Apologia Radio is Very Concerned and Your Won't Believe Why! - Part 1

Commentary on Apologia Radio’s Bronze Age Masculinity Segment

All right, everybody, welcome back to the channel. It is Tuesday, December 17th, Year of Our Lord 2024. And today we are going to be commenting on an episode of Apologia Radio. That's right, Apologia Radio.

I have a lot of fond memories about Apologia Radio. I used to listen to every episode back when I lived in New York. Sometimes I'd listen more than once. Sometimes I'd listen while riding a bicycle up through Coney Island and then over to Long Beach on Long Island and back again.

It was like a 35 mile ride from where I lived in Bay Ridge. And I remember exactly where I was. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But it's been a while since I've listened to an episode of Apologia Radio.

I listened to this one called Bronze Age Masculinity with Andrew Sandlin. I listened to it yesterday and I thought to myself, let's do an episode. So here we go. All right, all right, all right, all right.

Let's get right into it today. I'm gonna start right around minute 24. And if you're interested in hearing why Dr. Andrew Sandlin is very concerned and troubled about the rise of pagan masculinity, including things like being strong, lifting weights, being healthy, eating healthy, things like that.

He's got a whole presentation about why he's very concerned and troubled about these things. He calls it gay. Well, he doesn't really quite say it's gay. He uses the term homoerotic. So they're against the gays, but they're kind of gay as well.

And he goes into this whole big thing. I don't really care too much to talk about that. If you're interested, like I said, go ahead and watch the episode. I'm starting at minute 24. And the reason I'm doing that is because the conversation gets interesting at this point, because it becomes an actual conversation instead of just a presentation by Dr. Andrew Sandlin.

And so let's start. I don't know how far we'll get. Maybe we'll do multiple parts. We'll see how this goes. And yeah, I got some comments. Let's do it.

Existentialist philosopher, some of that can get technical, but that's kind of the basis of it.

This is what the perfect gift for a man looks like. So my wife got me this weird new... There you go.

A lot of commercials here.

I have a lot to say, so go ahead.

I want to be balanced in this here.

All right, let me stop here. Let me stop here. I don't know who this guy is, but I have to say that I was very impressed with his questions. He asked good questions. He asked questions that I would have asked if I was in the same situation.

So I've got to take my hats off to this guy. I think his name is Zach. Not familiar with him, but I'm taking my hat off because he's asked some very good questions. Pastor Luke Pearson, on the other hand, he gets a little triggered, which I find very funny, but we're going to get to that at some point.

Let's start with this guy's very good questions.

One of the things that you point out at the beginning is in contrast to the leftist ideology of the egalitarian feminist mindset, there seems to be with the introduction of this philosophy kind of a counter-resurgence on the other side.

So you have a reaction going the other way now. And I see what you're saying. Anyone, I think, who's been on social media, in particular the X platform, over the course of the last several months now sees this type of language being used, sees the types of emphases that you are pointing out, the emphasis on cultivation of physical strength, the emphasis on using political power to destroy the left.

Once we gain enough power, political power, we can use that to crush our enemies. There's an emphasis on waking up to all of the atrocities all around us, things that we didn't quite see before, but now we see now that we've been lied to our whole lives.

And so now we're throwing off those past restraints because the elites and so on don't want us to be free. They don't want us to take care of ourselves. They don't want us to get healthy. So I see from the verbiage that's been used on social media everything that you're talking about.

I think my first question is this, what indicates to you that these things have been imbibed by the reformed community, whether Baptist, Presbyterian, because I see men talking about wanting to get strong so that they can be here a long time to take care of their families, for example.

So that they can serve their churches and serve their people and they wanna get a baseline of established nutrition so that they can start eating better and being stronger. And they wanna be more involved in their communities and they wanna have a strong Christian presence and build things and do media and politics and all this thing.

That's what I see, which I don't think are inherently bad things. So what in your mind has convinced you that they are imbibing this kind of neo-pagan resurgence that is right wing, if you will?

Great question. I have to hand it to him. Again, double hats off. I'm gonna take my hat off to him. I think that he's asking the exact right question because he says, you know, these things that you're very concerned about, Dr. Sandlin, I see them too.

They sound like good things to me. And so what makes you think that this is being driven by pagans? Why are pagans driving the bus here? What makes you think that? And one of the things this guy says is he says, I've seen it in the last few months and that's fair.

I mean, obviously I can't deny what he's seen, but I've seen it since probably COVID, right? 2020 is when I started seeing an uptick in this kind of stuff. And I think that makes perfect sense. You know, COVID was a big opportunity for people to really become aware of a lot of things that have been happening for decades.

So people have noticed this before COVID, but COVID was really like a big mask off moment for a lot of people. And so he asks the exact right question. You know, these are good things. And I see Christians talking about them in a Christian way.

What makes you think that this is, why are the pagans driving the bus, Dr. Sandlin? Let's see what Dr. Sandlin has to say.

Yeah, good question.

It is a good question.

Suspicious Timing and the Rise of Natural Law

The first thing is the very suspicious timing. So Luke asked earlier, I've been in the ministry for 42 years and the idea of needing young men to be strong, godly young men to press the faith, the kingdom, the gospel, it's not a new thing.

But it is odd that only in the last few years, since I would say basically about 2015, 16, 17, 18, at least I have heard this, it's come about remarkably. So correlation is not causation, but when they're using the same language, that's sort of, to me, indicative that there is at least an indirect Bronze Age influence.

There's the other problem of

So his first answer is that the timing is suspicious, right? And in his mind, look, it doesn't equal causation, but essentially when someone says that and they're trying to push some kind of causation, they're like, yeah, yeah, I know technically correlation doesn't equal causation, but you know, it's just too suspicious.

I gotta be honest with you, that to me betrays a extreme lack of creative thinking, in my opinion, because again, I do think there is a correlation here, but I think the correlation has to do with the big mask-off moment in 2020, you know what I mean?

Lots of people, not just Christians, but lots of people realize, wow, you know, maybe the government doesn't have my best interests in mind. And how far does that go? I mean, it certainly seems like they want us to be fat and stupid and not engage in all this stuff.

Hmm, maybe I'll do the other thing, right? And everyone has their own reasons for doing the other thing, but you know, we don't wanna be like the humans in WALL-E, you know what I mean? We don't wanna be like the humans in WALL-E, so it would make sense that the reaction would be kind of simultaneous, even if they're for different reasons.

That's my idea, but you know, I can't prove that, but I can easily think of another reason besides Christians are being led around by the pagans to become healthy and strong, and this is somehow very concerning.

I don't know, I mean, it's just a very weird way to start the answer, but he's got more, so let's continue.

So, Zach, you mentioned rightly, guys, and this is nothing wrong with, I wanna be strong, I wanna be physically fit so that I can keep my family and advance the kingdom, live a long time.

Yeah.

I might add, though, that when Jesus was training his disciples, when Paul was speaking to Timothy and to Titus and others, though they would not certainly have disagreed with that, this did not seem to be a point of emphasis.

This certainly was not

Who cares? Ha ha ha ha ha, who cares?

I just have to ask, who freaking cares. If this was not a point of emphasis, especially as he says at the other corner of his mouth, they wouldn't have disagreed with this, but they never emphasized it.

Yeah, they never emphasized environmentalism either, but does that mean that environmentalism is automatically bad? Like, if you wanna have a Christian, not a stupid version, but a Christian version of taking care of the earth and conserving things, and listen, if we can come up with an electric vehicle that doesn't utilize all of our resources in a cost-effective way, let's go ahead and do that.

They never talked about that stuff. Does that mean that we should not.

Talk about that kind of stuff?

Look, I'm not one of these wacko green guys, but I think there is an element of conservationism that's probably very Christian, driven from Christian principles, and is a very good thing. Obviously, again, I'm not one of these green new deal wacko types, and I still drive cars that use gas, but at the end of the day, listen, if there was an actually affordable, cost-effective, good-for-everybody kind of thing where you didn't have to use gas, I would do it, and it was a good car, it was an effective car, I would do it.

I mean, why wouldn't you? I just don't understand. Jesus never really emphasized going to your local park and picking up the trash that's everywhere. Yeah, and if Christians decided, we're gonna start doing that a lot more, would that be somehow concerning just because the pagans are doing it too?

It's just so weird. It's just so weird.

Like, where does this come from? Well, they wouldn't disagree with it, but yeah, exactly, they wouldn't disagree with it because all of this is based on biblical teaching, biblical principles, and yeah, we don't need the letters of the book to explicitly explain everything to us to know that yeah, you know, as Christians, we should care about our health, our bodies.

There's so many reasons why. In fact, this man, Zach, laid some of those out, and Zach, if your name is not Zach, sorry, let me see if I can find out what his name is. Doesn't say, doesn't say. That's okay.

He laid out some of the reasons. You know, I wanna be around for my family, I wanna be strong to fight tyranny, I wanna advance the kingdom of God. These are all legitimate reasons, and so if people are emphasizing this, you've gotta wonder why would people be emphasizing this now and not in Jesus' time?

Look, Jesus' time was a different time. It was a different context. You know, people were worried about getting enough calories to survive in Jesus' time. In our time, we're all eating way too many calories, myself included.

Like I said, I said in a video the other day, I probably got like 25 pounds to lose, and that's going to happen at some point. I've just been delaying it for a little while for reasons, and so anyway, the point is, our context is very different than Jesus' context.

If in Jesus' time, everyone had way too many calories and everyone was so unhealthy, just statistically, you know, maybe he would have started talking about some of that stuff a little bit more. We, like, this is the thing, like, we can't pretend like the Bible's context is the context for all time.

The Bible speaks to everyone at all times, right? And there's principles that we can apply to every situation and every time. We all understand that. But it's not an all exhaustive manual for life. It just isn't that.

We can't try to make it that. We can't do the thing, well, we can only talk about things in proportionally to how much Jesus talks about them. No, our times might require emphasizing certain things more.

Emphasizing certain things more. Look, you know, the Bible, this is what liberals do. The Bible barely ever talks about hell, you know? Like, so therefore you should never talk about hell. Well, this is the problem, right?

Maybe the Bible doesn't talk about hell all that much, right, but in our context, most people don't believe in hell. And so it would make sense for people to address hell more.

It's the same thing with homo,.

The Bible only mentions homosexuality a few times.

This is the liberal,.

This is the way that they interpret things. The Bible only mentions homosexuality a few times. So why are you majoring on the minors? Well, the reason why is because everyone is celebrating homosexuality.

It is the area that's being attacked aggressively. And so therefore it's gonna make sense that we talk about homosexuality more in a greater proportion than what the Bible talks about it. This is not magic, this is not new, this is not a mystery.

I'm trying to be nice here.

But this is the way liberals approach the Bible. He didn't emphasize homosexuality, so why are we? We all get it, right? We're all reformed, we're all conservative. We get why we emphasize homosexuality more than what the Bible seems to.

And in the same way, health, fitness, you know, your body's a temple, all these things, they need to be addressed more because this is an area that seems to be an area of need today in the United States in 2024.

It wouldn't make quite as much sense to emphasize these things in Ethiopia today. Because in Ethiopia, that's closer to the context of the Bible times when people are struggling to get enough food to even survive.

So it wouldn't make sense to go to Ethiopia and preach on gluttony. It wouldn't make sense to do that as much. I mean, of course, it's still in the Bible, you still talk about it, but it wouldn't make sense to do that.

Not a point of emphasis in Jesus' teaching. It was not a point of emphasis in Paul or John.

And if he said that, and this is what kind of gets me a little bit like, what is going on, right? This is what makes me really kind of, it boggles my mind. It's like, if Dr. Sandlin were to say the same thing about homosexuality, everyone on Apologia's watch list would understand what the problem is, why this doesn't make sense, right?

But because it's about this issue, all of a sudden, oh yeah, you know, slay, you know, fire.

This is total fire.

Like, this is not fire. This is not fire.

Well, it's the bodily, bodily exercise does profit. Not being a couch potato, but this

Isn't that enough? Bodily exercise does profit. Act like men, be strong. The body is a temple. Isn't that enough to not countersignal Christian men who are telling people, you know, we actually got to care about our bodies a little bit more, right?

This is not about deadlifting, you know, 600 pounds, right? This is about being able to deadlift, you know, a decent amount, 300 pounds, right? If every Christian pastor is out there deadlifting 300 pounds and, you know, doing their squats and able to, you know, run a mile and stuff like that, like basic stuff, right?

Basic stuff.

We wouldn't have an issue here, right? But the thing is, it's the exact opposite. It's that many Christian people have not even the beginnings of health and fitness and things like that. That's why it's being talked about.

That's why it's being talked about.

But profits a little bit. Godliness is the great gain. So it seems to me that they're

Godliness is the great gain. That's right, but we're not Gnostic. Godliness applies to every area of life. We all get this.

It's highly suspicious that this would have come around at the same time, particularly when a lot of the same language is used.

It's only suspicious when you want to make it suspicious, right? Again, it's really, this is one of these things that's like, if you're looking for it to be a problem, you can try to draw suspicions and cachet and all this stuff.

But if you're not approaching it, looking for a problem, right? You might say, well, there's a correlation here. I wonder what that's about. And you come up to other conclusions, right? Maybe people have had enough of all this promotion of fatness as healthy.

You know what I mean? Like, cause that's been happening, right? You know, everyone has a different body type. You can be fat and healthy, you know, and putting the Calvin Klein models, which they shouldn't exist anyway, but putting the fat ones and saying, oh, this is something to be celebrated.

You know, Lizzo and all this stuff. Like, I don't know, maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe that has something to do with it. Cause as we understand, you know, people have a knowledge of the law of God even without acknowledging God's law, right?

They know just, it's been written on their hearts, right? And so they see people promoting Lizzo as a standard of beauty. And even if they're not Christian, they're like, no. That's actually, no. No, that's not something that should be promoted.

And so maybe they're just kind of all sick of it. And they went a little bit too far. And now they're all together at the same time, Christian and non-Christian saying, you know what? Let's fight this.

Let's actually do the opposite. I mean, if you're not looking for a problem, it's not a problem. But if you're looking for a problem, oh yeah, it's a very suspicious correlation there. It doesn't make any sense.

So to me, it's, and if you've read the book, I think you will, and again, I'm not recommending anybody read the book, but if you do, you'll say, my, my. And then another reason is that.

If you read the book, just trust me on this one.

Don't read it.

But if you do, you'll say, my, my. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna be saying, my, my.

The utter mockery. I've just been stunned by the utter mockery of this.

Boomer, boomer, this kind of derogatory speaking of elders and so on and so forth.

That's the nicest one they've used, nicest term.

Right.

Ah, this commercial.

This is Mosey.

They're killing me.

A simple, beautiful tea infuser designed.

It is, it is. And I saw, I was just, I guess not surprised, but some of you guys saw just a vicious and vile caricature of physical image, caricature of Dr. White and Douglas Wilson and some others that it's just beneath what any Christian would do.

Now here's the thing, guys, I can understand. And by the way, this Bronze Age mindset has really influenced a lot of non-believing or non-Christian conservatives. So certainly I'm not saying that there is a massive number of young Christian guys and a small number of others.

No, the number of non-Christians who follow this, I'm sure is much greater than the Christians. I guess I could understand it because, you know, modern pagans will act like pagans, won't they? Doesn't justify it.

It's still evil. It's still sin. But when you have sort of this Christian veneer over this stuff or a synthesis trying to join these two things.

That's what I was gonna ask about.

And by the way, you may have noticed how this coincides very well with the revival of natural law.

I was just gonna ask you about that, yep.

You're smart, you're smart. Genius loves company, Zach.

That's where I was going is there seems to be a lot of emphasis on the natural law. And, you know, obviously they wouldn't come right out and say many people trumpeting this. I mean, let's just be real.

You know, a lot of quotations by Aristotle are flying around.

You know, let me be real as well. I, you know, I've heard a lot about natural law. And, you know, as you know, I consider myself a theonomist. Although I'm sure a lot of theonomists wouldn't want to claim me.

That's fine. But I'll never forget this for my whole life. When I was really like in the beginning stages of theonomy, I, you know, I was kind of suspicious of natural law myself. And I watched a video series from, oh man, what's his name?

Brian Schwartley. Brian Schwartley. He's a minister in one of these micro-Presbyterian denominations, stuff like that. And he's got really interesting content. And some of it I don't agree with, some of it I do.

But it's always like just chock full of information and he just goes really deep. Very interesting character. In any case, Brian Schwartley. I remember he was critiquing theonomy and he's very sympathetic to a lot of theonomy, right?

But he was critiquing in particular Christian reconstructionism, which is where I kind of cut my teeth on theonomy. And he has this whole series on natural law that just kind of blew my mind away. And in this series, he talks about the, just the absolute huge mountain.

It's a huge, it's like Mount Everest of reform thinkers on natural law and how natural law was actually legitimate and real and all this kind of stuff. Now, a lot of people try to abuse natural law to say all kinds of weird stuff that contradicts revealed law and stuff like that.

But that's not what he was talking about. He was talking about actual natural law because God created the world, you know what I mean? God is actually the creator. And he wrote into the code of the world all kinds of things that people just know, that people just know.

And so it's not the case that we need a law word from God about how it's not good for pastors to be obese or anyone really to be obese. Like we don't need a specific word from revelation to know that that's not good, right?

Now we do have some of that stuff, which boggles my mind with this kind of stuff, but we don't need it because we know from nature that that is not acceptable. That's not good. That's not ideal. That's not something that anyone should desire.

So natural law, I understand the suspicion of natural law because so many people abuse it. I get it. I understand. I have sympathy. I'm not gonna throw shade at people that have suspicion, right? But natural law is actually a real thing and God really does have it and it's real and we should embrace it.

And I'll never forget that. I mean, it didn't turn me off from theonomy, you know, exactly, but it did help me understand the reformed tradition just a little bit more. And I think that if we embrace the reformed tradition a little bit better, we wouldn't be instantly kind of suspicious at any talk of natural law.

Now, of course, there are still times when you should dismiss it, but whatever.

And Greek thinkers. So where does this come from and why is this being emphasized right now, this emphasis on natural law?

Now, you get a cue from these guys by the fact that when I push back, like I did a few minutes ago, Zach, and say, what about Jesus, Paul? And they'll say, well, they did say bodily exercise prophets and we're not Gnostics and they're right about that.

The body is important, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we all agree on that. But this is not a major emphasis of the Bible. It's not that the Bible is unconcerned about the body and physical things.

That's a false Gnostic.

We're not Gnostics.

We're not Gnostics. But the Bible also doesn't teach that there should be this constant emphasis on being in shape. A consistent emphasis on if you're too fat, you can't be in the ministry or something.

Or we won't listen to you.

Or we won't listen to you because you're overweight. I think we need to make, by the way, a distinction there. And I think Dr. White

Look, this is just how it is, man. I did a video on this the other day, I think on X, where it's like, look, look, you might not like it that guys say, you know, you're preaching to me on discipline and how to have discipline, and I can see that you have none.

You know what I mean? You're obese. You know, you might not like the fact that people aren't gonna really take you that seriously, but that is just a fact. And if you're gonna be all things to all people, I would suggest that, you know, if you're gonna preach on discipline, then demonstrate it.

You know what I mean? Demonstrate the discipline in every area of your life. That would be the way to go. Now, you could wring your hands.

And say it ought not be that way.

I'm sorry, but it just is that way, right? I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying that I automatically do that. When I see an obese pastor preach on discipline, I disregard what he says.

I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that's just how the world is. Because when you have an apparent lack of discipline and you're trying to teach on discipline, people are gonna have an issue with that.

People aren't going to take you quite as much, as seriously as you'd like them to. And that is just a fact. And you need to own that, accept it, and make the changes that are necessary. Demonstrate the discipline.

Demonstrate what I need to do. It's hard for a lot of people to believe that you can be knowledgeable on disciplining your body according to sexual sins, if you yourself have demonstrated no discipline with what you put in your mouth.

That's just how it is. I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't do you any good to wring your hands and complain about it. That's just how it is. Again, I'm not saying that when you're fat, automatically everything you say is disregarded.

It's just not the case. But if you're gonna be convincing, you gotta be a product of the product. You know what I'm trying to say?

One of his statements, dividing line, he did a great job on this. Gluttony is a sin and a serious sin that must be dealt with. Obesity is not a sin. Show me in the Bible where obesity, I know of men and Dr. White pointed this out because of some heart problems.

He has to be very careful. He can't do the exercise. He's a little heavier now than he was before. He can't ride the bike as much as he used to before. Well, there are physical problems and there are genetic problems that cause some people to weigh more than others.

Can that be an excuse for people being overweight? And certainly for, of course it can be, but be very careful. I think you and I know, in fact, I'm thinking of some right now. I know of some gluttons that are real thin.

It's just the way their body is. So there's no basis in the Bible on this. You look at the qualifications, let's look at Titus and Timothy for the qualifications. Is there a weight qualification?

Okay, so let me just stop there for a minute. He's gonna go into some other kind of just nonsense. Honestly, the only, I'm being nice. And the nicest thing he can say is that it's nonsense. He says, gluttony is a sin, but being obese is not a sin.

Obesity is not a sin. Okay, and then he talks about all these exceptions, right? And I'm not a doctor. I have no idea, right? Whatever. It sounds suspicious to me, but whatever. We can't, there's a great meme out there where a guy says, this is every conversation with a woman.

And he says, women on average are five foot four. And the woman says, well, but I'm five foot eight. He says, that's every conversation with a woman. And then there's a woman that responds to him. It might be a joke, but it's just too funny.

The woman says, well, that's not true because I'm a woman and I don't do this. Like we can't, this is another problem that I think we're having right now that is just rampant, right? We can't start the conversation about what's going on with all of the little exceptions, right?

Is it true that some, let's just pretend that it is true because I don't know if this is true or not, right? That there are some medical conditions that cause you to be obese that has nothing to do with the calories that you consume, right?

Let's just go with that for a second, right? I'm not so sure that that's really true, but I'm not gonna argue that point, right? Let's just say there's some medical conditions that basically make you obese when you don't consume more calories than you put out, right, let's just say.

What is the value of starting the conversation that way? Because the majority of people in America that are obese are obese because they stuff their face with more food than they use in energy throughout their day.

That is the facts. That is true. If you look at an obese person, the chances are that they consume way too much food for their activity levels. So why would we make the exceptions to the rule dictate what the rule is?

No, obesity is a sin because obesity is caused by feeding yourself way too much food. Okay, that's the rule. And of course there are exceptions to this rule, but that's the rule. Why argue this way? Why argue by starting with the exceptions when you make the rule?

All Cretans are liars, lazy gluttons, all this stuff.

Yeah, but I know a Cretan. That's, you know,.

He's very truthful and he's not lazy. Like it doesn't make any sense. It makes no sense to argue this way.

Why do it? Why do it?

This is the problem that we're having because guys like Dr. Andrew Sandlin, who I don't know that much about, but I've read a number of his quotes because he used to be quoted often in a page that quoted also Rush Dooney.

And I used to love that page because I love Rush Dooney, right? I know he's able to think through things much better than this.

Why?

Why is this happening? It's very interesting. And why is Apologia Radio going along with it? That's the other question.

No. So I'm not saying this is unimportant, but this is not a central feature of the faith.

He just said that one of the qualifications for elder is not that you're not obese. And so he's not saying it's not important. It's just not central to the faith. This is not true. This is not true. One of the qualifications for elder is self-control.

And that's all it says, self-control. Again, the Bible is not an exhaustive list. So we shouldn't go to the Bible and expect every area in a person's life where they could have self-control that it spells it out for us.

It doesn't have to. We don't interpret the Bible this way. We understand that when it says self-control, discipline is what it says. Let's look up what it... I was right. It does say self-controlled.

I should have listened to my first instinct. So why would self-control not apply to what you feed yourself? Why wouldn't it? And look, I'm not saying everybody has to have the perfect diet, right? The perfect human diet.

Obviously, that's not what I'm saying. If you're a pastor and you wanna have an Oreo, have an Oreo. Just don't eat the whole sleeve of Oreos.

How about that?

I mean, it just boggles the mind that you could look at a typical obese person. Again, I'm granting that there are exceptions to this rule, even though I'm not sure that there are. But let's just say that there are exceptions to this rule.

There's people that have the genetics that just make them obese no matter what they eat. Even granting the exceptions to the rule, when you look at a typical pastor or a typical elder who is obese, how in any way could you say they're self-controlled?

That's a model of self-control.

How could you do it?

I just don't get it. Look, we're all sinners.

We get it.

We sin in many ways. We get that. Nobody's looking for perfection. But to not even recognize a problem, to not even be attempting to do anything about it, to not even granting the fact that, yeah, this is a problem for me.

I gotta do something about this. I need help. It boggles the mind. It really boggles the mind. How could he say that?

Well, if I can just, I don't want to interrupt your thought, but what is the root?

You're not a child. Again! You're a man, so stop wearing so many layers to go outside and get the bare.

Issue there of gluttony. It's self-control.

That's what I was just thinking.

Right, so you look at the qualification for elders and deacons to be self-controlled, and that's the issue. And that's why, like you just said, a skinny person can be a glutton because they have lack of self-control.