DAVID EDGINGTON | The Importance of Submission: The Role of Women in Marital Strife

My name is Will Spencer, and you're listening to the Renaissance of Men podcast. My guest this week is a biblical counselor, plus a good friend, brother in Christ, and the author of the Abusive wife. Please welcome Dr. David Edgington. You are the Renaissance. For the past several generations, evangelicalism has been infected with the idea that women don't sin.

Part of this is due to feminism and what I call the feminist theology, which is the idea that women are cosmic victims of patriarchy and that in order to right historical wrongs, we can never hold them accountable again. Another part of this is due to the cultural disparagement of men. We see this in the Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond and more. Bumbling and buffoonish dads provide adorable comic relief while the capable wife dutifully cleans up behind the scenes.

The husband does all the wrong and the wife does all the right. And that's just how it is and how it's always been. Both of these ideas and more combine to produce the idea that women are saintly, sinless angels under the oppressive thumb of men, either actively through mistreatment or passively through inaction.

And so the notions that women sin, women sin against men, and that women sin against men who don't deserve it cannot be tolerated in the public square simply because they're obviously false, right? Right. There's just one problem. Women do sin, including against men. Women have a sin nature, just like men do, and it expresses itself uniquely from men's. It also expresses itself in marriage. Yes, men can and do fail as husbands and as fathers.

No one has had any trouble saying that since at least the 1960s. But when you try to suggest that women have their share of failings as wives and as mothers, you're met immediately with shrill pushback. Clearly, it must be the husband's fault. Somehow, this false secular idea has also crept into evangelicalism and into the pastor's counseling office.

It seems that in many cases around the country and also the world, the pastors cannot or perhaps will not see that there are situations where the abusive or abandoning partner isn't the husband. Rather, it's the wife. And there's a storm coming. Feminism has begun its long fall from its cultural and political heights. And with it is coming the realization that in our rush to point fingers and laugh at men, we've missed out on the shared responsibility for an entire sex, women.

And that correction is going to be painful, difficult, and a lonely road to walk for all but the most faithful men and women courageous enough to walk it. Which brings me to my guest this week. His name is Dr. David Eddington, and he's a biblical counselor and the author of the Abusive Wife Ministering to the Contentious Woman. And there are a bunch of key words in that book title. First, the abusive wife. Yes, that is a real phenomenon.

And since my podcast with David last year, which has become one of my top 10 most downloaded episodes ever, David has had men reach out to him from around the world, sharing their stories of being abused, often verbally and sometimes even physically, by their wives. These are cases that pastors often ignore in their rush to blame the husband. And in case you're tempted to wonder, David sees these couples in person or on zoom and witnesses this behavior firsthand. It is not speculation.

The second keyword in David's book title is ministering. This isn't about shame or scorn. This is about ministering to a sinful woman's pain, calling her to repentance, and turning her heart towards Christ and her husband. This is key. We are not talking about a Christian version of red pill finger pointing, rather gentle but firm and loving calls to repentance in Christ for the good of her own soul, not just her marriage. And finally, the contentious woman.

As we all know, women are less physically powerful than men. It's more difficult, though not impossible, for women to abuse their husband's bodies. Instead, women abuse men by being disagreeable, difficult, argumentative, accusatory, disobedient, vindictive, and cutting with their words. These women break men down verbally, and men, being more action oriented, have limited ways to respond and often can't respond at all. Not in time, anyway.

These are the cases of men and women that Dr. Edgington counsels, perhaps one of the only counselors in the entire world who does so. And this is significant because this phenomenon is more widespread than most in the Christian church can imagine. But my sense is that very soon we're all going to hear much more about it. The pain, shame and hiding is real. No man wants to admit that he's the victim of abuse. And yet it's becoming time to talk about it.

May we all do so with the wisdom, compassion, patience, and Christian heart exemplified by my friend David. In our conversation, we discussed the worldwide phenomenon of reviling wives, the infiltration of psychotherapy in the church, the need for men to stand up to women, the trait to look for in a godly wife, cultivating the gift of repentance, how your feelings will lead you astray, and finally, healing through biblical counseling. If you enjoy the Renaissance of Men podcast, thank you.

Please leave us a five star rating on Spotify and a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If this is your first time here, welcome. I release new episodes about the Christian counterculture, masculine virtue and the family every week. Just a reminder that many things about this podcast will be changing very soon. As you heard me say a couple weeks ago, this podcast will soon become the Will Spencer Podcast. New brand, new topics, new guests, same format you love.

This has been a long time coming and I'm incredibly excited. I hope you are too. And I hope you won't mind these regular reminders to make sure we all come along together. And so now I'm thrilled to announce the new podcast Substack that is our new community home. You can find that link in the show notes.

There will be free content on the site, including a new article entitled no one Cares about Female Action Heroes and Were right not to, which is about the recent box office failure of the film Furiosa and what I think that has to say about the undeniable differences between men and women. So expect more of that.

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And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, a pastor and biblical counselor, plus the author of the abusive wife, my friend, Dr. David Edgington. Hey David, welcome back to the podcast. Hey Will, great to see you again. So in the time since you and I spoke on the show, I guess it was about a year ago, something like that.

I've been very blessed to form a friendship with you and so I think that'll probably that ongoing dialogue that's been happening since then will probably show up in the recording maybe once or twice. I'm sure, I'm sure it will. Very grateful for our friendship. Me as well so maybe fill everybody in on what the past year has been like. Because you wrote this book, the Abusive Wife, back in. I think it was 2013 when you wrote it, and suddenly it got noticed.

And you were on five podcasts last year, including mine. And so that was a. That was a big shift. So. So catch the listeners up on what that's been like. Well, I wrote the Abusive wife back in 2015. That's when it was published. And so nine years ago now. And after doing these podcasts last year, including yours, I could never have expected the response that I got. I mean, it's been incredible.

The number of men that are struggling with the issues that you and I talked about in that first podcast is off the charts. And I'm not one for hyperbole. I'm not one for exaggerating. This is. I literally counseled hundreds of families last year on this issue alone. And the reason that I think that's happening is that no one wants to talk about it. No one wants to acknowledge it. No one wants to even think that it's a thing. And there are suffering and hurting men.

There are women that are bound in this reviling, in bitterness, and they're completely unrepentant about it. And so, you know, so we struck a nerve when we did the podcast. And what amazed me will, you know, I'm just a boomer, so I don't understand all the. All this stuff. You know, honestly, Honestly, I wasn't even sure what a podcast was when the first person invited me. I'm like, what? I think I know what that is. Does it grow on trees? Yeah. What is that? Is that the little pods things?

But the reach of the podcast, where it has gone literally worldwide. I mean, I've counseled people in England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore. I'm just trying to think of Iceland, Turkey, Brazil. All over the world. People have contacted me because nobody wants to talk about this again. Nobody wants to believe that this is really even an issue now. Nobody is hyperbole, but it's very, very few people.

I would say that probably 90% of the pastors and counselors out there miserably fail with this exact issue. And that's from talking to so many pastors, too. I've talked to many pastors in the past year, many counselors, many no thetic counselors like myself that, you know, I know we've talked about this before, but they not only do not address the problem, they actually blame the man for the problem. So it's a double pain.

First, the man getting all of this reviling in bitterness and hostility and control and rage from his wife. And these are Christian families. They're not liberal families. They're not families that don't believe the Bible. They're families that say that they believe the Bible. So the men get all of that hostility from their wife and then they go to their church or their counselors, even, so called biblical counselors, new fetic counselors, and they get blamed.

Doesn't matter how wicked or bad the wife is, the man gets blamed. Now the way I handle counseling is I listen to people and I say, okay, the man is in sin, I hold him accountable for the sin. If the wife sends sin, I hold her accountable for the sin. But with the reviling wife, she doesn't want to be held accountable. She actually gets angry when you try to, just as gently as you could, hold her accountable for what? For her behavior, for what she's doing. Always gets blamed on the husband.

Well, he's abusive, he's toxic, he's, you know, we gotta destroy the patriarchy. We gotta, you know, it's like, this is not what this is about. These men are almost without fault. They're gentle, they're kind, they're loving, they're forgiving. They love their wives, they love their children. They're not, you know, mean, cruel, you know, flexing and saying, you know, you must submit to me. They're not that kind of guy at all. And this is what's so mysterious about us.

Like, why, why is there not just that basic discernment to see what's going on? Why aren't people even curious about it and say, it can't be that bad, can it? Do the women who do this, I've got so many questions. Do the women who do this, do they actually say, we have to smash the patriarchy? Like, does that come up? Do they bring that up? Many of them do. Many of the women do.

And again, we're talking about women that would present themselves as conservative, that they believe the Bible is the word of God. They believe the Bible is what should be preached from the pulpit. And, you know, they hate Doug Wilson. They hate, you know, anybody that's trying to assert male headship and just simple men leading in their homes, men being the authority in their homes.

I think what happens will, is that when people hear authority, when they hear leadership, when they hear headship, what a lot of women hear is oppression, domination, cruelty, no freedom, doormat. That's what they hear. And it's like, that's not what that's not these men. Now, there are men like that out there. You and I know, sure, there are men like that out there. There's probably a lot of men like that out there.

But there are so many women out there that have just given in to feminism and they don't even realize it. I don't think they see it. Yeah, they don't because they don't call it feminism. Like that's the thing is I think feminism. I've begun thinking that feminism is the wrong word because when you say the word feminism, people hear a socio political movement, right? Oh, I'm not a feminist because I'm not part of the socio political movement. But it's deeper, it's theological.

I mean, it's garden stuff. Right. As my friends and I say. But there's no word for what that is. I mean, obviously it's just rebellion. It's hatred of God that's expressed towards hating. Your desire will be to usurp your husband and he will rule over you. That's what it is. But a lot of women are like, that's not me. I'd never do that. It's like you're doing it right now. Yeah, no, it's the Genesis 3:16.

I like the way the ESV translates it, that your desire shall be contrary to your husband and he shall rule over you. So it's contrary to the husband and now he has to rule over her. And then you look at Genesis, chapter four, the very next chapter with Cain and Abel, and God tells Cain, you have to rule over your sin. Sin's desire is for you. It's crouching at the door, it's desire for you, but you have to rule over it. So you have to take care of that and say, this is not going to happen.

I don't want sin to overwhelm me, and so I have to rule over my sin. And yet the same picture is for the husband and wife, that the wife wants to control the husband. And the husband says, no, God has given me the rule. And that's not oppressive. It does not have to be oppressive at all. And a lot of these men are not as strong as they should be. So I'll say that a lot of these men are more passive than strong leaders.

But with the reviling wife, this is such an important point and it's usually missed will. With the reviling wife, it doesn't matter how strong the husband is. It doesn't matter how masculine he is, how tough he is, how assertive he is. She's still Going to rebel because the sin is in her hearts, not in him. And the example I use with that, because people say, well, if a man will just be strong and masculine, then a woman will submit. I know you and I roll our eyes at that a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. And so my response to that is, okay, let's say that that's true. I guess Jesus is not masculine enough. Right. Because his bride, the church, rebels against him all the time. Are we willing to say that. That, you know, it's the man's fault when the wife sins? I go, no, it's not. Now, in the garden, obviously, Adam was responsible for Eve's sin. He abdicated his leadership because the scripture says that he was with her when that happened. But she carries the blame for the sin.

She's guilty of the sin herself. Thank you. Yes. So that distinction is important and it has to be made because a lot of times it's just, nope, Sky's fault. Sin entered through Adam. So men are always to blame. It's like, no, no one Timothy 2 talks about Eve was deceived and became a transgressor, so she fell into sin. I mean, it's not saying, well, she was sinless. Right. Well, that's all we're trying to do. We're just trying to hold men accountable for sin and women accountable for sin.

And I'm not looking for sin. I'm not digging in and saying, I gotta find it in you. It's like it's right out in the open. Yeah. There's a book about it, I think. It's not just your line either. And a much better book than mine. Much better. Exactly. Well, this is exactly what I run into, is I try and point out women sin, and then the response I get is, women sin. My line is, women sin. Women sin against men. Women sin against men who don't deserve it. All three of those things are true.

I think I did. I think in my how to Find a Church. Because last year I did an episode, how to Find a Church, and I talked to men who are seeking, probably women, too. Like, you have to ask your pastor, do you agree with these three statements? Do women sin? Do women sin against men? And do women sin against men who don't deserve it? Because if a pastor isn't willing to say an immediate yes to all three of those, don't go to that church. Because all three of those, and the.

Other part, too, will you, Pastor, hold that woman accountable for her sin? Yes. That's a great. That's a great part of it. Women's sin. But I'm not going to do anything about it. It's like, no, you got to do something about it. That's right. There's so much here because I've been going around in DMs and on Twitter and stuff like this, about this, you know, about. There are so many people who will say, I. A woman who will say, like, my father or my pastor was. Was really terrible to me, even.

Even assuming that it's true. And so when you try and point out that you need to be accountable now, they get all mad. Like, somehow it's that man's fault for your behavior today. Like, it's. That's not how it works. Like when, when, like, women, when. When you die and you face judgment, like, I don't think God's going to say, well, I see you did all these terrible things, but, you know, was your dad mean to you? You know, asterisk. Like, there's no asterisk. You're.

You're morally responsible for your. For your thoughts, words and actions, period. Right? Yeah. And I don't. I don't want to minimize. This is a whole nother area. I know we can go on a lot of tangents on this. I don't want to minimize what women have been through, especially in their childhood. Let's talk about this then, please. So what I have found, and I just started seeing this pattern, I go, there's got to be something going on here.

As I'm counseling 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 of these husbands and wives. Unbelievable. I'm seeing a pattern in the reviling wives. And of the hundreds of ones that I've counseled, about 80% of those reviling wives had some kind of traumatic experience in their childhood. Now, when I say traumatic, I mean that they've been raped, okay? They've been sexually molested, they got an abortion. You know, there's all kinds of things.

Now, I realize she chose to get the abortion, but sometimes it's a young girl. And I go, that. That's horrible that she has to go through that. Abortion is wicked sin anyway. But, you know, a little girl having to go through it is just horrible. So what happens is that trauma, it's exactly what you described. Sometimes it doesn't kick in for five, 10, 20 years later, and she just gets full of rage over her husband, who didn't do anything like that to her, didn't have any.

Nothing even remotely like that, but she just gets gripped by this, and she's blinded with that rage. Now, again, I have Sympathy and compassion for what she went through as a little girl. I go, it's just wicked and horrible that men would do that to little girls. But your point? She has to be held accountable, compassionately held accountable as an adult grown woman who's 40, 50, 60 years old. You can't treat your husband this way. It's wicked. It's godless.

You're blaming your husband for something that happened to you as a little girl. Well, I'm not blaming him. He's just like my uncle or my father or my brother. I'm like, no, he's not. But you're so blinded, you've just got this tunnel vision that that bitterness has set in to that woman's heart. Started as a little girl, but again, it seems like it doesn't manifest until many times decades later, and then she's full on, just hostile and uncontrollable and unaccountable.

So, again, you know, we have to have compassion for what these women went through as little girls, but we still have to hold them accountable for what they're doing now and saying, you don't get a pass on this. You really don't, any more than a man does. And I'll say this, too. I see the same thing with men. Men that were molested and abused as little boys. When they become adults, the same thing happens to them. They become uncontrollable, full of rage. And you go, what's going on?

Where did this come from? So this is a big, deep topic, but we have to biblically and compassionately hold people accountable for their sin. Nobody gets a pass over what they've been through from their past. So I have a lot of thoughts about this because before I became a Christian, I spent a long time in the new age, which you and I have talked about. And the new age world is big on huge. This might be the most. The number one draw of it is healing, quote, healing trauma. Right.

And now there's all different categories of trauma in terms of the way the word gets used. Right. I think it's misused, too. Yes. Completely. Yeah. And if you want to go looking for various offenses that have been committed against you through your whole life, if you frame them that way, you'll find plenty. Like, there's a video going around right now of the women's rage rituals where they're banging the sticks. Apparently that retreat costs $4,000, which does not surprise me at all.

But if you tell men or women that there's something in their past to be angry about and to Let it out. Then even if there really isn't a whole ton that we might objectively call terrible or sinful, they'll still find something to be angry about. There's plenty to be angry. Welcome to earth. Angry sinners hearts, right? So the heart will manufacture whatever it needs to. You bet. So, but here's the thing.

So having been in countless retreats and rooms where this is exactly what's going on, and I've been participating in them, so part of this, I look at these things and say, it's not as if these forms of quote unquote trauma are new. It's not as if prior to the 1960s or 50s, like, no one did anything to harm anyone at all and it was just utopia. Right? So I'm trying to figure out why and what has happened now, because I don't think that it was that way.

I mean, I wasn't around in, let's say, the 1800s or the 1700s. Like I wasn't there. Right? So like the boomers. So I gotta believe that these things were happening. And that doesn't make them right at all. They're still morally wrong, they're still sinful, and in many cases still criminal. But people managed, it seems to me, to live their whole lives without making what happened to them in their childhood their husband or their wife's problem. Like, yes, of course, all sinners.

There's no papistry going on here. The heart is not basically good. That's not what. That's not what's happening. Right. So of course there were criminals. Of course there were. Of course there were terrible people who through being broken, became broken themselves and went on to pay that forward, let's say. But it seems to me that terrible things would happen to men and women for centuries, and people understood that.

It's not like, well, this just means I have license now to go treat the man who loves me best like dirt, or the woman who loves me best like dirt. Like, when did trauma become a license? I mean, a license to kill? I mean, in many ways, maybe not murder, but, you know, like, in a way that would, you know, truly be violation of a commandment. You know, what it is, Will, is unbridled psychotherapy. Yeah, that psycho.

And that's infiltrated the New Age movement and it's infiltrated the church as well, and big time, you know, huge. That's one of the reasons I became a new fetic Counselor, you know, 30 years ago was because of the infiltration of psychotherapy into the church, where it's all about sympathy and feelings. And now it's a. Now it's about compassion on steroids, where you feel so bad for what people have been through that any expression that they give is legitimate. And this is where.

Yeah, excellent book. Joe Rigby, emotional. I'm interviewing him for the podcast next. Week, scheduled to read that. Excellent. Well done. But you know, the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. You know, James, chapter one, right? See, ritual anger, just, you know, just going full on with anger is going to make things worse. It's going to harden the heart. It's not going to somehow magically cause all this anger and bitterness to escape and leave the body.

It's actually encouraging it to stay in there. You know Ephesians 4 that says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. What does the very next verse say? And give no opportunity to the devil, right? Because what happens, you let that anger fester and stay in your heart even overnight. The next morning, the enemy is able to take advantage of that and saying, you've got every right to be angry. These men mistreated you. These people did horrible things to you. You should be angry.

You should be full of rage. You should be breaking sticks on the ground, you know, screaming and yelling at your husband. You should be reviling these men. This is a whole nother area too. I don't know which tangent you want to go on with this, but all of them, I. But you know, this is another big, big problem is the so called conservative women that have a platform and they're counseling other women. And yes, I mean, I'm thinking of a number of them. I'll name their names.

Leslie Vernick, Darby Strickland, Sheila Gregor, Kaylee Triller. I mean, these women, they actually urge the women into sin, not just divorcing their husbands. But I had an interaction with Kaylee Triller on Twitter and she said, bad men deserve to be reviled. She actually said that. She used the word reviled. She used the word reviled. And I said, you're kidding me. You're actually encouraging women to sin? Oh, you're just twisting scripture. I said, no, I'm not twisting scripture. What?

How can you say that? This is okay. Oh my goodness. Do I really need to point out Jesus was reviled and didn't revile in return? I mean, 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, we do church discipline for reviling. I mean, do I really have to point all that out? Is that. And you know, it's just the men are so Evil. We have to hurt them verbally. You know, we have to do this, and we gotta basically burn down the marriage. And so, you know, you've got women like this, and there's a bunch of them.

These women have a huge following, and you've got a bunch of them. And then you got pastors and counselors that have been so feminized and they don't even realize it. So they're supporting these women. It's a recipe for disaster. It's a train wreck in the making. And so you've got this momentum that is building and building. And in the Meantime, it's Proverbs 14. 1 the wisest of women builds her house, but with her own hands, she tears it down. That's what these women are, tearing it down.

I don't love you. I don't care for you. I don't want you in my life. I've got one. I counseling one right now. And the wife said, I don't want to be married to this man anymore. I just want a partnership to raise the children. Wow. And the man is not, you know, the man is like I described before. He's gentle, he's kind, he's sweet, he's loving. He's. He's probably too passive. He's not too aggressive. He's not an angry man. And you go, where is this coming from?

What's happening to the women of our society? And why are the men not doing something about it? That's what's so concerning to me. I know that you're doing a lot about it. You've been doing a lot about it. But I know the average man that has any kind of a platform, it's just staying quiet. Because once you speak out, you get a lot of hate, don't you? You get a lot of attacking. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not just that. Yes, that is part of it.

But I mean, I think ultimately I have a thread of tweets that is finished and ready to post, but I don't know if I want to start this fire. I try to be respectful of rooms that I come into and recognize that there are men in these rooms that have been spent a long time building them. And, you know, it's like walking into. And I think I've said this in my podcast with Jeff Wright maybe a month or two ago, that it's.

That coming into evangelicalism today is like walking into a big hotel conference room, you know, where the fluorescent lights are kind of hanging and things are flickering and there's stains on the carpet. And there are a lot of people just sitting there. And I'm like, guys, what's happened? Like, does anybody see this? And everyone's like, nope. Do you see what's going on? You see what's going on? And it's like, well, they were here. I want to be respectful to them.

And I think ultimately the reason why no one wants to say anything is that as soon as you start speaking into this, you're going to lose your church. I mean, like, because the tentacles of feminism have reached so far into the church social structure. Because this is. This is how women use power. Men use power physically, right? If we want to exert power, it's with force of arms and force, force of rational will, like reason, you know, our minds and our bodies.

Women have power, which they do through social influence, through insinuation, through gossip and reputation destruction. Right? So men will. A man will just. What's that? And manipulation. Yes. Men will destroy your bodies. Right. Women will destroy your social life. This is our sin nature. There's nothing wrong with saying either of these. And neither is better or worse than the other. It's still destruction.

And so I think a lot of pastors know, they see the seams of feminism like a coal seam running through their church. And as soon as they start speaking about these issues about women's sin, you know, they start the Proverbs 14: Women. There are all kinds of sinful, wicked women, all throughout scripture. Of course, there are many virtuous women at all, but we don't talk about these sinful women.

We're happy to talk about men's sins, like David, but we forget that Bathsheba was an adulteress, right? She knew her husband was out, like, so she participated in this. But so we focus on the sin of the man and we leave out the sin of the woman. Because when you start talking about these things, this entire feminist network will activate. And they don't think of themselves like feminists, as you said. They just know that, like, someone has spoken against the almighty woman.

And then things start to squeeze. And I think that runs all the way up to many pastors wives. Right? There's a book I've been working through with my men's group Disciplines of a Godly man by Kent Hughes. And in this book, it was written in 1990, 91, there was a survey, and it was an anonymous survey to pastors. And in 1991, 12% of pastors admitted in this anonymous survey to having some sort of sexual misconduct that they considered sinful.

It didn't say what it was, whether it was adultery or inappropriate messaging or maybe even an emotional connection. It didn't say whether they'd repented or not. It just said 12%. Now, the number is probably higher than that, right? And this is in 1991, prior to Internet pornography. So that number is probably way higher today. In how many pastors, wives have overlooked various indiscretions of their husbands, so the husbands know that this is now off limits.

And so men have to overlook this whole section of life and can't speak into it because it not only will affect their church, it'll affect their marriage, their family, their reputations. And this is what sin does. It has to be covered up. But a secret sin solves nothing. And I think that there's certainly that. The secret sin that I don't want people to know about, but I think in some ways, will. It's even more basic than that.

Just people lacking the courage to speak the truth when it's unpopular to be a prophetic voice and saying, this is wrong. This is sin. And I think a lot of men, a lot of pastors are reluctant to do that because they'll get a lot of flack for it without realizing that. I think a lot of pastors and a lot of counselors would be applauded for doing that. If they do it with love. They do it with boldness, but with love. I think a lot of pastors would have a greater following with that.

You know, it was interesting that I was counseling husband and wife. Wife that was reviling. And she was. She was going down the list of all the things that her husband was not doing, all the things that she was doing, and, you know, and totally unbiased, kind of glorifying herself. No way. And I just. I don't know, I'm hoping it was just the spirit of God came over me. And I said, you know, you are a poster child for why feminism destroys a marriage base. And I said that to her.

And she, you know, she got this shocked look on her face. No one had ever said that to her, obviously. And she said, you're right. I go, I mean, I think then I was more shocked than she was. Yeah. And, you know, she was repentance over what she had been saying and what she'd been doing. Praise God. So, you know, there is hope. There is. I don't want to look. I don't want anyone to look at this and say, boy, you got a reviling wife. There is absolutely no hope.

But I would say the Vast majority of them. The vast majority of the reviling wives won't even talk to me. They won't even participate in the counseling. I would say maybe, you know, 5, 10% are even willing to talk in a counseling setting. You know, they want the echo chamber. They want somebody who's just going to agree with them. And I go, oh, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that with your husband either. I'm going to. I'm going to hold him accountable, too. That's right.

But I've been tracking this statistically and since last year, will my counseling. 40% of my counseling is in this issue. This area alone. 40% is in the reviling wives and marriages. And there are a lot of suffering men out there. And again, as you and I have said many times before, we are not saying that men don't do the same thing to women. I know they do it to women. It's just as wicked, it is just as evil, is just as sinful. Yet we have to talk about what women are doing.

It's dishonest not to. It's leaving women in their misery if we don't talk to them about it. It's leaving men in the misery if we don't help these men to say, you have to stand up to her. Even if she leaves, you have to stand up to her. Do it with grace. Do it with forgiveness. Don't start yelling and screaming and raging at her like she is at you. Don't revile in return. But you have to stand. You must. It's not. You have to fear God more than you fear that woman, your wife.

And that's hard because, you know, these women are so fierce and so rigorous in their. In their sin that it's hard for a man to stand up to that. Yeah. Especially because women are very adept verbally much. Women much talk circles around a man before he even gets out of bed. Like, you know, it's like, wait a minute, what happened? What? And she's got. She's talked about 20 things already that he's done wrong. It's like, what? What? Wait, wait, what happened? What. What did I do?

And that's right. And then you just paid. You just play defense rather than saying, no, let's. Let's go on offense and say, you know, wife, I love you, I care for you. I want to protect you. I want to do what's best for you and the family. God has called me to be the leader. I am the leader. Whether you want me to be or not. I am the head of this family, whether you want me to be or not. It's just going to be a matter of what kind of a leader am I?

Am I a good leader that stands where God stands, or am I a bad leader that just lets my wife lead? And that's tragic. We see the tragedy of that. You know, one of the other things too, that I have just recently understood, probably the last year or so, is about the dangers of complementarianism. Oh, boy, now you've done it. I know, I know. I'm just poking the bear everywhere. All those bears you and I poke all these bears, poke all the bears.

And it's just the complementarian view just says that the husband and wife. The wife completes the husband. And I go, okay, that's good. That's biblical. Nothing wrong with that. Completes him. I can see that. Yes, yes, okay, we can go there. Yeah. But what happens with that, in effect, is the husband becomes basically a tiebreaker. So in other words, there's a disagreement, the husband, okay, the husband has the final say.

All right, but really, even in that, what happens is the husband is pressured and says, well, if you really love your wife, you'll just do what she wants. Right. And I go, wait a minute, that's not leadership at all now, is it? That's just abdication, like what Adam did. Far better to say, you know, the word patriarchy, very simple word, and yet, boy, that. That makes feminists heads explode too, doesn't it? Yeah, but patriarchy, it just basically means it's two words. Father, rule.

That's all it is. And we could look at scripture where Abraham was a patriarch, David was a patriarch, Jacob was the patriarch. You know, I mean, it's a biblical word. It's not something that masculine bros have invented. It's something that's in the scriptures, and it does not at all imply oppression, toxic harshness, cruelty. Making a wife a doormat doesn't imply that at all. It's for protection, it's for help, it's for leading. It's saying that's when the wife is safest.

So I've become someone that I embrace the patriarchy now rather than the complementarian view. Because the complementarian view invariably has not only allowed this problem to arise, but it's actually furthered the problem of the reviling wife, because it basically nullifies the man trying to lead in any way, no matter what way the man wants to lead. If the pastor or counselor says, oh, you know that you're asking too much of your Wife. Okay, I'll just go along with her.

Well, then she's leading. How can you not see that? How do you not see that? That's just abdication just looks a little differently. And again, I'm not saying that men get everything they want every time they want. You know, my wife and I, you know, we function perfectly with this. And I ask her for input. I say, what do you think of this? And sometimes she'll say. She says, well, she says, I think. This might be the better way to go. And I think about it, and I go, you know what? Thank you.

You're right. I appreciate your wisdom. I'm a blessed man that you can think about things and you're right about some things. And I'm not saying I'm right about everything. And then I go, okay, let's do what you said. But when we disagree, when it's something that I say, well, no, I really think this is the way we should go. She says, I trust you, David. I follow you, and I'll gladly follow you. Yep. How come that's so rare, Will? How come that is so rare?

I can give you lots of reasons, by the way. I can. For everyone, you know, for everyone listening. Like, you know, I've been to. I've been to dinner at your house, David. Yours and Diane's house, you know, what, two, three times at least, and spent a lot of time around you guys personally. And I can validate, like, that's how. That's how your marriage works and how happy Diane is and how. How peaceful she is to be around. Yes. And what a. And what a warm and loving presence she is. Right.

And the way. And the way that you guys communicate and that you. It's very clear from being around both of you that you both have your roles and you're happy in them. Right. And that's such a beautiful thing to see, because I think a lot of women hear words like patriarchy or, like submission or obedience or respect or whatever, and these alarm bells go off, and they go straight to doormat. Like, as soon as you say these, Yoshi. Right.

And it's like, no, like, these are just two separate roles that both people can be equally happy in if they don't feel the need to lord it over the other person. Right, exactly. I don't. I don't lord things over my wife. I mean, I say, this is what we should do. And. And then she goes, well, you know, I think maybe this would be better. And if she's right, I'm going, of course. I've got to be humble enough to admit that. But we do. We value each other, we love each other, we support each other.

But you know, isn't it funny what you just said about a wife should obey her husband? You know, 1 Peter 3 says that Sarah obeyed Abraham. Sarah obeyed Abraham. It says it right there in the passage. He said, oh, that's terrible. You should never ask a wife to obey her husband. What? Why not? What is so wicked and evil about that? Now again, I know there's bad men out there, and I go, that's harder.

But still, 1 Peter 3:1 talks about, even if a husband is disobedient to the Word, you submit to him, you follow him. Now again, let's just qualify this will, because I know people will say, oh, so you're saying that if a man is beating his wife, just submit to that, don't do anything about it. Course not. Of course we're not saying that, right? Oh, he's molesting the children. Just let him. Of course we're not saying that. Immediately jump to the most extreme.

Stop making the hard cases the general principle. That's not the way. I mean, obviously then Peter was wrong. Then Scripture is wrong. Then God is wrong if we're saying that. But there's three passages that I like to point to people about this issue of submission. Ephesians 5:24 now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. In everything. Not just the things that she agrees with him on, but in everything.

Not just the areas where she wants to submit to him, but in everything. She doesn't get to pick and choose and say, well, I'll submit to you here, but I won't submit to you there. I mean, Scripture is absolutely clear on that in everything. The second one that I point to is 1 Peter 3:1, 1 we just talked about.

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the Word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct. So the likewise is appealing back to first Peter, Chapter two, where here is Jesus was reviled and he suffered, and he did not revile in return. 1 Peter 2:23. And remember, the Scriptures never once tell the husband to submit to the wife. Not even once.

Nope. And yet just the example that I was giving you about my wife and I that if she's right, she's got a better idea. If she's right and I'm wrong, if she's Just wiser than I am. I'm going to follow. I'm going to say, yeah, that's good. That's what a good leader does. He listens to the counsel of other people and then he acts accordingly. But that's not submission to them. Yeah, that's still. Ultimately, you're making the decision. I'm still making the decision. That's right.

I'm taking in your advice, I'm taking in your guidance and your perspective, and I am making the decision. Like, if you're in the car, you know, it's not like you're driving is like, oh, honey, I think we should go left, because that's. And you say, we should go right. She says, no, left. And you're like, okay, we'll go that way. Why don't you drive? That's not what happens. Right. You still turn the wheel of the car. We function this way all the time in a. In society. Right.

In a company, the CEO, you know, the CEO, he asks for input from his. From his employees, and sometimes they have better ideas than he has. And he says, okay, we'll go that way. Yeah. But the employee can't say, well, I'm not going to submit to you, CEO. I'm going to do whatever I want. You know what he's going to say, you're fired. You can find another job, you know, work to somebody else. The military.

How could the military function if there wasn't submission, if it wasn't leaders and submission. And that's what the word hupataso is involved in. It's in a military metaphor, a picture that, you know, there's rank, there's order, and if there's not, there's absolute chaos and there's bedlam and nothing is ever going to be accomplished. Well, you have to have order, you have to have authority, and you have to have submission. The soldiers must submit.

And yet sometimes the soldiers will tell the general, you know, this is a bad move. I think we should go this way. And a wise general will say, hmm, you're right. Let's go that way. Now, he's not submitting to them, but he's saying, I'm taking that wisdom in. That's right. Thank you. Thank you for speaking up. Thank you for having that. And with a godly leader, with a godly man, that's going to happen. Appropriate. With a prideful, arrogant fool.

He's going to say, I don't care what a woman says. I'm going to do whatever I want. It's like, well, you're a fool. So I mentioned there's three passages. The third one I go to about submission is Titus 2. 5. And it's about older women speaking to younger women and urging them to train the young women to be submissive to their own husbands. And here's the key part, that the word of God may not be reviled. And the word reviled, there is the word for blasphemy.

Same word for blasphemy, that the word of God would not be blasphemed. So in other words, the unsubmissive wife is actually blaspheming the word of God by saying, I know better than God. That's God's rule. That's God's order. I know better. I'm going to do what I want. I mean, that's basically blasphemy. It's putting herself in the position of the authority of God. And so those three passages, Ephesians 5, 24, 1 Peter 3, 1 Titus 2:5, submission is so important, and yet it's a dirty word.

Now, the S word, you know, not the other S word, but the S. Word, the longer S word, right? It's even a more deadly S word. And we have to speak this because it's scripture, it's biblical. It's what God says. We didn't come up with the term. God did. And if we're not impressing that on wives and doing it in a godly, loving, gentle way, we're not teaching them well. We're not teaching these young women well.

And this is the one trait that I always talk to when men ask me, say, what do I look for in a godly wife? You know, I'm not married. I want a godly wife. How do I find that? Say, you know, submission is really one of the most important points because our society has changed so dramatically, so dramatically from even when I was a young man. Oh, yeah, I'm an old goat now. But even when I was a young man, dinosaur riding. Still going, still going. I'm not done yet. Right?

God's not done with me yet. But find a wife that will willingly and gladly submit to you in your leadership. Just be sure that you're a godly man. Just be sure you're a man that loves the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Don't just love doctrine. Don't just love all the doctrines of grace and things like that. Make sure that you really love Christ with all your heart and be that kind of man. Then you can look for the right kind of woman.

And it'll be a beautiful, a beautiful marriage. But if she's not submissive, it's going to be agony, is going to be painful. Well, then I want to, then I want to ask you about something because this is, this is something that is, it's on the minds of many men of all ages. And it's something that, in a sense, that you helped me with and how will be apparent when I bring up the example.

There are a lot of women that spend their 20s and their 30s being unsubmissive, doing what they want, living the life that they want, you know, being feminists in practice, if not in ideology, although sometimes both. And suddenly their mid-30s come around and they're realizing they're not so enthusiastic to be alone anymore. And so now they want a husband. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. As the clock begins to tick down and they say that they want a godly and biblical marriage, right?

And it's, yeah, of course, yeah, of course I want that, sure, whatever. But ultimately, like, even if they get into that situation, that they don't really want it. Right. And so, and so a lot of men are dealing with this problem.

And this is the big thing that pastors, I think this is the real problem that pastors aren't dealing with, don't know how to deal with, would prefer not to deal with, is women flooding into the church in the second half of their 30s looking for a husband but bringing no actual godliness with them. Like, where are all the men? It's like, I didn't realize that this was a drive through marriage opportunity for you.

So, and so women come into the church and they, of course, men and women do this all the time. But we live in a feminist context. We live in a societal context that has failed to hold women accountable for sin for the past, I don't know, 60 or 80 years at least. Right. That's the context we're in. None of this makes men's sins go away. I could talk to you all day about men's sins. All day. Men sin against men especially. Right. So no one's pretending that doesn't happen.

But we've overlooked society wide, society wide, up to the highest level, the existence of women's sins. And so now women are coming into the church seeking husbands. Right. But they don't understand or care to understand what a truly submissive heart looks like. Right. So knowing that pastors are probably going to abandon young men in this. What do you mean? She looks fine to me. No problem. Was she an Oldie fans model who made $9 million. Well, she's baptized. You saw this, right?

Nala, the onlyfans model. It's like, yeah, she was a literal digital prostitute. And I'm not going to use a more biblical word. I'll use the word prostitute. She made $9 million selling filth for years, and then she goes and gets baptized. No problem. She's good to go. Everybody and pastors and women especially who support her are like, yeah, she's baptized. What are you talking about? There's no problem here anymore. Like, she's washing the blood of the lamb.

You should be enthusiastic to get married to this woman. It's like, this is preposterous, first of all, but I think there's going to be a lot of this. So I really would like, if you, if you wouldn't mind a couple of different. I have a couple different questions. What can men do to make sure that the women that they're courting or dating are genuinely. They are about that life. Right? It's like repentant. Right? And then also, what can you advise? How can you advise women? Like, this is serious.

This is not a larp. This is not trad wifing. This is not even Christian trad wifing. This is the condition of your immortal soul and to take it seriously. Right? Yeah. It's funny, a year ago, I would have no idea what you just said. I'm like, what do all those words mean? But now I'm like, oh, I get it. I get it now. I still don't know what I just said. So I understand. What larping and trad wife and all that. Okay, I understand. We're going to unbover you yet. Yeah, you're going to.

You're going to make me into a millennial, I guess. I don't know. But, you know, white knighting and cucks and all that, I go, I know what all that means now. It's like, amazing what the Internet does. The education that you get. Right. Was this all literally all because you went on those podcasts a year ago? Yeah, really, it is. It's the podcast. And then talking to all of these younger men too, because most of the men I'm counseling are younger than I am.

And, you know, they're talking about all stuff. I'm like, okay, I gotta look that word up. What does that mean? Okay. And so I've learned an incredible amount in the last year just from counseling so many of these men. Again, hundreds of men that are going through this. And I Go. This is incredible. So let's talk about that. That's an excellent, excellent topic.

The. The woman that's lived an immoral life, godless life, you know, porn star only fan star, you know, whatever it is, she's been a digital prostitute, or digital whore, whatever you want to call her. Yeah, there you go. I said the word. Sorry, Will. You said the thing. I said the thing. It's so over. Yeah, that's it. That's it. But, okay, I think we have to look at this and say, all right, there is redemption for her. Of course. You know, there is redemption for her, and she comes to Christ.

Salvation in Christ. She is regenerated. She is born again. I go, praise God. I'm happy for her. I love this. This is wonderful. But now, as Matthew 13 talks about, let's examine the fruit. Let's see what comes of this. And as you know, fruit, it takes time for fruit to grow, doesn't it? Fruit doesn't just, boom, just appears on the tree. We got a big fig tree in our backyard, and, you know, it takes months and months for that fruit to appear.

We go, okay, that's what we're going to have to do with these women that say, oh, I've lived this horrible, immoral, unsubmissive, godless life. Now I'm 35 years old. I want to have a good husband. I want to have children. And I go, okay, good, good. That's a good desire. But let's put the brakes on and let's examine the fruit. Let's be fruit inspectors, right?

Let's not just assume you've made a profession of faith, you've been baptized or baptized, whatever you want to say, however you want to view that, that everything's fine now, everything's great. Sanctification is complete. It's like, no, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way with anybody. There's a long road of sanctification. In fact, it's your whole life. It's progressive. Sanctification is the biblical word for it. You know, I've been. I've been a believer for 41 years now.

You know, I became a believer when I was 23. So the math is, I'm 64 now. I'm almost a senior citizen. But when I was 23 years old, I thought, yeah, I got it all together now. And then five, 10, 15 years later, I'm like, boy, I need a lot of. I got to grow an awful lot. I'm not seeing a lot that I, you know, I'm seeing more than I did when I was an unbeliever. But, boy, I've got a long ways to go.

And so now, even at 40, 41 years later, after I'm a believer, it's like I still have a ways to go, but I'm much better than I was, you know, 40 years ago. Amen. So I think we have to be patient with these women that are making these professions of faith. Some of them are going to be false. Some of them are not really going to be born again. They're not going to be regenerated. But how do you tell? The only way you tell is through time. That's the only.

I don't care how precise and perfect their theology and their doctrine is. The fruit is what demonstrates whether it's genuine or not. The fruit that evidences whether it's real, Holy Spirit work in the heart, or if it's fake or if it's just a profession of faith. So the same thing for men, whether it's young men, middle aged men that are looking for a wife, you've got to take time, get to know this woman. And I urge men right up front, talk about these issues right up front with this woman.

What is your view of submission to a husband? I mean, you know, some husbands, some men say, I gotta ask that right in the first date. I go, it's not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. Do it gently. But see what, see what's out there. See what? The landscape. If she balks at that and says, well, I don't, okay, it's probably not going to work unless she just really changes dramatically and follows you. But if she says yes, I do believe the man is the head of the home. He is supposed to be the leader.

I go, okay, that's a start. That's not the whole thing, but at least you're in the ballpark. And now you evaluate it. You go out with this woman, you talk with her, you go on dates in different venues. You might go to the movies, you might go shopping at Costco, you might go to some events. All different situations. Get her around your friends go around her friends, evaluate. See what's happening in her. Is she. Does she look like a kind of woman that's willing to follow you?

Or is she all about a career? Does she say, no, I'll submit to you, but I want my career? I'm like, well, that's going to be really hard. You know, you've got a career, I've got a career. You have to be you know, woman, wife, you have to be willing to join me in my mission. It's not me joining you in your mission. I don't mean that in a mean way. I mean that in a biblical way that she has to be willing to follow him. This is the Proverbs 31, wife. You know, we all glorify the Proverbs 31, wife.

We say, well, look, she worked and she had a job, and she went out and bought a field and all that. And we go, yeah, but she was doing that to serve her family, to serve her husband. Yep. She wasn't just doing it independently and saying, well, I'm going to work for some other employer and. And make him rich and make him prosperous. It's like, no, I want to do these things for my family, for my husband. That's right. So. So we're. We're kind of touching on a lot of different issues here.

And, you know, the career woman is going to be hard for her to submit because she has invested a lot of money in her education, a lot of time in her vocation. And, I mean, just. Just look at what happened a few days ago with the football player, Harrison. But, yeah, you know, I mean, what he said, I'm like, wonderful. How nice. I mean, he's a Catholic, so his theology is off. But, you know, what he said was good. And I go, praise God. This is wonderful. Oh, my. You see what happened?

Blew up the woodwork, was it 250,000 people signed a petition to get him fired from the team. Nice. Like what? Really? Yeah, it shows. It just demonstrates the size of this. Yeah. And then I saw this video of one of the. I think it was one of the cheerleaders on the team, and she was just snarky, you know, arrogant young woman, and saying, well, we're both employees of the Kansas City Chiefs, and let me educate you. And foul language.

And like, you're putting yourself on the same level as a football player, first of all. I mean, come on, we're both on the field together. Give me a break. But I mean, just the things that she said. I'm like, oh, this is just so painful to hear. I just feel so bad. I felt bad for her, but I felt bad for the man that she's either married to or the man she's going to marry. I go, this is not going to go well. This is going to be painful, painful, agonizing.

She's probably going to be a reviling wife if she's not already. So this is kind of the whole landscape you know, I mean, I think, again, the scriptures give one basic command for wives. There's really not. I can't really think of other commands specifically for the wives other than she is to submit to her husband. And if she fails in that one, game over, as far as I'm concerned, I go, just move along. Don't pursue her. I feel bad for her.

I hope other godly older women will help her, like the Titus 2 women. You know, I hope they'll come alongside and help her to learn that. But the man has to look at this and say, no, this is going to be torture for me if I marry the wrong woman. I don't want that to happen to men because I counsel these men every day, Will every day. They contact me every single day. And it is painful and agonizing.

It's hard for me to endure what they're going through because it's like I'm just kind of living it over with them saying, oh, oh, this is painful. Yeah, this sounds exactly like the other guy I talked to last week. The story is the same over and over and over again. It's almost like a carbon copy of the reviling wife. Yeah. And again, this is worldwide. This is not just America. This is not just Phoenix, Arizona, where you and I live. This is all over the world. Yeah. So it's.

I know I got off on a tangent there. I don't know if I answered your question or not, but I don't remember. What the question was. Okay. Maybe the listeners remember saying, you guys missed it, you know. Well, there were two questions. One is, you know, what men should do. But I think there's also a question of what women should do, because we don't have those Titus 2 women anymore to disciple, you know, to disciple the younger women. We just.

We have a whole generation where that's just been dynamited. And so we have. This is what the renaissance of men was is like. You have a generation where fatherhood has been dynamited, whether by war or propaganda or both. Right. So you had, beginning in the 80s and the 90s, a whole bunch of men basically being like, well, I guess we have to figure this out for ourselves. Right. Substituting older brothers for fathers. And Andrew Tate is the best example of that. Right. He's an older brother.

Older brothers are bullies, like, I love you. I bully you because I love you. Right. That's the classic older brother model. That's the whole manosphere, essentially. Right. Okay. So now a lot of men are exiting that world to Christianity, which is all about the father, right. Brotherhood has a different framework. It's all about the father. So men are going in that direction and in the process, men are becoming more conservative.

This is actually young men are becoming more conservative as they enter various forms of Christianity. But what we don't have is in the demolition of fatherhood. We had a knock on effect of the demolition of motherhood down to the point of like, what is a woman? Right. But what we don't seem to really have yet, or what is taking shape much more slowly is women discipling women and how to be submissive. Right. So you have. I mean, there are examples of women that are doing this work.

I had a podcast, I've recorded it. It's gonna come out Friday. It'll be out by the time this one comes out with Annalise, formerly feminine, not feminist. Right. And she disciples by example. Right. But she's a young girl herself. I believe that she's in her 20s. We don't have women in like, we have more Leslie Vernix that are discipling women in rebellion than we do.

And it's up to Pearl, who Pearl believe in her 30s, she's not a believer, but it took someone at that level and look, I'm not a huge fan of everything that she does, but she said a lot of really right things about calling out women's sins. And we don't have a generation of women inside the church who have been doing that. It's like a blind eye kind of thing. Now we do have Rebecca Merkel and Rachel Jankovic, Doug Wilson's daughters, and Nancy Wilson, his wife, that have done a really good job.

And I'm a big fan of the things that they've talked about. Yes, but it can't all be Moscow doing everything forever. Right? And so. And so in the same way that young men have had to find their way forward to men that can disciple them in masculinity, godly masculinity. You have. Because they've been abandoned, they're orphans. You have women that have been orphaned as well, but are still made in the image of God and their heart is drawing them in that direction and they don't.

They have few resources that they can turn to. So for women who are listening to this interview, knowing that they might not find a pastor or his wife to do a good job in discipling them in godly womanhood, what advice would you give for them in their own faith walk in their own sanctification so that they can become a non reviling wife? Because I actually do get quite a lot of DMs from women on Instagram saying, I think I'm a reviling wife. Right. Like, I'm worried that this is me, which is.

And praise God for that. I appreciate knowing. And what I normally say is like, my, I don't know you, I've never met you, we've never talked. This is just words on a screen. But that you're worried about that means that you might not actually be right. So, but there. But there. But there are young girls who might wonder, who have seen that in themselves, and even women and wives as well, who may see that in themselves.

What advice would you have for them to walk this out on their own, knowing they may not find support in the church or in the world. Right. So you're talking about women that they may see tendencies or traits in themselves that say, I may be this kind of a reviling wife. You're not just talking about a woman in general? No, I love how you take the long winded things that I say and you put them in like a loving and calm way.

I'll talk for five minutes, like, so Will, what you're really saying is, I. Just want to be sure I'm getting your point. That's all. You do that all the time. It's one of my favorite things. Okay, thank you, Will. I think it's a compliment. It's definitely a compliment. Yeah. Because I get women like that, that contact me and say exactly the same thing. They say, I think I might be a reviling wife. Can you help me?

And I go, praise God. You know, it's like, well, that's kind of strange saying, praise God, but praise God. Because they're seeing some things, there's conviction in their heart, and often it's after they watch a podcast and maybe after they watch this one and they say, oh my, that sounds like me. And I go, okay, so that is a woman that is at least to some degree humble enough to examine herself and not just blame her husband. Yes. So now that woman has a lot of hope.

And I've helped women like that. I've got a pastor and his wife. And the wife contacted me because she said, I think I'm a reviling wife. Can you help me? And I said, yes, let's get you and your husband, the pastor, together and let's meet altogether. And I always do that. This is another point that I want to re. Emphasize, meet with the husband and the wife together. I know. I'm getting to your question because you're Asking about something different. But meet together. Do not meet separately.

Let the wife meet with the pastor or the counselor, and then the man meet with the pastor. That's a recipe for disaster, because that just encourages gossip. So meet together. But my point is about this wife that she says, I think I'm a reviling wife. And so they contacted me, we started counseling, and I said, you are a reviling wife, but there's hope for you because you're humble enough to recognize it, and you see these tendencies and these traits in yourself and you want to change.

And this is a couple in their, like, middle 30s, I'd say. So they're a young couple, and through the process of counseling with them, just using the word of God and helping them, she has been repentant and changed. And the last time I talked to them, the husband said, you know what? It's so nice. I love coming home. Now, I don't dread coming home because my wife is sweet and kind and loving and all that. I go, oh, great, that's what we need.

But it's going to take women to be humble enough to examine their own hearts. So now I'm talking about specifically the ones you're asking about. A single woman that's not married that says, I might be a reviling wife, okay? Humble enough to acknowledge that maybe there's something in me that's wrong. If you're bitter and angry and hostile at everything in the world, you're not going to get any help.

All you're going to find is an echo chamber of other people who say, oh, you have every right to be bitter and angry. Go bang the sticks on the ground and scream in the forest. That's not going to help you. It's going to make it worse. But you've got to put on humility. Colossians 3 talks about that. Putting on humility. Put it on and listen and hear. And now you have to have someone that's willing to help you and someone that can help you. Two things, right? Willing to and can do it.

Because some people are willing, but they don't know what to do. Some people, you know, they can do it, but they're not willing to do it. But it would be best if it was a godly older woman that would do that. So I think this is a good call on this podcast to say, older godly women seek out these younger women in your churches, in your sphere of influence, and pursue them to help them to grow, just like Titus 2. 5 says, right? To be submissive to their husbands.

So that the word of God is not blasphemed. They need that. But we need to have pastors and counselors rise up and say, I'm not going to be afraid to call women to account for their sin. I have to. It's part of my calling as a minister of the gospel, as a man. That's a. I mean, I look at myself as a physician of the soul. That's what the Puritans used to call themselves, physicians of the soul. They I can't set a broken bone, but I can help you with the problems of your soul.

That's what we should be. And help these women. You know, don't just ignore them if they're crying out for help. Let's minister the Word to them. Talk to them about humility, talk to them about grace, talk to them about their tongue. You know, go through James, chapter three about the tongue, what the tongue does. Because the reviling wife just tears her husband apart with her tongue. A lot of things that it talks about there speak with respect.

First Peter 3 passage talks about when they observe your respectful behavior. So here's even the man that is disobedient to the word of God, the wife still has to unconditionally respect him. Because I've had wives that say, I don't respect my husband at all. I said, well, you know, that's a problem. It's not him, it's you. That's right. You are called to respect him whether he's a respectable man or not. That's what scripture urges and teaches and commands.

So this is a. It's a complicated problem, isn't it? It's got a lot of tentacles to it. It's got a deep web to it. And it's going to take older women to rise up and seek out these other women, these young women that say, I think I'm a reviling woman, help me, or a reviling wife, help me. It's going to take pastors to speak clearly, cogently and boldly about this.

And it's going to take counselors like myself, whether they're nosthetic counselors like I am, or whatever type they are, to say, I've got to hold women accountable just like I hold men accountable. I can't wilt, I can't shrink from that. That's the responsibility that we have. And help these people, help them. Well, you know how it seems to me. I had this thought earlier when you mentioned it was Leslie Vernick and a bunch of others, a bunch of other names that you provided.

Now, I don't follow any of them, but I'm familiar with their names, and. It all blocked me, so I don't follow them anymore. Wow. You, like, you have. You don't have a whole ton of followers either. So you're. Yeah, they're gonna contact Sheila Gregor. And I said, you know, I just said something very simple. And I said on Twitter or X. And I said, is it possible that women are bitter against men and that's causing a lot of problems? She blocked me. She didn't even interact, just blocked me.

That's it. Thank you for proving my point. Like, yeah. Really? Like, okay, you kind of did prove what I said. I'm like, wow, okay. But it's almost like there's two sets of rules, right? This idea of patriarchy that's assigned to Christianity, that men. Obviously, it's deeper than that, but it's not just assigned to Christianity. It's the way that God made the world. But there's this idea that men should be bound by the word of scripture. Right? But women, they don't need to.

And this is within the Christian sphere. It's like, well, all those things, it's just for men. And so good men follow the word of God, and women are like, we get to do whatever we want, and we still get to call ourselves Christian. It's like, where are you getting this second rule book? What is the parallel source of authority to Scripture? Well, I mean, it's. What is it? Trauma, My feelings, right? Like the books, the key textbooks of feminism.

It's almost like there's this parallel authority that's set up. It's a decoder rig. Will, you didn't get one of those? Well, I didn't, but I'm familiar with lots of different faith traditions that seem to have a decoder ring on the Bible that produces all kinds of terrible ideas. But that's neither here nor there. But it's like feminism is. It's. I don't even like the word because it's not the. It's. It's not a sociopolitical, economic thing. It's deeper.

It's. This is a parallel authority that is set up even in the Christian sphere, that we interpret the Bible through this lens of our own texts and our own authority that gives us this kind of parallel. This sort of false religion. Right. That. That Christian women and faith leaders seem to think that they can do. And it's a strange thing. This is what I hear very often when I have the opportunity to talk to reviling wives A lot of times, again, as I said, they won't talk to me.

But when they do, and a lot of times they talk to me just to blast me and say, I'm done. That's it. Just wanted to get this out. Thanks. I want to help you. I'm not trying to condemn you, but here's what they say, because I read Ephesians 5. 24. The wife should submit in everything to her husband. And she says, well, read the next verse. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. My husband is not loving me like Christ loves the church, so therefore I don't have to submit to him.

I said, that's not what it says. That's not what it says. It's a command for you, and it's a command for him. Yeah, but he's not doing his part. I said, don't worry about him doing his part. You do your part. Don't look at correcting him. Let God work in you. But that's what the reviling wife does. She says, well, he's not loving me like Christ loves the church. And I go, okay, probably in reality, no husband is loving his wife like Christ loves the church. Probably. Probably not.

Probably not exactly a completely doable thing. But I know men that are striving to do that. I go, yes, and when they don't love their wives, we rebuke them. We say, you know, that wasn't very loving, the way you handled that with your wife. You're kind of harsh. You're kind of cruel. I've called many men out like that. And they go. Usually the men go, you're right. Thank you. But when I call a woman out and I say, you know what? That wasn't very submissive to your husband. Well, how dare you?

Who do you think. Wait, wait. I just called your husband out on not being loving to you. You're not being submissive to him. Why is there a separate rule for you? Why do you have this? It's that mysterious book, Second Hesitations Will. That's not in all Bibles, but in some Bibles, it explains all of these things. Very feminist Bible, that we get a separate set of rules. And I go, no, you don't. We all get the same, we all sin. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 3:23 does not say all men sin and fall short of the glory of God. Says all of us do. Not just men, but women do as well. And we have to just keep on that point and say, look, I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but you have to be held accountable for your sin, too. But like you said, a lot of wives, they just dismiss those. You know, like Kaylee Triller saying that I'm going to tell women to. She did. She told women to revile men. I go, how could you possibly say that?

Wow, that would be like me saying, okay, men just slap your wife whenever she's out of line. You know, it's like, I mean, women would come unglued on that, and rightly so. You know, that's just encouraging sin. That's horrible. It's harsh. But why does she get a pass? And then she blocks me. And so it looks like everybody agrees with her because my comments are not there anymore. And I go, oh, that's pretty effective. That's one of the things I've learned about X and Twitter in the last year.

It's like, okay, you can kind of manage what you want people to see, what you want them to hear. Well, if someone blocks you on X, your comments stay, but you just don't get to reply. You don't get to rep. Yeah, so. When you comment under her post, when she blocks you, that doesn't mean that your comment goes away. It's still there for everyone to view, including her, because she can click to unview that specific tweet.

I've had to learn this because I've gotten quite good at blocking people on X now because I used to give them a chance and now I just don't anymore. But they're always annoying. So, yeah, when you block somebody, their comment remains and other people can still interact with it. So I've gotten notifications and stuff like that, but please, go ahead. No, but you're right. But what they do is they kind of manage it so that you can't comment on anything anymore. That's right.

You can't defend yourself anymore. You're prevented from interacting and talking about it and saying, wait a minute, this is not accurate. I mean, I've been called a pedophile. Been called. I need an exorcism. Done. What? Good. This is interesting. This is very fascinating. I, you know, I feel sorry for all the people you counsel. I'm like, really? I don't think they would say the same thing. You know, of course some of them would. You know, some of them don't. Don't like me.

But it's very, very small number. I go, I. I think like you, I'm a likable guy. Not a. I try to be. I'm Not a mean guy. I like you too. And it's like, you know, it's just like, you know, I'm not, I'm not out to cause trouble. I'm. I'm here to help people grow in sanctification. That's right. That's right. And you know, and they help me too. When I see some things in them, I go, yeah, I do the same thing, don't I? Interesting.

What's odd about this is I get that accusation a lot, you know, who say, oh, you just hate women. It's like, well, if that were true. Some of my most downloaded podcasts of all time on a show called the Renaissance of Men are interviews with women. And you can go and you can watch those interviews and you can see me interact with women of all ages, inside and outside the faith. I did a whole conference on the Proverbs, 31 woman with like eight women spoke that day.

So you get to like, how do you. Right. So is this the behavior of someone who hates women to spend a ton of effort putting on an all day conference that I ran and did all like myself and just let women talk and like, I'm going to challenge. I didn't challenge them, obviously, because why would I? But this is the thing is it's very easy for people to say, oh, you're just a woman hater, because you made me uncomfortable with something that you said.

That means I'm now going to impute motive to you. That because I'm uncomfortable by your words, that means something about you. That's not how this works. My inner reality is the metric that I go by to know other people's. And this is the mind of the reviling wife. It twists everything around. So in other words, when the man is kind, is nice, is gentle, they say, oh, you're just manipulating me now. I'm like, well, how can this man ever win then? How can he ever do something good for you?

So the same thing with me. I get accused of that by the reviling wives accused me of that. Oh, you just want this woman to stay in an abusive marriage. I'm like, no, I'm trying to save the marriage. I'm trying to reconcile the husband and wife together. I'm not trying to encourage abuse, which is a terrible word because it's so vague in general, almost nothing. But I'm not trying to encourage that abuse.

I'm trying to get each of you to look at your hearts and examine your hearts and repent where it's needed so that you can have peace in your home. But it's, you know, it's not going to happen if the wife just continues to insist. No, he's hateful, he's abusive, and then when he's kind, he's manipulating me. I had one. Oh, I could tell you so many stories. Let's go. There's one that happened just last week. Husband and wife. I'm counseling, and I asked them, I said, how are things going?

And the husband said, you know, I've been really trying to be kinder and more gentle with my wife. I go, good, good. And I looked at her and I said, how's he been doing? She said, yep, for the last three weeks, he's been really good. He's been a good husband. He's been gentle, he's been kind. It's been wonderful. Okay, how's it been going the other way? You know? Wife, how have you been doing towards him?

Well, I've been screaming at him and I've been hitting him and I, you know, scratched his back and 18 inch long scratch marks on his back and this and that. And I go, why would you think that's okay? Well, he's being kind to me now, so I can, you know, be any way I want to him. I said, wait, what, what you're doing is just evil. This is a sin. This is wicked. This is horrible. How could you do that? And then she started laughing about it. Oh, very positive sign. She started laughing about it.

And I said, why are you laughing? This is not funny at all. I'm not, I'm not joking about this. And she just kept laughing and laughing. I'm like, wow, David, did you come to trouble her before the time? Is this some Star Trek parallel universe here where everything is the opposite and I don't know what have you to. Do with me, David Edgington? Have you come to trouble me before the time? Head turns around, head spins around, vomit. Comes out, you go, wow.

But that's how blind some of these women are. Now, again, this man was not perfect. He had plenty of flaws. And I called him out on every one of them. And I said, you know, you're doing some wicked things to your wife. This is. There's no excuse for this. But, you know, he was somber and repentant and sorrowful and call her out. She laughs. It's funny. I'm like, was this in person? Was this in your office? Or was it on zoom? Or on. It was on Zoom. Okay. Maybe best for your safety.

Yes, I think so. I meet on Zoom for my safety. And you know, about half of my counseling is on zoom now. It's remote. About half. That's changed too, in the last year. It's because of the reach of the podcast and the book that so many people are getting exposed to this and saying, oh, finally someone that's talking about this. My pastor doesn't understand it, my counselor doesn't understand it. So the online community, the remote counseling has just exploded in my ministry because of that.

It's a phenomenal thing that's happening. I mean, praise God for that. I'm glad that you're bringing awareness to this issue and just today, providentially, like Zach Garris, who wrote the book Masculine Christianity and who has a new book coming out, I guess in just a couple weeks at the New Christendom conference about, I think that I don't know the title of the book, I don't remember, but it's the Reformers Perspectives on Feminism. And I'm sure that will be very.

Sure that will be very popular. But he tweeted about your book and Zach Garris is not a huge account, but very well respected. And so that was. So maybe talk a little bit about that. Like to go from a one year ago, we're like, is anyone going to pay attention to this thing that I wrote eight years ago and not knowing much about the Internet or podcasts or anything like that to a year later? You know, again, Zach's a very well respected author and writer and leader of the faith.

Yes. No, I was very grateful for that. Like you said, it just happened this morning and I noticed that within 10 minutes there were a thousand views of that tweet that he put out about recommending my book. I thought, wow, so this is, this is going to get a lot of, a lot of help for men. Yeah. And, and I admire Zach Garris. I've had some interaction with him. We've talked about things. And, and his book Masculine Christianity is excellent. It is. It's back here on my shelf somewhere.

I have that probably right, right there. Yep. Yeah, there's. That's one of the three books that I recommend the men in my online group to read. Masculine Christianity. What are the other two? Real quick, while we're here, the other two are no Mere Mortals by Toby Sumter, which is excellent. You recommended that one to me and I think, boy, that was just outstanding. Yeah, love that. And the other one is It's Good to Be a Man by Michael Foster. Oh, great.

Okay. Those three books I think are excellent. They're outstanding. These are recommended to my men's group as well. Good, good. And that's the other thing, too, for your listeners is that I have an online support group. I've got dozens of men that their stories are almost identical, and they help each other with this. Because I frankly can't help all these men with all of the details and the specifics of it.

So my requirement to be a part of that group is they have to talk to me personally, and I kind of vet them and make sure they're not, you know, they're not the problem. And then I just turned these guys loose with each other on Discord, and they help each other tremendously. Great. Great bunch of guys. And so one guy listened to the podcast that you and I did last year, and he couldn't believe that I gave out my phone number and my email address.

So he called me up, I think, a couple of weeks ago, and I said, hello, this is David. He said, you really did give out your phone number, didn't you? I said, yeah, I just want to help guys. I mean, I'm not trying to hide. I know that could easily backfire, but, you know, I just want to help people. I'm not trying to hurt anyone. I'm trying to, you know, bring about sanctification and. And help Godly help for people. So I would offer that again. My Phone number is 602-384-4417.

Call me if I can help you. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, but I do remote counseling all the time and be glad to help anybody that needs that. Help. Men or women? I prefer to counsel men and women together, husbands and wives together. So there's no opportunity for gossip. There's no opportunity for siding with one person over the other. I hear the whole story that way, and I get the whole picture that way. Because it's always going to be slanted if you only counsel with one person at a time.

And I can't tell you how many. How many men have gone through this. Well, my wife went to the pastor or the counselor and said, you know, I don't know what she said. And then they brought me in the next month, and I was automatically guilty. I didn't even get a chance to defend myself. Sometimes they don't even talk to the man at all. They just make the decision solely based on what? The wife's testimony. I go, that's unbiblical, too. How could you do that?

And even churches that have supported not only spiritually, the wife burning down the marriage, but even financially helping her to end the marriage. Oh, God, have mercy on these men and how horribly they're failing. Please, if there's any pastors listening to this, please do not counsel husbands and wives separately. Counsel them together with an issue like this. Counsel them together at the same time right from the beginning.

Don't do this separate counseling because it's entertaining gossip and it is destroying marriages because you're going to go on assumptions, because the wife is going to be very convincing and yet she's going to leave out a lot of things. I would say the other way, too. Don't just meet with the man. That's right. Don't just meet with a man without the wife there. But if one of the spouses refuses to go for counseling, then I'll still help you.

So in other words, a husband and wife are needing help and the husband approaches me. And I always tell them, every time I say, let's get your wife involved in counseling before you tell me anything else, let's get your wife in here. And vast majority of the time, nope, she doesn't want help. She doesn't want any counseling. She's done. She's out of the marriage. I say, okay, you, husband are going to need help. I'll be glad to help you.

I wish your wife would so we could reconcile your marriage, But I don't want to leave you just helpless out there. You're going to need a lot of help. And let me just take this opportunity to endorse your counseling services because that's how you and I formed a friendship. Yes, you appeared on the podcast. I think it was probably about a year ago, right around this time.

And then I started having problems with insomnia, which is not something I've really spoken about on the pub on the podcast yet, but I will be speaking about it. And so I recognized that this was not a physical issue. I had tried all the different physical things like red lights and weighted blankets and humidifiers and like, I tried all the different physical things. And then.

And then I was talking to a sleep psychiatrist about behavioral therapy, about, you know, sleep routines and all this different stuff. And he's like, he said, I don't handle emotional issues, so if you want, if there's something else going on, you need to find a counselor. And so that was like a light going off, like, well, I can't go to a psychotherapist like I used to anymore because I'm a Christian now. And I had no idea how bad it was back then.

I know now, but I even knew Back then that I can't go be part of that. And I recognized that I had your number and that. Well, he's a. He's a biblical counselor. So let me start there. And so we started. We started in just biblical counseling together. I guess that was probably like in August, something like that. And it was over the.

Yeah, it was over the process of coming to see you in a professional capacity and then you helping me through some relationship stuff, et cetera, where it was like we built a friendship over time. Over time as well. So I got to know you as a counselor first. And so I would say that you're one of the finest counselors I've ever met. I mean, you're certainly the finest biblical counselor that I've ever met. But I don't. I say that not having met a whole bunch of them.

But you've shown me by example what it means to be a biblical counselor. Right. Because I, again, my intention was originally to be a psychotherapist. That's what I thought I would be doing right now if Covid hadn't. Well, you know, Covid did happen. And so if is a silly question because. Right, but that was. My intention was to. Was to be a psychotherapist. That was. Praise God. You repented from that. Yes, absolutely.

And for anyone who still thinks there's any virtue or merit to psychotherapy, definitely read the book the Other Worldview by Dr. Peter Jones. He does a whole chapter on just how wicked Carl Jung was. We all know these days how wicked Freud was for the most part. But like Carl Jung and Transpersonal Psychotherapy, Stanislav Grof, G R O F. These are the guys behind that particular form, which is essentially the. The spot. The skeletal structure of the New Age.

So the New Age has a Jungian skeleton and it has a Buddhist heart or a Hindu heart and kind of Buddhist flesh, if you were to try and assemble that. But I didn't really. Demonic spirit. And a demonic spirit. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And a wicked plan, for sure. But I didn't understand how much Jungianism was built into that whole worldview. And I know now, and Dr. Peter Jones takes that apart. So seeing you in a counseling capacity has shown me.

I haven't even read the J. Adams book, but from listening to the way that you've counseled me and then our conversations as well, it helps me understand just how powerful biblical counseling is and also how unpopular it is. The word of God is always unpopular. But to really say, like, no, there is no Authority, inside psychology.

You've worked me through a bunch of different stuff, like the subconscious and all this different stuff ideas that I thought these are self evident, that might not be the case. And so. And so I offer this as an endorsement of your counseling services for men in reviling marriages, women who are reviling wives, you know, couples that are stuck in this cycle, men who are struggling with these, with their own issues independently related to that, and women as well.

Because the Bible is the only thing that offers true healing. It is the truth, not some. It is the truth, it is the authority, and it is effective. The people that change the most are the ones that I can convince. Meditate on the word of God, let it soak in, let it change you. Let that be what addresses every problem in your heart, bring about conviction in the soul and grant you repentance. Your life will never be the same. It'll be so wonderful.

So the people I can convince of that, not just the people that will listen to me, but the people that will indulge their hearts and immerse themselves in scripture, those are the ones that change the best. And it sounds so simple and yet it is so rare that people will do that. You know, they'll say, well, no, I need, I need some medication, I need this, I need therapy. And I go, you can do that, but it's not going to change your heart. You know, medication has never changed anyone's heart.

Not. Not even once. Not even a little bit. Well, maybe we can talk about this a little bit then. Maybe we can talk about the psychologization of culture. Like Abigail Schreier, I guess, wrote a book that everyone's speaking very highly about. I wish I could remember the name of it off the top of my head, but we talked in the beginning about trauma being this overused word. The word abuse is also kind of being overused.

And this idea that everything goes back to my own inner experience as the measure of all things, that's all an outgrowth of the psychologization of culture. Right? Even weaponized empathy, as Joe Rigney talks about. Right. And that's an outgrowth of that. And now it's set up as a parallel authority to the word of God. But only by rooting yourself in the word of God as the sole infallible authority can you truly begin to find healing. Because that generates repentance.

Repentance is not very popular, is it? Yes, it's where people get a lot of pushback when you call someone to repentance. But it's like that's part of the gospel. If we don't have a call to repentance, we don't have the gospel because Jesus says, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That's right. And John the Baptist said the same thing. It's not a mystery. But this is where we let the word of God, we turn it loose. We say, God's word is going to change you.

Your feelings are going to deceive you, your feelings are going to lead you astray. And what Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson talk about with empathy is sin. I address that in my book and I say, your feelings are not sovereign. That's right. It's not just, okay, this is what I feel, therefore it's true and it's real. And I go, no, not necessarily. In fact, probably, definitely not. Because your feelings are going to mislead you. They're going to lead you astray. It's the pure milk of the word.

As James talks about the word that's implanted, you know, the word that's implanted, that that's what transforms and changes a person. Psychology might change the outer man, might change the behavior, but it doesn't change the soul, doesn't change the heart. So that outward behavioral change that psychology can accomplish at times, it doesn't last, it doesn't endure, and it definitely does not glorify God.

But the change in the heart, where you turn away from anger, you turn away from anxieties and fears, you turn away from depression. Instead, you trust, you have faith, you build your fear of God, not your fear of man, fear of circumstances. You learn how to endure trials. That's what glorifies God. Because you go God without your grace. My grace is sufficient for you is what the Lord said to Paul when he had the thorn in the flesh. Right? Thorn in the flesh. What do I do?

Three times I asked the Lord, take it away, take it away, take it away. And what did the Lord say to him? My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect, perfect in weakness. Grace and power are parallel words. That's what God's grace is. It's power that works in the soul. It enables you to overcome sin. It enables you to change. Without that grace, it's just shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.

It's like, okay, we're just going to move everything around, but the ship is still going down. Might look a little different today, but it's not going to help you. So it's amazing to me will that, okay, I'm going To get more people mad with this one. Let's go. No, please, Lord, don't have this guy on the Will's podcast anymore. That could be arranged. That seminaries will train future pastors in Greek, in Hebrew, hermeneutics, homiletics, exegesis. Go through all of this.

Oh, boy, we need to understand the Word of God better so we can preach it better. Good. My seminary did that. But then we get to the counseling arena and we go, the Bible can't help there. Yeah, we got to have psychology, we got to have psychotherapy, we got to have Freud, we got to have Jung. We got to have. Or something. Or some integration. That's the big word, integration, where we integrate scripture with psychotherapy.

And we think that somehow we're going to come out with something better. And it is a tragedy, and it is a train wreck again. And we look at this and say, boy, the same things that a pastor is taught about publicly preaching and teaching the Word of God, that same thinking, that same philosophy, those same principles should be in the counseling office as well. Acts 6:4. The disciples were devoted to prayer and the ministry of the Word. And I talk with people often about that.

I say, okay, that means that your pastor should be ministering the Word publicly. When he's preaching and teaching. He's got a large group of people and he's talking to them all at once. His authority for what he's saying is what the Word of God says. It's not him. It's not his training, it's not his education. It's the Word of God. He's ministering the Word publicly. But now we want to minister the Word privately as well.

So there's public preaching and teaching, but there's private discipleship, counseling, helping someone one on one. And now you can customize the application of the Word of God to help exactly that person. You can't do that publicly in a sermon. You can do it to a degree, but not specifically to an individual. But you can do that in the counseling office. In fact, you must do that in the counseling office. You must help that person privately. And you have to minister the Word of God.

Not your opinions, not your feelings, not even your education or your experience. But you minister the Word of God because the Word of God is what changes people. I don't. I always tell people, I don't change anybody. And if I changed you, then you need to repent from that because you shouldn't be doing it because I said so. That's right. You should be changing because this is what the word of God says. And all I'm doing is bringing the word of God to you and saying, here's what it says.

What should we do about this? So we've got a lot of work to do on this, too, Will. This is another area now. I've been a counselor for 20. 20 years now. No, 30 years now. They've been full time in it for 20 years. And 30 years ago, when I first started, it was like, nobody wants to listen to this. It's like, this is crazy. And now I think that people are starting to wake up and they're saying, boy, all of this other stuff is bankrupt. We need what the word of God says.

So I think there is a sense of people coming alive and saying, we need something more than just the Band Aids, you know, the cisterns that won't hold water. Like Jeremiah talks about. We need something real and substance. And that changes the soul, changes you on the inside. Because once the inside changes, the outside is going to change. That's right. The outside changes, but the inside doesn't. It doesn't go the other way, but you have to.

I think that people are recognizing the wise people are recognizing that they need it. But it's very clear that culture does not want it. It's fighting, right? Yeah, the culture is with everybody. Now, when you try to explain to people, hey, that Netflix you're watching, that music you're listening to, it's the food you're eating, the things that you're choosing to do, you know, they. You recognize the world is very much with you, and they don't want to. They don't want to hear that. Right?

And that's the. That's. They don't recognize just the hooks that culture has in almost everybody. Right? And so. And so you try to say, like, hey, we need to. We need to pull this hook out. You know, it doesn't even have to be something that's egregiously, obviously, sin. You know what I mean? It has to be like, hey, this little bit of pleasure that you're getting from the world. Let's say it's Netflix, right? Which is almost totally degenerate now, or Amazon prime or whatever, like video.

We have to pull this out because you're getting poison pumped into your. Into your mind, into your spirit through this. Right? And you're not going to be able to live a godly life when you're having this whole other alternate set of values portrayed to you, whether it be through wokeness or misandry, like the Hatred of men. Right. I just yesterday interviewed Jeremy Carl who wrote a book called the Unprotected Class about anti white hatred in American culture that's been going on for 50 years.

We talked for about an hour. It was a fantastic conversation. So it's like people have been plugged into these systems. It's like we have to pull that out and minister to you using the word of God. Oh, well, and then what do you get? Oh, that's patriarchy. That's outdated. That has the two kingdoms. My kingdom is out of this world. All the standard lines start flying out like, okay, we've got something right there. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true.

But I'm seeing more and more people that, including the ones that I'm counseling with the reviling wives that they've gone to, psychologists and psychiatrists and secular authorities and they go, they're not helping me. You seem to be speaking about things and you have a lot of Bible references in your book. Maybe you'll say something different. I go, I guarantee you it's going to be something different. There's going to be food for your soul. It's going to change you.

It's going to transform you. And I mean you commit your way to it and I guarantee you it will, it will be effective. I won't always be effective. But the word of God will never fail you. His word will never return to him. Void. Right? His word goes out. Isaiah 55. It never comes back empty. It never comes back void. It always occurs, accomplishes what God purposes for it. God has a purpose in his word and it's going to be effective.

You know, another resource or set of resources that I would commend as well. Not only Jay Adams books on noether counseling. You know, those are, those were excellent. Those were my training ground. But the Puritans, just reading the Puritans, the banner of truth. Paperback editions of all of these great men, Watson and Flavel and Owens, you're going to see exactly how you use the word of God in changing the soul, in addressing the problems and the agonies of the soul.

The reason that they're so effective is they were written before psychology was even a thing. They were written in the 1600s. So it wasn't, you know, wasn't even around. So that's why it's like all we have is the word of God. Let's use it to help people. And they did. They were effective with it, tremendously effective. So I would commend that to your listeners too. Read the Puritans read them. Read Jonathan Edwards. You want somebody that's going to blow your mind, read Jonathan Edwards.

He's my favorite theologian. He's the one that I think he taught me more than anybody ever has in my life. And Religious Affections is my favorite book. Nothing better than that in my mind. This is how much for listeners, this is how much I love this guy. I handed you my phone and like, here you go. Sent you to Amazon to go find a copy of that of Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards that you liked and just said, go ahead and order it. I just let you order a book for me from my phone.

You go, just. You do that. You're sitting at the dinner table and you're like, what? I remember that. That's right. Yeah. I got it up on the shelf right there. Good, good. I think I've read Religious Affection seven times. Oh, wow. It's the only book I've ever read like that. I mean, I've read the Bible more than seven times, but other than that, I've never read a book seven times. And I go, wow, it is so deep and so rich, so incredibly thorough. And what always amazed me.

Here's another tangent, Will. What always amazed me as I'm reading and listening, you know, reading the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, and I go, wow, they are so deep and intricate and theologically robust. And he's preaching to a bunch of unsophisticated farmers. Does that tell you something about our education system? Right? It really does. Here he's studying Latin and Greek at 10 years old and going to Yale, and you know what I mean? It's like, okay, what are we doing?

Well, we got PhDs in gender studies. That's right. So, you know, just the fact that you and I could read that and go, man, I got to read this so slowly because it's so deep and rich and is so intricately woven. His thought processes are incredible. And we go, I can't think like that. I want to, but I can't. And it's because we've been dumbed down in our education system. Everything. God commends you people that will study and read for yourselves. Study to be a workman approved.

Study the word of God that you're approved because you know what the word of God teaches you. Amen. Can't emphasize that enough. And we just have a few minutes left.

I know you have some men to counsel, but maybe just to close things out, you can talk a little bit about, you know, some of the garden variety things that men deal with that are that it's not reviling wives, but that young men, older men that deal with completely independent of their interactions with women say that biblical counseling is also good for.

Because again, as we talked about, people will turn to psychology, self help, pop psychology, journaling, stoicism or whatever as a way to make these outer changes. But maybe we can talk a little bit about how the Bible can minister to everyone's everyday challenges as well. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think another big area that I see a lot of activity in is pornography. Men getting gripped by pornography, sexual sin, but specifically pornography. And it is deadly. It is devastating.

It destroys not only marriages, but it destroys souls as well. And I've actually written a book on that. It's called Pornography as a Murderer, the Suicide of the Soul. And I address that because it's a murderer in the sense that the enemy uses pornography to murder your soul. And yet it's the suicide of the soul. You're doing it to yourself. You are ruining your own life. And this is a massive problem, not just with young men, but older men too.

Middle aged men, older men, absolutely destructive. Men having the courage to lead in their families is another big area that I talk about. You know, I see that very often as well, men that are too passive and they're too afraid to lead well in their homes. And we need that, you know, 1 Corinthians 16, that, you know, being a man, being, you know, being strong in the Lord, in the strength of his might. I see a lot of anxiety. Since COVID anxiety has been off the charts. A big problem.

Men and women, not just. Not just men. People are afraid. Seeing what's happening with tyranny in the world. Propaganda that is just pretty much in every fabric of society. People are afraid. People are fearful. They're worried. They're thinking, what's the future going to be like? What's it going to be like for my kids and my grandkids? We have to teach about faith, about trusting God, about trust the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways, acknowledge him and you'll make straight your paths. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. So anxiety is another massive issue. Anger, another big area. We talked a little bit about anger and people just being bitter over what's happened in society and in their families. People getting a pass, sorry, people getting a pass for their anger, not being held accountable for it. That's a massive issue as well. And again, the word of God addresses all of these things.

It addresses every single one of these in a beautiful and effective and God glorifying way. So there's no problem of living that Scripture does not address. None. And that's an incredible encouragement. I could not do what I do every day if it weren't for the breadth and the depth of the Word of God. It covers everything. Nothing new under the sun. All of these things are addressed in Scripture. And you let the Spirit of God bring the Word of God to convict you and say, I need help.

You're on the right path, but you keep your sin hidden. You cover it and you don't want anybody to know about it. You're not going to prosper. You're not going to prosper. Was one of the reasons, one of the many reasons I'm so grateful for our friendship is that in my entire faith walk, which really hasn't been that long, you know, coming to understand the power of the Word of God in a spiritual sense, yes, absolutely.

Coming to understand the reliability of the Word of God in a theological sense, yes, absolutely. But to understand the healing power of the Word of God in a, we'll say, emotional, moral sense, you'd say, and life, life reform. True life reform. The way that you, you, you model that, the way that you embody that, the way that you communicate that, the way that you invite and have invited, even before we became friends, invited me to participate in that process.

And the things that that has shown me has been an enormous part of my sanctification over the past six to nine months since we started doing counseling together. It feels like it's actually been quite a while that we've known each other, but it hasn't been all that long. That's the magnitude of the impact that you've had on me. And I'm grateful to hear you say all those things because it's true.

And so few pastors or influencers or content creators, whatever, inside, inside formal church structures, outside on social media, are willing to say these simple truths that the Word of God can and does do this. And that's all you need. Man, woman, married couple, that is. That's all you need. I need this other thing. No, you actually don't.

If you submit to what the Word of God has to say, it's been an enormous blessing that you've shared with me in addition to all the ways you've blessed me with friendship and brotherhood as well. Amen. One final thing. I would say Psalm 119, an incredible chapter. You know where I'm going with this incredible chapter? 176 verses it's an acrostic, which means that it is poetry that is written in a very specific way.

So it's designed after the Hebrew Alphabet, 22 letters in the Hebrew Alphabet, eight verses for each of those letters. And all of these verses talk about the different benefits of the Word of God. And where I like to encourage people is Psalm 119, verse 24. Your testimonies are my delight. They are my counselors. So first of all, what God says, I want to delight in that. I want to look at that and say, whatever God says, even if it's rebuking me, I want to delight in that.

I say, that's good for me. It's going to encourage me. I love that, too. Whatever God says through the scriptures, you want it to be your delight. You want it to look at. You want to look at it and say, this should have an internal effect on me where I'm drawn to this, and I love this, and I want this, and I want it more and more. And then the second phrase, they are my counselors. So then I remind people, I say, I'm not really the counselor. The word of God is the counselor.

And that's what you want. You want God's word to change you. So if you delight in it and you're looking to it for the answers to all the troubles you have in your life, it's just turn it loose and let God work in you. Delight in that. And look for him to counsel you. Look for him to correct you. Look for him to encourage you. Look for him to teach you the truth. God listens. God hears. God is very eager to be involved in your life.

And some people, they just, you know, they block him and he won't work. So. Amen. Nice way to end, Will. Very nice. Very nice. Thank you, David. Praise God. Praise God for the wisdom. Brother, thanks for having me on the show. You're welcome. We should talk more often. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. We do. All right. Well, where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do? Well, again, I'll repeat my phone number. 602-384-4417. Bold. I'm just a masochist. Go ahead, it's okay.

Or email me. Counselthewordm me. So that's council. C O U N S E L the word W O r d at PM as in PaulMichael me, Michael, Edward, contact me. I'll be glad to help you. Wonderful. And God willing, when this comes out, should have a new website for people to visit as well. Amen. Amen. And thank you for helping me on my website, too. It needs a lot of work. We'll get there. It's less work than it seems, I think. Well, praise God for you, brother. So grateful. So good seeing you again.

Amen. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Renaissance of Men podcast. Visit us on the [email protected] or on your favorite social media platform at Ren of Men. This is the Renaissance of men. You are the renaissance.