Hard Men Podcast
Hard Men Podcast
The Mythopoetic Movement, Robert Bly, & Christian Nationalism with Will Spencer
Join us as we explore the mythopoetic men’s movement, inspired by Robert Bly’s "Iron John," and how it aimed to fill the emotional void left by distant paternal figures. We'll uncover the cultural significance of this movement, which relied on Jungian psychology and pagan spirituality, examining its rise in the context of post-World War II alienation and the 1960s cultural shifts. We'll also talk about its compromises with feminism.
In our conversation with Will Spencer, we dissect the evolving landscape of masculinity, especially in the transition from manufacturing to a service-centered economy. We tackle the introspective journey many men embark on and how therapeutic practices can sometimes lead to complacency.
Wrapping up, we delve into the importance of brotherhood and authentic male relationships, contrasting mythopoetic values with modern movements like feminism and the red pill ideology. We explore the allure of Eastern mysticism within tech culture, the evolution of Burning Man, and the intersection of Christian nationalism with biblical masculinity.
Follow Will on the Renaissance of Men.
Sign up for the New Christendom Press Conference in June 2024.
Join the Patreon exclusive membership.
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
Alpine Gold Exchange Website: alpinegoldogden.com
Set Up a Meeting: https://calendly.com/alpinegold/alpine-gold-consultation
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth with Backwards Planning Financial.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Buy your beef or pork box today from Salt and Strings Butchery. Use code "HMP" to get $20 off your next order.
Visit Livingstones, your Reformed Design Partner for Churches.
This episode of the Hardman Podcast is brought to you by Backwards Planning Financial and Joe Garrisi, by Alpine Gold, by Max D Trailers, by Salt and Strings Butchery and by Livingstones. Welcome to this episode of the Hardman Podcast. I'm your host, eric Kahn, and joined by one of my favorite Twitter followers and just an account. I love Renaissance of Men, will Spencer. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, eric. I'm grateful to be here, Big fan of everything you do as well, so thanks for inviting me on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I remember the last time I was on your podcast.
Speaker 1:It was like a three-hour affair and I felt like it was one of those this is like a joe rogan deep dive, I guess and uh, that kind of inspired me. So I was like you know, I want to have will on and I want to. You have such an interesting past, how you got involved with you know, masculinity in general uh, one of the things we were talking about recently that maybe we can start here. But you had posted about this and it kind of piqued my interest. You had posted about the mythopoetic men's movement and I want to ask you in just a second what that's about. The reason it struck me and struck a chord with me was because we have all these kind of new dynamics in the men's movement happening.
Speaker 1:One of them, I think my wife was at a library. She found a book. It was called Iron John. She said I don't know if you'd be interested in this, I know you. You know, obviously I have masculinity podcasts started reading the book, found some things interesting, found some of it very strange. I've covered it on the show but I guess I didn't realize it was part of this broader movement. And then, kind of full circle, I see people like Karen Swallow prior, you know, sort of like the more left leaning people in evangelicalism. They're perfectly happy promoting this type of masculinity. You had a post about this and I said, oh, this is making a lot more sense now. Um, so, first of all, just walk me. Like, what is the mythopoetic men's movement and what does that stand for? Like, how did you get involved with this?
Speaker 2:So the mythopoetic men's movement began what we think of as the masculinity kind of dialogue today. It started in the early to mid 1980s and it had its heyday through the late 80s, early 90s and it kind of started to fizzle out around the mid to late 90s, at least in terms of public acclaim. And then it got picked up and adapted by John Eldredge a little bit some of the ideas. But really the mythopoetic men's movement took place in the 80s and the 90s. It was started because of a man named Robert Bly, who you mentioned, who wrote the book Iron John. He's very Jungian, he's an acclaimed poet, not a believer, not a Christian at all, actually quite pagan in his beliefs, but he had been doing this nationwide tour where he would go and focus on indigenous spirituality and poetry and song and do get togethers for men about the experience of being men, and so this is in the early 80s. So you're talking about men who are pretty much baby boomers, you know, like, so like from their mid-20s into their late 30s at this point, something like that, and they were feeling very alienated from modern society, feeling very alienated from their fathers particularly. And so you have Robert Bly, this kind of wise old grandfather figure who's talking about myths and songs about the male experience. It was very, very inspiring to the men there because they had never had a meaningful connection with their fathers, many of whom either died in World War II or came back with shell shock or PTSD and weren't emotionally available, which became really important in the 60s for better or worse. And so here's Robert Bly embodying this sensitive, warm, loving grandfather figure that's trying to unite these baby boomer men back to some image of masculinity, using kind of like Jungian psychology.
Speaker 2:And this nationwide tour was documented on PBS. He was interviewed by I wish I could remember the name of the famous interviewer. Anyway, it's called A Gathering of Men, and so this was a PBS special about the tour and the thing went nuts. It was so crazy successful so they started producing VHS tapes, shipping it around the country, because these VHS tapes shipped through the mail and it sort of ignited this nationwide movement towards masculinity and so that started the mythopoetics. And then you had ignited this nationwide movement towards masculinity and so that started the myth of poetics. And then you had Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette wrote the famous book King Warrior, magician, lover archetypes of men's consciousness, again based on Jungian psychology. You had the book Fire in the Belly by Sam Kean. It was this whole big movement of men trying to rediscover masculinity in like pagan spirituality and Jungian psychology.
Speaker 1:Essentially, yeah, so fascinating I think it was. I was looking this up, as you said, but the PBS special it looks like it was a Bill Moyer, that's it. So they spent a lot of money and resources on this. Obviously, my question for you is like what do you think is you know? You talk about World War II what was going on societally? But what was it that men were longing for this? Why did it hit a spark? What was like the cultural moment that made it so big and important for people to follow it?
Speaker 2:I mean you had men that were longing for a connection with their father or any sort of father energy, when you like. The 1960s was basically defined by a rejection of the father, and that's first started showing up with, like Archie Bunker. And so you have a whole generation of men that have rejected their father and they've rejected God, the father, but they still have this hole in their heart that father is written on. And so they're starting to get into like in their late 20s or early 30s and starting to have kids themselves and they're starting to recognize there's this big hole. And so they don't know or they don't want to go looking in Christianity, they don't want to go looking towards their own dad, who they hate and haven't reconciled with. So they go looking into pagan spirituality and they go looking into psychology. And so here's this wise grandfather figure, robert Bly, who kind of embodies that in a powerful way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting as you start to unpack some of the elements of the myth of poetics. You know, you mentioned psychology. I remember reading Robert Bly and it's hard for a Christian. I was like a Christian, you know, with reform background, plus like a childhood of like public school Right. But I was reading them and I was like what the heck is this Like? What are they talking about? Where's this stuff coming from? So I guess, if you were to start to paint a picture of sort of like the, the keystone things that you find in their teaching, um, you know, I was even thinking of stuff that I remember from John Eldridge, which I then found in Bly, which was like the archetypes, this was a big thing. So, I guess, start to unpack some of that for me. Why is that important to their teaching too? That's the other thing I'm wondering why focus so much on archetypes?
Speaker 2:Well, so imagine that you throw out the Bible, that you don't regard the Bible as anything authoritative or just one tradition amongst many Not that it's the authoritative word of God.
Speaker 2:And so you're a man trying to figure out what it means to be a man. So where are you going to go looking to put that down? And so Jungian psychology, going inward to our emotional experience, to a spiritual experience, is what these men kind of proposed, Because it was something more meaningful than evolution or science. Right, it's like okay, we're going to reject all forms of Western spirituality as authoritative, and so we're going to go looking in pagan spirituality in many cases in Eastern mysticism as well, but less explicitly in the mythopoetics and so they're trying to find some place to root their masculinity, and that's why it's important to them. Where am I going to find out what it means to be a man if I can't go looking to my dad and I can't go looking to Christianity? So that's what they were attempting to do, and Jungian psychology was the example they provided. And archetypes as these transcendent forms that exist in all men's minds and hearts. So it's looking for a universal place that we all share, but within ourselves rather than outside ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. One of the concepts I remember specifically you know from like John Eldredge but also Bly talks about, is, like the father wound, yep. One of the critiques I would later have when I got into biblical counseling was we would get an influx of these guys that would come to us for counsel and they had been through the myth of poetics or Eldridge or whatever, and, um, I really found it was like a rebranding of categories that we would call sin and repentance, but they would you'd say like you're in sin and you need to repent, and they'd be like no, no, no, I'm wounded, and I remember at the time again having a hard time wrestling with this. I think some of the categories are actually, you know, kind of helpful to think through. You know, even in Christianity we have prophet, priest, king. There's something about the human nature and men in the masculinity camp where it's like, yeah, there are certain notes we can all resonate with because we're all made by the same God, we have the same, you know, god's image stamped on us, us, and so we have some of those notes.
Speaker 1:I get that, uh, but it seems like some of this isn't actually just innocuous. Uh was sort of my takeaway from it. When I recommend uh to people like you know, iron john, for example, that's a pretty like I would recommend it to a pastor who has is able to pick through a lot of bones and stuff like that. It's not generally a book I would recommend to everybody. I wouldn't have my teenage sons read it at this point and be like here, have at it and see what you can make of this. Um, so on that front, like, do you, do you agree? Do you think like there's some real arsenic in some of it at least?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, I mean it the whole Jungian, psychological, psychotherapeutic world. It talks a lot about woundedness and what you're supposed to do with your woundedness is you're supposed to make your parents, or whoever wounded you, apologize, right? Or you're just supposed to forgive them? They did something wrong. And so it's actually inverted from the Christian model honor thy mother and father, right, meaning that if you formed a judgment against your father or your mother, you have to repent for that right. So rather than them apologizing to you, you have to honor them and you have to release your resentment, your bitterness and your judgment. God commands it.
Speaker 2:And so, yes, it's definitely full of arsenic. Now, look, it might be productive to have a conversation where you and your dad hug and he's like, look, I was doing my best and he has a genuine move of spirit within himself to apologize for his human failings as a man. There's nothing wrong with that. But demanding that, but holding that as like I will not forgive you until you apologize, is actually directly in contradiction to God's commandments. But again, they threw out the Bible, so that has no meaning to them. It's just help me heal my woundedness, not honor thy mother and father.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's so interesting too because again in pastoral counsel you can tell if somebody has been through like therapy or something like this. Yeah, because they'll use this kind of language. I was traumatized, I'm wounded, but it seems like what it produces is sort of a victim mentality in a lot of people, one of my frustrations, I guess. When I first didn't have a lot of the theological tools, but as a young man first read Wild at Heart, I was thinking he doesn't really have a solution, like it's just you're wounded forever, your identity becomes your father wound. You never seem to really move on. It's very like group therapy, which I found kind of gay and I was like, well, yeah, I mean, there's a time and place to be like, hey, what happened in your life? Get people, get to know you, but to dwell there and to stay there doesn't feel very masculine.
Speaker 1:Um, I can even remember one of my, one of my favorite lines in uh gates of fire. There's these moment where the soldiers around campfire, whatever, and the younger men are talking and the older, wiser guy says all right, boys like enough philosophizing, more action, let's talk, more action. And that seems to be sometimes how I felt. You know, when you're going through that endless group therapy and struggle sessions more or less, over your emotions on the father wound and all that stuff. So what do you make of that part of it? Do you think that's true with, like, the therapeutic nature of it itself?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, a thousand percent. But one thing that I think we have to keep in mind is that the that the nature of the American workforce changed pretty substantially beginning in the 1980s as manufacturing was shipped overseas. So action, the ability for men to take decisive action in the world to build things, changed as we became a service-centric economy. And in a service-centric economy you have to focus on what's knowledge, work, right. So you have to be nicer, you have to be softer, right, you can't be as aggressive in your speech because now women are in the workforce.
Speaker 2:So it was part of this big holistic shift in the way that America stopped doing one form of business and started doing another form of business. So it became how can I become nicer, how can I become more socialized, how can I become more thoughtful? And whole generations of men, myself included, were raised that way, and so the psychotherapeutic process of constantly trying to become a quote unquote better person is a very different thing from becoming like a good man. But that's a large scale American shift that the boomers kind of led us all through. Oh man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're're absolutely right. So many of the guys we talked to who've been raised in this, you know we could probably say we, in a way we came out of it. We kind of tried to chart a different course. But I think the number one thing I see in guys in this camp but in our society as a whole, and I think it's related to the shift in work is just sort of a listlessness. I mean mean, I'll talk to guys who make six figures.
Speaker 1:They have a good house, have a good family and they're just bureaucratically bored out of their minds. They hate their work, they have no purpose in it. It's sad because the only thing that they've been really taught to do is not act, not change that, not go find like a meaningful mission, but it's like, hey, let's get together and have coffee and talk about, you know, my father and I'm like I don't see that as a way out for you. Um, so I'm curious as, as you start to well, I want to ask you how you deal with men first, and then I want to ask how you kind of got in this, how it personally hit you. But if you get guys who come to you who've been steeped in this. What do you do for them?
Speaker 2:So I get men who I get steeped in what Just so I can, because there's a bunch of different things. So steeped in what?
Speaker 1:specifically, yeah, sort of like the therapeutic, this whole existence of you know, the father wound, over therapeutic mindset about it, sort of the inward introspection, and then, like trying to get them, you know, like the typical I guess it'd be like the typical, like John Eldridge guy maybe, like if he's really been reading that a lot and he's, you know, focused on the wound, all that like how do you? You know, my, my hunch would be you're trying to get them out of that way of thinking into something more productive. But but what, what do you typically, how do you deal with that guy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's a it's a big challenge. Passivity is is a real thing. It's a real thing in men, and I usually work on first habits and beliefs, right. So, like, what are, what are your habits? What are your habits in terms of, like, producing results towards the things that you say you want? So there's so on my part there's a lot of listening to find out, like, what is this man saying that he wants? Why does he not have it? Well, clearly he's not acting enough to go get it.
Speaker 2:So let's start instituting habits first, to start moving in the direction that you want to go.
Speaker 2:And in the process of cultivating those habits, inevitably one of two things happens Either life throws a curveball right that either knocks them off the path that they then have to recover from so that's reinforcing the habits or they run into actually a belief about themselves that they can't or they shouldn't, or it's bad, or it's wrong or whatever.
Speaker 2:And so there is actually something true about the way that we think about ourselves does influence the way that we behave, and so I sort of work with both of those, like, okay, let's get the habit going and you start feeling momentum in your life and I think that what a lot of men are really looking for right now is a feeling of momentum. Right, you can have all the things but not feel like you're moving right, and you can have nothing and feel like you're moving really fast. What men are looking for is a feeling of momentum. So I them create that and then inevitably something will try and throw them off that and we deal with that when it comes up and that can be a number, a number of different things to walk, to walk through with that. That's my, that's my personal approach.
Speaker 1:So correct me if I'm wrong that sounds like it's a lot of driving guys back to action, habit action. It seems like that's where the momentum comes from. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, and then life throws a curveball at them and they have a tendency to self-sabotage. Because a lot of men will do that too, because they're uncomfortable with momentum. The way that I phrase that is a lot of men have this belief if I pull the sword from the stone, will I become a tyrant. They're not actually comfortable with their own sense of power, probably because they could have picked it up in their family. Culture tells men not to trust themselves, so men will actively self-sabotage from becoming men of momentum and power and righteous power, I mean and success. So it's both. So, yes, drive them to action, but when they're tempted to cut themselves off at the knees or to give up, work that through with them and find out why they're doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so interesting. I think this is maybe a picture of self-sabotage like you're talking about. It's related to like imposter syndrome. But I remember talking to a guy who was overweight and, um, I said, you know, pretty significantly I said, why are you overweight? And he's like, well, I used to be fit and I would work out all the time and I was kind of like a bodybuilder and I was always dealing with this was his, I think his excuse. He was like I was always dealing with women, you know, wanting me and I just realized it was easier to be overweight and then I wouldn't have to deal with that anymore and I did. It felt like a self-sabotage thing, like, eh, this feels like an excuse to me. I mean, probably be healthy.
Speaker 1:But I do think there's a lot of guys where you're almost afraid of what would happen if you were successful, like if that momentum led to something. I mean I can. I can think of a number of instances where that was true in my own life, whether it's, um, you know, you get invited to speak at a conference or you get invited to come do this men's group meeting or whatever for a church, and you think like, well, I don't want to do it. And then you're like, well, why don't I want to do it? And you're like part of it is because maybe you get there and people realize you're not that great or you fall on your face or something like that.
Speaker 1:But a lot of times it's the thought of like, what if this is successful? What would I do then? And so a lot of times, yeah, like you could self-sabotage to not even get to that point. I won't accept the invite or I won't do this thing. I remember David Goggins on Joe Rogan talking about it. He's like I'm like 10 minutes ago since we started this interview, joe.
Speaker 1:I've thought about walking out, like how do I get out of this, which is pretty interesting. My question to you is like, how do you, how do you deal with that? Like, if people are dealing with self-sabotage like you could take meaningful action, but you don't, you cut yourself off at the knees. How do you address?
Speaker 2:that men today, by most probably 75% if not more grow up in some form of unhealthy home, single mothers, upside down relationship with mom and dad dad checked out, fighting who knows right. So what the parents are ideally supposed to be is a net that catches and supports the young and growing human being. Right, and what a healthy mother is supposed to do for the first seven years is instill a healthy sense of self-love in the child. So the mother teaches through action how the child is supposed to relate to themselves inwardly, both men and women. And then, at age seven is when the child learns to relate to the outer world. So you go from the world of the mother into the world of the father.
Speaker 2:It looks slightly different for men and women, but primarily so. After age seven the young child begins to learn how to relate healthily to the outer world, to boundaries, to success and failure, to resistance and all that. So it depends on how the man is sabotaging himself and what he says. If he says something like I don't deserve it, or he's doing something that's like self-harming ultimately, like obesity is a great method of self-harming. It's ultimately what it is. That's one thing. If it's a matter of like, when I get out there into the world and I'm scared of people, or someone told me no and I have to overcome that. That's more of like a father thing, so I work through what their inner beliefs are or their own determination to act in the outer world. So it shows up differently for every man.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And then I want to ask you, like the myth of poetics, how did you first get into it? And I guess, like just your journey through it, what was that like? What were you learning? Why was it appealing in the beginning?
Speaker 2:All that. So when I was in my senior year of college in 2002, I took a class on Carl Jung and in that class they did an overview of what the Lord of the Rings like, what it says about masculinity.
Speaker 2:And I was yeah, it was really interesting. It was like oh wait, because I've told the story a number of times Like I was never like the pizza and beer kind of kid. It was always I liked reading and things like that, right. And so I always thought there was something broken about me as a man because I didn't play football and I just I was never accepted in that world. So I thought I was a broken man, like literally broken. It's like clearly there's something wrong with me. But then when I took this class and I looked at all these different portraits of masculinity, I'm like there's nothing wrong with me at all, okay. So it sort of started getting me thinking what does it actually mean to be a man? If what I embody there's something valid about that, what does it actually mean? So run that forward about 12 years and 10 years and I saw someone post on Facebook just an acquaintance today I begin my new warrior training adventure. Oh, interesting, yeah, I was like what's that? And so I Googled it and I found it, and so about a year later I went on the new warrior training adventure, which was run by an organization called the Mankind Project. They imploded due to wokeness in like 2021, I think something like that.
Speaker 2:But at the time it was a 48 hour men's initiation Friday night, saturday, until Sunday morning, based on the work of the mythopoetics so Robert Bly and Iron John and King Warrior, magician Lover so 48-hour men's initiation. And it was on that weekend that I showed up and here's 50 guys, 50 men that are going through this men's initiation and it was incredibly powerful. And during some experiences I'm looking around and there are men from all walks of life. There are like 20-year-old men and 70-year-old men who are all asking the same questions that I am what does it mean to be a man Like, wait a minute, I'm not alone in this. There are guys from all walks of life that are asking this question.
Speaker 2:And then I found out at the end of the retreat that there were also 50 staff members and they weren't like professional therapists or anything. They were just men that had been through the same retreat and had been trained on some processes, but they weren't professionals. So here's a hundred men in a room together that had all been grappling with the same questions as part of an organization that had initiated 60,000 men worldwide. It's like this is way bigger than just me. There's something way bigger, going on, and so that was my introduction to the whole notion that the world, the conversation about masculinity, had been going on for a long time, and now, as I look at it, we hear about men like Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson or Jocko Willink or Pickett. That is the surfacing of a conversation that's actually been happening since the early 1980s, and so that's what I call the renaissance of men, this 40-year process. That's what my brand is named after. So this is the surfacing of something that's been going on for much longer than I discovered in 2013.
Speaker 1:What I'm curious in the 48-hour going to this event, what sorts of things were you doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there was a lot of what you might call group therapeutic processes. There was a lot of. So there was a lot of what you might call like group therapeutic kind of processes. There was a lot of like somatic kind of therapies, where it's like taking feelings that are in the body and turning them into words, which is difficult for men to do. So it's like how do I articulate the thing that I'm feeling? To work through this, there were some physical challenges. One of the things I liked about it was that it was very accessible to men of all capabilities, Because when you have men in their early 20s and men in their 70s, you can't do wall climbs and rope climbs right. So it was really. The physical challenges were available for everybody.
Speaker 2:There was a lot of visualization and there were some very hard emotional moments where men were forced to confront issues of integrity. That was one of the most powerful things of the weekend was men make a series of commitments of things that they have to bring and things that they have to do, and if you show up at the weekend without doing one of those things, you get called out in front of a room full of 100 men and say number 55, stand up. Did you make an agreement to do this? Yes, I did. What did you do instead? I don't know, I don't know. Is that how you go through your life? And you this? Yes, I did. What did you do instead? I don't know, I don't know. Is that how you go through your life? And like you got to see men get broken down by some very powerful men and I was like okay, this is real, there's something serious going on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems like one of the things that Bly talks about that I didn't hear a lot of people talking about was initiation older men doing initiation, and he would talk about how you know tribal peoples, whatever any culture that you go to you could even go to the like the chivalric movement in medieval times, but it's like you had knights, you it was an initiation process by your older, uh, male counterparts and it seemed like that was one of the things that really resonated with me in all of it, because you know you talked if you have fathers who are absent, I think Bly even talks about things like you have really a generation who kind of the retirement generation, who like checked out, and he even mentions like RVing around the country instead of being involved in your kids' lives and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Collecting seashells.
Speaker 1:Yeah, collecting John Piper's seashells. That was sort of like a stereotype about the boomers, but for a lot of them was definitely true because they were taught that was the good life. So I wonder, on the initiation front, how important do you think that is and do you foresee any ways? You've been around the men's movement for a while, but do you do you? Do you see ways where it's actually making like? Are we getting better at this? Uh, where we have groups of men initiating it? It seems kind of like my my read on it would be no, but uh, I'm curious, your thought no, we're unfortunately not.
Speaker 2:Um, because I don't think that anyone has really figured out really besides the Mankind Project. This is the one piece of credit that I will give them. They figured out how to do a genuine initiation, and so I've had to think about this over time, like what is a genuine initiation? A genuine initiation, the first thing is that you have to be able to fail at it. Right, you can't be carried across the finish line. You can't be carried across the finish line. It can't be easy. It can't be easy and no one can carry you across.
Speaker 2:You have to truly be able to fail In order to succeed at it.
Speaker 2:You have to go deeper within yourself to find inner reserves of strength that you didn't know that you had, and you have to go above and beyond and outside yourself to find a sense of faith that it's all going to be okay.
Speaker 2:So it's difficult on that level, like I can actually fail and I have to reach within myself and reach beyond myself to really get there. So that's the burden that's put on the individual man, but then when he succeeds in that, he has to be recognized by a group of men around him that he admires and holds in high esteem. They have to embody something that he wants. So when he like in terms of what it means to be a man, so when he succeeds and he gets there, he has to stand up and have a man that he admires, look at him and say, now you are a man, you have just been invested with the responsibility of the tribe, you have won Welcome to the circle of men. That's what it takes to do an initiation. But how do you initiate men really with something they can fail at, that isn't going to cause them physical harm, like you can't do an initiation like, well, you might fail at this and if you fail you might die.
Speaker 2:Which is like, how initiations used to be done Not a lot of guys are going to sign up for that and I wouldn't want to write the waiver or sign it Like well, you're going to do this initiation and you might die, like say goodbye to your family. That is the one thing that the Mankind Project did figure out is how to do an initiation that men could fail at, that they had to reach beyond themselves. That created a they call it a container of men who were truly powerful in a sense, so that you felt, when you got there and you did it, like oh wow, something definitively have shifted in me and it was a huge turning point in my life when I went through that.
Speaker 1:So what did they have you do for initiation?
Speaker 2:I want to be careful because the work is considered sacred and I want to hold it like not in a Christian sense and so I struggle with how much to say, but certainly in a sense of honor to the men who went through it. I want to be careful what I say just because there are some very beautiful things that have taken place and I've seen men accomplish some pretty special things, but primarily, let's say it was confronting things about oneself that you didn't want to. They call it touching your shadow. This is a Jungian term, but your shadow, we can think of it about your dark side, or your flesh, or the sinful side of yourself that you don't want to acknowledge but that is sneakily running your life. And so the initiation is do you have the strength to really look at yourself in the mirror and see the ways that you're screwing up your own life and take responsibility for that and look yourself in the mirror? That was the initiation, where it's like you.
Speaker 2:Really, when I say break a man down, I don't necessarily mean that in a bad sense, where you kind of.
Speaker 2:There are all these different things that are done over the course of the first 24 hours that really strip men of their armor that men just kind of carry around.
Speaker 2:A good example is the men are up on Friday night quite late until like 2 o'clock in the morning, like doing a late night physical kind of challenge.
Speaker 2:And then they're up at like 6 o'clock in the morning and you have to take a 60-second ice cold shower, right, so you have to count while you're standing under the freezing cold water, so you're sleep deprived and you've just been through this really jarring kind of experience. And so as you run that, over time men's kind of defenses get kind of broken down and camaraderie gets built up. And then there's a process in the afternoon where men are forced to confront things about themselves that they'd rather not see. And it's that experience that's like oh wow, I am not the man I thought I was and I have to take accountability for this and act in a spirit of integrity to rectify this in my life. And so it can be very powerful for those reasons, and I've seen men go through very difficult things, because there are no necessarily spectators like men can be invited to participate when someone else is going through the initiation to play a specific role, and so in those roles men sort of express some of their inner traumas, you know, because it is ultimately psychological.
Speaker 3:But it does all turn back on the individual man to confront what he believes about himself, what he believes about life and the mistakes that he's causing to generate the life that he's currently living.
Speaker 3:As the saying goes, gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, but debt is the money of slaves.
Speaker 3:If you're tired of seeing your wealth sapped by the silent theft of inflation, consider adding gold to your financial plan. Gold and silver have been recognized as sound money and a store of wealth for centuries. Converting your savings into gold and silver will protect and preserve your wealth so that one day you'll be able to pass down a true inheritance to your children's children. That's where our friends at Alpine Gold Exchange come in, offering 0% buy-sell spread gold leases with up to 3.5% annual return paid in gold, by the way and secure vaulting right here in Utah. Alpine Gold approaches every transaction with fairness, honesty and respect, reflecting a strong Christian business ethic in all that they do. Head to ogdengold today, or tap the link in the description to sign up or schedule an appointment to speak with an Alpine Gold advisor today and see what would best serve your family. And just so you know, if you schedule a call, you'll be speaking with Jace, ethan or Stu, three members of Refuge Church, right here in Ogden, head to Ogden Gold and check it out today.
Speaker 1:Here at the Hardman Podcast. I've spoken with some very successful and competent men. Most of these men share a characteristic of delegating to other competent men to manage various aspects of their lives or businesses. I've realized that I don't have the time to properly navigate investment portfolios, financial planning and tax strategies. It simply takes away from the most important work that I do. That's why I've used Joe Garrisi with Backwards Planning Financial to help me with integrated planning. Joe is a Christian man who focuses on insurance, investments, tax-efficient strategies, company benefits, debt plans, estate planning, multi-generational planning and more. He's been available when I have questions or ideas for my financial planning and future and Joe has made a plan specifically for my family and my goals that best suit my needs. Whether you have millions in assets or just starting to invest, Joe Garrisi can help you reach your goals to grow the kingdom and leave a good legacy for your generations. You can visit backwardsplanningfinancialnmcom Again, that's backwardsplanningfinancialnmcom or call 615-767-2555 to speak with Joe to prepare for your future. The testimonials presented may not be representative of the experience of other clients and are not a guarantee of future performance or success.
Speaker 1:America is built on the backs of hardworking blue collar. Americans is built on the backs of hardworking blue collar Americans. That's why we're so excited to join forces with Max D Trailers, a Texas based and family owned company, to bring you this episode. We're proud to partner with Max D to see the vision of new Christendom established, one small business at a time. Max D builds innovative, hardworking trailers for the builders, fixers and growers of the world. You can follow their stories by checking out Max D Trailers on Instagram or by visiting the link in the show notes. Learn more about Max D Trailers by visiting MaxDTrailerscom, where you can check out the article 10 Ways to Make Money with your Trailer.
Speaker 1:Red meat is a staple of a healthy, protein-packed diet, but not all meat is created equal. That's why I buy my meat from Salt Strings Butchery. Equal that's why I buy my meat from Salt and Strings Butchery. Salt and Strings is owned and operated by my friends Quinn and Samantha Bible, and the meat they offer is raised, harvested and processed exclusively in Southern Illinois. It's cut and packaged by my friends Quinn and Anthony, and not only is it the best meat I've ever had, well, all their meat is sourced from local farms that share our Christian values. Salt and Strings is now offering a beef and hog box that can be shipped directly to your door. The 15-pound beef box features 100% black Angus beef and includes ribeyes, T-bones, sirloin, chakros, fajita meat and ground beef. You can order your beef box today for just $259. It will send it directly to your door. The hog box is $239 and features premium duroc pork, including eight thick pork chops one of my all-time favorites pork steaks, cured and sliced bacon, ground pork, bratwurst and breakfast sausage links. You can place your order today at saltandstringscom or use the link in the show notes and also be sure to follow Salt and Strings on Instagram. We'll also include the link in the show notes and also be sure to follow salt and strings on instagram. We'll also include the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really fascinating. I think about it all my time. You know, in the manosphere, masculinity, any of this space, uh, and then helping men as well. This concept of self-awareness and seeing yourself as you are is actually harder to come to than you might think, and I remember just talking to guys who had been through even AA and that was one of the things where they're pretty. It sounds like pretty brutally honest with a person about.
Speaker 1:You know, because it's most people are going to do some form of blame shifting. Well, you know my situation's. Most people are going to do some form of blame shifting. Well, you know my situation's bad, or this is bad and this happened, Uh, but getting a guy to see, uh, you know, you, you are a bulk of your problem, and and then these are the specific ways in which you're the bulk of the problem. But I want to ask you, why do you think for men, why is that so difficult to come to that honest assessment, to look in the mirror and, as James would say, to look in the mirror and learn from it, but also not walk away and forget and not just go back to pretending? Why is it so difficult, also not walk away and forget and not just go back to pretending.
Speaker 2:Why is it so difficult? Pride, pride, right. Like there is something very heroic and very noble that lives in men, and I would say our flesh fights us, and it's easier to focus on what is heroic and noble and aspirational about ourselves and it's easier to look around and blame people outside of ourselves than it is to actually look in the mirror and say like no, this is on me, and to see clearly, right, and that's somehow. The challenge is that we can know the ways that we're messing up our own lives, but it can be difficult to see it objectively, and so that's why we need other people around us who we trust. So, like I think this is kind of what I'm doing, because I do this, I do X and Y results and it doesn't seem like that should be the case. What is it? And so men need brothers, like real tight brothers around them, to say, yeah, when you do this, this is how you come off. Oh, that's not me at all, but still, this is how you come off. But so many men lack not just friendship but brotherhood now, who they can rely on, who they can trust, to give them accurate reflections. Like, bro, I really need your help with this. Tell me what you see when you look at me, and not so many words and to have that bond of brotherhood and say like, okay, do you really want to know? Yes, hit me. Well, this is what I see. Like oof. I needed to hear that Most men don't have relationships that are even close to that anymore and so we kind of just navigate by feel through the world in a way that actually actively shames the best part of men.
Speaker 2:So when they try to bring out the things that are good, they get forced feedback from our feminist environment that that's toxic masculinity or whatever. So get forced feedback from our feminist environment that that's toxic masculinity or whatever. So they develop all these sideways kind of behaviors that are actually very counterproductive and we don't have any relationships in our lives to say like, hey, dude, that's passive, aggressive or hey, dude, that's self-sabotaging. Most men don't have that. So they navigate through life not being able to develop their good qualities and navigating with these half effective strategies to make their way through life. That's how men end up with six figure jobs that they're alienated from is they haven't been able to cultivate things about themselves that might be actually good. They just they find what works, and those aren't necessarily always the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you mentioned this. But like the importance of brotherhood, uh, I've talked about like gangs of men, just just tribe, yeah, but a tribe, that's honest. You know, I found that I did have male relationships, especially in corporate America, but they were largely under feminine rules, in a very passive, aggressive, bureaucratic environment. It's been eyeopening but like at Refuge, you know, I work with uh pastor Dan, pastor Brian, uh Ben Garrett, and being in that environment where you know that, like, these men love me and I love them, but we have so many of these conversations and a lot of it comes up in conflict, where you know I can remember certain times where a guy would say to me, like you think you're this way, and that's not like, let me, like you said, let me tell you what I see, let me tell you what you really uh are or some of the features maybe that you're missing here. And it's really interesting because I can remember sometimes, like going home feeling crushed, um, it's sort of the I would say like Psalm 51, just the broken and contrite heart that realize, when you have that realization of man, I, who I thought I was, isn't the guy on screen. People are watching the film and going. That's not what I see, or in these ways it's not what I see, but then, over time, it seems like you're able to operate with more authenticity you might say integrity because you get a more honest picture of yourself. You're able to correct some of those things. You have to work on them.
Speaker 1:I wonder, though, what it is, particularly because I've been a part of churches for a couple decades now, and most churches I never did Like I didn't experience that. Um, it was. You see, people on Sunday we weren't really involved in each other's lives in any meaningful way. Yeah, um, but I guess just talk about this issue, which seems it fascinates me, but it seems to be so important. Like masculinity, I keep saying, is not an individual project that you can accomplish by yourself. Like, if you want to grow as a man, you're just not going to be able to do that without a tribe. So I want to get your thoughts on that. Do you think that's true?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the um, I think the notion of the so-called Sigma male is ultimately very destructive, and I, and I think a lot of the hero movies that we see, like you know example, again, that was again based on archetypes and Carl Jung and stuff like that. Joseph Campbell as well, it really focuses on the journey of the lone hero and all of our great movies are like this and they make for really excellent storytelling because we can focus our attention on the lead character but, like, none of us are the main character right, it warps our perspective of who we are as men, and so we generally navigate more accurately in tribes and there is something to the idea of alphas and betas. Now, these words are so heavily laden with judgments right now I prefer describing it as some men are meant to lead and some men just want to belong.
Speaker 2:And in our society we're not allowed to say like, hey, man, I just want to belong to some other man's tribe and make a valuable contribution. I don't got to drive the bus, I just want to be on the team, right, and men lack that because like, no, I got to be the king, alpha, leader of everything, because whatever guru told me, I have to do that, like no, it is sufficient for you to belong. And men who are called to lead, they generally today, when they get into positions of leadership, think it says something about them. Leadership is a gift from God. It is a massive responsibility, and so, rather than being like I'm at the top of the pyramid, I conceive of leadership like no, the pyramid is upside down and it's all balancing on me. It's an enormous amount of responsibility, but we don't have these ideas anymore, and so everyone's kind of trying to be this. You know, epic, timeless hero, but I don't know that men used to think of themselves that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fascinating, because you'll even get like we've been doing all this research for, you know, christendom, for King's Hall, you know, going back through the great leaders and heroes and kings and all that sort of thing, and somebody like King Alfred. He's kind of put in a position, he's like the eighth son, not expecting to be a king, his brothers all die, he's alone on a battlefield and it's like okay, you have to step up and lead. And I think probably in that moment he seems to have recognized like this is a heavy, weighty thing and the number of guys who were kind of called to be Kings, who didn't really even want that. You see this in Moses's story, where if the leader really understands what he's being asked to do, he's like no, please, lord, anyone else, anyone else isn't there, somebody else and the Lord, you know, gets irritated with with Moses and it's like no, it's you, but that you're right. It stands in contrast.
Speaker 1:We run into this all the time, even on the economic front, where you have all these guys who are like every man needs to be an entrepreneur and every man needs to be a leader, you need to start a business. And we sort of realize this in our own community. There's guys here who are great men but they're not business leaders, they're not going to be leading, but they're wonderful churchmen and they're wonderful guys who are going to plug in and be, you know, integral to the community. But recognizing that there can be differences and this is the other benefit of tribe, you kind of it sifts, it helps you figure out where you are in the pecking order. I've even had guys where I've said like hey, man, you need to be a leader on this, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And I've had a guy say like that's really not me, and it was eyeopening because, you know, I look at him like well, every man's a leader, every man needs to be a leader, and it's like, well, that's. That's not always completely true. And then I also think something that you mentioned about that self-discovery process in the midst of other guys, you can actually come up the other side and be stronger. So that's what I want to ask. You know you go through the initiation process, you do all that. What are the ways that you saw that it made you better as a man?
Speaker 2:That was a really big. The first thing that happened was like there are so many. The first thing that happened it was a real stiff introduction to integrity about the necessity of making sure that my thoughts and my words and my actions align. And when I experienced that in my initiation, I realized that I am so far out of integrity with so many things. I started feeling the real pain of that and I was like I am not the man I think I am, and so I went on a very long process to get myself back into integrity with people apologize for things, take responsibility for things, take accountability for things, and it hurt. It was painful because I got to see the ways that I had let people down, that I had hurt them, that I had lied, that I had lied to myself right, that was the most painful one, like I've been lying to myself and so going through that it was grueling. I made it out the other side, and so now I take my integrity very seriously and make sure that if I give my word to something, I follow up, or if I fail, I apologize and I make it right, because I remembered what it was to discover that I was so far out of integrity. I don't ever want to get back there again. I think that's a lot of men and I think a lot of men would be scared and rightfully so to look through that and I don't think there's anything wrong with the fear.
Speaker 2:But the second thing that I got from it is to recognize that I can be in relationship with men Like I grew up. You know, classic nice guy had lots of female friends, right, and that was just what I thought was normal, didn't trust men, didn't have great friendships. And so this turning point shift of being like no, I want to be a man of integrity, a man who keeps my word, forced me to learn to lean on other men. I started sitting in weekly men's groups in person and working through these things and it really taught me how to open up, trust and rely on men and be relied upon. So that completely shifted my relationship to men and began moving me from the world of women, which is what most men live in more comfortably, into the world of men, and that's been an almost complete shift. But to maintain yourself in the world of men you have to be a man of integrity. Accountability is the price of your man card, and so those would be the biggest things that shifted for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's so important, I think, when you're in tribe and you're in these relationships, that moment where you realize other people are depending on you and on your integrity and where, yeah, some of the most painful times in my life is where it's like you hurt one of the people in the tribe and it's. It's amazing because in Christian community you can say you know, brother, I'm sorry, I wronged you, will you please forgive me. And I can remember getting hugs from guys and being like I love you Absolutely, I forgive you. But even then it's like it would be like a week for me of processing that. And it's not just like a flippant, like, oh, sorry, yeah, no, no big deal, it is actually a really big deal and you're processing all the ways that you have to improve work on yourself. It's a weighty thing.
Speaker 1:And I remember again, going back to Gates of Fire, the fictional character I can't remember his name. Is this the Steven Pressfield book? Uh-huh, yeah, but all the Spartans die and he's left alive and he just wants to die and they're like, why? And he's basically like I want to be with my brothers. There's such a bond there of being together, being with them, not wanting to have let them down, almost like surviving was letting them down, I think was part of his ethos. You know that, the nature of those male relationships again, which really until coming to Ogden like I had never experienced anything like that. One of the interesting things is you look at the this men's movement, obviously we'd have critiques. I'm curious at what point did you start to see some of the problems? What were they? What was that process like for you?
Speaker 2:Christ had a lot to do with that, because I was in the mythopoetic men's movement for a while let's root our masculinity in psychology and then that took me. As a result of being in that movement, I went to go travel around the world. Let's root, where am I going to put masculinity? Is it going to root in pagan spirituality? I found that that was no place to put it, and then I found my way into, like the red pill and evolution is no place to put it. Where am I going to root masculinity transcendently? And so, at the same time that I started my podcast, I got baptized and started reading more about Christianity, started reading a lot of stuff coming out of Moscow Doug Wilson stuff and watching sermons by Votie Bauckham and all this stuff and really taking it in and being like, oh wow, christianity is where masculinity is rooted. God, the Father, god is male, god is transcendently male. And so here's a place that I can put this down and so, okay, this is where masculinity belongs. And then God says what men are for. Men are for being, you know, to protect, provide, and you know priest, prophet, priest and king over wives and children and families and the community at large, but we're meant to be fruitful and multiply. That is what men are for. That is what God has ordained men are for.
Speaker 2:But then, if you look at the masculinity dialogue, they reject Christ. So they are unable to say what men are for. They can't really say so they say what men do. What do men do Men get rich men do. What do men do Men get rich? Get fit, get laid. But ultimately, if those things become self-serving, if you can't put them towards a larger telos or purpose, getting fit becomes vanity, getting rich becomes consumerism and getting laid becomes promiscuity. And so what do you have? You have the manosphere collapsing under its own lack of purpose. Because men recognize the end of these. Instead, christianity provides an answer. These same instincts, when put into service of a wife and family, fulfill them. Christ perfects them.
Speaker 2:And so this is what I've seen is because the manosphere we'll call broadly is rejecting Christ. They're going over the falls. It's happening with Rolo Tomasi and all these different guys. They have no grounds to say what is what, so they're just kind of indulging in their own hedonistic pleasures. Andrew Tate's about materialism. Ultimately it's going over the falls. A lot of men are getting wise to that and are coming over to Christianity and are recognizing. This is what I've been looking for the fulfillment and perfection of masculinity. But there's a price, and the price is repentance, of course, but that was sort of my journey out of that and what I see happening in the manosphere now, because it can't say what men are, for all it can say is what men do, and that reaches a natural endpoint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a great point. One of the other things that you mentioned on Twitter that I found really interesting I think it was Karen Swallow Pryor. She was talking about Robert Bly and this movement. It's interesting to me that this is sort of the left evangelical movement which used to be considered conservative but really isn't very egalitarian that sort of thing they are. They've been publishing a lot of stuff you know. Recently Karen had mentioned, like you know, the biblical masculinity movement is a sham or a scam or something like this.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I was on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't like the masculinity that we talk about uh, that sort of biblical masculinity but they're okay with Robert Bly and they're okay talking about this type of masculinity, and I wonder why that is. So I want to ask you that what? Why do you? What is it about that brand that they're okay talking about this type of masculinity and I wonder why that is. So I want to ask you that what is it about that brand that they're okay with the same Jesus and John Wayne movement? We don't like John Wayne masculinity, but we are okay with Bly?
Speaker 2:Why? Because the mythopoetic men's movement accepted the feminist narrative that women have been oppressed, and so it sought to define a masculinity that didn't step on women's toes and make them feel oppressed anymore, because it threw out Christianity, it threw out God's design for the family. So, again, without being able to say what men are for, all it could say is what men do, right, and so it ultimately became kind of empty. And so they're okay, as long as you don't actually tell men what they're for, because telling men what they're for means you have to tell women what they're for. So we don't want to do that. We just want to tell men what to do, which is to go reconnect with this fatherhood spirit, work on your father wound forever, and it becomes a lifelong pursuit.
Speaker 2:So naturally they're totally okay with a form of masculinity that accepts feminism, belief that women have been oppressed. Of course they're okay with that, and that is the myth of poetic men's movement. They even write about it. If you read King Warrior, magician Lover, if you give me a second, I can actually pull up a quote that references it, but they talk about it very openly. They were boomers. They were secular, non-christian boomers who were raised in the 1960s with a double dose, a double dose of feminism, and so that will that shows up in their writings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting because the more that I've spent like doing the hard men podcast talking about biblical masculinity, the more I've kind of seen how hostile so much of the evangelical church is to biblical masculinity. They're willing to promote counterfeits, like you said, as long as they're embracing of feminist principles at their core. I wonder, do you see the same thing? Do you see that it seems like over time, like you know, in a way I can understand what they're saying? You know, Karen will be like, oh, Andrew Tate's terrible. And we would actually agree Like, yeah, a lot of this is really terrible. We're not saying go be Andrew Tate, Right, but they want to associate us with Andrew Tate or associate the whole movement with Andrew Tate, which it certainly isn't Right. I'm wondering, do you see that that sort of maybe as the movement, the masculinity movement, has gained traction, particularly biblical masculinity? Michael Foster, you myself, it seems like you're getting more press from the regime evangelicals about why that's such a bad thing. Do you see an increase there?
Speaker 2:On the-.
Speaker 1:Just the hostility.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, of course, Of course, and ultimately I look at it as being convicted of sin. I mean, feminism is nothing more than women's rebellion from God's design of the family. It goes all the way back to the garden, and so, as men begin really standing up and embodying the principles of virtuous masculinity, that seeing themselves reflected in the mirror is powerfully convicting and they can't keep silent as a result.
Speaker 2:And so if men stand up, but slightly hunched, like sorry, don't mean to take up your space, am I man spreading right? But a man who stands up confidently and says, hello, I'm here and takes up space, like when men stand up and assert themselves like you don't have to say a word, you can feel that he occupies a certain amount of space. And when people feel that online, they get convicted and they rebel against it because they see a reflection of God's design for men in these men and they hate it and it drives them nuts and the best thing that they can do is try and tie it to some some other oppressive image, like Andrew Tate or whatever, and it's like no, I got nothing to do with him. That's something that's going on in your own mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. The other thing I want to ask you about is just sort of the trajectory I know you've followed. It been involved with red pill, manosphere, all that stuff, I guess. From my perspective it seems to have imploded almost entirely. I don't know if that's true, what's your read on it?
Speaker 2:I mean the manosphere, the red pill is exploding. The red pill will distinguish itself from the manosphere. It's like Rolo Tomasi and Pearl and Fresh and Fit. I don't follow it as much as I used to, but that world is kind of it's so anti-family and it's so anti-marriage and it exploits men's bitterness, like feminism exploits men's bitterness sorry, women's bitterness. The red pill exploits men's bitterness. Feminism says men are these terrible oppressors, you need to avoid them. The red pill says women are these terrible oppressors and you need to avoid them. In many ways, the red pill is the son of feminism. So that's what's happening in the red pill world. It has no ability to prevent a slide into degeneracy and pornography and promiscuity. It's going over the falls, the Manosphere, tragically.
Speaker 2:In summer of 2021, I did a cross-country road trip 14,000 miles and I interviewed 25 leaders of the Manosphere at the time, and 60 hours of 2021, I did a cross-country road trip 14,000 miles, and I interviewed 25 leaders of the Manosphere at the time, and I have 60 hours of footage and I can send you some links to the stuff that I produced. Yeah, it's great. And so I met a lot of these people in person and over the past two and a half years since I did that footage, one by one, various men within that have had very serious personal crises that have revealed there was more to the picture than met the eye at the time, and it's been very difficult to watch that and I think part of that. It's hard not to draw the conclusion. First of all, I wasn't particularly super Christian at the time so I wasn't viewing things through that worldview lens, but neither were many of the men that I was interviewing as well, and it's been very difficult to watch these men, many of whom I cared about very much, go through these struggles.
Speaker 2:And it's hard to avoid the conclusion that in some of the cases it's because men held themselves up as examples for people to follow. Not let me point you to an example, it's, I am the example and, as they say, pride goeth before the fall, and so that's what's happened is a lot of men that held themselves up as examples to follow have had their secret sins, their secret problems surface, and it's been a shame. So I would say the red pill is driving the dialogue right now. They're going over the falls. I think the manosphere tragically has, you know, has had so many men have their own particular version of falling, and I think that phrase, that phase of the dialogue is over and Christianity is where it's at now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, a big, you know, even some of the guys that would say they were Christians. Think of, like Jeff Younger, you know, looking at his material and the biggest thing that I would take away, and he and I would have disagreements on this online and elsewhere. But when your aim is to say that the family is no more, or don't get married or don't pursue the things that you know, yeah, we have cultural problems, but God never said well, you know, genesis one and two are true. My plan for the world is true, except when it's really bad, in which case jettison all things and just do something totally different. You have guys advocating for you know, get a vasectomy. These are purportedly like Christian guys saying get a vasectomy or use surrogacy to have your children. Don't marry a woman. It's a bad legal thing.
Speaker 1:And we would agree, like with the part of yeah, the legal structures in America regarding the family are screwed up. It's really bad. I would love to see those change. No, no fault, divorce included. But, uh, we, I would guess you'd be in the same boat, but we stay on counter because I'm like no, god's plan is still God's plan. I'm still going to honor the Lord, uh, and I'm going to encourage other men to honor the Lord in a culture that, yeah, is hell bent on destroying the family. But the way to answer that, in my view, is not say, okay, well, let's just forget family altogether, let's just not do that until the legal structures change. And I think you're right about this, that in a weird way, it's like well, you're actually aiming at the same thing the feminists are, which is the destruction of the family, and so I can't be on board with that. Do you see that as a pivotal issue? As, like, what people ultimately want to do, it's related to the talos of men, but, like with the family, oh yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:feminism drew a lot of its early energy from the idea of sexual liberation of women, meaning women's sexuality needs to be liberated from the oppressive home and family right For breeding was what they would say.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we have that. That happened in the 19. Well, it happened before, but it happened predominantly in the 1960s, right? So you had this flood of supply into the market. Let's say, the first book on pickup was written in 1969 by a man named eric weber. It was called how to pick up girls right 69.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's crazy. So it's been around a while it's been around for a while?
Speaker 2:yeah, because he realized that like, well, wait, there are all these women around everywhere, you know, let's take advantage of that, right. And so you run it forward 30, 40 years, you know you have the same attitude. Well, like, where there's all this supply out there, why shouldn't I go enjoy? Why should I just, you know, enjoy one woman for life and build that, why shouldn't I Right? And so it's ultimately saying the same. It's ultimately saying the same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fascinating. One of the things I want to talk to you about. Before you know, I let you go, which you know, who knows I may? I may just keep you forever. I'm down, let's go. One of the things I find really interesting there's all these cultural currents going on, but one of the things that's interesting about the church you know you have, I think, if you okay, men are the protectors. That's why men are supposed to lead, men are supposed to be the teachers and elders. They defend the wall, but that's not only physical, that's also teaching. And we've seen, concurrent with all the feminism that's coming to the church, things that I never thought I would see. So guys like Russ Moore promoting a gospel version of the Enneagram, or, you know, yoga and meditation, all this stuff is finding its way into the church. It seems to all have sort of new age roots, and I know you know a lot about this. But first of all, do you think that new age spirituality is making inroads in the church?
Speaker 2:Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Yes, it's not even a question.
Speaker 1:And then, in what ways do you see this happening? I would assume you would say like Enneagram is one of the big ones I've seen. I was part of a PCA church and I think it's Beth McCord who has like a gospel Enneagram type book. But basically they took that and were using it to build this whole business about marketing the Enneagram to Christians to make it seem like it was just a you know character profile. But it's, it's really not. And so Enneagram do you agree with that one? And then maybe what are some others?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Dr Peter Jones, his, his, his ministry is called Truth Exchange and he had an online conference, I want to say, back last summer, and one of the presenters did an hour long breakdown of the origins of the Enneagram. I'll send you that and you can put that link in the show notes. It's incredibly revealing and very scary. So there's nothing Christian about the Enneagram at all. I don't care what anyone says.
Speaker 2:The other very popular one is yoga. The word yoga means yoke, as in yoke with the divine, become one with the divine, which is Brahman. So the very word, like the Hindu god, brahman. So the very word yoga refers to a Hindu practice, and so you will see a lot of Christian women that will get very salty when you tell them this is a Hindu practice. Oh no, I'm just stretching and breathing. No, like. If you're doing yoga, like you can do stretches from mobility on YouTube and you don't have to call it yoga, they get very attached to this. That's another example. Yeah, oh, and you want to start a fight on Instagram? Start talking about yoga isn't Christian and you'll see.
Speaker 1:Well, and a part of it will, I think, is this goes back to what we've taught in biblical patriarchy, but Paul tells Timothy that women are more easily deceived, which is why they're not to be teachers. But it's interesting to me how many of these make their inroads through our ladies Exactly correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the serpent's temptation, right? So the gospel is offensive to men and women for different reasons. Men find today they find the gospel offensive because it insults their intellect. It can't possibly be that simple. It can't possibly be as simple as repent and believe. It can't possibly just all be about God wrote a book. There has to be more.
Speaker 2:It's like no, bro, you have to submit your intellect to God. Like, yeah, I know how you think it should be, but this is how it is. And men struggle with that. That's right. And some men struggle because it offends their sense of strength. Like Christian men are so weak, bro, why are they so weak? Like Christian men should be powerful, warrior conquerors. It's like, well, maybe not exactly. Maybe there's more to it than that, right? So it's like you have to bow the knee to a God who willingly sacrificed his life. Like you have to do that.
Speaker 2:And some men find that offensive. Women find it offensive because first it offends their feelings, which is like I have to submit to a God. Like that hurts my feelings, this idea, it feels oppressive. Like, yes, I know it feels oppressive. It's actually liberating, but your feelings are not sovereign. God is sovereign, same for men's intellect and physical strength.
Speaker 2:But the other part that I think women struggle with is they want to have, like their intuition. It's like no, I want my magical, intuitive powers. I want to cultivate them. I know secret things. You know secret knowledge, right, and it's like no, like it's in the book. There is no mystical experience in that way. The mystical experience is to be had in God's word, and you have to bow the knee of your desire for a mystical experience to God's word, and so that's why it comes in, primarily through women and many effeminate men as well. It's like they want that mystical experience, and that's what Eastern mysticism promises. Is this mystical, feeling-centric experience? And, by contrast, the word of God feels very dry. It can, unless you learn to read it for what it is, and then it's incredibly liberating.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting because even the temptation in the garden for Eve is to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and you could see, in some of the Gnosticism that is prevalent among women like I have this secret knowledge that other people don't have, or, you know, my husband doesn't have. The way that it's spread through the church, though, is interesting to me, because the church tries to do this thing a lot of times, where it's just like we just attach gospel centered to anything, and then it's like gospel centered yoga, gospel centered enneagram, and it's like no, no, bro, you got to go back and look at the foundations. Uh, even I saw a video on enneagram, and it's probably linked in the peter jones talk, but, um, he was the guy who kind of invented it or whatever, talking about how it was like what is it called like direct writing or whatever, like demonic? Oh yeah, it's um automatic writing automatic writing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and like it was crazy because somebody posted and, and they were like founder of Enneagram, I got this from demons, christians. This isn't demonic Facts, facts, this is what happens. But there's a lot of other stuff too, where you remember, like the secret, like the power of positive thinking, laws of attraction stuff like this. Seems like it's part of that as well. No.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it very much is. And all these things come as a package deal, right. So that's the thing is bad ideas spread. It never stops with the Enneagram, it never stops with yoga, because what they're attached to is a whole oneness worldview. You start getting things like mindfulness I'm just going to clear my mind and meditate and this is the doorway that all these things start flooding into the church. And once they come in, particularly through the women, it's very difficult to dislodge. It's very difficult to dislodge because you ultimately have to call a woman to repentance and not many churches and not many husbands and not many pastors are skilled at doing that. And when you confront women's rebellion against Christ, it is a thing to see it. It is a thing to see it.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's interesting too because even a lot of the popular movements and popular, you know, even like tech industry, for example, yeah, I've gotten to know a lot of guys in this space and the amount of mushrooms, dmt, lsd, ritalin, the stuff that these guys are using. And it's interesting because guys who've come out the other side repented of all that. I've talked to some of them and it's really interesting because they talk about having demonic experiences. They talk about how it really was a way to like how do I defy my own nature so that I can just work non-stop or I can have loads of stress but not ever feel it? Uh, you and I were talking about this before the show, but like this whole thing of like trying to numb it all away, um, so we talked to guys who were like, yeah, it's like dmt in the day, pot all the time, like you're always trying to mask something, um, but it really is. It seems like it.
Speaker 1:One of the roots is this demonic desire to be God, like I don't have to live in the rules of this universe, I don't have to sleep or I do it all with substances. But one of the things that really struck me as I was getting to know some of this world is the amount of deception. Deception, right, the amount of deception. So this is a tech industry and they're like, oh, we work 80 to 90 hours a week and we're just, you know, we're changing the world for good and, by the way, we're introducing AI and so many of them were like dude, it is straight demonic. What is going on. A lot of people don't see that, um, on the surface but but I wonder just your thoughts on that. It surprise you at all how new age demonic and like dmt demons, like how that's all coming together in our culture no, that was uh, that was basically the bay area when I was there from yeah what?
Speaker 2:2000 to 2016. You know, like, for example, you've all know a harari right, that world economic forum guy a lot of people were posting his videos this year like I knew guys in the tech industry like who were super early at Facebook. You know, just in my social circles they were talking about Yuval Noah Harari, like over a decade ago you know so like, so, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:So it was big in those circles.
Speaker 2:It was big and oh yeah, oh, for sure, for sure, yeah. I mean, like the one thing I never heard in all my time in San Francisco was anything about Christianity or Christ. Christians were always those bad people who wanted to oppress and enslave humanity, or whatever, or the conservatives, you know what I mean. That was always what Christianity was about. There was no notion of the true message of Christianity, no message of Christian say spirituality, no message of liberation and redemption, repentance and sin. That is not part of the language there. So it doesn't surprise me that, as you have these giant mega tech companies rising in terms of their influence, in terms of their power, politically, socially, culturally and you have an entire generation of kids being paid huge sums of money They've been through the liberal university, cultural Marxism, meat grinder and they have control over the algorithms that drive our lives it does not surprise me at all that a lot of these people are now driving culture through their influence and through their choices in spirituality.
Speaker 1:Why. I wonder why the use of drugs is so prevalent, whether it's mushrooms, DMT, LSD. I was blown away when I heard all this. Why is it so prevalent among that group?
Speaker 2:There's a couple of different reasons. I mean, that was my world for a while. One is for entertainment, right, for like a cool experience with your friends. That's probably, I think, how well, at least when I was there, which was again a decade ago. So that's the number one reason. But some people will use it to access secret knowledge. So like enlightenment, to discover secret knowledge about the cosmos through some mystical experience. But a lot of people will use it for betterment, meaning like, oh, if I can just you know, work on my trauma, or if I can, you know, learn some knowledge about the universe or heal, then I can become more efficient in my job. So entertainment, enlightenment and betterment are the three reasons that people primarily do them yeah.
Speaker 1:The other question I have about it we, we started the haunted cosmos and pastor brian and ben started down this road. We tell the joke in the office. When they first were like we're going to do this show, it's about like demons and all the weird kind of a cult and stuff like that that's going on in the universe, I was like, okay, yeah, that's really weird and I don't think that's going to be like a thing. And they were like, no, trust me. And it's like and and they were saying, not, a lot of Christians are addressing these issues. And uh, you know, I was living under my rock. This, the show takes off. And so now the joke in the office, I, I tell everybody, I'm like, oh, I called this from the beginning, I knew it would be successful.
Speaker 1:I told you guys, you know, just need to, just need to believe, um, but, but it's interested me because we have people from all walks of life I mean mainstream evangelicals to not Christians who will listen to this show and you know, really have to at least think about you know scripture, or what does scripture say about these things in Christ? What do you think it is about our age that people are so resonant with that topic, whether it's aliens, demons, the occult. It just seems like the perfect storm in our culture where people are people who claim to be so modernist and scientific are somehow like a lot of people watch bigfoot shows, you know that sort of thing. Why do you think that's so big on people's mind right now?
Speaker 2:Because the world is mundane. It's mundane and scary. Houses are gray beige boxes, right. Everything is we're swiping on black screens. We're alienated from any real contact with the miracle of creation. You live in a city and you look up in the sky and maybe you see a couple stars. You look, you live in a city and you look up in the sky and maybe you see a couple stars.
Speaker 2:Versus 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we were connected to something so much larger than ourselves, just when you went up to look out at night. But now we live in concrete jungles and we drive and you know we drive in cookie cutter kind of cars to our office jobs. All the same, it's all the same, yeah, and it it masks the great miracle of life and creation and being, and people want to re-enchant the world. They want something special and fresh and colorful, they want to believe in dragons or whatever it is, and so they can't find it out there in the world because every frontier has been conquered, right. So maybe I'll go looking within myself or I'll go looking into the spirit realm for excitement and kicks, and I think that drives a lot of it.
Speaker 1:Do you think that's what's going on? We've talked in the past stuff like Burning man. Do you think it's a similar thing that drives the interest there for people? Or maybe looking for something spiritual? I don't know what's the motivation, I guess.
Speaker 2:So Burning man actually plays a role in my story. So I've been three times. I went in 2003, 2013, and 2015. And it was in 2015 that I ran into a group doing underground Christian ministry and they were the group that introduced me to Christ and that ultimately baptized me five years later. Oh, wow, yeah. So Burning man plays a role in my story.
Speaker 2:I think what Burning man has become is not necessarily what it started out, as I think it started out as very much like the Wild West. We don't really know what this is, but we can go in the desert and we can light off lasers and fire and drive cars around and be kind of crazy and just do what we want. But I think something shifted at Burning man, probably sometime around 2017. And then it's become an active pagan rebellion festival against the creator, god and civilization, and I think that's actually what it is in intention, and I think that's what draws people to it now is they think they're trying to imagine some new and better civilization and society. But really they're trying to imagine some new and better civilization and society, but really they're rebelling against all the values that built Western civilization. It's just that their money makes them too wealthy to notice that's what they're doing. They think they're being progressive and they're really being communist revolutionaries.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy too, and I mean you look at even the World Economic Forum, the connections with occult worship of some kind, but even you know the Taylor Swift saga that seems to be ongoing and thrust in our face. Yep, You've got, I don't know, the little ice lady. I forget what her name is Ice Spice.
Speaker 2:Ice Spice.
Speaker 1:Flashing like demon signs and balenciaga. Do you? I don't know how much you've looked into that stuff, but it seems like not a coincidence that when you have these like absolute rebellion against god type movements that there would be a cult stuff attached to it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, western, western occultism is the other side of the coin from Eastern mysticism. So you see, like Eastern mysticism, buddhism, hinduism, etc. There's a Western version of that and that's called occultism. They teach very similar things and so it doesn't surprise me at all, as we've had a rise in Eastern mysticism. I remark often that I go to my local Whole Foods and as I'm checking out, there's Shambhala Magazine, there's like Lamas Day greeting cards, there's incense it's just in the air breathed in mainstream cultural America now. So it makes sense that Western occultism will feel more comfortable stepping out in that regard. And so, yeah, I see these things as very much related, but people aren't. They don't see a problem with it, and that's the problem. Like, oh yeah, obviously, like Sam Smith wearing devil horns and grinding and, you know, cage with fire, like, yeah, hey, cool, you know they don't recognize the evil for what it is because it's been conditioned out of them to see it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you mentioned Christian ministry. That reached you. I'm curious, as you're wrapped up in all this new age stuff, can you remember like specific things that stuck out to you about what they were saying, that resonated from the Christian camp, when you were in the midst of this? Like what, what was it that kind of opened your eyes?
Speaker 2:It was.
Speaker 2:It was that they were willing to listen. I had come from a therapy. First of all, they didn't advertise that they were Christian, so I didn't know I had been sent there. I just come off a breakup and someone had said well, if you're dealing with grief, you should go to this camp called Spirit Dream and they can help you work through that. I went to them yesterday. It was great. I'm like, sounds good to me.
Speaker 2:So I went and I ended up in a three and a half hour I would have described at the time as like a healing session, where I really got to unpack a lot of things from my past and reconcile with a lot of things that I had believed as a result of, like my mom and dad, for example. I don't remember if the language of sin and repentance was really used in that moment, but it definitely was a powerful moment of healing for me. It definitely was a powerful moment of healing for me. And then there was a moment where, at the very end, with my eyes closed, if you want to hear I don't know if you want to hear the whole story, if you want me to just answer the question, yeah, I'd love to. Okay, so at the end of this three and a half hour kind of healing session, there was one of the women was standing behind me and she had her hands on either side of my head and she was speaking behind me, but I couldn't hear what she was saying and so, with my eyes closed, I had this kind of vision and I could see the streets at Burning man, so the dust blowing in the wind and flags and people riding their bikes down the street. And this man came up and looked at me. Now he had Burning man goggles on, but he had a very distinctive shape to his head and hair. I was like, okay, cool. But then the face seemed to suggest like no, look, okay, I see you.
Speaker 2:So then I opened my eyes and then the woman who had been standing behind me said come with me, there's someone I want you to meet. And so she led me to the other side of the tent, to a pillar that I couldn't have seen, the side of it that she led me to. So the side of it that she led me to, so she led me around the other side. When I came in I couldn't have seen it and she turned me around and she pointed me up at the pillar, and on the pillar was a painting of the face that I had just seen in my eye, in my closed eyes, minus the goggles, and it was a picture of. There was a woman named Akiani, a young girl who was a famous Christian painter, and it was a painting that she had made of Christ.
Speaker 2:And so I'm looking up at this like recognizing, like who are you people? And they're like we're Christians, what are you doing here? So we've been running an underground ministry to show God, the Father's love to the lost, and so they didn't make a big whole thing about, you know, they didn't bring the Westminster Confession of Faith with them or anything like that, but they were just, you know, showing God the Father's love to people who were lost in searching, and I bumped into them and they bumped into me, and so over the next five years, as I was traveling and doing all these you know, dark, worldwide, pagan spirituality, fulfilling a dream of mine, they kept praying and kept in touch with me. I ended up, I did go to Christmas with them that same year, that I met them at Burning man and their Christmas was up and they live in Coeur d'Alene and it was so warm and so loving. I was like the version of Christianity that I had always kind of believed somehow existed but had never been introduced to the Christians I had met, had always been quite a bit harder right, and so they were very warm and loving and they didn't put any pressure on me, they just welcomed me into their family. They were hunters. They fed me bear I'd never eaten bear before and stuff I knew you'd like that and so then I traveled and I came back and I had my experiences overseas and that left me with a lot of questions.
Speaker 2:And then, the day I got back to the United States in February of 2020, rob, one of the members of the camp, put the book Simply Christian by NT Wright. He bought me that book for Christmas and I read it when I got back and I got it, like what I'd been looking for for 20 years, you know, finally arrived. And so then I read Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters and then I asked my friends to baptize me in the Spokane River and Labor Day weekend, 2020. So but they, because they were there, because they were there doing this ministry, this ministry group. So the question that you asked is like what did I think, or what did they say?
Speaker 2:They use language like processes, like they would do dream interpretation, you know, which is a biblical thing, and things called like free fall, you know stuff like that. So they used language that wasn't overtly Christian, right, but it wasn't pagan either. So they'd been there for 12 years, so they'd worked hard to come up with language that's like it's not explicitly Christian but it's not anti-biblical either. To kind of hook in people like me oh, this sounds cool, what's that? But the crazy thing was that I was looking around their tent and normally at Burning man there's like Shiva statues and, like you know, psychedelic art from Alex Gray and Buddha stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'm looking around and I'm not seeing any of that right, I'm just seeing like paintings of swirly colors, and like there's a painting of a lion, you know, and an eagle, you know, and like I don't know what that is. And so when they told me that they were Christians, it's like, oh, suddenly that all makes a bunch of sense, cause I couldn't figure out, like, what are you guys about? So, anyway, that's a long winded answer, you know, of of how I got plucked out of that world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. It's so incredible. It makes me wonder too, like with obviously you're addressing a lot of new age stuff now, but masculinity, what's the connection? Like, how did you get into? You were in the masculinity space before this, Is that right?
Speaker 2:I started the Renaissance of Men podcast right when I got baptized immediately after, so it sort of happened at the same time.
Speaker 1:What was it that got you down that path then, of like ministering to men wanting to reach that audience?
Speaker 2:So I mentioned that I went on the New Warrior Training Adventure in 2013.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so then I went and I traveled a bit, and it was while I was on the road I discovered the manosphere and the mythopoetic men's movement guys were talking very much about men's inner realities, like guilt and shame and fear, but they didn't talk about outer stuff. So then I discovered the manosphere, and the manosphere talks about money, fitness, women, right, and I'm like, okay, so men's outer lives these guys are talking about men's outer lives. These guys are talking about men's inner lives. Why are they not talking to each other? Why do they not even seem to know about each other?
Speaker 2:And so my interest in putting those two halves together was like maybe there's something that I can offer men, and that's where I came up with the Renaissance of Men. I thought that these two men needed to know about each other and that they could have something to teach each other. That's why I started that, because I'd been so transformed by the mythopoetics and by the manosphere I wanted to put those together. I just happened to get baptized at the same time, and so as my podcast evolved, it's become much more explicitly Christian and reformed, as I finally found what I'm looking for in that regard.
Speaker 1:Are you a business leader aspiring to build a parallel economy and glorify God with excellence in everything? Livingstone Studio offers full-service design solutions to communicate your values visually, set you apart from the competition and convey the good, true and beautiful. Leave behind the cookie-cutter templates and build with cathedral-style aspirations, like Living Stones, crafting lasting beauty at every turn. Living Stones can help you stand out with a timeless brand, complete with a world-class logo, custom website, marketing materials, graphics and more. Learn more at livingstonesstudio or contact Rob Hewitt directly at rob at livingstonesstudio for a free consultation and landing page audit. Livingstones Studio, your reform design partner. Yeah, that's great. I want to ask you too.
Speaker 1:I know you've done some interview with Stephen Wolf recently and it intrigued me because I was thinking when I started the Hard Men podcast I was I had already read about like post-millennialism, so it was kind of the right soil, I guess, for like Christian nationalism, christian nationalism. But especially when I came to Ogden, it really helped me realize that masculinity by itself is just a piece of the puzzle you have to ask. I think. Ultimately, men want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. This is why so many men who are or were in biblical masculinity spaces would naturally be attracted to post-mill theology, christian nationalism. I know not everybody is post-mill, including Stephen, but sort of the same idea of, yeah, I want to be a biblical man, I want to be physically strong, I want to lead my family well, but even then you have to look bigger and you have to say for what like, for what greater purpose. And so for me it really became rooted in this building of Christendom, establishing Christian communities, a lot of networking, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:But I wonder for you, like, as you think about like, why Christian nationalism? Why is that? Why did it take off? Because I think it did answer something that a lot of people were like really questioning, and partly, I think I would also say, because of Christianity. You know, I've often characterized as pietistic and that's sort of inner life, like doing the inner life work, which is important, and a lot of the things that people point to are, like the Puritans, right, contentment, working on the inner self. Are you content, are you joyful? But I also found in the Puritans that they were intensely committed to building Christian communities and Christian nations and this sort of thing. So then I was tied to the bigger work, the outer work. How do you build a Christian nation with businesses and churches and all those sorts of things. So I guess, yeah, the question is just on Christian nationalism. Why are the people from the masculinity space interested in this topic?
Speaker 2:I was on the Forge and Anvil podcast last night and I was sort of talking about how I think a lot of it goes back to the doctrines of grace. Like if you believe that salvation is a gift that you didn't earn and you can't lose, and you make your life into a living sacrifice. And the way that men are called to make their life into a living sacrifice is to be fruitful and multiply. So then you go and be fruitful and multiply and then you want to have your kids and you want to make sure that your kids have a world to be a part of so that they can have kids. And so like, if you're, if you want your kids to grow up and to be able to have kids of themselves, their own, you probably want there to be a future for them.
Speaker 1:It's like the natural outflow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a pretty logical conclusion, and so I think Christian nationalism provides an outlet for men to say no. I would like my kids to inherit a better world than I received, and I'm willing to put myself out there to fight for that economically, politically and socially so that my kids can have their own Christian kids. Because, as Aaron Wren so astutely said, we live in negative world, a world that is actively hostile to the Christian faith, and so if we have to practice our faith in secret, that does not seem to be at all what America was founded on. So let's practice our faith in secret. That does not seem to be at all what America was founded on. So let's practice our faith in the open and let's create a nation where we can practice our faith in the open.
Speaker 2:And what I like about Stephen Wolfe's vision is he conceives of government and culture as two halves of an interlocking whole that guide people towards the Christian faith. Not that government saves, not that culture saves, but that government and culture can be used as an instrument to guide people to salvation. That's why I like his vision, and so I think his vision of Christian nationalism is very different. But ultimately, men that want to be masculine men want to raise children, sons and daughters, that themselves get married and have kids and establish a legacy. So if we're in a hostile environment, let's make the environment less hostile, and that's biblical masculinity right, which brings us back to Karen Swallow Pryor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, and a natural question too, then would be the same people who dislike biblical masculinity have turned this into really a pejorative right. You're a Christian nationalist.
Speaker 1:But just to expound on it, why do you think it's such a flashpoint issue To me? In many ways, I think, like you just explained, I think, okay, yeah, that seems like a natural thing, even in the Lord's Prayer. You know, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. We want to do our best to, as Stephen would say, to make the cultural sphere and the civil sphere subservient to Christ. That seems like a pretty simple conclusion from reading Matthew 28. Disciple, the nations were instructed to do that. But why do you think this is so hated as a concept? Christian nationalism.
Speaker 2:In my introduction to my podcast with Stephen Wolfe. What I said is there's two groups of people who hear those words. The first group of people hates both of those words individually.
Speaker 2:Christians and nations and nations right, and so the Christian nationalism must be extra bad right. And then the other group hears both of those words and loves them both individually, and so, therefore, it must be extra good. And so you take these two groups that are natural enemies of each other and you put them in a jar and you shake them up and you release them on Twitter, and both of them are reacting to something that is inaccurate, and each other yeah, no, it's definitely true, and I think too there's a lot of misunderstanding, particularly within the Christian camp, I think, about what is being said.
Speaker 1:So, you know, I watched the back and forth for a while and then eventually, you know, Steven had said multiple times, do the reading. And so I did. I read his book and I was like, oh, I think that part of it is. We don't even understand the categories that he's using.
Speaker 1:And what shocked me was like wow, I claim to be reformed and these are like what you know Calvin and you know Augustine and Aquinas and people like that, even pre-Reformation, obviously, with some of those guys. But this is what our forefathers were talking about. In this sorts of language which we've lost in the church, particularly with like political theology, we just don't seem to talk in this way. But having read the book, why would you encourage people, I guess, to do the reading and to at least think through these issues? Many people have even said I thoroughly disagree with Christian nationalism, but I refuse to read the book. Why is that a bad idea?
Speaker 2:Well, the best reason, I think, to read the book is so that you can understand Stephen's idea of how he conceives of Christian nationalism, his unique definition the totality of national action to orient a nation towards its earthly and heavenly good in Christ right. So Christian nationalism is not. I think the classic quote is when fascism comes to America, it'll be carrying a cross and wrapped in a flag, like that classic. That's not what he's talking about. What he's talking about is government and culture as two halves of an interlocking whole that guide people towards salvation in the church. And what I said in the podcast is that, like, if I'm called to love my neighbor as myself, right and love is desiring the good for someone and Christ is the highest good for anybody, should I not desire Christ for them? Is that not fulfilling the second half of the greatest commandment? And so if you conceive of government and culture as orienting people towards this highest good, is that not truly loving the neighbor, even if they don't like it? And I think that's the part where the friction comes in. It's like you mean that you're going to force Christianity on me. No, I can't force Christianity on you, but I can show you that this is the thing to want and I can suppress, potentially, expressions of other anti-Christian practices, but that runs counter to our social dogma since World War II, essentially.
Speaker 2:But the real meat of why to read the book is like look for Christians particularly. Can we conceive of government and culture as instruments to guide people to faith, as human instruments to guide people to faith in Christ? Let's kick that idea around. If yes, praise God and hallelujah, because I think we can. If no, why not? Why can we not use government and culture for that? Maybe you don't agree with how Stephen would instantiate it, maybe you don't agree with his proposal for how it would look, but can we talk about this idea? Can we use in America American government and culture to orient people towards their highest good in Christ, can we? I think that idea is worth considering.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and after talking to Stephen, I'm curious what do you think the prospects or the future of that movement are? Obviously, there are some Christians who say you know, certainly like regime, people are offended and setting their sights on Christian nationalism. You hear people saying we shouldn't use this language. I'm curious do you think it's going to stick? Do you think that people are going to continue to talk about this? What's kind of your sense about that? I mean.
Speaker 2:What I see is that the regime is completely misunderstanding what is meant, and so it-.
Speaker 1:Maybe intentionally.
Speaker 2:Maybe intentionally, but also just through their own blindness and hatred of Christ, right? So they just can't even see clearly. And so when someone tries to slander something that you're not, it doesn't do anything to slow you down, right? Like no, you're talking about the other guy, right? And so I think the people who read Wolf's book, who are invested or feel invested in this vision, keep walking forward and say like, okay, you can keep throwing mud, but it's not hitting me, you're throwing it past me.
Speaker 2:Because I feel convicted in my heart to fight for something. I may not ultimately be successful, but I still feel convicted to fight, and I think there's something very masculine about that. You mentioned the Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. Yeah, we might lose, but you know what? I feel convicted in my heart to fight for something larger than myself, so that my kids have a future, a future of true peace and true prosperity and true righteousness. And so the regime is not going to like that, but we see what the regime likes. So, like, I think men who feel convicted by that will keep working until someone can levels of substantial critique, and that's the thing it's like read the book and level a critique. If you don't which you you can do like you have the brain try.
Speaker 1:But they're not even yes, exactly so yeah, no, that's really helpful.
Speaker 1:One of the other things we look at kind of our culture and what is produced right. So, on the one hand, is this vision for building, I think, building something different than what we have now, which is Christian nationalism. It doesn't seem to be, like, you know, in many ways that's not really the reality, that we're living in, sort of this like globalist, secularist, whatever. Well, one of the things you notice in all this, I've seen a lot of these like TikTok style videos of women who are kind of realizing the sham and the lie they've been told through feminism and our culture and careerism. As you sort of watch these types of videos, I know there's a lot of people who are dunking on it be like, look how dumb these women are. I kind of feel.
Speaker 1:I guess I would say you know, it makes me think of one of the gospels, I can't remember where, but where Christ looks on the people and it says he had compassion for them, for they were sheep without a shepherd and they were helpless and harassed. Now, I'm not saying that these women don't have, you know, like guilt like there's. They've done things right and I'm not saying they're innocent, but to me it's grievous to watch this. When people are realizing at a point in their life when they're 40 and it's kind of too late for many of them that what they've been sold is a bill of goods, I guess just react to this phenomenon it seems to be growing. We see more and more people becoming disillusioned with what it was they were told would lead to the good life, and kind of what is your response? What's your reaction to that? It's so hard.
Speaker 2:It's so hard, eric, one of the things I talk about on my podcast I interview a lot of women and it's been some of my most downloaded episodes actually Really coaching women to rediscover femininity. There's a lot of that going on in the secular world and so I hear and I feel the grief, particularly from Christian women. The secular women have trouble kind of getting there, because repentance is hard and if you don't have a model for repentance it's tough. It's also very personal for me because I'm trying to date for marriage right now and I see a lot of the women getting 35 and 40 and like, oh, I'm trying to date for marriage right now and you know I see a lot of the women getting 35 and 40 and like, oh, I'm just now realizing it's like there were people that told you 10 years ago and you didn't listen, you know, and so like it grieves my heart because you know, I see a lot of these women in a lot of pain and and it's hard knowing that their mothers failed them, their fathers failed them, their culture failed them, their pastors failed them right, and they can't say that they didn't know. A woman's body every month reminds her what it's for right. They just chose to ignore it.
Speaker 2:And so, on one hand, it grieves me very deeply to see that, to see women go through it, because I do believe it is sincere. And it grieves me for another reason, because I think women, naturally and this isn't a criticism I think they struggle with accountability. I think men's bodies are built to take on accountability. That's what we do. I don't think women's bodies are built in quite the same way to take it on.
Speaker 2:And yet the moment is demanding that they take on an enormous amount of accountability and they're failing at it and they're pinched into a place where it's like either you have to take on all this accountability yourself and continue to be strong and independent like a man would, or you have to truly submit with a repentant heart to a man and to Christ.
Speaker 2:And they're caught and they're stuck and I wouldn't want to be there, but it causes them quite a lot of pain. And my hope is my hope, my greatest hope, is that that wave works backwards from 45, 40, 35, 30 to women that are in their late and early 20s, looking down the line, saying like you don't have as much time as you think it will run out like that, and that, hopefully that wave of repentance will lead women to rediscover the virtues and values of home and not waste their fertile years pursuing fun and flings and travel, and all that and that that will land within the church. That is my deep hope and my deep prayer to avoid another generation of women having to discover what they ignored for so long. I fight off the black pill about it, I'll be honest. I fight off, but yeah, that's what I'll say about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's one of my questions too is, in all of this, I mean, we all have these moments where you see stuff and you're like, wow, it is like I'm talking even to guys like yourself, guys who are trying to date, trying to find a, a godly wife it can be really discouraging and, uh, for these ladies as well, especially. I mean, I think what's heartbreaking about it for me is when you hit these points in your life where you can't go back. Yeah, you know there's no turning back to that. You can't go back to 20. But my question is how do you like, what do you do personally to not take the black pill route? What do you do to? You know, guys talk about Christ pill, white pill, all this other stuff, but at a practical level, how do you actually do that.
Speaker 2:God's sovereignty is the only way. This is what God has sovereignly ordained for me and for my life, you know, for my own sanctification. All things will work together for the good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose, that he might be conformed to the image of his son, the firstborn right, and to recognize that this is ultimately for my sanctification, that God has ordained it, and to trust him in that and to submit to his will for me and to submit to his will for the church and his will for America. I personally and yes, just to respond to something you said yes, I think there are a lot of genuinely repentant women that are finding lots of flaky men in the church. I think that's very much a thing, and I think that there's enough rebellion to go around.
Speaker 2:I think we talked earlier about how men they will fear failure and they will fear success as well Like, oh my gosh, what happens if I actually succeed at finding a wife? Then I have to be a husband, right, and so they'll avoid it for that reason. But I really do believe that some of the singleness I've just finally concluded this some of the singleness is God's judgment on the church Like why are men and women, young men and women, not having their hearts turned towards each other? I think it's because, like generations of faithlessness, you you just see couples like men, young men, women walking around inside a singles mixer and they're just bouncing off each other when they could easily be falling in love and it's not happening. I think there's some component of that.
Speaker 1:And it seems like part of you know demonic, satanic device, where one of the things that happens is you get two camps of people where, like you said, the feminists are all mad at the men, and then the manosphere, or whatever red pill guys are all black pilled against women. Yeah, and in a way I think, like Michael Foster said this, it's sort of a war against the sexes, not just like on them, yes, but then that turns them against each other. And it seems like one of the things we have to do is, you know, even pastorally, in our messaging it's like look, there are real things I go back to. An older pastor years ago was saying this to me. He said you know, as a pastor, you read all these passages in scripture. You know the woman wants to read the man's mail and he wants to say, you know, she wants to say like well, here's all the things you're supposed to be doing. And vice versa, he wants to read her mail and be like well, here's what you should be doing.
Speaker 1:And you have these almost comical if they weren't so grievous instances of, like you know, red pill man, whore guys who are telling women how trashy they are for sleeping around, right, and you're like this isn't going to actually solve anything. So my question for you is how do you address these camps? In a way that's like the point isn't for you to go to war with each other. The point is to hopefully get to repentance, acknowledge your own sin and then move forward. But but how do you? I mean first of all, do you see that like the contentious nature of the sexes happening?
Speaker 2:nature of the sexes happening. Yeah, I have thought a lot about this and I think that there's my natural inclination is usually to say it's 50-50. I don't think that that's necessarily true. I think that there is a societal hesitancy to really talk about and you and I talked about this on our podcast to acknowledge women's sin. We have no problem acknowledging, culturally, men's sins.
Speaker 1:This is part of the accountability you were talking about.
Speaker 2:That's right, yes, We've had no problem talking about men's sins for over a hundred years. They're patriarchal, oppressive, abusive, terrible, insensitive, bigot, whatever right Warmongers. We are saturated and, yes, all those things are true about men, and a lot of men, myself included, grew up like saturated with that message, so much so that I was bent over and broken, like, yes, I'm a terrible, broken human being. I lived like that for a long time and I had to slowly find my own way out of that and my own redemption from that. And in the midst of that we cannot, will not, do not have an honest, cultural conversation about women's sins. And so this gets very sensitive, because it's very hard to talk about that subject as a man without coming across as bitter. And yet we still have to say it. And so I struggle with this and I think part of the reason is because it's just not talked about Like, oh well, women sin, like the classic Doug Wilson joke, like on Father's Day, it's all. On Mother's Day, it's like, oh, women, you're great and wonderful, we love mothers, mothers are wonderful. And then on Father's Day, it's like men, you need to do better. It's like there's an unequal weights and measures thing going on here.
Speaker 2:So, yes, it's necessary to avoid the bitterness that characterizes the secular dialogue between feminism and the red pill, and there is also a need to acknowledge we have lived amidst women's rebellion from feminism for 150 years, and it's gotten so bad now that more men want to have children than women do. Men are more conservative than women are right. They're just exiting the family structure, and everything in society from frozen right Is leading them down this path, and so how do we talk about that in a real and authentic way that doesn't come across as bitterness? Talk about that in a real and authentic way that doesn't come across as bitterness. That's very, very honest, and the only answer that I've really found to it is more women's having that conversation, along with the men, right, and that's the only thing, because men can't and shouldn't remain silent about it, right?
Speaker 2:And so we have to calibrate our language very carefully, which is difficult to do, especially on social media, and we need women standing alongside us. You know Titus too, being like, yeah, this is kind of what's up. Ladies Like you should figure this out. And unfortunately for those women, it involves a little bit of masculinization to be able to step up and do that Like, oh, I just want to be soft and be feminine and be a wife. Now it's like.
Speaker 1:but you made it, now you have to you have to do that right, and so it's this very strange moment that we're in well, and it's interesting too.
Speaker 1:I was even nancy piercy had shared a study the other day and this is kind of like, I would say, evangelical egalitarianism, kind of their mindset, and I think there's actually a lot of problems when you rely on, like, sociological reports and psychologists and people who hate Christ and you're using that as like the basis for your arguments rather than scripture. But one of the things was a study where she said like it was something like 75% of the time they found that divorces were really the man's fault. And you know, it was interesting to me because I'm thinking about all the stuff, the research we've looked at, really thanks to a lot of the manosphere type discussions, and you realize well, actually, like most of the divorces are being initiated by women. So there's also a gap, it seems like, between what evangelicals are teaching their people and then what reality is. And you know, to quote Mark Twain, you know there's lies, damn lies, and statistics and a lot of that stuff can be manipulated. But I even had an older pastor tell me this we talked about it when I was on with you but kind of the idea that you can't really say it's all the men's fault anymore.
Speaker 1:Feminism has had its heyday, and one of the things I want to ask you is particularly related to women in careers. I saw a guy post this couple maybe a month and a half ago, something like that, around Christmas time and he said I have, you know, three beautiful sisters. Can't figure out why they're not married. And then he went on to describe them and he said they're not married. And then he went on to describe them and he said they're in their mid thirties, they have high power careers, they know how to close major business deals, and it was all about their career accomplishments. And one of the thoughts I had was well, I think there's a disconnect for a lot of women that they they think like that would make them appealing to men, but it's actually the opposite, yeah. So I guess my question to you is in what ways are women being misled about how career is or isn't appealing for marriage and men?
Speaker 2:I mean I would. I would say that that that approach is. I don't know that that's actually the message that's given to women. Maybe it is. I think the message that's more powerfully given to women is that you need to have a career and not get married or not be a wife to a husband and be a stay-at-home mom, because if you do that, you will be betraying all of womankind that has been oppressed by the home and marriage forever. Like actually being a wife and mother and being happy in that role is being disloyal to all women, and women are raised in that.
Speaker 2:And in fact, I have this book right here Disciplines of a Godly man by Kent Hughes. If you've seen this book before, there's a study in here. I might be able to pull it up very quickly, but it talks about how adoptions like girls were preferred in adoptions over boys like generationally. So we live in this kind of cultural moment where oh, here we go. This is from a 2016 New York Times article. The name of the article is the Fear of Having a Son, by Andrew Reiner. I'll just read a quick quote. It says adoptive parents are even willing to pay an average of $16,000 more in finalization costs for a girl than a boy. Many fertility doctors observe that 80% of patients who are choosing their baby's gender prefer girls. Interesting, yeah, and so that's an excellent book, and that's how it starts, and you sort of get a sense of like.
Speaker 2:We need to like girl power, we need to elevate women. And what does it mean to be a woman? It doesn't mean being a wife and mother. What it means is being a woman's version of a man. And why? Because we need to make up for centuries or millennia of women's oppression, and that is literally the definition of radical feminism. If you go to radical feminism Wikipedia entry, the definition, their definition of radical feminism is women's oppression is a trans historical phenomenon that is the model for all other forms of oppression, meaning feminism exists across, like women's oppression exists throughout history, and patriarchal, oppressive men have used that model of oppression for all other forms of oppression racism, et cetera, et cetera, exactly, exactly, and so I call this the feminist theology that women are cosmic victims and in order to make up for women's cosmic victimhood, we need to give them all the things that men had.
Speaker 2:You asked earlier about Robert Bly why they're popular with the evangelical elite. Because Robert Bly, in the myth of poetics also conceived of women as cosmic victims. They conceived of the earth as a cosmic victim. And so if you want to make it right, what do you have to do? You elevate women above men, and so the Christian notion that a woman needs to submit to a man, right To a man who's in himself into submission to God, a woman who submit to a man is offensive to the feminist theology. It is the core offense of the feminist theology, and I think most people in America actually participate in the feminist theology, not Christian theology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And when you think about you know, we've had conversations with young ladies high power careers, they'll do the sleeping around thing, whatever. And then you know, I was talking to one guy and he was telling me, and he's successful too, but unmarried, and he was like late thirties. I was like how come you're not? You know, how come you're not married? What's going on? And not a Christian guy. But he said, you know, just very simply. I appreciated the simplicity and the straightforwardness of his answer.
Speaker 1:But he's like I don't want a woman who's trying to compete with me to be the breadwinner in the home. And he said every woman I've dated is like trying to prove to me how they're a better man than me and I somehow find that not attractive. So it's in our day, it's kind of counterintuitive. But you're like, actually, actually the career is not what's making you attractive to the right kind of man. That's right, it's things like you know. I remember this uh, when I was dating my wife, I had known a lot of women in high school, obviously, and talked to a few, gone to prom, gone on a date, whatever, overwhelmingly even then, the thing I was hearing from women was I don't want kids, that's a hassle, blah, blah blah. I met my wife and I was like we went on a date and I said what do you want from life? She's like honestly, I want to be a mom and I want to take care of my household and I was like bingo, yeah, even then though.
Speaker 1:So that's like the OOs 2000s. That was hard to find. It was hard to find a woman who just would say unashamedly I want to be a mom, I want to raise children, I want to be in the home. So if you were going to give any message, I guess, to the ladies and I think there's a lot of them you know, you're 18 and you're like well, I'm not married yet. Should I go just pursue career full hilt? Is that the thing I should do to make myself more attractive to a man? How would you answer that?
Speaker 2:If you want to make yourself more attractive to a confident and capable Christian man, I would avoid college at all costs. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't work. It doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue education. Maybe it means you go to New St Andrews.
Speaker 2:I had a great interview with Dr Ben Merkel where he explained you know, some women should be educated, and that education then feeds into the home. It's not facilitating a career like the secular world does, and I agree. Now, first of all, I don't think all men should go to college, right. So it's not that I'm using some unequal weights and measures, like some people just aren't cut out for it. So what I say to a young woman is that I observe that everything in young women's life meaning including their fathers, their mothers, their friends, their culture, their churches tells them either explicitly or implicitly girl power, you got to get yours, and if you don't, you are betraying womankind. And women receive that message explicitly and implicitly, and especially like go on Instagram, and there are lots of Christian female content creators who are very happy in their homes and like oh, you're being oppressed, stop guiding women to be mothers. They're just being oppressed by men, and that creates a sense of bitterness. And so what's required of young women today, in particular kind of homes, is such a remarkable degree of courage, because you have to challenge the sisterhood, you have to get kicked out of the sisterhood. If you actually choose to love and honor men, you will see that the women in your life, unfortunately, will turn on you as you decide that you want to love and honor men.
Speaker 2:I've had a woman on my podcast. Her name is Alison Armstrong, secular, but she wrote a book called the Queen's Code about how women can communicate with men. Again, she's a secular writer, kind of in the new age, but she teaches women how to communicate with men. And what she talks about is, as women learn how to communicate to bring out the best in men, they develop an appreciation for men, and what happens to those women is their friends turn on them. You don't seem like yeah. And so women will have to develop such a remarkable courage to do this.
Speaker 2:If you're willing to do it, if you're truly willing to humble yourself before Christ, before the Lord, truly repent and truly put in the effort to become a capable, loving, enthusiastic wife and mother who recognizes that God's design for the family is glorious, if you are truly willing to do that. I believe God will reward that faithfulness, but it will require fearing God more than you fear men. And the way that I think women are configured psychologically perhaps with being very agreeable is that it's very easy for them to fear men, or in other words, the women in their lives, more than they fear God. And so for women who are looking at this choice right now, who do not come from faithful families, you will have to swim against the stream. It will be difficult, but finding your way into a faithful church right, a faithful confessional church will keep you safe. But it will require such determination to get across the far shore, and I honor all the women who are capable of doing that and all the men who can do it too.
Speaker 2:I had to do that for myself. I had to swim out of the new age, I had to swim out of the psychological world. I had to swim into a place and I had to swim through the manosphere, try and learn what I could along the way and be like, no, no, who I'm meant to be as a man is not what I've been told by all these communities I'm a part of. I grew up in a Jewish family. I'm not invited to my family Thanksgiving anymore since becoming Christian right, and so I can relate to this. But you know, god commands faithfulness, and it's a far better fate to serve. You know to serve, and I'd rather be a doorman in your house than than dwell in the tents of the wicked. The Psalms, I think, and so there's, there is something to that, and I find peace in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always think about it in terms of on the masculine side, you have the white Knights who always will come after you. On the masculine side, you have the white knights who always will come after you. But I think you're absolutely right, like for the women in my wife too. I mean, she gets attacked and it's like why she's obeying scripture, like why are you so mad at her? Or I even think sometimes like, if it's true, you just want every woman to follow her own heart and do her own thing. Why isn't motherhood one of the things that you're OK with her doing? Why isn't motherhood one of the things that you're okay with her doing? But I think just being biblical in your sexuality for men and women is going to require a tremendous degree of courage, particularly in this cultural moment. I also think the thing that helps, as you mentioned, like my wife, you know she's surrounded by other godly women who have the same aims, and so it's important for people to have those communities so they don't feel like aliens all the time. I think that it you know even us in the building at refuge. You go on Twitter and you realize kind of the world's against you, but you also are stiffened by the men around you who are like encouraging you and be like, no, that's right, it's like keep, keep sending it. Uh, you know that's biblical and we're going to keep teaching that. And so, to be encouraged by a group of people that you know have your best interest. But, yeah, I mean it definitely is like when you come out as like, not feminist, I mean, ladies on, moms will be, you know, obviously concerned. You know, I'm I'm concerned about the abuse of patriarch in your life or you know, whatever it is. Um, you have a whole host of people who are against you.
Speaker 1:Will I appreciate your time? Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. Before we close, I just want to get a feel for our listeners sake, um, the work that you're doing now. Where can people follow you? What sorts of projects do you have on the horizon? Obviously, I've really appreciated your work. It's been really helpful. Would encourage people to check out the interview with Stephen Wolfe. But what's on your horizon? What are you working on at the moment?
Speaker 2:So I have my podcast, the Renaissance of Men past three years with that. In fact, I meant to mention that our interview I think is my number two most downloaded episode of all time and the reel that we made from that interview I think is my number two most downloaded episode of all time and the reel that we made from that interview I think has passed like 1 million views or something like that.
Speaker 1:That was so great to see and it was like on a women's sin.
Speaker 2:Basically, people have just stopped arguing over that one, so that's a lot of fun. So to find the podcast, you can go to renofmencom slash links. I'm active on Twitter and Instagram and I also have one-on-one men's mentorships, and you can also find information about that at renofmencom slash links and we can walk through many of the subjects that I've talked about today.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, I appreciate it, brother. We'll include links for those in the show notes, but thank you so much once again for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, brother. Brother, I appreciate it.