas around 2017 after reading Rodriere's Benedict option. So I read this book, his book, and that was at the time, there was a ton of discussion on that book. A lot of people, a lot of people liked it. A lot of people hated it.

And it kind of took over the majority of not just christian discourse, but a lot of discourse online on the right. And reading it, there were things that I liked. The thesis of the book is, okay, we're in this very anti christian world now. It's in the wake of Obergefell and all of the rapid cultural change that took place in the years following that decision. And it's like, okay, the response to it, we should retreat to intentional community, intentional christian community.

And reading that, I'm like, that's great, that's awesome. But then what do we do, right? There was no, okay, now we're in our community and we're safe and secure altogether. Now what do we do? Because, like, they're not going to allow that. They're not going to allow you to have these little christian enclaves, these little christian ghettos or whatever. They're going to. They're going to come for you and destroy that.

And even if they don't, like, send in SWAT teams like Waco or something, they're coming for you in all sorts of different ways. Like, you're still going to have Internet in those places. Your children are still going to be exposed to all of the destructive cultural things that are carried via Internet, television and everything else.

And so in some ways, you can retreat physically to these places, but you still are not insulated from those things unless you became totally amish and completely cut yourselves out from society, which I don't think people are going to do. And that really wasn't the argument in his book either. And so I was left wanting. I'm like, well, no, there's got to be more that we can do. And I started thinking about the story of Saint Boniface.

I remember in college, many years ago, reading an issue of table talk magazine from Ligonier ministries, where they had a story about Saint Boniface in the 8th century and his mission to Germania across the Rhine, which at that time was all pagan. And I was fascinated by it. I mean, I am mostly german. And so that had a, struck a chord with me, of course, along those lines. And these are stories growing up, I'd never heard. I'd never heard, yeah. How did all of my people become Christian anyway?

No one ever told me. And so here, St. Boniface, who was this monk, and coincidentally was a benedictine monk from England, is commissioned to go be a missionary. He goes across the Rhine and goes to the main shrine of Thor, and there's this massive oak tree that they believed if anybody touched it, they would be struck by a bolt of lightning from Thor and be killed. And he tells them, I'm going to come back the same time tomorrow.

And not only am I going to touch this tree, but I will chop it down and comes back the next day, takes one swing of an axe and a wind, or at least according to the legend, a wind comes out of the heavens. And knocks the tree over. And all of the people who, tons of people had come from all the surrounding villages to go watch this guy get fried. And they witnessed this, and they're all converted that day and are all baptized.

And from this tree, he had it milled and built the first church in Germany. And from there, the conversion of the Germans began. And I thought about that. I just thought about what this guy would be like. What would it be like to have someone go and say, here's your idol, here's this thing that you venerate and adore, and I'm going to destroy it.

Just the character of a man like that, the ethos of a man that would do that and thinking about what christian men are like, even in the most ideal form in our minds today. And the contrast between those two is stark, right? There's a major, major difference, especially the last 20 or 30 years. The major ethos of evangelical Christianity is whatever you do, whatever you do, you must never offend anyone. You have to be nice and winsome.

And that's how we, that's how we are going to evangelize and convert people, is they'll see how nice we are, they'll see what wonderful people we are, and they'll say, I want to be like that guy. And in this post christian world that we now exist in, at least in America, that doesn't work anymore at all. They, they are going to hate you no matter how nice you are, no matter how winsome you are. And so the time clearly had come where, no, you need to be much bolder.

You need to be much more aggressive. You need to have that same type of ethos of, I'm going to fight. I'm going to say what's true and right and not care who it upsets, not care who it offends, because it's true and it's right. And so thinking of those two things together, I'm like, okay, yes, there are tactical, strategic things we can do and sort of retreat to community and build up christian institutions that will be able to stand against the anti christian forces within the culture.

That stuff's important, of course, but if you don't have that ethos of we are going to fight for what's right, and we're, we don't care if you're angry at us, if you hate us, we are. We're going to stand against you. If you don't have both those things together, then it's going to fail. Right? Then it's going to fail. And the benedict option is all defensive. How do we retreat and survive? How do we get through this? And you need offense, too, right?

You need to be able to go and take background. Um, and. And so that's really where the book came out of. You know, I wrote an article about that in, in 2017. And you continued thinking about these things for. For several years, for, you know, four or five more years, then you go through the whole, you know, Trump era, and everything just got intensified even more. And finally, you know, you go through the year of 2020, and that was certainly eye opening for many, many people.

And by 2022, 2023, it was just incontrovertible that, right, we are firmly in this era where christians that actually do believe the Bible and genuinely follow Jesus, we are in the minority. And the, the people in power hate us. They hate us the most. And so we got to change our attitude. We have to change the way we go about things. And it starts internally.

It starts with rejecting a lot of the implicit ideas of just being nice and sweet and a little choir boy that no one will hate, to rejecting all of those things and saying, no, I'm gonna fight. I'm going to stand up for what I believe in and do these things take up this kind of character, this much more, much more, dare I say it, masculine approach. Oh, no. Yeah, I know. It's terrifying. Anything but that.

Because you see, throughout christian history, you see men as men living as christians, and they live that way in a much different way than we do now. We think being a good christian man is being a servant leader, and a heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy emphasis on servant. Very little bit, tiny little bit of leading involved in that. A tiny little bit of authority, if any. Mostly just serving and being a doormat and never being disagreeable in any way. And I'm like, no, that's got to stop.

If we're going to have any kind of christian culture, any kind of christian future for christian people, it has to be led by men who will stand up for their families, for their churches, for their people, and say, enough. No more of this. We are going to do what's right. And you wrote the book in a particular way. The metacommunication of the language and the imagery, it speaks to that. Like, you didn't just write the book with this kind of perspective that you had just kind of articulated.

You wrote it in it using language like Bugman and world, right? But that's the language of this energetic, masculine approach to culture. But in most of the cases, it's divorced from Christ. But it is a specific way of communicating about social problems. How did you land on writing it that way? Cause you could have written it lots of different ways. Yeah, yeah.

I think some of it is, like many of us, you go through the cauldron of online, and you learn to communicate ideas in that rhetorical frame, which is very powerful. Right. You see this, and you see how these arguments are made online. And I. And so, yeah, it's a lot of, you know, a lot of Internet terminology, you know?

And it's funny because, like, I'll have older people that are not online at all, you know, read it, and they're like, yeah, I didn't get some of the terms, but they all made sense, right? None of that, like, yeah, when you talk about a bug man, and even. And now it's kind of even somewhat of a dated, you know, term, like, things move pretty fast on the Internet, but it makes sense, right?

The social problems that we have where men are demasculinized purposefully and made to be these consumers, that your only existence is just to watch Marvel movies and NFL football and play video games and. And consume. Just have fun. I mean, all of these things are things like Doug Wilson talks about this, where all the freedoms that they say, these are our freedoms that we will die for, all of them are freedoms that you can have in a prison cell. Right? And so the language of the online.

Right, is like living in the pod. It's the same thing where you look at these extremely bleak. Like, there's that one guy who does, like, tiktoks or whatever, and it's like he lives in this tiny little apartment, and it's. He goes to his job, and he has no human contact of any kind at all. It's like life like that, right? It's so depressing. And there's. There's. It's like, this is. This is all that life is, is I wake up, I go to my office job, I come home and, you know, watch.

Watch movies or football or porn. I, whatever, order Uber eats, and then start the day all over again. And that's just my life until I die, right? That. That's a horrible life. And. But people love it, right? They think, this is great. This is great. I have freedom. I could do whatever I want as long as it's available on Netflix, you know? And it's. So many choices. Yeah, it's awful, actually.

Like, you are so constrained in this mode of life, and I. And you see it in the social dynamics as well. You're not allowed to be a man, you're not allowed to speak frankly. You always have to walk on eggshells with every single thing you say, and you can't ever have any conflict directly with other people. It's awful. It's so terrible. And that's not the way God made us to be and to live at all. And you see this. You see, especially young Mendez see this world, and they hate it.

They know that something is wrong, and they maybe can't quite put their finger on exactly what it is. Especially because we're so divorced from history, we don't know how people historically lived in any sense. You're born into the situation you're born into, and you just assume life has always been this way, and it always will be this way, and you don't have any other perspective to say, well, maybe it hasn't been that way before. Maybe.

Maybe life was actually a lot better for a lot of people, right? Even without all of the modern innovation that we have, even without antibiotics and dentists and air conditioning and everything else, like an iPhones, like, they actually had real life with real human community, where 100 years ago, you didn't have. You didn't have people that are, like, designed to be antisocial and alone.

You actually have friends, lots of friends, people that you've known your entire life, many, many relatives that live around you, that we all believe the same things and love and hate the same things. And instead, this world that we have, everyone is alone. And you have all of these modern copes, you know, that.

Some of which we've mentioned that allow you that sort of desensitize you and anesthetize you to the conditions that you are in, and you take those away, and then life becomes really rough. Some of that is like, you look at the lockdowns in 2020, and there's some people, many people, I'm sure everybody knows people like this who are like, yes, this is awesome. I can stay in my apartment forever, and I can just have food delivered to me.

I can watch as much streaming stuff as I want, and I can take up a couple new hobbies. Won't that be fun? And maybe I'll get, you know, I'll take the extended unemployment and not have to work for, like, nine months. This will be great, right? It's almost like an early retirement when you're, you know, 25 years old. There are people that loved it. And for me, I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm going insane. I'm going nuts. And I would just get up and leave. I would just go.

Go to empty parks and go meet friends illegally. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it, man. And it was a horrible life. But you see these lockdowns. People have been socially engineered to almost love that way of life where it doesn't affect them at all. It's like, well, I never leave my apartment anyway, so this is great. This is wonderful. And so, yeah, I mean, you see these social problems, and, I mean, most people don't even see them as social problems. They think this is just the way life is.

And it's good because look at all the stuff that we get to have and things we get to do, and it's like, no, it's actually really, really, really bad. And so, yeah, that's that. And so you have to use kind of shocking rhetorical devices and strategies to kind of shake people out of those things where it's like, actually, no, this life isn't very good. You should not like it. This is. You weren't created to live this way.

You're created to be a man and to yearn for the unknown, to take risks, to do difficult, hard things and not seek comfort, always not seek the easy way. And, yeah, I think a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people liked it. I mean, I tried not to be, like, too funny in it, but some of it, because it's almost like morbid gallows humor in some ways, but you have to be somewhat shocking order to get people to, like, say, to see, like, no, look at the reality of things.

Things are way worse than you think they are. And, like, even from the start of the book, you know, I kind of. I kind of made fun of, you know, like, the boomer QAnon kind of thinking where it's like, oh, you know, Klaus Schwab is going to create this dystopia where we all have, you know, barcodes and we're living in pods and eating bugs and. And there's going to be a one world government that, that dominates everything, and it's going to be so bad.

And it's like, just step back and think for a minute and compare the way we live now to the way people lived 100 years ago. And you already have that dystopia. You're already living in it. All the World Economic Forum stuff and everything else, that's just theme, right? Trying to advance what they already have. Right? It's not, they already have the dystopia that they. That they want. They've created it. And you're living in it.

And so instead of, like, focusing your energies on this horrifying future that could be, you should actually learn to hate the world that you already have. There's a powerful idea lurking in all of these. It's called the Red Pill. And I don't mean it in some sort of masculinity dialogue kind of way, which is kind of co opt. And this idea that there's a moment of awakening where you look around and you see that you are in the dystopia.

And I think the language of the online right is really effective at painting a picture of where things already are as opposed to this conspiracy narrative about where they might go. This is what already is. And this sense of revulsion that comes up, the sickness. Right. Like, this is terrible. And there's something particularly appealing about that, I think, to young men who, as you said, they feel that something's wrong.

They have the energy within themselves to truly despise it, but they can't articulate it. And once you paint that picture, it's like, yes, I see that now everywhere, and I hate it, and I want to tear it down. And I think that's really effective and very confronting to the american evangelical mind of the past 30 or so years, if not more.

Yeah. Especially because you look at the last 20 or 30 years within evangelicalism, and a lot of it is they just assume that the dystopia that we currently live in is totally fine and okay, and. And here's how we can kind of baptize it and make it, you know, give it some godly aspects. Like you look at, like the gospel coalition, for instance. I mean, it's really declined, and no one pays that much attention to it anymore.

But in its heyday, right, they were constantly writing these articles about the idolatry of the family and caring about singleness, right? The gift of singleness. And the subtext of that is you would have young women who, the way our culture has been engineered is for young women, which all of human history young women, they reach maturity, and now they go get married and have families. There's a very short window that God has designed for them to bear children.

And what our culture has done is say, no, we don't want to do that. We want them to go have careers and work, because look at all the lost productivity that we will have if these women go be moms and raise children. And so they get diverted into the workforce, and then the cultural machine makes, you know, basically propagandizes them and indoctrinates them into this idea very subtly, that being a mom is bad, having children is bad.

That's a life or a death sentence to all the good things that you can do. Look at all the travel you can do. Look at all the brunch you can go have with your friends and post pictures of your avocado toast and mimosas on instagram. And you won't get to do that if you have to take care of a crying baby all the time. And so that's, that's buried into their, into the mindset. And then they go, and they don't have children, they don't get married. They think, well, I can, I can put that off.

I can go do that anytime. And then they get to their mid to late thirties and, like, the biological clock has already mostly passed them by, and they're stuck. They're stuck. And it's really awful and tragic and, and you see, like, that dynamic. And then the flip side of that is that if all of those young women are not getting married and finding husbands, that means there's an awful lot of men who are not finding spouses within that age cohort.

And so then you have the whole incel phenomenon, and it's just devastating to the entire society. It's really bad. And the whole evangelical world totally oblivious to it. Or if they aren't oblivious to it, they want to attack what they'll do. They'll attack the red pill men, they'll be like, oh, see, this is Andrew Tate, and this is guys like that that are pushing these ideas for making men hate women. And it's like, well, no, I don't necessarily blame the women here either.

It's the people that govern our culture and rule it and decide, it's not like culture is organic. It's not like we organically decided, yeah, we're going to pursue this course instead of what human beings have done for time immemorial. No, people decided this. They decided this. And multiple parties are involved. A lot of the discussion of the book, people are like, you talk about them and they, and who is that? And I'm like, it's really this decentralized conspiracy, right?

So it's not, it's not like there's, it's not like George Soros is sitting up there, right, pulling the strings saying, all right, now we're going to send all the women into the workforce and trick them with mimosas, right? No, it's multiple parties, all sorts of different nos to this thing. It's not like there's one central guy where it's like, if we just get rid of this guy, then we'll be okay. It's the entire managerial regime that has decided these things.

It's major corporations seeing, hey, you know what? Yeah, that really will be bad, I guess, if the birth rates fall massively, but we'll just import people from all over the world to make up for it. And so, but right now we can double our productivity if we bring all of these moms into the workforce. And, yeah, instead of having four or five children like before, well, maybe have one or two.

And, yeah, we'll save on maternity leave and childcare and all these things because they just want to have kids and we'll make so much more money. And when you're in your twenties and you make a good amount of money and you don't have a family, you have all this discretionary income to spend and so demand of all the products we sell will go up. So, like, there's, there's clear, like, ego motive behind these things. And so it isn't like any one guy that decided, we're going to do this.

A lot of people saw, hey, this is really good. I mean, some of it you could go back to like World War Two and women entering the workforce there because all the men are off fighting and we need people to build tanks and bombs and everything else. And so you see the rosie the riveter, you know, we could do it thing. And, and the people with a lot of money saw that, too, and thought, hey, this isn't so bad. We can make a lot of money this way.

And so it inserted this sort of very high time preference into a society that didn't otherwise have it, right. You had american society, which was very low time preference, and people would save money, right. They wouldn't want to just go out and buy stuff. I mean, you see this kind of, with like, like the tv show Mad Men, right? The subtext of that show is, right, this massive cultural change that's occurring during that era, and, and what are they doing on the show, right.

They're trying to promote high time preference in society, right? That's the whole, wait, what's Don Draper doing the whole time? It's like, how do I get people to buy more stuff? Right? That's, that's what they're trying to. Then the background of it is all the massive cultural change from, you know, the idealistic 1950s family to the, you know, sixties sexual revolution. And so like that, you know, there's, there's, there's good and bad things. Of course, about that show.

Of course, they, they try to glamorize it, but you look at it, it's like, no, they're the villain. They're the bad guys the entire time. And, and so, yeah, I mean, just that major cultural shift. Like, there are economic motives to it. There are culturally subversive motives to it. People that wanted to remake american society in a particular image. And so it's not like one guy or even one small group of people just up and decided, we're going to do this.

And so that's why it's like, oh, this is kind of conspiratorial language. And it's like, well, I don't know, man. Like, that's literally what happened. Like, people wanted it to be this way. I don't. I don't think that's up for debate. That's what happened. That's what happened. Yeah. And so how do you overcome that is the big question. I mean, there's basically two ways of thinking. And I don't get into this too much in the book, because a lot of the book is for the general public. Right.

It's for regular people. And so for regular people, it's. Right. You see the way the culture is, and here's what you can personally do to protect your family, protect yourself, live in a much more human way, rather than a socially engineered, managerial society way. That's a lot of the, the theme of the book, but I think on the larger meta political side of it is this society can't continue to function the way it's been designed to in perpetuity. Right.

It's just like, I mean, one is like just a simple math problem, right? If you don't have babies, you don't have a society. I mean, this is like Elon Musk's thing, right? That's why he's trying to repopulate the world single handedly. And it's like, it's a busy guy, and Marsden. That's right. People go to bars, so he's making them himself. But it's. I mean, that's just the nuts and bolts of it.

It's like, if you don't have people, and you could try to import people from the third world and wherever else, but they're not the same people. They're not able to function in the same way. And so it will decline and fall apart in some way. All sorts of people want to prophesy, oh, there's going to be a collapse within 20 years, and the whole system is going to fall apart. Maybe things are complex. Anybody who tries to do that, I think, is selling snake oil to a certain degree.

But the reason they're able to do it is because everybody can see this can't keep going on forever. I think the background is knowing that, knowing that these things can't keep going on forever. How do you build things and devote your life to the appropriate ends, to the right ends for 100 or 200 years down the road for your children and your grandchildren and so forth? How do you set yourself up, if you're a single guy, to even have children, grandchildren? What things do you need to do?

Some of it is just a pastoral question because I've, you know, especially when I was younger, a lot of my pastoral ministry was to younger men. And so I started, I mean, this is probably, you know, I was online and seeing all of the, I mean, the nice thing about online for those that aren't online is you kind of see things that are going to enter the mainstream, like, five or ten years beforehand. And so you get, you know, sort of an idea of where things are going.

And so we had, in the church that I was at, there were maybe 20 or 25 young men that were like 18 to 30, and most of them are unmarried, wanted to be married. And I saw this problem, like, none of them were getting married. And all the dads are like, well, they just need to stop being lazy. They need to go get jobs and stop playing video games. And initially, of course, I just assumed that's what was going on. And I'd see these guys and it's like, no, I'm working like 60 hours a week.

I don't have time for video games. I want to get married. And I've asked all these girls out and none of them are interested. And I'd look at these guys and I'm like, well, you're not, you know, you're good shape. You're not big fat slob or anything. You're a good looking guy. That's weird that none of these gals right are giving you the time of day. That's strange to. And it was like every guy, it wasn't just like one.

Like, maybe he's just being weird and antisocial, doesn't know how to talk to girls, but it's like, it was all of them. And I'm like, what is going on here? This is, this is strange. And, and I started to see some of the stuff I was seeing on the Internet. You know, you're reading. You're reading. You know, guys like Michael Foster was, was starting to talk about this stuff.

And you'd read a, you know, this, this guy Dalrock would appear all over the place and I'm like, whoa, some of this stuff really makes sense, right? Even within, like, conservative christian homeschool communities, we'd have these, you know, 20 something girls that just would say no to every single guy. And it's like, well, why are they doing that? Why don't they want to get married? And it's like, oh.

Even within that very insular, kind of Benedict option kind of community, you still have the same problems that exist in the outside world. Now, these girls were not on, like, Tinder and like hooking up with guys like girls out in the world, but the same kind of thinking was there, right? Even though, even though they weren't living in an overtly sinful lifestyle, the same ethos of, well, I'm just going to find myself in my twenties and have fun and be with my friends.

And if the right guy comes along, that'll be good. And then they get closer to their thirties and they're like, well, I just can't find a husband. This is terrible. And it'd be like, well, I know for a fact like half a dozen guys have asked you out and you've told them all no. And to me, it was like, it was like selling a house. In a lot of ways, it's like selling a house and you put your house on the market and you want half a million dollars for this house.

And all the offers you're getting are like, for 300, 350,000. You keep saying, no, no, no, no. Well, what's the value of the house then, if all the offers are way lower than you think it should be? Well, it's the problem with your own valuation. And of course, I'm a guy analyzing these things in this cold, brutal, rational way. So it's not easy to, to talk to young women and explain that to them because, you know, women don't think that way, right? It's hard.

It's like, honey, you're not as good as you think you are. Like, you can't say that and you can't communicate that in a way that will be effective. Like, only a father can do that. So a lot of it. Right, right. Was like talking to the dads, like, hey, maybe it's maybe just too highly of herself, but I, that is the, that ended up being a lot of you. You end up seeing these things. You see the cultural, social problems that exist all throughout the world.

Or even in, even in very strong christian communities as well. And the evangelical world was just totally oblivious to all of these dynamics and any of the resources that you had. I mean, some of it is, you'd have know boomer pastors, that they grew up in the seventies and eighties and the sixties and the world was not this way at all for them. And so they understandably, they have no way of understanding these things and coming up with any kind of solution, right.

Because these guys are just being lazy and playing video games, right. Seemed like a very simple, easy explanation. They can just harp on the guys being, being lazy and bums. And that wasn't the answer. And then you have the whole, all the leadership in the evangelical world really, really, really reinforcing all those ideas and at the same time telling the young women, no, you just have the gift of singleness.

And the gift of singleness means going and having fun with your friends and you don't want these people pressuring you to get married and have babies. Right? That's idolatry of the family. Right. You, that's bad. And so, right. Really, it was primed for this cope of the entire social order collapsing and assigning blame in all the wrong places and not giving good actionable counsel to young people living in light of these drastic social changes.

And thankfully, there has been sort of a sea change, at least among conservative evangelicals, to begin to address these things in different ways. The prime example of the old way is you had very popular conservative evangelical pastor Matt Chandler. When he gives this, I'm sure you've seen it, Will. He gives this sermon and he's talking about, he's criticizing this older pastor who's talking about promiscuity, who is got this rose. I mean, it's kind of a corny example.

He's got this rose and he's having all the young women pass this rose around. And by the end of it, when it gets to the last person, the rose is all crumpled up and damaged and destroyed. And he's saying, that's what, what you are, right? This older pastor that he's critiquing, that's what you are. If you go live a promiscuous life, you're going to be this damaged rose. You need to keep it pristine. You need to remain chaste and so forth. And Chandler's like, no, Jesus wants the rose.

Jesus wants that damaged, destroyed Rose. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, I mean, in terms of like the salvific sense, right? Can women who have been promiscuous and so forth. Can they be redeemed? Can God save the Onlyfans girl? Right? Yes, of course. No one disputes that, right? They, they can be right. Grace extends to them. Of course it does.

But when you're talking about ideal ways of life, right, a way of life that you would want for your own daughter, the crusty old pastor that he's critiquing was right. He was correct. You don't want your daughter to live that way. That was their mode. And you see this even today, constantly. What happens is the OnlyFans girl, her career starts to end, she gets older and the grift ends. And what do they do? Well, I'm a Christian now, and so now I'm going to be a christian influencer.

And so send me money, right? And anyone who criticizes them, it's like, well, you must be some kind of incel hater. You must hate women and you must say that women can't get saved. Who you're withholding God's grace from them. It's like, no, if you're actually repentant of these things, like you would just go and not live in the public eye anymore. Yes, that would, that's probably the best counsel you can give them. And so you don't even give the pretense that you're just doing this as a grift.

And like, nobody can understand, we can understand that they want to, they just want to hate you. But it's the same thing, right? It's the same thing of winsomeness. And whatever you do, right, one of the third rails of evangelicalism, you know, modern evangelicalism, is that women can't sin, right? And you can't ever address women's sins, right?

You see this all the time with, you go to a megachurch on Mother's Day and it's how women are so great and so wonderful and we love our moms, don't we, folks? And, and then you get to Father's day and it's like, men, you got a man up, you got to take responsibility. You got to be a servant leader. And I know some of you are just absolute losers. You got to figure it out. It'll just be, they'll hit you.

The only time they'll ever confront sin and be really bold and really hit you between the eyes is like when you're attacking men specifically, right? You have permission to do that. Everything else, which kind of shows you the feminization of Christianity and modern american evangelicalism, is, right. You can't, you can't address sin by women. Right? You can't say that like, ah, promiscuity is bad. Like, I mean, you see people like this, they'll, they'll, they'll lose their minds.

If you, like, use the word whore. Like, you can't do that. It's like, I don't know. It's used a lot in the Bible. Can I say it there? Well, you're, you're not Paul. You're not Jesus. And it's like, okay, all right. So, you know, yeah, it's just nuts. And so a lot of these things, it's like, well, that stuff's changing, and it has to change. Well, largely because Christianity and the christian religion in the Bible, it conforms to reality. It conforms to, and it fits within reality. They're not.

Conform isn't the right word, but they're seamless, right? It's the same God who created all of creation and designed it the way that it is designed men to live like men and women to live like women, and for them to interact the way that they do, that God that built that whole world is the same God that gave us the Bible. And the two things fit together.

And so what you see with a lot of modern evangelicalism that has conformed itself to the way of the world and to our currently socially engineered dystopia, is the Bible. The way that they will preach it and teach it and so forth, will conflict with reality over here.

And so you see it like this, where, I mean, one of the realities that we badly, badly want to suppress in our current social order is that there is a finite amount of time where a young woman can get married, have a family, start having babies. There's a very narrow window there, and it also corresponds with the time period when women are the most attractive to the opposite sex. Right? And you can't even say those things out loud without being accused of being a misogynist.

You hate women or you just think women are objects constantly. You'll be told this, but it's like, it's just reality, right? It's the way it is. Sorry you don't like it, but that's how God made it, right? He could have made women to be beautiful when they are 70 years old and just glowing with beauty, but he didn't. He had those two things correspond for some reason, really, it's hard to figure out why that would be.

You have that reality that's built into the world, but then you have the world that we have in evangelicalism trying to cope with that. And trying to justify it. And so you will have the church telling young women these lies and repeating these lies to young women rather than just saying, hey, you should go get married, you should go be a mom if that's what you want. And for the overwhelming majority of women, deep down, it is what they want. It is what God has made them to want it.

There's very few that actually have this gift of celibacy that want to be devoted to a particular mission, that don't have any desire to be a mom. And the reality is, no, most people do because that's how God built the world for human beings to want to have a future generation. And so we're so out of whack with these things. For, for faithful Bible believing Christianity to exist in the future, we have to react to the errors of this previous age. And it's painful, it's hard.

People will call you a lot of names. They will hate you, they'll attack you, they'll call you an incel, they'll, you know, whatever, you know, I mean, I get called it and I have weird, you know, we are on our 7th baby here, my wife and I. It's like, I guess I'm the only, not the only, but one, one of the few incels with seven children. But you get attacked this way and it's, and it's nuts, but, oh, well, right. Who cares?

Like the world that you let the dead bury their dead, like this world that you are married to, that you love, is destructive and horrible and it's not going to survive. We're after the future and what we can build and the future of christian civilization, and I don't care what people are going to call me. That's like the ethos that you have to have. It's like, I don't care. St. Boniface doesn't care if the german pagans are going to hate it. He was martyred. That's the end of the story.

They killed him. They killed him. And that has to be the ethos that we have to have. I don't care if you kill me. What I believe is true and that's what matters. And so that's, you know, I mean, all of these things and there's so many other ones, but I mean, that's the obvious big one that's right before us is how feminized everything is, how it's geared to support this idea that women should not be mothers and to divert them from motherhood and family life at any cost.

And that's a major, major idol that exists within our society that has to be cut down. And it's going to take men of boldness and courage to actually do that. On a personal level, I really appreciate you saying all that because I've seen many of the same things. Even though I'm very new to evangelicalism, I've seen all the same things. And these are the inescapable conclusions that I've drawn. And it's very easy for me to feel like, well, I'm the new guy in the room. Maybe I'm crazy.

And I hear you say these things and it's like, okay, no, praise God, I am not crazy. So thank you for that. And I'll just. I have a tweet kind of going viral right now, literally, about this. Like, look, women, a single, unmarried, childless woman over 30, have to repent for the rebellion that they've been living in. Yeah, that's just true. You know what I mean? Like, men, you can't say that. No, you can't say that. There's nothing in the Bible that says women should be married.

Like, well, show me the you go single girl scripture verse. I haven't been able to find one yet. And it's. It's, it's. It's so sad. It's really. It's tragic for so many. For so many different reasons. And I've just had it. Like, I, you know, this, this idea, like, guys, does everyone see that fire over there in the corner? Like, what fire? That's keeping us warm as it's burning the house? You know what I mean?

And the fact that there are so many pastors that will get up and berate men for hours and like, excuse me, do women sin ever? We can't talk about that because they'll lose their church. And I think that's cowardice. And as civilizations burning down and birth rates are crashing, you have all these men, like, I bravely preach the gospel really well, let's hear it. Are we going to get some equal weights and measures? Are we going to. No, we're not going to do that.

You say these things like, okay, these things are real. I'm not making it up. And so I very much appreciate that because your line that I took away from the book, one of the many things is you said harlotry versus the household. I think that really just crystallizes it. I don't know if you want to unpack that really quickly. Yeah, I mean, that really is the. That really is the issue. Right? Those are the two ways you can go because the gift of singleness thing is extremely narrow.

Like, oh, I'm going to devote myself to missions and to serving the church. Well, that's not a huge chunk of people. Throughout the history of the christian church, most people were just normal people that went and got married and had kids and raised them to be christians and so that their children would go do the same. And that's how, that's how God has built us to, most normatively built people to live. And so you divert people away from that.

Well, then what are they, what else are they going to do, right? What else are they going to do? They're going to. And this is, and it's, I mean, you see some of the modern innovations as well, right? You have, you know, antibiotics and modern surgery coupled with, you know, chemical, hormonal birth control that comes into, into being. And it, it allows women to become just as promiscuous as men. In the past, right?

In the past, right, men could be man whores and, and, and go, go to prostitutes or go to just loose women in general that were kind of on the margins of society, and rightfully so, and they could do that seemingly without consequence. Right? And so what feminism brought and the sexual revolution brought is, right, we want women to be able to do the same thing. And to do that, well, you have to kill a lot of babies to do that.

And yes, there was abortion in the ancient world and the medieval world and the pre modern world, but it's very dangerous, right? You very likely would die if you did. There's a good chance you would, because you're basically taking poison to kill the baby or doing more primitive surgical techniques. But with antibiotics and modern surgery now, it's relatively safe for the mother. And on top of that, like your hormones prevent a baby from implanting in the womb.

So this conceived egg, which is a human being, gets implanted in the womb ordinarily. Well, if your hormones block that, what are you doing? You're killing a human being, the very smallest, tiniest human being, but it's still a unique human being with its own DNA, a person created in the image of God, and you're killing that.

So you have in the middle of the 20th century, this technological ability that unlocks this way of life that is unnatural, and you see the corresponding social changes that come out of that. And women are incentivized to live that way, to live a promiscuous lifestyle. It seems like fun. It seems like this is a good life that you can have all the things you want. You have a life like the tv show Sex and the City that's glamorized for women, and that's the ideal life. That's what you want to do.

And if you do those things, obviously you can't have a household. You can't be a mother raising children. And those things, of course, are demonized and treated like slavery, treated like a waste of your gifts and abilities. Like, that's something. I mean, even recently online, some of the discourse has been, well, all the red pill guys and things like that. What do you do about the really talented, bright women who you're like, well, go be a mom. Go have kids. What do you do about them?

And who have all these abilities, right? What do you do about them? Right? What, what have, what do you have to offer them? And it's like, it kind of goes back to the meme, right? This. It's, it's an older meme, but it checks out of. Right. The woman who's like, ah, I was a scientist, and I did all of these things and cured these diseases, discovered these things. What did you do? And this woman's like, well, I raised five scientists. It's like, which is better?

Which contributed board of science, right? And it's that kind of thing. Like, it's better to have children and have many children and raise them up, train them, devote your life to them, devote all your talent and ability to that than to go have a single, solitary career of 40 or 50 years and leave nothing behind after that. Right? That's what you have to offer. Right? And people used to think this way and understand this intuitively, that God has made men and women different.

Yeah. That he's made. He's made men and women different. That women have this extraordinary ability to create new life inside their own bodies. Right. And bring forth the next generation of humanity. Right? Only they have this. Men don't have this ability. Right? This is controversial statement today, but men don't have this ability. Women only women do.

And God has endowed them with this ability and even, like, psychologically and physiologically giving them different ways of understanding the world than men do. Right? We talk, you know, you talk about, like, men are, men are kind of autistic and rational and. And cold and heartless, right? They just think about things like this. Boom, boom, boom, ABCD. And women are much more emotional. Right? They make decisions more emotionally. That's also a controversial thing. What do you mean?

Yes, they do. And you just proved it. Thank you. Yes, you do. And, I mean, you see this also just in group dynamics, women seek consensus and they seek. They avoid conflict, right. They want everybody to get along. And men are like, I'm right, you're wrong, and this is the way we're going to do it and let's have it out, right. And if you win, then you win. And I'll submit, right. That you have rigid hierarchies form among men, women. It's like nice democracy, right? They all get along.

Isn't this nice? And. And so like that. There's a reason for that, because within the household, when you got a bunch of little people, you raise them to get along. You have matronly instincts where you have a much greater degree of empathy and care and love just built it in. The hormones that are all throughout your body exist. This way, women are unique compared to men. They're different. That's the skill and ability and everything else.

Yes. If they're high iq, well, guess what, you're going to raise high IQ children that have lots of abilities or if they're very athletic, well, guess what, you're going to have athletic children or whatever it is. Like you're going to replicate yourself in these people. And people understood that not just 100 years ago, but throughout all of time, they understood that's what women are, that's what God made them to be, that there's a telos behind men and women.

There's an end for which God created them, a purpose of, for men and for women. And God created women to be mothers. And that is insanely controversial today, to say that. What do you mean? That means you don't think they're as good as men. It's like, no, I think they're different. I think they're different than men. And it would be like saying men aren't as good as women because they can't produce babies inside of them. No, they're just different. They're different. They're different beings.

And so just recovering that, recovering this natural order of what men and women are, you see this really the full bloom of it is within transgenderism, where it's like, all right, we take away all the social conventions between men and women, where we have to think of men and women as identical things in every possible way. You own a corporation and you can't say, well, we're only going to hire men because we want.

You run an oil rig and you say, we're only going to hire men because this is a dangerous job and everything else. No, you have to interview women for that job, too. Those are the laws we make in our society, you take away all the social conventions around differences between the sexes, and then what happens? Well, the next step of that, of course, is men can become women and vice versa. It makes. In this sick, twisted way, it makes sense, right? That one would flow from the other, and it takes.

I mean, it took, I think, because most people. Most people are okay with all the weirdness of feminism and all of that stuff. They're even okay with perverted sexuality, like homosexuality and lesbianism and everything else. They'll maybe be okay with those things. But then when they see the transgender issue appear, especially when it starts to affect children, like, whoa, hold up here. We're gonna put the brakes on right at this point, and you have to show them.

It's like, no, these are all, like, this is a clear line from one to the other. And, like, you can't just go back to 1992 and say, we're going to stop right here. That was good. We'll stay right? We just want to put all that. That's what a lot of the anti wokeness stuff ultimately is. A guy like James Lindsay, the anti woke guy, what does he want to create? He wants to create a world where it was like it was in 2012, right? Right back the clock up just to 2012, and then we'll be good.

And it's like, buddy, even if you're successful in doing that, you're gonna get 2015 and 2024 like that. It's baked into the cake. There's no way around it. You either have a normal, natural order or you do not. It's one or the other. A lot of the thing seems like I harp in the book the transgender issue a lot, and I do that deliberately because that's the thing that people can grasp hold of, where it's like, yeah, this is wrong. You're right. This is wrong.

And it's like, yes, there's a direct line from this line I use in the book, a direct line from Rosie the riveter to the genderqueer goblin with pink hair that's actually a dude that's 400 pounds in a wig. Right. There's a straight line between those two things. It doesn't just stop somewhere. Now we have this nice, liberal, secular society, Star Trek style right now.

No, we have this horrible dystopia, and it's this progression from one to the other, and there's no way to stop it reaching these ends. And people have to understand, and the church doesn't really want to understand that because we've made our. We have made our peace with feminism we've made our peace. Many evangelicals even have made their peace with homosexuality. And I'm sure the same people will make their peace with transgenderism and whatever is next.

And you have to say, no, not only are we going to stop here, but we have to go back to a normal order. And that's really painful because everyone has built their lives around, even, even normal. Like, you go to a large mega church in a metropolitan area, in a suburb, and a church of ten or 15,000 people, and 90% of the family's there. Mom and dad both work and they have 1.3 children. And that's what's normal. That's like normal family life in our dystopia.

And to get them to not do that is, I mean, they built their entire lives around it, right? You can't just say, okay, mom's gonna stay home from work now. Like, that's hard. That's hard for, that's a very hard pill to swallow for people because, right, all of their lives, decades of their lives, have been, have they've worked toward having things the way they are, and you can't just rip them out of that.

And so it's much easier to just not go down that road in the first place and to disciple young people to avoid those things at all costs. And that too, is very, very hard. You look at housing prices today, and average cost of a house is nearly $400,000 throughout the country, and you would have to devote more than half your salary, the average, the median income, to paying just for the house, much less all the other expenses which continue to go up. It's extremely difficult for people.

You can carve out a path on the margins. You can live out in the sticks like I do, where the housing prices aren't quite as much, or you can be on the other end of the margin and make a lot of money, and then your wife can stay home and raise your kids and homeschool you. But the median, the people in the middle of the bell curve, um, economically, right, they're stuck. There's nowhere for them to go, and, and there's really no desire for any kind of change like that.

And, and the church is not going to, because they, it's not like, it's not like, um, like if you were, if you had a big, huge megachurch of 10,000 people, you start saying this stuff immediately. People would be like, well, show me in the Bible where it says to do this. Show me in the Bible. And it's like, first thing, show me in the Bible where it's a sin to cut off your arm, right. Well, there isn't actually, like, jesus says, cut off your hand, but, like, show me the Bible where this is.

This is not. This is not right. It's like, well, no, this is extremely foolish way of life that's destructive to every. To your own family and to the entire society. And it takes a lot of work to. I mean, I had to write an entire book, like, outlining these things, and I don't have, like, little proof text to be able to say, here's where it's wrong. It's like, no, you could see it if you have the sense to see how God built the natural order.

And so it's a tough hill to climb for people because they want just a quick, easy Bible verse that says, live this way. And even the Bible verses that describe the household and describe how life is to be, even those ones. Everyone wants to carve out these exceptions and make them say things other than they say. Like, you look at ephesians five where wives are to submit to their husbands.

You'll have evangelicals who will say, well, that's conditioned on the husband loving the wife as Christ loved the church. Then you make it conditional, and the wife can say, well, I don't have to submit to you for this, that and the other thing, because you're not loving me the way I think you should be loving me. And so it's. It's entirely subjective at that point. There is no, like, objective command. No, just listen to what your husband says.

And. And all of this, all of what Paul says is predicated on an understanding of the natural order and how God made households. Right? He he just assumes it. Right. He assumes that the, um, ancient greek and first century jewish people that he's preaching to just implicitly understand, yes, we have households with husbands and wives, and men and women are different. And we can't make that assumption anymore as easily because we've revolted against the natural order.

And so much of this stuff, I make this analogy in the book, too. So much of this stuff is, it's like, I live in Minnesota, and we've got the Mississippi river here, this big, massive river, and our society is like, as if we manufactured a way to make the Mississippi run north, right, instead of south.

And we build all of these dams and we divert the whole river and everything else, but gravity is still working the way that it's working, and it doesn't actually work very well, but we've built all these things, and it seems like it's working okay. And it's like going up to people and saying, actually, I think the Mississippi is supposed to run south, man. What do you mean? No, no. We've devoted everything to this, right?

We've rebelled against the natural order, and we've advanced in technologically and sociologically to make it seem like it will work right. Forever. But it's not going to. It's not going to. And it'd be like, well, tell me in the Bible where it says that the Mississippi should run south. You know, it's like, this is insane. This is nuts. And you almost feel in some ways like a cassandra, right?

If you know that, you know the ancient greek myth where this woman is cursed with prophecy, where everything that she says will come to pass, but nobody's gonna believe her, right? You feel this way constantly, and I'm sure you do in the circles you run in as well, where it's like I'm just describing reality and nobody wants to listen at all. Nobody wants to hear it. But the white pill there is that there actually are people that want to listen.

There are people that seed reality all around them, and they hate the way things are. And you have this duty and responsibility to help them to say, okay, you see the way things are, and we're not going to persuade the masses to give up their 401 ks and their life in the suburbs. That's probably not going to happen. I'm not going to have 20 million people read my book and say, yeah, we need to go back to an older way of living.

And so it will end up being the people on the margins on either end that are going to be able to rebuild a functional society and live in the way that God is intended for human beings to live and await the river, to start all the dams, to start bursting the river, start running south again, and to have things in place, to have institutions in place, to have communities in place where people live in a normal human way, and for that to finally grow when God brings it all down.

So I really appreciate so much of what you had to say there because there's a lot of context that I find myself also missing the fact of just how much of evangelicalism has bought in to feminism. I can see the rainbow flags going up. I can see the diversity equity and inclusion. I can see that stuff happening. But I haven't been able to see quite so clearly just how much feminism has gotten its claws deep into the evangelical church.

But I experience the pushback when I try to talk about these things, including well, where is that in the Bible? Where does it say that women should get married? I'm like, well, let's see. The book starts with a married couple, Adam and Eve, and then it finishes with a married couple, Christ and his bride. And there's marriages all throughout the thing. So where isn't it in the Bible? Show me the, you go single girl scripture verses as the thing.

I said, but people don't want to be challenged on that. But when you say, and I love the image that you put into the book, all the engineering that's been trying to make the Mississippi river go north. Right. And you can feel that in culture, like, the gears are grinding. But what I don't understand, and I guess I get the part that they don't want to have their ways of life upended.

But when you show people the truth, when you show them, like, this is God's design for the family, and I know that they've been engineered through complementarianism and egalitarianism. Like, I understand that dialogue.

But when you show them and you show people inflation, you show people immigration and you show people crashing birth rates and you show people transgenderism and you see weak and aimless men and brassy women, and you say, like, you know, there's a book about all this and it says that we're supposed to do things this other way. That worked pretty well. Their response is like, is violent. They get angry and they get mad and they make it about you. And that's the part that I don't understand.

For people who in the next breath will call themselves Bible believing, faithful christians, that's the part that I don't get. I also get the making it on the margins. But what has, and again, in many ways, I'm the new guy in the room, right? You're articulating things that I also see what I'm trying to figure out. I had a great conversation with Jeff Wright about this. Understand the context of what is the, from the evangelical perspective, where is the rejection of these things coming from?

Where is the energy to reject these things coming from? Is it pride? Is it an unwillingness to be duped? Do they really believe it? Yeah, I think a lot of it is that. And this is other things that I've mentioned in the book just on worship, is that pragmatism is the thing that drives evangelicalism and evangelical culture? That, and this hearkens back to the second great awakening.

That second great awakening is this event in american christian history where you had traditional, mostly Protestant America and you would have Presbyterian and congregationalist and Baptist and Methodist churches. And what the second great awakening brought about were things that were parallel to the church. I mean, many of them, like Charles Finney, was an ordained minister, one of the leading lights of the second great awakening.

But you'd have these revivals that would take place where people would make decisions for Christ, and everything became about securing decisions for Christ. And whatever pragmatic means you had to use, whatever emotional manipulation you would use to bring these things about was all on the table.

And that became really the driving force since within the evangelical world, and you see, especially in the 20th century, when you started to have a collapse of mainline denominations and people fled those places because they just stopped believing the bible wholesale. They started going to evangelicalism. And evangelicalism grew to be this large force within the american religious landscape in the sixties and seventies.

It was all the same methodology as the second great awakening is what drove it. And it was pragmatic. It was whatever we have to do to get them in the church, whatever marketing methods we have to use. So by the eighties and nineties, you begin having the seeker sensitive movement where guys like Rick Warren, people like that bill Hybels, where whatever we got to say or do to get them in the church, thats what well do, right?

And you see the result of that is what we'll just soften on some of these things that conflict with the more mainstream culture, because that will be a roadblock to getting them into the church. Once we get them in them, maybe we'll straighten things out, but we got to get them in the church. Like you even see this with the Super bowl ads of he gets us. I'm sure you've seen those ads.

That's the same dynamic at play there where they're trying to appeal to this kind of middle of the road current american sensibility of racism is bad guys and right wing stuff is bad. Being against immigrants is bad. And there's all this imagery countering kind of maga impulses among evangelicals. And that's purposeful, right? There's a goal there. They want to appeal to the culture. And so I think a lot from the leadership perspective of the church, that drives a lot of it.

I think we have this idea. And so guys like Doug and others who in one sense they're totally right, that the church should be the engine that's driving the culture, that the church, just the idea of culture and what it is is the famous quote, like, what is culture but religion externalized? And that's where you get like cult, cultus is at the core, it's a religious thing. And so our culture is not driven by the church at all. It's driven by. By other religious impulses.

And so what the church ends up being is the caboose, right? The culture takes it along and they're at the back end and they adopt whatever cultural things are extant, like ten years later. And you even see this with worship music. So, like, whatever music is popular, whatever pop music there is today, right. You'll see within five or ten years, like the mirror or a parallel to that within christian music, right. It just, it's the caboose following the train of culture.

And so that's the situation that we're in. And so thinking along those lines, why do people react so violently to that? It's because what is at, what is the, what is the cultist that's at the center of all of their cultural beliefs and practices? It's not this christian idea of how we live life. It's the world's. And so if you conflict with how the world says you're supposed to live, then you're a bad person, right. You're an evil person. And they'll.

Or what you're doing, it's like, will, you're saying I'm an evil person because I live in this way and not in this way that you say I should. You're saying I'm a bad person, right. That's why they react violently to it, because you're really actually striking at the center of their actual religious belief. That's the thing within christian churches today. You can go to your pastor and say, you know, I'm having a lot of doubts about the resurrection and the virgin birth and all these things.

I've been on Reddit and I've been reading atheists, and they've been making some good arguments, and I think they're persuading me. Right. Well, your pastor or your friends at church or your friends at Bible Study or whatever, they won't freak out if you begin expressing doubts about these things. But if you begin expressing doubts about certain cultural things or certain narratives that our culture believes, you will be cast out of the church immediately. Get out of here. We don't want you.

You're a bad person. You're saying that women shouldn't work. If you said, hey, sort of have some doubts about the 19th amendment, I think maybe that was a bad idea. It's like, get out of here. We do not want you at all. You're divisive. You're a bad person. It's like, no, I've just been reading. I'm not sold on. I'm not persuaded. I'm just. I'm starting to have some doubt, like, no, we don't want you. Because what is at the core of their religion is. Right. The post war consensus, right.

The actual religion that we have in America, which is we live in this secular liberal democracy, we buy into at least some strain of feminism, whether it's first wave or second wave or third wave. We're somewhere on that spectrum that we think is we've made our peace with. And if you confront those things, if you challenge those things, you'll be put out of.

Out of churches, because their actual belief, their actual religious belief that they would burn at the stake for is not Christianity, not the claims of the Bible, but the current civil religion of the United States. That's right. I think that's an excellent way you put it. The church is the caboose of culture. Because I want to talk a little bit about christian nationalism, because christian nationalism viewed that way would seem to be.

There are some of us who are in the caboose, like, no, I think we're going to go up to the front of the engine. I think we're going to start making our way forward on the train, and maybe we're gonna, you know, see if we can get an engineer put in to drive us, you know, where we want to go, instead of being comfortable in the back. But it seems that there are christians at the door that can woosh. Like, no, you can't do that. You're not allowed to do that.

It's like, well, we're probably going to. So maybe we can talk. Maybe we can talk about that. At the risk of. There are some more things in the book I want to cover, but I want to just kick this idea around for a little bit, if we can. Yeah, we'll spend the rest of our time talking about this. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think a lot of it is just that, like, the people that are strongly reacting to any talk of.

No, the christian religion should be the foundational cultural expression or the center of our culture. Right. That's bad. You can't have. Jesus doesn't want us to have power. What are you talking about? My kingdom is out of this world. Yeah. No, no. Right. And it's weird because it will be guys who. It doesn't matter what tradition they come out of. I mean, it can be people who are reformed and believe in the Westminster confession and catechisms, you know, 100% without exception.

And then they'll be like, no, we can't have Christianity at the center of cultural identity in the United States. We're a secular democracy. Or they could be, I mean, they can be Baptist, they can be mainstream, evangelical, they can be anything. And they all end up in the same place because they've bought into this idea that secular liberal democracy is the end of history, and this is the good and best and most virtuous society that we could possibly have.

And if you say that no Christianity should be at the center, the christian religion should be at the center, then you're a bad, very, very bad person because you're threatening that. And the irony, of course, is before the 20th century, and certainly at the time of the founding of the country, there wasn't any other option other than Christianity being at the center of the culture. It was at the center of every culture in the western world.

And it would be inconceivable to those people for Christianity not to be at the center of your culture. You don't have any expression of this in the west anywhere until 1789 with the French Revolution, where now we're going to have this atheistic, rational society where Christianity is not at the center. It's going to be human reason.

And that's what's revolutionary about the French Revolution and all revolution, revolutionary ideology since 1789, is that it's man centered, it's humanistic, it is us recreating society along our own lines and in our own vision and remaking everything. And so what they're doing is saying, we want, that we want to have this permanently revolutionary society where God isn't at the center, where Jesus isn't at the center, right? He can be.

Often we'll carve out some space where we have a little safe space for us to exist, right? And that's what they cling to because they think if you have Christianity at the center of a culture, well, then what are you going to have? It's going to be like the 15 hundreds and the 16 hundreds, where you're going to be persecuting other christians and it's going to be so horrible. We're going to have religious wars and all these things.

It's like, man, you are in a religious war right now and you are being persecuted for being a Christian. If you, if you say there are only two genders, male and female, and I believe that because that's what Jesus said, that's what the Bible says, well, guess what? You're a bad person, you're going to lose your job, you're going to lose economic opportunity, you're going to be shut out of normal society for believing that simple truth. What is that?

But being persecuted for your beliefs like it is. It is. And so, no, we are in a religious conflict, religious war. It's just not among various christian traditions and sects. It's between an anti christian society and christians. And so it's, what is, I mean, fundamentally, I guess what is happening is that just from a political and cultural and sociological perspective, the secular liberal democracy order that came into being after the second world war in America is collapsing.

This kind of neutral space where no one religion is going to have dominance, we're just going to have a neutral society. Well, that's a transitionary period, right? You can't. It's a vacuum. And something is going to fill that. And what is filling it? It's like this anti christian, anti God, anti Bible, religious view. And it's becoming more and more obvious by the day that that's what we have. And so now you have christians that are saying, no, I actually don't like that. I think that's bad.

I think it's bad to kill a million babies a year. I think it's bad for. For children to be put in dresses and put on hormone blockers and have their genitals removed surgically. I think those are bad things that are just deleterious to any society, and in particular to a society that has millions and millions of christians. And so as these things fall apart, it's just a natural expression of it. Some of it, too, is, where does this term come from?

A lot of it came from the tail end of the Trump years, where you have very widespread support, despite evangelical leadership that hate Donald Trump. You had widespread support of him by evangelicals, like, 80% vote for him. And I mean, that's just like, vote yes or no. But among evangelicals, not only did they say, yeah, I guess I'll take him as president, if that's my only option, it's like, no, this is the guy we want positively, right?

There's very intense support among Trump, or for Trump among evangelicals, and it's a reaction to that where it's like, we have to eradicate this among the population, because the base of his, of this guy's support is among christians who think that we should have a Christian America. And that's very bad, very scary. So they wanted to attack this. I mean, this goes back to Stephen Wolf's lone bulwark tweet. Where he just looks at demographic data and that's who's being described.

And they do it negatively all the time where it's like white christian evangelicals. They are the strongest supporters of Trump, and they're very bad people. This is why Russell Moore and David French and people like that attack Trump, supporting evangelicals all the time. It's because they want to chip away at those things. They want to get rid of it. They want christians to buy into their project. And so what is christian nationalism?

It's just telling those people that you're not crazy, you're not insane, extremist people for wanting the morality of our laws to be shaped by the Bible. That's not a bad thing. That's not horrible. It's a good impulse. It's the right impulse for christian people to have, actually.

And then Woolf is able to take it a few levels deeper and just place it within traditional protestant political theory that, yeah, when you have a majority of christians in a place, civil power is going to be exercised by christians. And that's good. Right? That's what we want. That's not a bad thing. And so that's where a lot of this conflict arises out of is. And I don't think, like, even when I wrote the first book, Torba, my, I mean, there were a few goals that we had here.

I mean, some people interpreted it as, we're gonna create this, like, new political party and have this voting bloc and take over America and winter and instill this positively christian state in America through the ballot box. And I'm like, I don't see that happening at all. I think there's maybe 20 or 30 million american evangelicals that would generally be described as having these christian nationalist sensibilities. That's not a majority. You're not going to win an election that way at all.

It's more. So my goal was to just, one, to defend christians that had the right ideas and maybe don't have the words to articulate why they have these feelings and thoughts and everything else. So to defend them, and then secondly, to move the conversation forward that the church's understanding of politics is really messed up and that it's okay to vote for things that are good for christian people and good for christian society, that it's okay to want that.

Not that we're going to somehow turn the United States around by voting our way out of it. Right. Yeah, I think a lot about this, and also what you said about James Lindsay wanting to turn the clock back to, like, can we just go back to 2012 or 1995 and without fully grasping people, with not fully grasping that, no, we're at the tail end of a process that was initiated and, I don't know, 250 years ago.

I mean, you can take it back to the garden if you want, but like you can go back to the french revolution. Like, it's arbitrary ultimately, but the foundations need to be of where we are need to be ripped out. And I think everyone wants to continue having their little bit of modernity. Like, I just want this little bit of thing. I just like this. I just like this. No, its all got to go because I had to go through this myself. Im not sure if you know, but I spent 20 years in the new age, right?

And so I absorbed all kinds of really terrible ideas about men and women and religion and spirituality and Christianity. And so as I started going into my own sanctification process, I had to go digging within myself. Plus I grew up liberal, atheist, jewish, feminist, you know what I mean? So I had to dig in. It's like the core of my being and find beliefs that were rooted in there from the start, maybe even in my bloodstream in some sense, and just rip them all out.

It's like I don't want to hold on to any of this stuff because I recognize that it's all lies. It's all caused me pain. It's all been deception. And I want to start moving towards something more in line with scripture and God's truth because that's freedom. Yes. What I encounter is people. You start pulling these things out, it's like. But no, I like that. It's like, why do you like that? It's poison. Stop. And I don't get it. I mean, on some level I do. I understand the fear of change.

I understand all of that. But it just seems like people want to hold on to things that are bad for them and that I don't understand. Maybe some of it is just like naturally what men in their sin are. I've already mentioned Doug a few times. I think this is his analogy where he's like, sin is often like a little baby who has a dirty diaper. It's warm and it's mine. I don't want to get rid of it. I haven't heard that one. And it's like, it's like that's true. Like we don't.

It brings us comfort, even though we know the end of it is pain. But we would rather have this thing that gives us comfort in the moment and makes us feel good and getting rid of it can be painful, and people don't want that. They'd much rather have. I mean, that's the thing, too. It's like, yeah, we want to be back in 2012 or 1995 and just live that way again. Why can't we just have that? And it's like, no, things weren't bad then. It's just, it wasn't as readily apparent.

All the toothpaste hadn't come out of the tube yet, and so it seemed like things were fine. But we're already on this trajectory of where we were going to get to the place where we are now. At that time, it wasn't like it could stop there at any point. And people, yeah, most people, because, I mean, I've had some reaction to the book. There are people that hear about it or hear it described were like, you got to read this book. This is a really good book.

And be like, I refuse to believe that the world is as bad as you say it is. And usually the people that say those things, right, they have, they have pretty comfortable lives, right? So they, you know, it's usually like, like a middle class couple, right? Things are, things are a little tougher than they used to be. But, you know, mom and dad both are making a pretty good income, and life is good. You get to, you get to enjoy all the hobbies that you like.

You know, you get to, you get to watch barstool sports and, you know, watch football. Football and go have fun with your friends. And things are pretty nice, right? You don't have to deal with these things. You're kind of, you're insulated from a lot of the pain. And that really is life in the early two thousands and the 1990s is way more people were insulated from the pain of the massive social changes that were occurring that they didn't have to. Think about it. Think about it.

I've got a pretty nice life, right? I make plenty of money. I like my life. And if they did consider these things or if they did accept that, wait, actually, this maybe isn't good, it would radically disrupt their lives. Their nice, comfortable life that they have would suddenly be way less comfortable then it would be otherwise. And so, yeah, and if there isn't, like, show me in the body.

And this is the thing, I mean, this is, this is like, this goes back to like, the gospels where it's like, show me, show me a sign, Jesus, that you're actually the messiah. And he's like, no. Another one. No. You want some more? What? No, I'm not gonna show you any more signs. Or it's like. Or it's. It's the parable that he tells of the rich man in Lazarus where he's like, please let me go back to my brothers so that I could tell them not to do the things that I did.

And he's like, well, they have Moses and the prophets. If they wouldn't listen to them, they're not going to believe someone that came back from the dead. And it's a similar kind of thing where if they can't extrapolate from. From the Bible and from the natural order of the world that God has made, that's apparent to all. They're not going to listen to some guy on a podcast who wrote a book or whatever. They're not going to do that.

And so I think things will inevitably become more painful for more people, and more people will begin to see these things. Like the guy who's living a comfortable life right now when his kids get trans or when he has to deal with his, you know, whatever other social problems come down the road. Then you start to feel the pain. I mean, you even see this to a certain extent, in, like, the 2022 election where you had all of these moms running for school board and fighting, like, the trans issue.

It's because these people are starting to actually feel the pain. It's like, oh, maybe gay porn in the public school library is not a thing that I want my children exposed to. All the other stuff until that point, whatever. All the sex ed and everything, they're getting near pornographic stuff anyway. All of the pro homosexual stuff that had been in schools for years, whatever, all the feminism, everything else, okay?

But when it came to that, it's like finally they're feeling some pain and they are pushing back. And I think it's the same kind of thing where it isn't until people start to feel pain from it and start to feel their own families personally affected by it. I mean, it's. You know, it's the meme, right? How does this personally affect you? And it's like Rome is burning behind them, right? It's. It's the same kind of thing wherever people don't get it until it does personally affect them.

And I wish it were some other way. I wish people could see, like, no, here's what's going to happen if we continue to do the things we've been doing.

But until then, you're only going to have the small group of people on the vanguard who are, for whatever reason, willing to think through these things and come to the same realizations that a lot of us have that will continue to push ideas that are true and, like, self evidently true to everyone, for them to eventually gain more mainstream credibility. That actually brings me some peace, is to remember just how many people doubted Jesus. Like, didn't. Wasn't in the resurrection.

Like, he's there. He's like. And some doubted, like, he's right there. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. Like, bro, right? Yeah, you are. Yeah, here I am. Look at my hands. Like, I'm not so sure. I appreciate knowing that because it's a very heartening reminder that some people just will not see the truth right in front of their face. Because for me, it's like, give me truth. People, maybe they're incapable.

I always think it's people's high ability to tolerate cognitive dissonance, but it's actually deeper than that. It's beyond psych. I mean, it's manifested in psychology, for sure, and tolerance of cognitive dissonance. But at a certain point, it's the human heart, where we would rather believe lies all day long than one uncomfortable truth. That's just the reality of the way we are. I would rather someone live in a fantasy world. Right? I mean, it does often go back to the Matrix.

Like, I'd rather just live in it. And I don't care if this. I know it's not a real steak, but it sure tastes good. And I want to go back to that. I want to go back to that. I don't want to confront the reality that things are way worse than anyone recognizes. And so, yeah, it's a. It can be blackpilling for people. It could be really depressing, and you could feel like I'm the only person that gets these things. None of everybody around me thinks I'm nuts.

And you have to understand that this is the way we are, that human beings, in our sin, we will happily accept lies. It will provide us comfort. I mean, most people. People don't naturally don't want to be weird, right? They don't want to stand out. They don't want to have everyone around them think they're nuts. And so it will take. It takes massive, like, black swan events for people to, like scales to fall off their eyes and see things.

Like, I think, you know, 2020 was a big one, where there were tons of people who in 2019, because nothing I really believed was majorly changed from 2019 to 2020. But there were a lot of people in 2019, like, if I would have any conversation that had about any real things beyond just small talk. People would think I'm nuts. They'll think you're crazy. And I got really good at just. Only talking small talk with people because it's like, you're gonna think I'm nuts if we talk about anything real.

And after 2020, there were a lot more people way more receptive to things that I had to say that all of a sudden, I wasn't so crazy. Oh, maybe this guy gets some things I don't. And so I think it takes events like that where you're just forced to confront realities that you would way rather leave alone. And that's the thing that God does, right? He makes things happen. It's the current meme on the Internet that nothing ever happens.

And I have some fun with that, too, because everyone's like, oh, is this it? Is there gonna. Is this world war three happening? Is this. It's like, hold your horses. Right? Nothing ever happens. That's red heifer, bro. That's right. That's right. And they did it this week. And, like, what happened? Nothing and no one. Yeah, we're all still here, Vin, and so it's like. But sometimes things do happen, right?

2020 was a happening, a big happening, and there are going to be things happening this year as well that we have to be prepared for. And really, the preparation is people might start listening to ideas that they wouldn't have otherwise, given the time of day when. When stuff, you know, starts to hit the fan. And so it's. It's just to be. To be steady. I mean, some of the stuff I talk about in the book, too, is there is.

And it's really hard because there's this propensity that we have if you're, like me, where, like, if you get things that nobody else gets and you see the world so clearly and nobody else is getting it, or it's easy, very easy, to become extremely antisocial, right. Just to be, like, a gadfly and just happily upset everyone all the time, to be, you know, to be the guy at the party that ruins it all the time and. Right. It's important not to be that way at all, to.

Not. To not be the person that's not fun at parties and pick your spots and just wait for the moment when people are willing and ready to listen to you. That takes a lot of wisdom that we don't always have, that people are not just knowing, all right, this is not the time for me to start explaining this because they're not going to listen to me. But sometimes they are. And when things happen, then you are able to give an answer that is sufficient for the things that are taking place.

And it can be a lonely thing. One of the things with this book is it puts people in a position to be a prophet. Not a prophet in the sense that you are predicting the future and saying this thing is going to happen and come to pass, but rather prophetic in the sense that all these things that you love so much and think are awesome are actually really bad and we need to stop doing them and. Right.

You know, you don't have to be a huge Bible scholar to understand how prophets get treated when they speak prophetically. It's people don't like them, they think they're bad people and they beat them up and kill them. And if you're taking this call upon yourself to be a prophet, and really the call is, do you see reality that nobody else is willing to see, well, then there it is. That's your calling.

And learning to speak prophetically in a wise and effective way where you can win people and have your message heard and help people out. It's a lonely place. You're not going to get a lot of accolades. You're not going to have a big gin Normo, 20,000 person church. If you want to be a pastor like this. That's part of it, too. Going back to evangelicalism and just the structure of it is like, it would be very easy in some senses. I mean, it's not easy.

Not everybody rises to the top of the heap in the evangelical world like, it does take some talent and ability, of course, but in another sense, it would be easy for me to, like, climb that ladder and say the things that I had to say to preach the Father's day sermon, chewing the men out and the mother's Day sermon saying how great women are. I could do all that stuff. I could be a good little boy and make my way all the way as high as I can. And it's like, I can't. I could never do that.

I cannot. I could not bring myself to do that and sell out in that way. I can't be shameless like that. And it's like that for anyone who sees these things, wherever they're at in life, where you could have a lot more success in life, if you just lie to people all the time, don't tell them the truth about how life is. You'll have a lot more friends, you'll be invited to a lot more parties. But can you live with yourself being that way. No, it would be impossible.

And so the upside, and I. The white pill in all of it is those things really ultimately don't matter at all. What matters is the truth. And what matters is whether you're able to help people or not. And I do think, I mean, I saw a lot of things that were very white pilling in 2020, when I saw the churches that refused to close down or fought lockdowns and things like this, I saw those churches have a lot of growth. A lot of people came to them, and that is really good.

And I saw courage being rewarded in those years. And so it doesn't always have to be this gloomy, sad thing where it's like, ah, you're like the prophet Elijah on Mount Sinai. It's bemoaning. Everyone has abandoned you. Lord, I alone am left. And what does God say to him? No, I reserved 7000 who have not bowed the knee to bail.

There are way more people out there that are willing to face reality and hear things that are true, that are unpopular, to say way more of those people than you even realize. There are a lot of people that get, and maybe in ways that they can't articulate or understand, but they know things are not right here. There are problems, and I don't quite get it. And they're looking for someone to say, this is it. These are the problems. This is what has gone wrong.

And you can build people up, and those are the people you can build things with. Those are the people that you can rebuild a christian society out of. Great. You went right to where I wanted to go. Because there is a phenomenon where men, especially young men, become aware of these trends, these realities. Let me give you my definition of anger. Anger is a legitimate emotional response to a crossed boundary. So when someone crosses a boundary, we have. We feel anger.

Anger is our body letting us know that someone has crossed a boundary. It's instinctive, right? So that's how we know someone has crossed a boundary. We've been living in this trash world where all of men's boundaries, particularly men's boundaries, have been crossed multi generationally for 50, 60, 80 years. That's just how it's been. The sexual revolution, feminism, women's liberation, has entirely been about crossing men's boundaries.

And you can even go back to the betrayal of world War one and world War two, especially world War one and Vietnam, etcetera. And so. And so men have inherited this upside down world that demands them to be smaller and smaller. Smaller. You know, don't, don't even sit in a train with your knees apart. Right. Don't speak in a loud voice. Don't. Right. It's to that degree. And so men's boundaries have been crossed.

And so someone points out to them this is going on, and they feel this overwhelming relief and then a release. Now our society doesn't really know what to do with men's anger. This is something I can talk a lot about, and I think it's a real phenomenon. So what do we do with it so it doesn't become corrosive? Because I think that's everyone's worry. This is a real thing. We can't shame it out of existence. It's really there.

We want to channel it productively and we don't want it to melt down on itself. What do we do? And this can be as practical as what do you and I do having platforms. What do we do in our individual lives? What can we do for men to help them work with that channel that productively, use that anger so it doesn't feed back in on itself?

Yeah, I think that's like the million dollar question because, and even like, it's funny, Rod Dreher reviewed my book pretty early when it came out, and in one sense, I'm very grateful that he took the time to read my book and took it seriously. That's commendable. But he hated it. And his major critique of it is that Andrew Isker is this angry, angry young man. He is angry and he's young. And he apparently found the podcast with CJ and me, maybe watch some of it.

And I don't think I come across as very angry on the podcast. You don't, you don't come across as angry in the book either. No, I think it was his own, he was imputing his own feelings, probably onto it. And it's funny because he looks like he's in his early thirties. And so I'm like, wow, I'm almost 40, man. So thanks. I look younger than I am. But no, I think like you're saying anytime you express that things are wrong, there are problems here. Well, you're just angry, young man.

You're just angry. Really angry. And there is that fear, especially among the older generation, especially among the people that kind of are in power and in control, that the angry young men are going to take over and they're going to mess everything up. And yeah, this stuff happens. There are, Elliot Rodgers was a real thing. There are angry incel people. It's not a totally made up fear. And I could see it going a lot of different directions.

I think on one hand, there is, if things continue to decline, and you have these episodes where things decline precipitously, because I don't think there's going to be this full on collapse like the Soviet Union, but there will be regular, continual decline in the state of things into the future.

And at some point there will either be like a total left wing maoist revolution, so all the people doing the Hamas protests on Ivy League campuses will come to power and just destroy everything, or there will be a right wing reaction to these people and to the state of things, which some people discount. They think that's not going to happen. The right is disorganized. There's nothing. It doesn't really exist. But things change when economic circumstances change.

Inflation is bad right now, but imagine much worse inflation. And people are just not able to provide for themselves and their families, and now all sorts of right wing ideas, people are much more willing to hear them. Right. And so I can easily see in the next 20 years this reactionary movement taking off, and it won't be a christian one, it will be a pagan one.

And for this entire time, the church has been on the side of the regime and will provide no moderating influence whatsoever on any of this stuff. So I think on the meta political level, the church has to become a lot more right wing politically and just culturally and sociologically. So much so that it's able to influence the young men that are going this direction and to be able to moderate them, to be able to say, okay, yes, you're angry about the things, and rightfully so.

There is a lot to be angry about. And how do you direct this anger? What do you direct it toward? Do you direct it toward productively building things that are good, that'll be good for you personally and for your family and for the people around you? Or do you direct it into fruitless things that will be destructive? That's one of the things.

One of the main things that the church can and should be doing is if you're, if, I mean, some of it is just to be able to say these things out loud and tell people, these are the things going on. These are the things you should be angry about. Here's what you can do to, to fix it for yourself personally and for others. Right.

That, that alone provides a lot of moderation to the anger, because what, what other outlet is there other than to people, people to, to go online and, and call women whores? I mean, what else is there? I mean, you see a lot of that. It has to be directed into productive ends. The feelings and the emotions that people have in their circumstances. They're just going to remain black pilled and have no hope for anything. And that's a horrible situation to be in. Right? It's almost worse than.

Than just being a normie that wants to watch sports and play Xbox. That's a worse state of things than being aware of reality and having nothing you could do remotely whatsoever to affect your situation. So that is the huge one is all right, you're angry. I get it. I get why. Here's what you can do. The church today will stop right there. It'll say you're angry. Well, you need to repent.

It's bad to be angry and provide nothing for young men to do in any positive way to make things better for themselves. Some of it is just to have someone say to you, an older man, say, I get it. I get why you're angry. I would be angry if I were in your shoes, too. And if I were in your shoes, here's what I would do. Like, we don't do any of that kind of stuff. And it is like that alone. And I'm working myself. I'm getting angry about it, too. Let's go.

But it upsets me that I see millions of young men who have some semblance of understanding of the problems that existed around them. And the people that should have the answers don't provide any answers for them at all. The answer is, you're a bad person. You just need to be a better servant, leader. And then, right, if you just show all the women what a great and godly doormat you are, they'll come flocking to you and you'll find a wife and all of these. And it's like, no, that's the opposite.

They all go to the jerks. That's just reality, you know? And so, no, that's not the direction you should tell young men to go down. You need to tell them things are really messed up. Here's what you personally can do. And there are major problems, and I hear them and I see them all around, just like you do. And you need to direct that into things that you. Because there are. It shouldn't be black peeling because it's nothing. Not all hope is lost. Not everything is totally ruined.

You still can have a good life. It's just much, much harder. The good life that our fathers and our grandfathers just were born into. They didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary to achieve. You just reach 18 years of age. Boom, here's a job. Work hard and things will be good. Single income families, you can support your family on a job here.

Here are all the women that want to get married, and you have a job with money, and they're all really pretty, and you pick one and boom, you got a family. That world doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore, but you can still make it happen. You have to work a lot harder than your father and your grandfather did. You have to, you have to search a lot harder for a good woman to marry that wants to have a family. Yes, you do. But it's not impossible. It's not impossible.

The path is just much narrower than it was for everyone else. And so directing young men down this much narrower, harder path and encouraging them, in spite of the difficulty and problems that they face is, is what we have to do rather than, rather than what we've done, which is just. No, the problem is you. You're a bad person, right? Oh, you can't afford a home. Well, that must mean you're lazy, right? It's like, I'm working as hard as I can. I'm working two jobs.

What do you, what do you, what do you mean I'm lazy? All right. You play too much video games. I don't even own any video games. What are you talking about? I mean, I see that stuff all the time, even from pastors that are really good, conservative men that oppose a lot of the things in trash world. They'll just be oblivious to what a 22 year old guy has to the world that he has to live in today. And so then their anger gets directed at the church.

Their anger gets directed at the pastors and the men that don't understand and refuse to understand the things that they are experiencing. And so then where do you go? Well, you go find, I mean, this is the thing. It's like, why are all these young guys listening to Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate? Right? Why are they listening? And it's like, man, I don't want young guys listening to Andrew Tate.

I mean, one, he's an idiot, and two, he's not a good guy, but he is saying things, some of which are true, that you don't say. And he sees all of these young men and all the problems that they face and is providing answers that you won't even address the question of. And so that's a huge thing that we have to change. A huge thing is just listen to these young men. Don't assume that they're bad people because they're upset about their circumstances.

Don't assume that they're just these bitter young guys that are losers. They are, they're young men that are trying to have a good life. And all of the routes that traditionally were open to them to have a good life are all closed off. I mean, even just like economically, like the, with, I mean, these are guys who are like totally against Dei and things like that, and they should be able to see that.

I mean, there was that story, I think it was in Bloomberg about, right in the wake of George Floyd, corporate America now hires 90% non white male people. Like out of all the thousands of jobs that went to the top 500 corporations, 90% of them went to non white males or non whites or non males. And it's like, well, the majority of the workforce is white and male. So that means you're actively restricting this group of people and saying, nope, white men need not apply.

And so, like, if that's the dynamic of the corporate world and you're saying, you young guys are just lazy, like those two things don't work together. Like they're saying, no, we don't want you. We're not going to give you economic opportunities. And so that's shut off to you. You can't just call these guys lazy, right? They're doing the things they can and they're not allowed to have nice c suite corporate jobs anymore. So what do you do with that?

You have to be able to say, oh, the deck is stacked against you. This is bad. I understand the problems that you're facing, and you're going to have to work harder and we will encourage you in this hard work that you have to do. We get that. You have to work way harder than we ever had to work. You have to pay way more for a home than I ever had to pay for. And that is really horrible and rough. And I will encourage you in whatever way I can. I'll try to help you out in whatever way I can.

We don't say those things ever. We don't do that stuff. And that's the thing that I find the most distressing in the church, broadly speaking today, is we have these and it's like they are fields, white for the harvest.

All of these people that would be open to everything that we say, everything that we teach how to be a Christian, what it means, what the faith is, what the Bible says about every single thing, these guys would listen to us and hear us if we would just say, yeah, you are getting a rough deal. That is bad. Right. But we don't. We don't. And for all the reasons we've talked about, right. You're not allowed to say those things. Right.

You're not allowed to have any sympathy for young men because that would mean you're going to have to reject some of the things in our prevailing civilization, religion. Yeah. Nailed it. Because that's the thing. This is why I've tweeted before that the reason why we don't tell young men who they are is because you have to tell young women who they are. Right. If you want to tell a young man what he's, what he's for, you gotta. That involves women.

We can't tell women what they're for, so we can't tell anybody what anyone's for because we don't want to offend the young girls. And I've been saying, like, okay, so the gospel dies at the 20. At the foot of a 22 year old girl. Great. Okay, cool. Right? And that's, and that's really what it comes down to. Plus the grandfather also, by the way, was able to support his wife on one income. And now men are, they're having to compete with women.

And like, this might be a really unpopular truth, but let me tell you, in an office environment, a 22 year old girl at the peak of her attractiveness is going to have a lot more success, especially with older male executives. Then will a young 22 year old man who isn't at the peak of his abilities just yet, but who's a threat? So now you're having this thing like, oh, young women are buying more homes than young men. Well, yeah. You want to know why that is?

Because they're getting the promotions thrown at them. Because young guys are a threat to the guys in power, but young girls aren't. No one can address these. No one can address these things. And so, yeah, young men are angry. And I really appreciate that you said that there's this rising pagan right wing movement because I do battle with some of these guys. The hellenist is a good example. There's a bunch of them out there.

They're all talking about these pre christian civilizations, and they all hate on Jesus as some rabbi and all this different stuff. And they're like, they're welcoming these men in. And the reason why men are going to them is because, as you say, pastors aren't offering them anything. They won't offer them anything. Like, sorry, kid, you're the price to pay for my big church. Sorry, young man, I'm going to sacrifice you for my big church. I'm paying more than that.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're losing your entire society and. Yeah, and, yeah, I mean, that's so much of it. Like, yeah, why is a pagan rite coming to. I don't think it's going to dominate or anything like that, or could, but why are men attracted to it? Because. Exactly. You're going to find answers to these questions that no one is even willing to ask. And these guys provide answers, and they provide a lot of not good answers to them, a lot of very bad answers.

And it's hilarious in a sad sense that these church leaders will refuse to get this stuff and their denominations and their churches will die as a result of it. So much of it is the same high time preference thing where it's like, the getting's good right now. We can let these young guys die on the vine and flee the church. But it's also interesting, too. I think Aaron Redd had something about this recently about young women leaving the church that they're leaving in droves.

And that too is interesting because that's the whole kitten caboodle for the modern evangelical world, is we got to have the women. We got to have the young women. We got. The young women will be okay. If they're even leaving, then you got nothing. And so, yeah, I think the altar of pragmatism within the church is collapsing in on itself anyway. It's not going to sustain itself for very long. If you don't have marriages and families and children, you've got nothing for the future.

And so I think in the, in the near term future, the churches that actively combat trash world and teach people, hey, this is the historic way of living that your ancestors lived in for millennia. And it's good. It's hard. It's really hard in the world that we have right now, but it's good. It's very good.

And creating communities that can flourish even in the midst of trash world where people can, people can have families, where you have young people, children being raised to have families consciously. I mean, this is the thing. My daughters are. My oldest daughter is still only nine years old, but we're constantly telling them and just like, subtly reinforcing is right. We want you to grow up to be a mom. We want you to grow up to be a mom.

I mean, some of the things that reinforce it is we just keep having babies and they're around babies all the time, and they don't. I mean, some of it is the boomer generation. They had like, two, maybe three children on average, and nobody grew up with little babies around them. You weren't a teenager. The older kids weren't teenagers. And there's a little baby that's having his diaper change.

I had one sister that was two years younger than me, and the first time I held a newborn baby in my entire life was one week before my own son was born. And I'm like, I don't even know what to do here. Is his head gonna flop over if I hold him the wrong way? I was terrified. I was, like, shaking, like, I don't know. I'd never held a baby before in my entire life.

And so, I mean, an entire generation that grows up not being around in their youth, around babies, that has massive sociological implications, because the young women, it's the same thing. They're terrified of them, too. What do I do now? I have this person to take care of, and now I can't go out and have fun. I have to be changing diapers all day and nursing and all, and that my life is revolving around this baby.

But if you, your entire life, you're just around other children, little babies, constantly, it's not terrifying. It's like, oh, this is normal. People have babies and they take care of them. And when you're older, you're helping mom out, you maybe change your younger sibling's diaper. And that's not a weird thing at all. When you grow up in that, then it's an easy transition to, okay, now I'm 20 years old, and I want to get married and have a family and have my own children.

And so, I mean, some of it is just enculturating, things like that. And being in communities where you have lots of babies, like going to a church where you hear the sound of five month old baby crying. There's some churches where you don't ever hear that. I mean, big ones with thousands of people, they'll have a nursery. You go have the little babies off here, and they'll have children's services.

And some of it is just that, where you have the children cut out of the life of the body entirely, which is a huge problem, but it reflects how our society thinks. Adult time is what matters. The freedom of adults getting to do their thing and listen to a lecture and go to a concerte on Sunday morning. That's what really matters. But the reality is, no, if you have little children, sometimes they make noise and babies, and they're all together and you're just used to it.

And you realize this is normal life for all of humanity throughout all of time, is to be around really old people, brand new babies and everything in between. Then it's not so terrifying then it's not so scary to. To have a family and raise children. And so, yeah, we've been trying to teach our daughters, especially our sons, we want to raise them to be men, to have jobs, and to fight for things that are good and right and, of course, for our daughters, too.

But to understand the uniqueness of what God has given them, that he has given you this precious ability to bring new life into the world, and you get to use that. You get to go be married and have a family that's wonderful and a beautiful thing. I don't think that's a thing that even some people may be hearing this. Maybe people that hate you and me hearing this is like, whoa, this guy is indoctrinating his children to be breeders. Uh, and it's like, mind. You literally read my mind.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I heard that objection. Yeah, I am. Okay. You're indoctrinating your children to be whores and homosexuals. So why don't. We're all indoctrinating children, right? I mean, really, that's. That's it, though. I mean, that's the thing is, right? You are. I mean, even if it isn't, it. Isn't that so extreme? Right? You. You're indoctrinating your daughter to.

Even if you think that promiscuity is bad and sex outside of marriage is bad, you're telling her to do all the same things that the 20 something year old woman that's on Tinder and bumble and cycling through the Rolodex of men, you're saying, go live the exact same way as that girl, but just don't have sex. That's what you're instilling in her. And we don't want to do that. We consciously are saying, no, we don't want that for our daughters.

We're going to prevent whatever is within our power to hold the forces of trash world at bay for them. Because I want to have grandchildren. I want my daughters to have a good life. I don't want them to go through that pain and sorrow. I see the 30 something year old women who are despairing because the biological clock ran out. I don't. That's. That's. They are a warning to young girls. Don't do this. Don't do this. Oh, all the. All the eggs that you stored away that are frozen.

None of them are. You can't, you can't get pregnant now at, at 39. Oh. Science lied to you and said you'd be able to have this like that. That's horrible. That's awful. I don't want that for them. Right. And that's, that's part of, that's part of what it means to be a father is you have young children, teenage children, even young 20 something year old children that. I mean, I remember what it was like to be a 20 something year old. And I was an idiot. I was really stupid.

And because I hadn't learned, I hadn't matured and discovered the world and learned hard lessons that I've learned over the last 20 years. And the role of a parent, the role of a father is to have gone through all of those things, reached this maturity, have the wisdom that comes with age, and to be able to tell your children, no, actually, this thing you think might be good, it's actually really bad, and don't pursue that. That's good. That's actually good and wise.

The 18 year old girl just getting whatever she wants, or the 22 year old girl just getting whatever she wants, because she's been, she's been engineered. Her mind, her soul, everything has been engineered to pursue this kind of life. You have to prevent that from happening. That's why it is. And it's not even through their own fault. It's not like they were born just to live this way. Someone made them that way. Somebody wanted them to think, this is the good life. And so you have to.

You have to protect them from these things. That's what it means to be a father. And so, yeah, I think that just along those lines, you have these duties that a father has in our age that have always existed for fathers to protect their children.

But it's taken on a completely different aspect, where if you're living in a culture that more or less is in line with the natural order of the world that God made, you don't have to protect them from insane stuff because nobody else believes insane stuff. There are things you have to protect them from, but now you have to protect them from a culture that is encroaching on their minds and their souls and every part of them to want to live in this destructive way. And it seems good.

It seems like it's healthy and it'll be pain free and that it's beneficial and it's not. And you have to be able to see down the road things that your children won't I mean, I look at it like, when I was 17 years old, a bunch of my buddies on the football team were starting to get tattoos, right? Like, one of them, he got this really dumb incredible Hulk tattoo. I mean, now it looks dumb, but when I was 17, like, that looks cool. I want something like that. And I go to my parents, right?

And, you know, you got to get permission from your parents to when you're 17. And I'm like, I want to get a tattoo. You know, can I. Can I get one, please, please, please? And they're like, no, that's stupid. You don't want to do that. You know, you're gonna mark up your body, and it's gonna look hideous. You're a 17 year old. You're an idiot. You don't. I mean, they didn't say that, but that's more or less the vibe of what they're saying. And, like, they protected me from that.

Cause, like, now I'm sure whatever I would have gotten would look really stupid, and I have to live with that the rest of my life. And this isn't, you know, I'm not like, attack. I know you got tattoos, will, so I'm not attacking. That's not an attack. It's not an attack. But it's like, that's the job of parents, to protect their children from really stupid decisions that they would make that will last them the rest of their lives.

And now I was really mad at them when I was 17, but now I look back on it, and I think, boy, I'm really happy that the same thing happened when I was 17. A lot of stuff happened when I was 1720 years ago. I tried to join the army, and the recruiter comes. I had a really good Asvab score. And so he kept calling and calling because most of the people that would take the AsVab couldn't pass it. He's calling me every day and taking me out to dinner and all these things.

Comes to finally sign the paperwork. My dad was in the army, so he's like, yes, my son's going to follow in my footsteps. This is great. And I'm about to sign my name on the dotted line. I'm like, my mom just breaks down weeping. And this is like, 2003, Iraq is going on. And I was like, because the recruiter, they just lie to you about everything, right? But the recruiter is like, you got a 99 in the AsVab. You can have any job you want. And I'm like, I want to be infantry.

I want to be a ranger. I want to try to be special forces. And they're like, yeah, you can do it. You can do it, man. And so, like, it wasn't, like, so my mom knew, like, andrew's not gonna. He's not gonna be like, the supply guy, you know, fixing a truck somewhere way back in the rear, right? He's gonna be wanting to go to combat, right? And he's gonna die or have his arm blown off or whatever. And she just breaks down weeping, weeping and weeping, like, please, just go to college.

Just go to college and wait to join the army until after college or go to ROTC. Just don't do this. Don't do it. And I pushed the paper back and I said, all right, I can't do it today. Maybe some other time. So I never joined, never enlisted, never joined the army. And then I go through college and my views on foreign policy and the Iraq war, and things began to change, so I never joined afterward. But nevertheless, I look at that and it's like, yeah, she probably saved my life.

She probably saved my. I mean, sometimes I look back and think, man, it probably would have been fun, though. It probably would have been a lot of fun. Yeah. I mean, I would have some cool stories, but no, she made, I think, a good decision in that moment for me. And that's what parents are supposed to do. And I think about it along those lines just as far as the duty of fathers today, living in trash world is, there are way more things like that to protect your children from.

And it starts when they're really, really young that this stuff just creeps in and attacks, and the kids, they won't understand. My friends watch this show on Netflix. Why can't I watch it? It's like, we don't. We don't watch that stuff. No, we're not going to watch those things. And, of course, you're never going to be able to have your children live in a bubble. They're always going to feel like FOMo. They're always going to feel fear of missing out. These other people get to do this thing.

And so the enemy that you're constantly combating as a parent today is FOMo. It's like, why don't I get to do these things? Why don't I get the stuff the other kids get? Why don't they get to do this? Why not me? And it's hard. It's hard. And the battle is mostly within yourself to stick to your guns, just to be like, no, we're not doing that.

No, no, and so some of these fights, some of the chopping down of idols and things like that are totally within yourself to have the will and the resolve to stand even within your own household for what is good and right. Because, like, little kids, or even, and certainly like teenagers, they don't understand this stuff. They don't understand why these things are bad. But you're an adult, you do. And so you have to draw hard lines.

And a lot of people don't want to do that because it's way easier just to be like, ah, let them have. Let them watch it. You know, I'm busy. I got stuff to do. Just let them watch. Let them watch Mister beast on YouTube. Who cares? You know? And it's like he's got the tranny, you know, right there on camera with it. You really want your kids watching that? Like, no, no, man. Like, don't do that. Just delete the app from. From your phone or your tv. Like, don't even let him near it.

Yeah, have them. Have them go outside. You know, give them. Give your. Give your little boy some knives to, like, to carve sticks with or whatever. Give them something dangerous to do. Like, you'd be better off. Let him just throw knives out of the woods, then play around with that stuff. That is the great irony. We're happy to insulate our children from any kind of danger that they might face. Like, physical danger.

We'll wrap them in bubble wrap and prevent them from ever facing any kind of, especially boys physical danger of any kind, but spiritual danger. We're like, eh, whatever, you know, they're kids. Let's let kids be kids. It's like, no, I'd rather give my, my eight year old a chainsaw to play with than mess around with that stuff. I think an eight year old will have a better sense of the danger of a chainsaw than they will the danger of a Netflix series. Right? Yes, they won't.

It's colorful and it's bright and everyone's smiling. Versus a chainsaw, it's like, this is very sharp. I can demonstrate how it will cut you, but kids can't see how these being indoctrinated with these ideas will cut them in other ways. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think this also speaks to the importance of a father, because a father, a strong, confident father who's leading his household is the one who says, no, it's not mom's job to hold the final no, it's dad's job. Right?

And so if mom has to always be holding the final no, I don't think women are meant to be that way because as we talked about, they tend to be more like, get along, more agreeable is the Jordan Peterson word, whereas men tend to be more hierarchical. The buck stops here. I am taking responsibility of this household. My children are not going to watch this. And I have spoken. Right. And when you weaken fathers, there's no one to say that, yeah, I see. This in my own, I mean, my own household.

I don't even ever think about it. But all the time, the kids will ask my wife, can we do this? Can we do that? And my wife will say, no. Your dad said, no, you can't do that. She'll just put it all on me, and I'm happy to be the bad guy all the time. I don't even think about it. It's like, yeah, no, I'll be the bad guy. I'll be the one that they're angry at. Then they'll come to me, dad, dad, dad. No, no. Get out of here. Leave me alone. You're not going to get to do that.

No, no, we're not doing that. And that's the end of it. It's hard, especially because if you have this environment that is very egalitarian and the role of the father is not to be the head of the household, and parenting is a partnership and all of that kind of stuff. Well, then you don't have a dad. That's just, I'm in charge when we're gonna do what I say, and we're not gonna do that. Well, if that.

If that's not the role that you have, if you're kind of, you know, the co parent of your children, you can't do those things. You can't say, no. I've said, no, we're not doing that. And I mean that. And that starts, like, well, before you have kids. I mean, that starts when you, when you're, when you're dating and engaged and everything, it's like, no, I'm going to be in charge of things.

And, I mean, some of it is like the manosphere language of the s test and passing those where you're just like, no, not doing that. Oh, you're going to break up with me? Okay, whatever, fine. And there has to be, men have to have this confidence and this purpose and this mission where they're following it, and your wife has to be the partner in that mission that you have. It can't be. We have maybe separate missions and we're going to try to work together. It's like, no, it's your mission.

You're the one leading. She's coming with you, alongside you and supporting you, encouraging you. And then if you have a family like that, well, then it's not hard. I can't imagine what it would be like in my own household if every single decision I make, I have to persuade my wife and have a fight with her about everything. If the kids want to watch some show that I think is bad, I have to then argue with her about that. It's not good for her either.

She doesn't want to spent time thinking through those things and fighting those battles. That's a huge waste of time. It's much easier for her to just say, yeah, dad says, no, that's it. And you can hear. You can think about the people just hearing that they're thinking, that's patriarchal. It's patriarchal, and it's toxic masculinity. And his wife is a slave. Can you believe that? And it's like, I don't know how you live your life, but that would be horrible.

That would be agony to have to not be able to lead. A friend of mine, he just got married, and I did the wedding, and it was a lot of fun doing their wedding, did marriage counseling for them and on all of the pastoral stuff. And normally, normally when I do weddings, I just pick out the passage that I'm going to preach at the wedding, and I do it. But I knew them. I knew how they tick. And I'm like, why don't you guys pick out the passage? What do you want me to preach on at your wedding?

Let me know right before and I'll start working on it. They pick ephesians 522 33, and then they're like, go as hard hitting as you want with this, right? Say whatever you want. Be as offensive as you want to be. And I'm like, are you sure? And they're like, yep. And I'm like, all right, I understand the assignment. And so I just preached on it.

And, I mean, one of the things I pointed out is that, like, even the, even the people who are totally bought into our completely messed up society and reject distinctions between men and women and their roles and everything else, even they, if you have a married couple and you hear a window break in your house and your house is getting broken into, even the people that are hyper feminists and pro gay and everything else, if the dude told his wife, honey, go check that out, even they would be

filled with revulsion at this man sending his wife to go deal with the burglar. We understand that at this deep level, even despite all of the social engineering, that men have responsibility. Men have. They have a responsibility to go die for their wives if need be. We get that, and we'll put that responsibility on men. But we refuse to have that responsibility correspond to the same degree of authority. Right? So if your job is to go die, your job is to go provide your job.

You have all these duties, all these responsibilities that are on the Mendez. Then we turn around and say, look, you don't have any authority here at all. I'm in charge, not you. You just have a duty and a responsibility. Well, we have a term for a person that has all the responsibility and no authority. There's a term for that. It's called a slave. That's a slave. A person that only has responsibility and no authority is a slave. And that's what we've made men into. And so if you want.

You know, if you want him to go get the burglar, right. Then you need to go listen to what he says at the same time. Right? You need to say, all right, honey, we're not going to buy 15 more pairs of shoes. That's enough. And you need to say, okay, right? He has authority. Right. He has the final say. Right? But we'd be the same. People who are revolted at a man sending his wife to go deal with the burglar are equally revolted at a man telling his wife, no, we're not going to do that.

And it's ironic. It's there. It's because they don't want men to have any authority, because they want freedom. They want to have autonomy, to do whatever they want. And so you have to admit these things. You have to say these things flat out. Men do have authority in their households, and they're going to, no matter what, just by virtue of the created order, men are always going to have authority. The household is going to follow their lead regardless. And what men do is just abdicate it.

They say, I'm not going to fight those battles. I'll just happy wife, happy life, my way through everything. And so they abdicate the authority. They don't fight for it. They don't stand up for themselves and the authority that God has given them, then the family is just a disaster. And so you see that. And then you see Paul, the things that he says in that chapter, it's like.

It's just so obvious that this is the way God has built the world, and he's not creating something new, he's not creating some kind of new doctrine that people have to live by. That until the first century Ad, didn't exist in the world until then. He's saying, no, it always has existed since God created Adam and Eve. And this is how you live in a godly way in light of these realities. And so many people don't want to do that. You could be in an evangelical church your entire life.

Preach on every other part of the Bible except for there and a couple other passages, and you'll be just fine. No one will be upset with you ever. You can even say somewhat controversial things, but you touch on that. It's like the third rail, and you will lose. You will lose people in your church if you say these things. Because our culture doesn't want to believe. The Bible culture doesn't want to believe. It doesn't want to believe in the order that God has created in the world.

And it will take a tremendous amount of courage from pastors and from leaders of churches to combat these things. And the optimistic thing, I say all these things. I'm trashing the trash world that we live in. But the optimistic thing is these things are falling apart. People understand that things are not right and we have no place to go but telling the truth. In the evangelical world, there was this compromise.

You mentioned the word complementarianism before, where what complementarianism was, was this kind of middle ground, this sort of third way where it's like, okay, all right, we're evangelicals, so we're forced to agree with the Bible on everything. And so what is the bare minimum that we can agree with the Bible and still, still treat the Bible as authoritative and as the word of God but still fit in with the culture? And so out of that, complementarianism was formed.

And it's like, yeah, within the household, yeah, I guess husbands have authority and then they'll have carve outs where it's kind of subjective but nowhere else in society. Paul is not making any kind of broad sociological claim there. Right. Men don't have this leadership role in society. That's patriarchal. And so we're not that. But reality is patriarchal. It just is. You don't want to use the p word, but it is. And men are different from women. Men are built to lead. Men are built for war.

Men are built for fighting. And this is true even in, even apart from the fall. Right. And this is a point I brought up in the book that Adam is created in the garden. This is actually the part that Cam Haynes shared on Instagram, and then Joe Rogan reshared it. So I guess even Joe Rogan agrees with me on this point. But Adam's created in the garden, and he's given two jobs to guard and keep the garden. And that means, like, there's a martial aspect to it.

And actually, Adam is a priest in the garden. I mean, it's the same two things that the priests in the sanctuary are called to do. They're called to garden, to keep the sanctuary. And they're all armed with swords, right? In the Old Testament, around the tabernacle in the temple, they're armed with swords. And anything that comes in that's not supposed to be there, anyone that comes in that's not supposed to be there, they're supposed to kill him.

And so you take that and you think about later revelation, what it tells us the role of a priest is and what he's supposed to do. And you see that same language used of Adam in the garden. Well, what happened, right? Here's something that's not supposed to be in the garden, and he's supposed to guard everything in the garden, including his wife. So what was Adam supposed to do in the garden? He's supposed to kill the serpenthenne. He's supposed to kill it. You don't belong here. Get out of here.

Don't talk to my wife. And he's supposed to kill the serpent instead. He lets the serpent talk to his wife. That's why it's not Eve's sin that casts all of humanity into the fall. It's Adam's. Adam is the one that's responsible, not Eve. And Paul even says the woman was deceived, not the man. And for that reason, women can't be pastors. Oh, whoa, whoa. What? What is he saying about men and women, right? That women are more easily deceived. Oh, no. How am I supposed to tell my church that.

Oh, my goodness. That men have a responsibility, they're not as easily deceived, and so they have to protect women. Whoa. That sounds a little bit patriarchal. I don't know if we can say that. Bible says it. I don't know. What are you supposed to do? And you have these touch points in the Bible that are extremely controversial in the modern, secular, liberal, egalitarian society that we have, and everyone's just afraid to talk about them. You can't talk about those things. That's bad.

If you do talk about them, then that opens the door to, wait a second. Maybe the way that we're living generally isn't so good. Maybe there's some problems with it. That's where you get into these things and people freak out about it. They hate it because they're so married to this world that we have that they will attack you. They will say, you're a horrible person. They say, you must be mistreating your wife, and you must be this terrible guy. It's like, I don't care.

I'm going to tell the truth. And whatever happens to whatever you say to me, it doesn't matter. This is true. This is real. And so what? So what? You know? Oh, you called me a name, okay? I don't care. This is what God has said. Do you believe it or not? And unfortunately, many people don't believe it. But God is not mocked. And you can set up this superstructure of a society that is contrary to the world that he created. It's not going to last. It's not going to continue on forever.

And it requires the blood of a million babies a year to continue on. That's a great sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. And there will be. We like to pretend that no things will go on forever. We've reached the Francis Fukuyama end of history. We're here. The american global empire is going to be here forever, and we're going to sit fat and happy in our society. No, it's not going to. There will be judgment that will come for all of these things. And, I mean, that's.

I actually, when I wrote the book, I think I finished the first draft maybe a month before the Dobbs decision. And afterward, I thought, oh, should I change this? And I'm like, no, no, I'm going to keep this in there. Like, one of the things I say in there is, like, if you got rid of abortion in America, right? If you got just stroke of a pen, it's gone. You would have an economic collapse. You would have millions of women that would have to leave the workforce.

And now you have to pay workers a lot more to attract a smaller share of workers, and that would have massive repercussions on the economy. And I make this point, people don't want to believe it or think about it, but it's true. It's true. Like, our country, I said this in the twitter space a couple weeks ago on the abortion debate. Our country runs on it. It doesn't run on Dunkin donuts. It runs on abortion. And we don't get that.

We don't think about how all of life is crafted, and it's built on top of millions and millions of tiny little skulls. All of our current world is built on these things. And you take all of that away. That's the foundation for the entire society. And there are massive repercussions for that. And we don't want to confront these things. We want to think, oh, if we end abortion, all right, we could just, you know, change the law and then it's done and we go back to having a more normal society.

And that's not, that's not how it will work. Like, and you see it with the abortion debate today. Like, people have to have it. They want to have it. Oh, no, don't take this away. My freedom. My freedom. And it's a society, I mean, that in and of itself, to have a people that are there that love child sacrifice as much as they do is itself a judgment.

To live in a world where you have to have that, I mean, it's so much like ancient Israel in the time of the judges and then the kings, where, I mean, I used to read growing up, I used to read that and hear about, hear it in sermons. The rare, the rare moments when someone would preach on the Old Testament. And I would think, well, how could these people who, God has done all of these things for them, miraculous things, how could they so easily turn to worship idols?

How could they so easily go worship Baal and offer their children to Molech? How could they do that? How could they do that? And now I'm like, oh, I know. I know now. I know now how they could do it very easily, right? Very easily they could because they see the benefit to it. They get benefits from these things by offering their children to demons. And our society isn't all that different from what they faced in the ancient world.

We are, we are offering our children up to demons, and there's going to be judgment for it one way or the other. And so the only answer to that is to preach against it, for the gospel to combat it on the one hand, and for christians to acquire political power to stop it.

And I mean, that goes back to our previous discussion about christian nationalism, because anytime you say that, even like I said that on the Twitter space, it's like, well, the issue that we're facing is that we don't have as much political power as we think we do. And people are like, no, what are you talking about? Power? Jesus doesn't want us to have power. And I'm like, then why are we even talking about ending abortion? If he doesn't want us to have power, then just let him do it.

Let him go ahead and do it then. If we're talking about the exercise of power here, that's what it is. At the end of the day, it's not just, oh, if we. We have to persuade people. Well, power persuades people, right? 2015. I mean, 2008, state of California voted a majority, a large majority of Californians. Californians in 2008 voted against gay marriage and voted to ban it in their state, in California.

And seven years later, you get Obergefellen, and you see the public opinion shift on a dime regarding homosexuality as a result of that Supreme Court decision. Yeah, power does persuade people. It absolutely does. And so, yeah, I'm probably rambling here on these topics, but you get me going here, Will. No, I think I. You touched on so many important interlocking topics, and that's the challenge of this whole conversation, is that all of these things are connected. Right? It's not that.

Christian nationalism, abortion, feminism, right? College, Netflix, it doesn't all exist. Independent puzzle pieces just scattered around. It's one holistic, consistent system that reinforces itself to produce, as you said in the book, the bugman, the consumer. Right. The Sex and the city feminist lifestyle. That's what it does. This is not a broken system. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. And it was assembled around us, piece by piece during our lifetime.

It's like there are carpenters. It's like christians are in America, and there's carpenters building stuff. Hammering, bang, bang, bang. Stuff's going up. What's that? Oh, don't worry about it. Just nothing. You know what I mean? And then we're all in this house, like, you guys see all this house, like, what do you mean? There's no house here. No, no. Like that. There's nothing here. Yeah. The purpose of a system is what it does. Right.

And the purpose of our system is it's functioning exactly the way it should be. It's like, yeah. You hear the people like, oh, it's such a broken. It's such a broken system. Whether they're talking about, like, the political order or whatever else, it's like, no, no. People wanted it to be the way that it is. You didn't just accidentally stumble upon the world that we have. People created it this way for a purpose, and we're living in it.

And so the only way out is to recognize things for what they are and consciously begin living in a different way. That's it. And this. And the really great challenge for us today is that the majority of the christian church especially, I mean, the majority of american christians are evangelicals. And that's why, I mean, I am one and that's why I say these things.

And the majority of our churches want to live in like this minimalistically biblical lifestyle where it's like, okay, you're a Christian, you believe in Jesus, right? Here are things that are sins. Don't do those things and then figure the rest out for yourself. Right? Just this tiny little, it's very minimalistic. It's just Jesus in your heart and keep them there, hide them away right there. And don't you personally sin or involve yourself in sins of others and things like that.

But anything beyond that, it's whatever, don't worry about it. When the reality is that Jesus is king of everything and everyone, and he's king not only of individuals but entire societies. And you aren't at the end of a day, at the end of the day, a mere individual. You are part of, of a family, you are part of a community. Wherever you live, you are part of a broader nation. And you can't live totally as an individual. How you live is in community with other people.

And so if you are a Christian, that has an effect on every single part of your life, what you believe about who God is and who Jesus Christ is. And so you can't be reductionistic in this way. You can't just be, okay, well, you don't go sin and you'll be fine. It's like, no, here's this whole society that is operating contrary to the way God wants it to. How do I live in light of that? What are the things I have to do? Here are all these things that are messed up and how do I get a job?

How do I have a family, how do I raise children in this world? And we don't have anything to say to any of those things. I'll just believe in Jesus harder. And it's like, well, like, well, what does that mean practically, though? And so a lot of, I mean, just even like in my own preaching, I mean, so much of it is reinforcing and encouraging people that you're living in this messed up world. And the most important thing is to remain faithful to Jesus in everything you do.

And you might have to take stands on things that are unpopular. You might have to take stands that are going to cost you in very personal and deep ways. And you have to count the cost. You have to prepare yourself now and look down the road. This might be a thing like my job is making me call the Bob is now Susan. And so now I have to use the pronouns, right. And it's like, it might be time for you to get a different job. Right?

Like, people haven't even prepared their minds for those kinds of things. It's like, well, I guess just say the, you know, say the pronouns, man. No, no. You shouldn't be forced to lie, and you shouldn't care if, like, legally they can require it. You need to go somewhere where you don't have to do those things, and you might. You might lose your career to do that. We haven't prepared people for life in this world at all because, well, there's nothing in the Bible about using someone's pronouns.

Right. There's. Show me the Bible verse that says, I have to call men men. We keep going back to that. But that's part of it, too, is there is no. When you have evangelicalism that is both, like, biblicist, that's a word that people throw around a lot, but where it's like, I need a proof text for every single possible thing. And the Bible seems like a long book, but it's not that long. It's not 12 billion pages long with a proof text for every single possible circumstance you might face.

The Bible is a short book, actually, and it provides a moral framework for you to understand the world, and it's there for you to apply it. And we don't do a very good job of that at all. We want to just say, here's the Bible verse. We don't want to do the work. We want it all to be just basic two plus two stuff. But you might have to do some calculus. You might have to do some long division from a Bible verse, applying it to life here in. In the 21st century. And it will be consistent.

It will flow right from what the Bible says, but it's not. Not always so easy. Clear. All right. This verse says this thing, so we haven't done those things. And. And it's to a massive detriment of our. Of our people. Um, because they're. They're trained to think, I need a Bible verse for every possible occasion, and if I don't have one, then it's free game. I can do whatever I want. And that's not true at all. It's very clear, actually. And christians in the past understood this.

They understood there are principles that guide us from scripture that we derive from God's word that will show us the right thing to do. It's much harder. It takes wisdom that we don't currently possess and it takes discipline, it takes courage to do these things. And at this point, some of it is he didn't. Why is it the way it is for the last 40 or 50 years? You didn't have to do that stuff.

You lived in a much more normal world where, despite America not being a very christian place in the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties, deep down, it still was guided by christian moral sentiments. Christian social and cultural moray has pervaded everything, and those things are gone now because you could fall back on that stuff. Well, people just don't do that. That's wrong. And so you're playing life on easy mode in that way, but now it's much, much harder.

God is placed in a much more difficult position where a lot of things take a lot of thinking, a lot of wisdom and a lot of courage to operate in this world and to live faithfully in this world. And we haven't, we haven't provided that very well at all. But thankfully, I think things are starting to change. I think there are people that are providing that stuff that are willing to say, to preach unpopular texts in the Bible and say, here's what it says.

And so let's extrapolate from that how God wants us to live. People are summoning that courage, and I think God is rewarding them. God is rewarding the people that are earnestly pursuing faithful living in a very, very difficult, oppositional world. And I think continue to bless people doing that. I always want to circle back to encouraging things with these things because that's part of the book. The first half of the book, if you only read the first half, it would be really depressing, right.

All the things that are bad and wrong. And I kind of wanted, like, I'm like, do I want to organize the book that way? And I went back and forth with the editor, like, maybe we change it.

It's like, no, it's short enough book that I think people read the whole thing, hopefully, and the first chapters correspond with the latter chapters, and the latter chapters are much more optimistic and hopeful that there is, there are ways out, there are ways that you can pursue a good and faithful life despite all of the challenges all around you. And, yeah, I always want to go back to that, that anytime I'm like, ah, things are really bad, but there's a way out, right?

But there are things you can do. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that you read my mind because I want to talk about one of the last chapters, which is the paideia of Christianity, because I think that was. And for 01:00 a.m. grateful that you organized it the way that you did, because you built up to this case that, no, this is the way we need to be thinking about these problems.

So trash world is this interlocking system of ideas and bureaucracies and culture that has been assembled around us piece by piece. Well, there was this christian worldview that everyone was steeped in that also had its own interlocking system of piece by piece that produced a very different kind of man, for one. And so these systems are somewhat in opposition. So let's talk about this paideia of Christianity. I also want to talk about Barbara's. Let's talk about. They're related.

They're very much related. So let's talk about that a little bit because I think it's important. We've been deprived in America an image of a society that works any different from the way that ours does. In fact, our way of life is being exported around the world so that everyone lives in the same trash world kind of way. So if trash world's all that exists, trash world's the only thing that's ever existed. It's like. But no, there is another total worldview that previous generations lived in.

Yeah, I think, I mean, just going back to that word like paideia and what it means, I mean, there's a ton of, there's actually this long series of books. I think I referenced it in the book itself, just on that single greek word. And what it meant in greco roman culture that paideia was everything. It was the, it was the full cultural experience of the ancient greek and ancient roman world. And so you grow up into it. What does it mean to be a Greek? What does it mean to be a roman?

What is this identity that you are formed and shaped by? So when Paul uses that word in Ephesians, chapter six, to raise up your children in the paideia of the Lord, usually it just gets translated as, like, nurture and admonition of the Lord is the common one, I think, like King James kind of thing. And that's a nurturer of the Lord. And it's easy. That's the thing. You can read over the Bible in, like, an english english translation, and that word doesn't hit you the same way.

It's just a word. And there are words that have deep, deep, deep meaning that you could write volumes about. Like if you told an american today that you believe in democracy. Right? Well, what does that mean? Well, you could write twelve volumes on what democracy actually is right. And so it's not just some throwaway word that Paul is using. There's deep meaning to that word. So what is the paideia of the Lord? Well, it's culture, and it's a full system of culture. And so to raise children in.

In christian culture means from cradle to grave and from, in this interlocking system of how do communities exist and operate together? How do individuals work with others? How do they govern themselves? All of these things. How do they buy and sell things? How do they make living? That's what Padilla involves. And what does it mean to be a Christian? All of that. And so you bring up children in christian culture. The great irony, too, is modern evangelicals like to decry cultural Christianity.

There was Russell Moore, the odious Russell Moore wrote this article, I think it was in the New York Times or the Atlantic or one of those regs, and is celebrating that, the loss of cultural Christianity. Because you get rid of cultural Christianity and then all that's left are real christians, right? Not fake ones, right. Then it will only have real christians, not the people that just are christian because they're born, right?

And by articles like Mayberry leads to hell just as easily as Gomorrah or something along those lines, right? And that's what all this was. That's why the argument over cultural Christianity, I didn't understand that. Yeah, this is where it comes from. Because they have it in their minds that, like early Christianity, when it's a very small minority in the roman world, that's ideal, right? It's ideal for the church to be this beleaguered, tiny little group that's them against the entire world.

But they did that and then they won. Then the whole roman empire became christian. Oh, it's bad. Constantine is bad because he was just doing it for political reasons. And it's like, okay, well, even granting that that's true, and I don't think it is, but granting that that was true, a ruler wanting to rule as a Christian because all of his subjects are christian and this is a thing that can unite his empire, I don't think that's a bad thing for lots of people to be Christians.

I think that's actually good. And so anyway, it's like this loss of culture, I mean, some of it too, is like, as a parent, would you rather raise your children in trash world where you're having to protect them from all sorts of things that you wouldn't even otherwise be on your radar? And all around you are enemies that are fighting for their souls constantly.

Would you rather raise them in that environment or an environment, would you rather raise them in an environment where I, a major chunk of the country thinks men can become women and that children, that we have to protect trans children, you rather raise them in that environment or an environment where everybody, whether they actually genuinely are a Christian or not, believes that the Bible is good and true and that God's law is good and these are good moral principles to live by, and everyone

just implicitly understands that. Would you rather them grow up in that environment? It's like, obviously. Obviously. And so it's interesting because that admonition from Paul to raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord to raise them in the paideia and discipline of the Lord is a command to parents, but it's also a command to a church. And what happens when the whole society adopts the paideia of the Lord? Right. Is that bad? No, I think he actually commanded that.

Yeah, it's actually good. That's like, I mean, you want to talk about proof texts? That's like the proof text that shows that cultural Christianity is a command from God, right? You're to produce cultural Christianity like you're supposed to have it in your home and from the, from the home. That's like the fundamental, the household is the fundamental building block. An entire society. It's a whole society in a microcosm.

And so, yeah, if you get into like the christian nationalist debate and all of these things, it's like, well, I don't know, man. It's like right there. Yeah, I don't know how you get around, I mean, I know how they get around it, but they do some gymnastics to make. No, doesn't mean that. But it's like, I think it does. And so, yeah, you, you have this fully orbed culture that you're raising people in and raising little people to just be these sponges that soak this culture up.

And so that affects, I mean, obviously the go to for everyone with those verses is education. But it's much, much more than that. It isn't just, and this is how Greeks would understand Paideia is education, but it's education into an entire society. It's being formed and shaped to take your place in greek civilization, to be a citizen of this society and take on the duties and the responsibilities and the authority of being a citizen. What does that mean for the Christian?

It means that their entire way of thinking, their way of life, the way they understand the world has to be shaped by christian things, has to be shaped by the word of God. Yes. With regard to education, especially in trash world, the advantage this is, I think the biggest white pill is like, it's not hard to be relative to your peers, extremely well educated compared to everyone else around you. You don't have to have a 150 iq to be a genius anymore.

You can have a 105 and be fine if you've been taught things that's withheld from everyone else. Like, I remember growing up, I went to public school and I hated it. I hate it because especially by the time you're in middle school and high school, it's just a huge waste of time. And that was the case in the early two thousands and late nineties. I can't imagine what it's like now.

And I would not get good grades, not because I intellectually couldn't understand the material because I was just so bored by it. At the same time, I constantly was reading books. I was reading whatever I could about whatever subject I wanted. I was, of course, fascinated by history. As a teenager. You go through your world war two stage. I read every book that I could get my hands on about World War two and learning about history.

And I was, you know, even like the history classes I had, I was really depressed that like there's all this history from the ancient world and the medieval world and we never talked about any of it. Right? I felt like an idiot because I didn't know who Plato was or Aristotle was, right. And, and no one would teach me it. No one would teach me ancient greek philosophy. And so I started to read this stuff on my own.

And I guess I was probably a weird kid, but I was just fascinated by the world around me and all of these subjects that I wasn't allowed to learn about. I was fascinated by ancient history. I was fascinated by the medieval era. And so I would just read, read whatever I wanted to read and study whatever I wanted to study. And I'd get terrible grades, but I was actually like educating myself. And the same thing happened in college, right? I think I had, I did not have an impressive GPA in college.

And not because it was like intellectually difficult, but because it's like C's get degrees. I'm just going to do the bare minimum and I'm going to spend all my time studying history and theology and whatever else I'm interested in. And so I would go to the library in college and I'd read all sorts of books that, I mean, I spent a lot of time in the library but not for like my actual classes, I would just take advantage of the library to find. Find stuff I was interested in.

And, I mean, and I was interested. I took. I got a history degree, but it was all. It was like, I took a class on the. On, like, colonial America, right? And I'm thinking, like, all right, I'm gonna read, like, the federalist papers, and I'm gonna read, you know, all of the. You know, all of this stuff about, like, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and things like that. I can't wait.

And I get the syllabus, and it's like, we're gonna learn about women's roles in colonial America, and we're going to read this feminist book about how they made the women churn butter and things like that. And I'm like, ugh. And so I think I could look at my transcript. I think I either dropped that class or got a d in it. And so my transcript doesn't look good. Yeah, that's right.

And so what I did instead is I educated myself on colonial America and read as much as I could about it, checked out books in the library, and none of them were applicable to the papers I had to write for that class. But I actually learned about it and learned a lot about it. And it was like that for all of my classes, whatever the subject was. I took a class on medieval Europe. And what am I going to learn about medieval Europe? We're going to learn about gender roles in medieval Europe.

Oh, okay. That's what really mattered. We're not going to learn anything about Charlemagne, but we're going to learn about how they thatched their huts. Okay, cool. Yeah. So, like, I mean, my education that I paid for, I'm still paying for, is. Was worthless. But I I came away from college, you know, extremely well educated, not because of the college. And so the. The thing that you can do for your children, and thankfully, homeschooling is still legal.

And more and more legal, in many ways, is your children can actually get an education. Right. I mean, one of the things I point out in the book is, and it's kind of famous, this. You can go online and find the entrance exam for, like, Harvard or Yale from, like, 1898. And you look at it, you can go look. Your listeners can go look this up, just, like, google Harvard entrance exam, 1898. And you'll get a PDF of it. And this is what 17 and 18 year olds had to take to get into Harvard.

And it was like, from memory. Describe the route of Xenophon and his men back from Babylon. And it's like, okay, I don't think I. 98% of the people applying to Harvard today have even heard of Xenophon. I don't think 98% of the people who've graduated from Harvard today could tell you who Xenophon was. And these young people had to be able to describe from memory the entirety of Xenophon's anabasis. And it's like, okay.

And then they had to be able to do calculus from memory, find the matrice or cosine of whatever. And so they needed fully formed people that had an education that far surpasses the college education people would have now just to get into college. And you can actually provide this for your children. So I look at that and I think, all right, when my children reach 18 years old, I want them to be able to answer these questions on this exam. That's my own personal standard that I have for my kids.

Maybe not everyone's going to have that standard, but it's achievable. You can do that. Like, you can actually provide them the education that you never got to have. And they're going to be so well educated, so learned compared to their peers. There's going to be no comparison whatsoever. So you think about the economic problems and disadvantages that our people have. That's one major way to overcome it, is, right.

You could just give them all the stuff that you never got to have and they will know so much more about the world and be much wiser than you were at 18 years old, hopefully. And they have this massive advantage. You look at the literacy stats today, I think it's like 50 or 60% of Americans can't read at a 6th grade level, which if you look at like a 6th grade level, that's really low. Like, it's. That's below the newspaper level of literacy. And so you think about that, right?

If your children can read at like, 12th grade level, even, you're massively. You have a massive advantage if they can write, right? I mean, you go to the workplace and you see like, how people write emails. It's like, oh, my goodness, is this person? Yeah, exactly. You should probably just have chat GPT write your emails for you. But it's like, it's astounding how poorly educated people are today. So that's a major advantage that they'll have.

Just to be able to write anything and communicate in the, in the written form effectively will help your children massively. And so I think about those things a lot as a parent, what am I doing to set my children up to be able to thrive in the midst of trash world and not just survive, not just eke out some form of existence, but rather do well and to conquer. I can, you know, I'll take, I'll brag a little bit about my, my oldest daughter.

Um, you know, I, and I'm, I'm like, blown away by her, like, every year. And this is the hard thing with, like, homeschooling in elementary is, um, you only end up doing like one or 2 hours of work a day because, like, elementary kids in, like, public school, they go there for 8 hours. But the reality is, like, the teachers are working hard and everything because, like, they're, they're trying to keep everything under control for the kids.

But in terms of, like, academic content, that's probably all they're actually getting is one or 2 hours. And, and so my wife all year is worried because in Minnesota here, the kids have to take a math and reading test, like every other year. And she's worried. And if you don't pass it or if you do really poorly, then they have to go to public school. So she's like, oh, what happens if she's, you know, she's not going to pass this test and we're going to be in.

We're going to have to send her to school and it's going to be a disaster and be embarrassing and all failed and everything. I'm like, it's going to be okay. And so my daughter, you know, takes this test for, in third grade, and she does the reading test, and she's reading it like a 10th grade level. And my wife, the whole time my wife is thinking, like, we have hardly done any work. I feel so lazy, like, we haven't done anything. She's reading a 10th grade level.

It's like the standards are pretty low. You don't have to work that hard. And it's because she learned how to read and likes reading. And we don't have the tv on all day and all day long to get her to do chores. I have to make her put a book down right. She loves to read. And it's not quite the same with my son, but boys are a little bit different. But that's the thing. It's like, I don't think we're doing anything special or that we have some silver bullet that we figured out about education.

It's just we're doing the work and putting it in. And if you're able to do that, if you're able to bless your children in that way, you give them such a massive advantage. You even see this. I'm sure you saw this article a year or two ago where it's like, it's white privilege that parents, white parents on average, read books to their children. And so we need to close that gap. It's like white privilege that they're parents read bedtime stories to their kids more on average than other people.

And it's like, huh, okay, well, I didn't take that conclusion away from it, but you could give your children these massive, massive advantages just by doing, and it doesn't take all the work that you think it does. You don't have to be spending 8 hours a day slaving away at lessons and grading and all of this when you're educating a handful of children. It is work. Teaching a kid to read is hard, really hard.

So I'm not demeaning that or belittling it at all, but it doesn't take 8 hours a day of just going over the Alphabet and sounding out words. But it's worth it. It's worth all the hard work that my wife puts in, and you will see the fruit of it when they reach 18. And they can, even if they can't pass the 1900 Harvard entrance exam, they're going to be so far above their peers, whatever their ability level is.

Even if your child is not given to academics in any way, a child that is at the same ability level, they're going to be so far beyond what their peers get that it will matter. And again, this is a thing on the margin, but that's where I'm trying to point people to, to look for hope, is that there is hope on the margins. That's where we can go and do these things. Yeah, homeschooling is this marginal thing only a small percentage of people in America do.

But the benefits of it are absolutely massive to give to your children, and so you build them up, right? And it isn't just like, okay, we're going to do public school type stuff, but then pray a little bit. It's actually, all right, well, how do christians do math? Right? What do we understand about the world? Like, well, God built a world with order and patterns and reason built into the world, and that's what mathematics comes from.

Almost all of the great advances in mathematics over the centuries were done by christians. Right? Wow. Weird even. They're like, oh, what about algebra? That's a muslim ad. Actually, no, it wasn't. It was a persian dhimmi in Baghdad that they just had a muslim name.

All of these, all the advances in science and all of these things that we think are actually done by christians because they understood the world from a christian point of view and they understood it's God's world that they're examining and discovering. That's the amazing thing that you can do with your kids is, is show them that this is actually our God's world that he's made and he's built it for us to discover and learn about. And it's just so beautiful.

And I could go on for hours about homeschooling and how great it is, but really, that's what I want to build up. And I know you wanted to talk about barbells with that too. And I think especially as it pertains to boys, because homeschooling boys, and this can be an issue, is if a little boy is home with mom all day, he's going to grow up in a world that is obviously going to be gynocentric. His mom is in charge of everything and he's in the household. And it might be, in some ways it's harder.

Some ways school is better for boys because there's this rigid structure and they have to follow rules and be in a classroom. And so homeschooling can be a lot of times harder for boys. But because they need physical activity, they need to do stuff. And part of this discipline, and this goes beyond just school age stuff, is men need to develop. They need to physically develop. They need to be big and strong. That's what God built them to be.

And so, yeah, if you're doing homeschooling, you have to include physical activity. You have to include when they're old enough and it's much younger than you think, everyone's like, oh, they can't start lifting weights until they're twelve because their bones are not developed.

It's like, ah, no. I make my kids pick up heavy stuff all the time because even though they're not going to get the big boy muscles until they hit puberty, it's a good discipline for them to follow, especially in our age, because of all the technological advances. Most, the average person in the pre modern era, average man, he had to do physical labor, he had to use his body to make money. And today that's not the case at all.

Most people, how they make money is by sitting down and doing stuff, right? They're sitting at a desk. Yeah. All of us, right? We're sitting down at a desk, typing up things on a computer. We're sitting in a truck driving around. And that takes a toll on your body in an opposite way than physical labor does, right? You are sedentary, and along with all of the problems with modern food, you will get fat.

You will be unhealthy from the lifestyle that we have because of all the technological changes. And so a major part of it is right here. We've built this world where we can make a living and provide for ourselves without having to do physical labor. And the downside to that, because we think we've overcome, we have this world where there's so much prosperity, we're in an anti scarcity world now. And so, yeah, we're in our Star Trek utopia. But the problem there is that, right?

If you don't have to physically use your body, you decay, right there. You are sedentary, you get fat, you get weak, and you get sick way more. And so you have to go out of your way to just be healthy in a way that people didn't have to like. You just live your normal life and you're going to be usually pretty thin and muscular.

If you're a man, because you're working in a factory or you're working on a farm now, you have to, at sometimes great expense of both time and money, go to a gym and work out and do all of these things. But it's just like all these other things, right? It's just like the dating market and things like that. You have to do all these things out of the ordinary just to pursue a good life. It's the same thing with your physical body, right?

You have to consciously devote time and effort and money to live healthy and to have a healthy body. And it's like, well, that's worth it, right? It's worth it to do those things. You should do that. And even, and the, and it's not just for men, too. Like, I want, you know, I want my daughters to be healthy as well. It is like, the benefit of it goes well beyond, like, physical strength and ability. Like, that's important, being healthy and being strong.

But what lifting weights does is there are physiological changes that happen to your body. If you're fat, you produce less testosterone. And we talked earlier about men's emotions and anger and things like that. One of the reasons why people aren't so angry is they're really fat and they don't have the testosterone flowing through their veins to make them angry about things that should make them angry.

And so what happens is, yeah, you lose body fat, you build up musculature, your body produces more testosterone. You're going to be more aggressive, you're going to be more confident, and you start acting much more like a man. It's crazy. It's crazy. Even for me. My own personal experience is such that I was, at one point in my life, I was 310 pounds. I put on a lot of weight, and we'd gone through difficult time in life, and I got big. I didn't have time to go to the gym.

I was doing everything I can to provide for the family, didn't have time for. For working out. And I consciously, through a ton of effort, lost 60 pounds over the course of a year. I started working out every day and doing everything I could to get in shape.

And the thing that I noticed about myself way more than just I had to get different clothes because the clothes I had didn't fit was I had way more self confidence and not in, like, a fake way where you're putting it on, where you have to pretend like you're confident. Like, I just. I was way more certain of myself, way more certain of things that I had to do, interpersonal actions, things like that. I was.

I was way less depressed and anxious and, like, there were all these, like, emotional and physiological changes that occur just by not being as fat anymore and being stronger. It changes you. And even, like, consciously, when you know that I could pick up 500 pounds off the ground, like, just like, consciously knowing that it changes how you relate to the world, I can impose my will on the world in this physical way, and it changes your entire mindset.

It changes you into a different kind of person. Usually for a good way. In a good way. I look at that and I think it's like, oh, I don't think it's just personal to me. I don't think I'm the outlier here. I think that this affects everybody. Like, every man can do the exact same thing where not everybody's going to have, there's a bell curve of what your body can do strength wise, but most men can learn to deadlift at least 315 pounds. That's not with training.

I think the average person could do that. And once you start doing that, once you start squatting and doing bench press, overhead press, all the basic barbell lifts, it's crazy, man, what it does to your mind and your emotional state, where it's like, I don't really care about that minor difficulty anymore because I could squat 400 pounds. And it seems like this fake macho thing. It seems like it's fake, but it's not at all. It's not where it's like, yeah, I don't care.

I'm strong now, and that's cool. And so I think the most important thing out of all of that is you develop your physical body, and some of it is within the people will be like, oh, no, that's vanity. It's vanity to want to be strong and to look good. It's like, well, no, God gave us bodies, right? And so much of the evangelical world is functionally gnostic. And I know that's a word people use and throw out all the time, but it's like, this is real. Physical body doesn't matter.

We only care about spiritual things. And it's like, well, there isn't a division between the body and, and spiritually what you are. The two things are combined. And if you are unhealthy and out of shape and really weak, that affects your spirit, that affects your emotional state, that affects how your mind works, and not in a good way. And when you're able to develop these physical capacities that God has given you, it changes your entire outlook on the world.

Even if life is really hard and you're in a rough place, you have physical strength, you feel pretty good. You feel really good about yourself, about the world. Your mind is much clearer. You sleep better. I can go on and on about all the benefits of it. And it's crazy because, right, you see most of the people, and it's funny how this works this way.

Like, most of the people who are anti christian, nationalist and anti masculine Christianity and anti right wing Christianity or whatever, they're all really fat, and they'll attack guys like me or Stephen Wolf or everyone else who are like, no, you should just go lift weights and be strong and like, even.

And, like, the thing with the young guys like this is this goes back to when I ministered to younger men, is, well, I don't know exactly what, you know, how to change your situation or make things better, but, like, if you're really strong and really good shape, that will help you in a lot of ways. When, when it comes to attracting young women, it's, you know, we're not supposed to say it. We're not supposed to say that girls like guys that are, that look good and are in shape. But it's true.

It's true. And so maybe you should try to do that. And so I think that's good pastoral advice to most young men. Like, start deadlifting and see if that changes anything. And. But it's reality like it is. And the other aspect of it is. It takes discipline, right? You don't get a four or five or 600 pound deadlift, like, after a couple trips to the gym, right? That takes months or years to develop consistently, day after day after day.

It takes a lot of time to develop a lot of technique and discipline. It cultivates this discipline. And it's sort of self reinforcing, too, because you go to the gym and you're a novice. It's like your first time there that you've ever gone to a gym. And you maybe can bench press the bar with, like, five pound weights on it. And you look around, you're, like, shaking on the way down and everything, and you see all these guys that are like, that are just specimens, right? It can be intimidating.

And then the next time you come back, you could put, like, five more pounds on there and your arms aren't shaking quite as much anymore. And then the next time you come back, you put a little more weight on the bar and you see these gradual gains that you make. And so the work that you're putting, you can tangibly see the reward of the work that you're putting in, that you see the linear progression that you go on with a barbella and you feel a lot better each time.

It's like, oh, that was hard, but I did more than last time. You write it down in your little notebook or on your app or whatever, and then you check back the next time and like, oh, I did a little bit more. This is good. And all of a sudden, right after six months now, you are doing a lot of weight, and you look in the mirror and you start to look like one of those guys that you saw the first time you went to the gym. And it's like, that's not so bad.

And it applies to so much in life that so much in life is this way where you have to discipline yourself to put in a little bit of work today and then the next day, and then the next day, consistently over a long period of time, you cultivate that kind of discipline, and it bleeds over into so much of life that you see the benefits tangibly from this discipline that you're undergoing, like, consciously and willfully, like, voluntarily doing these, this.

This hard thing in little spurts every single day. You see the payoff from it and it builds you into a different kind of man. And so, yeah, I think. I think that, like, everybody. And, and, I mean, unless you have, like, some physical disability where you cannot pick up a bar bill, right, every. Every guy should do. And if they're able to take time to do it. Every guy should, and I think women should, too. It's not just exclusively for men. Women should be in good physical shape, too.

But I think most of your audience is probably men and. Oh, really? Okay. Okay, ladies. Well, you could pick up barbells, too. I don't want to break your heart, to tell you the awful truth that you're not going to be able to pick up quite as much weight as men, but even so. And the other thing for gals is, I think a lot of times they think I'm going to look like one of these crossfit women.

If I ever pick up a barbell, I'm going to have these delts and stuff that I'll look like I'll have man arms if I ever pick up a. No, you won't. Yeah, just one time. Boom. Now I look like a man. No, no. Actually, you'll feel really good and you'll look good, and it has the same benefit that it does for you, and it helps just the hormonal changes that happen to you.

Because of physical fitness, men and women's bodies are different, and your hormones will be regulated in the appropriate way if you get physical activity and especially if you're building muscle. And so, yes, I mean, I can't say enough about how much it does for you. And then you get to the point where, like, you have to have it, where you have to work out and if you miss a day, you feel terrible. Right? Oh, man, I can't believe I missed the day. Like today, I'm missing going to the gym.

I didn't go to the gym because I was recording with you. So I'm already feeling terrible. But it's worth it. It's worth it. But that's how much it means to go on your show, Will. But no, I think if you can devote the time to it, especially young men. That's one of the regrets in my life, is I wish I would have developed this discipline when I was in college and in my twenties.

I didn't wait until my later twenties and into my thirties to begin consistently doing this because I probably would have hit my peak and had a much bigger deadlift and squat and everything else. Some of it is not even just vanity. I do it. And I would try to get to the certain point because I'm thinking, okay, what are my sons going to be able to do if I can get to this level of strength? Well, maybe. Maybe my boys will do 100 pounds more things like that.

Especially as you get older, you can bring your children with you to do these things, and they see it. It's really cool when your little boy sees you pick up 500 pounds, and they're like, whoa, dad is strong. When you wrestle and let them win, they think they're like the. They think they're the best thing in the world. I'm bigger than, stronger than dad is. And so, like, all of that stuff, like, they. When the kids will.

They'll want to be like their parents, and they'll want to do the stuff that mom and dad do. And so your little guys seeing that, I mean, that's part of, you know, part of Paideia is you're raising them up to be the people that you are and the people that you want to be, and they're enculturated into the. Into the same thing. And so, yeah, I love it. And I know, and I know, yeah, you're in. You're into lifting, too. And so, I mean, what, what, you know, what. What is your experience?

Is it similar to. Similar to mine? Uh, with. With lifting? It's exactly that. Yeah. So, um. So I was courting a woman, uh, the second half of last year. That didn't work out, and it's pretty tough, but as I've been saying, you know, broken hearts, right? So I got into. I got in the gym and started specifically strength training, and it made a huge difference. So, specifically, big four lifts training. And there were some really tough days, but then I was like, well, I can bench press 250 pounds.

Yeah. I feel good about myself. Exactly. I feel good about that. There were whole days where it's like, well, I could bench press that much, and so it's not that bad. At least I have something tangible. 100% facts. And then. And then a couple weeks ago, I deadlifted over 400 pounds. It's like, that's a good. That's a good feeling. 500 pounds is a lot. Before you get there. You'll get there. You can do it. I think most people, right.

If you dedicate yourself to training, and, I mean, because you'll hit plateaus where it's like, I don't think I'm ever going to get beyond this. And then you. You keep pushing through like you used to. You go, it keeps growing. Like you. There's more muscle you could put on, coincidentally. Right? And it is. It feels so good, right. That you're able. And I think, really, it's just this, like, grug brain kind of thing. If I could impose my will on this barbell, I could do anything right.

It does change how you think. I mean, and it could be any kind of. It doesn't. Isn't necessarily just strength training. Like, if you. If you dedicate yourself with cardio and running a certain pace, I want to be able to run a mile like I did when I was 17. I want to run under six minutes. Okay, let's do it. And when you accomplish that, the feeling you have of achieving a goal like that, I mean, some of that, too, is just.

It's just like, basic life, basic wisdom of, like, setting a goal and achieving it and what that feels like, because so much of, like, modern life, you don't have that. Like, what's the goal that you set? Oh, I want to beat this video game under so many hours or whatever like that. I mean, that's why video games are so attractive to so many people, because it feels like you're accomplishing something, right.

Oh, I killed this many bad guys, and I'm on top of the leaderboard or whatever, and I've accomplished something. Isn't this great? And it's like, well, actually, I mean, you really didn't, but it feels like you did. But with something like this, you're forcing yourself to confront reality, too.

I mean, that's part of it, is like, barbell training can be really brutal because we like to think that we're things that we're not, and you're just confronted with the cold, hard reality of, I'm only as strong as I actually am, and I can get stronger, but this is my Max right now, and that's all I can do. And I see all these other people, they can do way more than me, and I want to get to that point, but I'm not there right now. And you recognize where you actually are in reality.

And very rarely in life. We're so insulated from having to confront reality about ourselves. We normally think that we're so much better than we are, that we're so much better looking than we are, that we're so much more successful than we are. And no one will ever tell you it's very rare. I do have some good, close friends. When I was really big that said, andrew, you got to lose some weight, man. You're getting really fat. And nobody tells people that stuff.

Nobody says, hey, dude, no. I mean, it isn't just, like, girls on the Internet that are like, oh, you're so beautiful. And whenever they post a new Facebook picture, whatever, you. Oh, you're gorgeous. Right? Everybody is like that. Oh, you're the best. You're the best, right? But behind, you know, behind your back, they're like, man, he is really tubby. Like, they don't, nobody tells you that to your face. But then, but with the barbell or with any kind of fitness thing, right.

You're dealing with reality like, I am what I am. You step on the scale. I weigh that much. And, you know, nothing I do today is going to change that. But what I do over the next six months, cat could, could change that. And that's why, I mean, part of like education and Padea and this whole discussion, that's why like, I mean, most of like the christian homeschool world kind of poo poos, sports and physical activity, which I think is a huge problem.

And as I think like, okay, if I was going to start a christian school, classical christian school, what would I have? We're starting from square one. And maybe people listening to this have done. I mean, it's a lot of work to start a school, but I'm like, whatever we do, there's going to be barbell training for the kids. There's 2 hours of physical fitness, right. Because if you want to read Plato and Aristotle, you got to do the same stuff. What did the ancient Greeks do all day?

They went to the gymnasium, they wrestled and they lifted weights and their minds and their bodies were in shape. Those two correspond to each other. We want to just have big brains. What sports does, though, and you see this within trash world. We look at sports as entertainment and it's just a fun thing. It's like a Marvel movie. But at the end of the day, you're only as good as you actually are. All of the boomer participation trophy stuff, actually, that's one of the things that's true, is.

No, actually not everybody is as good as they think. They're only a tiny few are actually really, really good. Everybody thinks their kid is going to make a. Get into the NFL or play in the NBA or whatever your sport is. And it's like your kid might be the best in the entire town. He might be one of the best in the whole, in the five county area, and he might never get beyond like division three in college. Right? It's so tiny few that, that make it.

And it's a good for you to deal with reality and find that I'm not as good as I think I am. Right. It's good for a kid who thinks he's great to go up to bat and strike out and deal with failure. Go wrestle and lose. It's actually really, really good. And insulating yourself from failure and from losing is bad for you. You have to experience failure. You have to experience loss. And in athletic endeavors, that's one of the few places we still allow it to happen.

We still allow people to discover that, oh, not every single person is exactly the same. Some people are better than others at different things. And so that's why I'm like, even if my kids are not great at sports, you're gonna go do it. You're gonna go and you might not like it, you might fail at it. The other kids might be better than you, but you're going to go do it, and you're going to find out how good you are.

And it's so important to face those things, because all of life is failure all around. You're going to fail at lots of stuff. And if you never confront these things, if you never subject yourself to the possibility of failure, you're always going to fail. You're never going to have success. And so all of these things together, that's part of building these fully formed christian human beings is living in the actual real world that God has made and giving them opportunities.

I mean, that's part of maturation, of growth. One of the things I'm really fond of saying is that the Bible, the point of the Bible, if you have to sum it up, the entire Bible in one word, is maturity. That's the word, maturity. And you actually alluded to it earlier. A will where it starts in a garden. It starts with a husband and wife, a bride and a groom. And it ends with a bride and a groom. And it ends with a garden city.

You go from a garden to a garden city, where you go from Adam being this little baby, even though he was created as a man. But maturity wise, a baby. And all throughout the whole thing, humanity is maturing until it reaches Jesus, who's the fully mature man. And that's the thing. I ask people this all the time. I'm like, why is the Bible so. It's not long, but why is the Bible so long? Why are there all these stories in there? Why is there all this stuff in there?

If the whole point of the Bible is just believe in Jesus and you go to heaven when you die, if that's the point of the Bible, why didn't Eve have Jesus? Why did it have to wait thousands of years until Mary had Jesus? Why all this stuff in between? A lot of times, people can't give you a good answer to that question because they haven't considered these things. And it's like, no, because God is slowly, patiently maturing humanity. He's maturing his people throughout time, right? They have.

They suffer a lot of failures, a lot of setbacks. They sin, and they mess things up, and he picks them up, cleans them up, and puts them right back, and they learn, they mature. He gives them a. They go from being a baby to a toddler to a child to an adolescent to a teenager to a man, right? That's the process of how it happens, that God is very low time preference. He is the extremity of low time. He's an eternal God that exists outside of time.

And so he's got a lot of patience and slowly, slowly develops. You see this with the parables that Jesus gives, right? The parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven, right? This slow buildup of the kingdom of God over time leaven slowly, imperceptibly working its way through the loaf. And that's what God does with us, right? He could have created human beings any way he wanted to, right? We could show up and be born full adults.

I mean, I don't know how that would, you know, biologically. I mean, he'd figure out a way, right? But we could be born like Benjamin Button, you know, like you're. You're already. You're already old the second you're born and have all the wisdom that you need and everything else. But he doesn't. He didn't create us to be that way.

We come into the world as babies, and slowly, through years, we grow and we mature and we learn and we gain wisdom, and we understand things better and better and better until we're grown men. And even as we're grown men, like, when you're 20, you understand things differently at 30 than you did when you're 20. And then every. When you're 40 and 50 and 60. And that's. That's built into how God built the world, right? He wants us to experience these things. And so much of.

So much of how we approach things is like no patience, no slow development of virtue and wisdom. It's, you got to get it right now. You got to get all these things right now. And rather, what we have to be building is the slow development of maturation and growth. And the obvious example of it, in my mind, that you can see where it's just so tangible, it's so obvious, is barbells is lifting weights.

You see this slow, very, very slow growth of strengthen that you gain, and it's like, applicable to all of life. You see that with, in wisdom. Like, you grow in wisdom in the exact same way. You grow in maturity in the exact same way. So that's. Yeah, we could spend another 3 hours on barbells, so. Yeah, easily. Well, it's true. I mean, there's this idea that it's high time preference, but it's also extreme youth focused.

Like, our culture isn't good at talking about what happens to people when they turn 40. Like, oh, you're in the forbidden stage of your life. You might as well get 1ft in the grave. 57. Yeah, exactly. And so there's this emphasis on youth and beauty and all this. But wisdom only matures over a lifetime. But we don't have any elders. I talked about this recently. We don't have any elders over the age of 70 who are able to wisely reflect back on life and say things that are true.

Instead, they're just regurgitating propaganda from their youth. And I think the young people today are like, this is obvious nonsense. And so we'll just focus on being young. Whereas there are virtues to every single stage of life. If you know how to grow in wisdom and you have a concept of maturity, instead of, like, Netflix, Disney plus infantilism, which is what we have, that's our culture. It keeps men essentially soft featured, undeveloped in body, mind and spirit.

And, you know, the PI day of Christianity, if it, when it's successful in building up the men and women that it can, I don't know that there's going to be a whole lot of contests there, like how are, how are, how are your homeschool kids? How is any other children from the public school system being able, going to be able to compete with your home school kids? No, I don't understand. I don't think they will. And I think one of, well, I hope not. We'll see. We'll see what happens.

But I think you bring up a really good point, is that the padea of the Lord is also intergenerational, and so you should have wise elders. And that's one of the things, there's this constant dismissal and hatred of the boomers, and some of it is merited, some of it isn't. And so the difficulty there, like you said, is that the elder generation is, there is a disconnect with them from their own elders. Right.

And so when you have the younger people, when you have the younger people who are saying, no, we need to do things differently, like, the way we've been living is wrong. And we need to go back to further in the past what they're doing, because the older generation today will be like, you're not respecting your elders, you're dismissing us, and you're calling us boobers and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, actually, no, I'm trying to honor my elders in a way that you are not. Right.

That's what I'm doing. I'm trying to honor my great grandparents and great great grandparents that it skipped this generation. Of course, there's a way that you can dishonor the boomers in a sinful way and be dismissive of them and hate them. I think the way to go about it is, is like, when they're obviously not getting it, when they're obviously not seeing a thing, just be as kind as you can and respectful as you can, and just say, okay, you're not gonna get it, that's okay.

And not fight with them. But that ultimately is the case that 200 years ago, if you had a problem, if you're a young guy that has a problem, you would go to the old men, you would go to your grandpa and your great grandpa or the other older men around you and say, what should I do? What should I do here? And they would have wisdom, because the situations in which they lived, there was continuity. The world hadn't changed that much in 80 years, from when they were young to now that they're old.

They're all living in the same world. And so the wisdom that they had accrued and gained over their lifetime would be applicable to the world that the young people are living in. But our world has undergone such rapid social change that some people, some of the older generation definitely see, like, they see many of the bad things on the surface, but they don't dig any deeper, and they don't see how the things that they were okay with are now affecting the youth in ways they don't understand.

And so it's difficult. But I think if you are developing this fully orbed community of paideia, and you have elders that get these things, because I think about it this way, too, as I'm interacting with guys who are in their sixties and seventies that just don't get it right. And the whole time I'm thinking, all right, how would I want to be treated if I were them? Just like basic golden rule stuff, how would I want to be treated if I were them?

I wouldn't want the young guys to be dismissive of me and spurning anything I say and just fighting with me. But the flip side is like, how do I want to act when I'm in that position? So when I'm 60 or 70 years old and you have 20 something, 30 something year old guys that disagree with me, how will I act? Well, I'd be kind of haughty and be like, you young guys don't get it. You young guys are fools.

I hope that, because I think a lot of the social change will continue happening and the situation that young men are might, might be things might be a way that I don't fully comprehend 40 years from now. And I want to have the humility that should come with age to be able to say, man, I don't get it. I don't understand what's going on and the world that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore. And so help me understand these things.

So I try to look at it both ways and think about, okay, what am I going to be when I'm an old man? And what kind of wisdom can I impart to my grandchildren and great grandchildren? And that's like a thing that weighs on me because I'm thinking about this in an intergenerational paideia. What will be my role at that point? Because traditionally, ordinarily, these would be the guys that would guide the community, that would provide the wisdom.

Even when they don't have their hand on the wheel anymore, they're kind of in retirement. They're not running businesses and leading churches and things like that. They'll be older and they'll step away from those things, which also, strangely enough, the silent generation and Boomer generation isn't doing. As an aside, all these guys are hanging on to the bitter end.

I mean, this is the thing that people, I can't remember who said this with the Tom Cruise Top Gun movie where it's like he's like 60 years old, still flying fighter jets. It's like the boomer's taking one last mission. He's still holding onto this thing and not giving it up to the young guys. And in a lot of ways, that's true. They're going to hang on to the bitter end. And some of that is they didn't develop younger men to take their place, partly because they didn't trust them.

They didn't think they, oh, if I hand it off to a young guy, they're going to screw it all up. Everything that I've built. And you see this not even just in churches, but in businesses and families and all over the place. And so like the intergenerational conflict that exists is a major part of trash. I think that's, that's part of, like, it's part of, it's my design as well that we want to have. We want to have the older generation so bought into.

I'm going to live, I'm going to have retirement. I'm going to go live in my retirement community. I'm going to take my four hundred one k and my pension and everything I earned, and I'm going to buy an annuity and that's going to give me a guaranteed payment. I'm going to take my whole nest egg, put in an annuity that gives me a guaranteed payment for the rest of my life, and then it'll be zero for my kids to inherit.

That has been a thing that has been actively sold to that generation is you worked hard your whole life and these lazy kids, they're going to take all of that and waste it. And so they've set the older generation against the younger generation as much as the younger generation is bitter towards them as well. I think it's a thing that's by design, and so that's another thing that we have to overcome. Right?

And it's, and it's not easy because if you're a young person and you're struggling and, you know, starting out with a family and working really hard and you're not getting any help from the older generation, really easy to get bitter toward them and resent them and you can't, like, normal life was not that way.

Like, nor like the Bible talks about, a righteous man will leave an inheritance for his children and his grandchildren, and trash world says, no, go move to Arizona and go play golf and pickleball all day. Right? That's the. Yeah, the John Piper thing, right? Like that's, that is like golf and pickleball for the 60 plus generation, right? That's their Netflix and Marvel movies and everything else, right? That's, that's their thing. That's, that's, that's for the elderly bugman.

And, and I know, and, and it's like, um, you know, uh, like you, you have to overcome it. Might, might be like they don't see it and they're not ever going to see it. And you need to not become that person when you are 60, 70 years old, because it'll, it'll be self replicating where it's like, I'm going to put money in my 401k my whole life.

Most millennials don't think they're going to retire, but maybe you will maybe this house that you bought in 2019 will be worth $10 million someday, because I guess that's what's happening to housing. And you'll be able to sell it and live in Arizona or Florida and live the dream that your parents lived and then leave nothing for your kids. Give it all to Blackrock, and it's stuff that's by design to set father against son and mother against daughter.

They want it this way rather than the generations working cohesively together, parents supporting their children and their grandparents helping their grandchildren out and all of these things. Right? You have to begin when you're in your twenties and thirties thinking, and you just have your first baby, like, okay, all right, how am I going to do things differently that is completely 180 degrees contrary to the way of the world that's designed for us? That will set my children up?

I mean, some of it is. I mean, we've talked about homeschooling and things like that. That comes at great cost, right? You're losing another income, and you're not going to have all that retirement income that you would have otherwise had, that your wife would bring in, but you're setting them up for success in the world that you never got to enjoy.

And it might be that maybe you'll go live with your kids when you are old, in a retirement age and preparing them for that reality that we spent our retirement raising you time for the payback. It is.

I mean, it's tough to think about even now about how to live in this way that is opposing the world that has been built for us, that is awful and destructive and horrible and facing these uncomfortable things and living in a way that might not be ideal, but otherwise is good and beautiful and wonderful. And that takes a every generation working together. I agree. Can I push back whatever you want to that? So my response to that is like, I agree.

And I'm big on masculine hierarchies, and I'm big on wise elders. And I'm very bullish on the potential for old, wise men to properly channel, harness, and control the energies of young, enthusiastic men. I've told the story multiple times that if you ever want to see the limits of masculine men's power, you put a whole bunch of braveheart dudes on a field of battle, painted faces, shaking their spears, cheering, and then do two things.

First, take a young, beautiful woman barefoot and just walk her across the field of battle, and you'll watch, you know what I mean? Power down. But then the same is that if you take a, an old man with like a cane. He just crutches out there to the middle of the field. He just looks at him. It's like, I'm ashamed. It doesn't have to say a word. Just looks at him and like, oh, okay. And then they all pack up and go home. That's the power of elders over young men.

But I think the situation that we have now is that this, the. A lot of the trash world system that we're living in was built. Or at least there was a generation that was the turning point generation for the construction of it, right. The most enthusiastic builders of it. And it's like, you guys were wrong. Like, okay, even if we grant the point that you were a hyper engineer, but you were. But, like, there is something also to trash world being. Like, it plays on people's sins. Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, I didn't settle down and have kids in my early twenties. Like, and I was making bad decisions. But you know what? Like, as I go back and I search inside myself, like, you don't like the stuff. Decisions that I was making to live outside of God's law. So there's, like, an accountability piece. And I've tweeted this, like, if just one baby boomer man, pastor influencer, got up and said, you know what? Like, we were wrong about all of it. Feminism.

We were super wrong about that. We were super wrong about Megan. He was super wrong about no fault divorce. Right. And just said that, like, there would be a wave of healing that would wash across the entire nation. But, like, they're not saying it. They're like, maybe I can run out the clock and, yeah, then good luck with that. And I think that's contributing to the anger. It's like, look, we'll forgive you. We just want to hear that. You see?

It's like, well, you know, Biden, I think he could do another four years. Yeah. No, no, I don't think that's even really a pushback. I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right that there hasn't. Hasn't been a. Any contrition of any kind, really, from anyone in that generation whatsoever. I can't think of one example of anyone coming close to what you're describing. So you're right. You're absolutely right that they're not saying, yeah, we loved the world that we got.

We were born on third base, and we thought we hit a triple. And we. Yeah, we really messed things up for younger generations. Right. Because it will always be. What always happens is they'll say, well, no, I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Those things. And it's like, well, I know you personally didn't, like, make the economic decisions to create the world that we have, but you were happy to benefit from them, right? You were. You were more than happy to benefit from them.

And because a lot of it, like, if you. If you begin to say those things, if you're 70 years old, then people will say, well, why didn't you. Why didn't you do anything before? Right? Why didn't you. Why don't you fight any. Why don't you. It's easy for you to say now, but, like, they're not even saying the easy thing to say now. And. And so I think a lot of it is there's a tremendous amount of guilt, especially when you hear young guys criticize the boomer generation.

It'll always be turned back to, you're just a bitter young guy. You're just angry. You need to respect your elders. And the reality is, it's like, no, because I look at it now, the things that are happening today that we are benefiting from, even in a minor way, 20 years, 30 years, it's going to be way worse for the kids that are born today than it is now.

I don't get why you can't just say, because I can tell you about all the problems with the millennial generation and all the sins that they're given to collectively, generationally, and say, yeah, I was part of that. These are the decisions I made that were poor and that were bad. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, I could do that. Right? Because it's easy to.

Because everyone wants to blame millennials and young people for their laziness and their lack of work ethic and all the things that seem obvious, but it's like, okay, well, like, turnabout is fair play. Like, what? Okay, what did you guys do wrong? And. Nope, nothing. I did everything right. I worked hard. I got my house in 1983, and I paid. Don't you know that I paid a 15% mortgage on that? And it's like, yeah, the house costs like $20,000, right? Like, okay, I paid that whole thing off.

It's like, well, don't you think, like, there's anything collectively, like, as a generation you did, that was not good or wrong? No, no. We were totally righteous and everything. So you're right. And there. And, yeah, I mean, if there was one that just said, no, we were wrong about these things, like, we destroyed our entire society and we thought we were righteous in doing it.

I think, I think that's the big thing is circling back to so much of this is the civil religion that dominates everything. You are a righteous person if you believe it. You're a righteous person if you believe egalitarianism in all its forms, and you're a bad person if you disagree with it. And so any form of contrition would imply that those things actually maybe are bad and they're not going to do that.

And it's like self reinforcing because the decisions they made and the things they were happy to agree with, all the social changes that took place, it confirms their own sense of righteousness. And so they would have to say that, no, the sixties and seventies generation, we were bad, we messed up everything. And, and that, that I don't think, I don't know if they can, I don't know if they can do that. And it's hard.

So, I mean, I, but I think understanding that, that they're not gonna do those things, we still can't be bitter at them, right? We still, cuz I think what that will do. Yes. Is, is the, like, the way that you honor your parents is going to be how your, your children treat you and like, because you're modeling that for them. And, and if you're, if your parents have, and there's a lot of people where they're, they had rotten parents, really terrible parents.

And if you respond to their sin sinfully, you model that for your children. So when you sin against them, they're going to respond in the same way. Right? And so I look at it that way where if you're modeling honoring people that even don't deserve it, right? They don't, they don't. The boomer generation does not deserve honor by their own merit, but they deserve honor from their office, right? That they, yeah.

And so I look at it along those lines where you can be honest about, here's where their faults are, here's where they really messed up and not give yourself over to this bitterness and resentment of them. And that's how you end up healing. Because it's like, I mean, it's kind of like back to the, you know, the late thirties girl who's, who missed out on her chance to have a family, right? You can't go back and reverse the clock.

Even if she's repentant now, even if she's like, oh, I see what I did wrong, but like, okay, well, you're not 22 years old. Again, the same thing with the intergenerational dynamic. You're not going to be able to go back and redo the 1960s and so. And do it right this time. And so what it means is only going forward, what does the next generation do? And it has to be all right. Here's where the previous generation did things wrong.

We'll honor them despite not deserving it, because we want the subsequent generations to honor us rightly, and we'll do things the right way. That has to be the mindset, I. Think I appreciate you linking it to the feminist argument as well, because that's. That's huge. That's huge. Like, do you have the strength to admit at age 37 that you were wrong? Yeah, you were wrong. You know, and that's. I did. That's a tweet that I have that's going kind of viral right now that I'm getting a response on.

It's like, look, it's. Okay. Look, I. Look, me. Will. I was wrong. I was wrong for many years. Right? Repented for. That was grueling. It's terrible. They're, like, penalty paid to, you know, by Christ. Consequences. Real. Right? And so. And so I was wrong. And so, and so encountering the same dialogue with women who are showing up, you know, 35, 37, 39. Like, I'm baptized. Where's my husband? It's like, yeah, it's not that simple. Like, you were wrong for 1517 years of your life.

In fact, there's a woman I was. I was chatting with on Instagram who was like, no, having kids for the first time at 40 is fine. It's like, no, it isn't. It isn't. And so my response to that is, okay, let's say that it is like, what should you be doing for 20 years of your life between, like, age 20 and age 40? Should you be getting married? If yes, why not having kids? If no, not getting married. What are you supposed to be doing? Please make a biblical case. There isn't one. Right?

And so it's like, look, just admit that you're wrong. But, like, there's. That I just can't. It's like, well, that's the kind of anchor that drags you really far down, which is the sad part, right? That anger goes all the way down to the bottom. And that's the part that's so difficult, is offering people the gift of repentance because it is a gift, and then they just reject it. Like, I have nothing to repent for. Well, the book says otherwise. Yeah. That's where we are in many ways.

Okay, so we've been at this for a long time. There is one last question that I wanted to ask, and actually, it was one of my favorite parts of the book. It was the very, very end. The very, very end where you thanked your wife, Kara, who is somehow more thrilled about this book going to print than I am. And I just thought that that was such a great way to end the book.

Such an anti trash world statement just in that, in and of itself, like, hey, everything that I've talked about that I'm opposed to, you know, what you have in the. And then the things that I look forward to, the very end of the book, it's like, yeah, no, I actually. I live this. I wonder if you can just speak. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't really want to toot my own horn or anything, but. But, no, I mean, it's okay. It is.

I think, like, just even bringing up my own example, even, like, with, like, weightlifting and things like that, is like, there's nothing remarkable about me personally or anything like that. I'm just a regular guy like everyone else. And so it's possible to have a good life. It's possible for us to pursue the things that God wants for us. It's possible to have a good wife. And by God's grace, I have one. Right? I have an amazing, awesome wife and fully supportive of all the things that.

That I'm doing. And it's, you know, a lot of the time, I don't even think about it, because you're just so, you know, you're just so used to it. It's like, of course, of course my wife is on my team, right? Why wouldn't she be like, you don't. You don't realize that that's not the case for a lot of people.

I remember at one point, maybe I mentioned in the book, I can't remember if I did or not, but I had some buddies from my gym over one time, and we were going to watch the NFL draft or something. I just do normie stuff together. Were sitting down and, like, my wife made us sandwiches, and they were. These guys are married at the time anyway, and she comes over, you know, she brings the sandwiches of her. Oh, do you guys. You guys need anything? Can I get you a beer or something?

And their jaws are on the floor. Like, she's making us sandwiches. And. And I'm like, oh, kara, could you get me this other thing? Could you grab this thing for me? And they're both like, wow, if we were at your house. Your wife would be like, go get it yourself. And I didn't think anything of it, right, because it's just, this is normal life for us. Like, honey, could you grab this? And they were just shocked, and not in a bad way. They were thinking, like, what is going on here?

This is like, I've never seen anything like this in my life. A wife that is, like, doing stuff for her husband just. Cause this is astounding. And for me, it was just normal life. It was just, oh, honey, could you grab this thing for me? Sure. Hey. And she'll be like, hey, could you go do this thing? Pick something up at the store for me? Sure, I'd love to. We don't think anything of it, but it actually is really remarkable for most people that, like, we, um. We love each other. And she.

She, like, she'll do things in the house to support me, to serve me. Oh, my goodness. Oh, you can't. Oh. A wife serving her husband. Oh, my goodness. I mean, it is funny, like, the anecdote that I shared, you know, it's like she literally made us sandwiches, and I can't remember if she was pregnant and barefoot at the time or nothing. She might have been, but it was. Yeah, it was.

I'm sure they probably thought this is, like, some kind of fever dream out of the 1950s or something, but no. Yeah, exactly. Under his watchful eye, yes. But no, she is. She's phenomenal, amazing, a wonderful wife, and you can have a life like that, and she loves her life. It's funny. If any of the feminists are watching, they probably think, oh, it must be a horrible life for her. And she's grueling away all day long, and she loves her life. One of the things that. That, you know, I knew about.

We knew each other in college, and one of the reasons why I'm like, oh, I should marry Kara. She's great. Was. All through college, she's like, I just want to be a mom and have, like, ten kids. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds good. Let's. I should bury her. And this is the life she's always wanted, is to have to be a mom with lots of kids and changing diapers and having babies and taking care of them all day long. She loves it. She thinks it's great.

And so it's not something where you just wake up and you can have it anymore. 100 years ago, that was probably true. Where this is how all of life is, is all around you, is formed and shaped, and this is just what everybody, by virtue of existing does. You have to go out of your way to pursue these things, and you have to find someone like that. They don't grow on trees. But it's not impossible either.

It's not impossible to have a life that is good and is wonderful where you have a wife that is. Isn't opposed to you all day long and living a contrary or parallel life from you, but you're actually a unit, you're a team. You're one flesh. You're united and together, actually, in reality. And, yeah, it is. Yeah. I wasn't thinking of reflecting on this today, but it's worth it. I just did a wedding, too, last week, and so part of the liturgy is. Of the wedding.

Liturgy is for married couples to witness this and reaffirm their own marital vows. Right. And it's like, no, it's good. It's good to continue to do these things, right? To continue to reflect on just what a good life you have. And definitely, like, with the book, I couldn't have done it without her. Right. Writing a book's hard. I used to think it was easy. I used to think like, oh, these authors that write stuff, it's the easiest thing.

It's like you're talking like, we just did a podcast for 3 hours or whatever, and it's like talking and just writing it down. You can just talk about whatever, but no, it takes a ton of work, a ton of effort, ton of thought, and. And she was instrumental in doing all of it because, yeah, the thing that I'm writing about, it's not like some theoretical idea of living a life opposed to trash world. It's actually what we're doing. It's what we're doing every single day.

And I couldn't possibly do it without her. Amen. Amen. Thank you for that. But what a blessing, brother. I really appreciate all the wisdom and all the insight that you've had to share. You've actually brought a lot of clarity to me and a lot of these issues that I've been thinking through, so I'm very grateful for that. Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for your time as well. It's fun to chat. Let me just go off on tangents all day long.

No, this is a joy for me because this is the opportunity to hear, articulated a lot of thoughts that I've dimly had. But the way that you articulate them, they're very clearly in focus. You spend a lot of time thinking through these issues, including writing books, a couple books.

But you see very clearly, from a perspective that I don't have and that I don't think a lot of people do have, it's like there's a wayfinder kind of characteristic to many of the things you're saying, and I appreciate that greatly because I think a lot of men will feel the same because it's not hard to see a lot of the problems in their surface manifestations, but to see the details of them, to show the way that they show up across time and into the future is incredibly important.

So this has been a real blessing. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. Will, where would you like to send people to find? Well, yeah, I do a podcast every week with my friend CJ Engel, who is a writer for Chronicles magazine. And our podcast is Contra Mundum. It's on YouTube, is where people can find it, or contramundompodcast.com on. They'll take them to Substack, where it's also hosted. And I'm on Twitter and gab at bonifaceoption so people can find me in those places as well.

I post a lot and a lot of the same things that you talk about. And in the podcast, we'll talk about a lot of these kinds of things, a lot of political and social and cultural ideas that are really worth talking about. We try to dig into a lot of these things and have different guests and provide a lot of commentary on the world that and say things that not a lot of other people are saying.

And to be able to, like you said, bring clarity to a lot of these issues that are really murky and cloudy that no one really wants to talk about. Very important. I'll be sure to send everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Renaissance Men podcast. Visit us on the web at Wren. Of Men.com or on your favorite social. Media platform at Ren of men. This is the renaissance of men. You are the Renaissance.