Should Men Lift Weight and Play with Guns?
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Many Christians with significant platforms are, for one reason or another, actively discourage men from weight training and using firearms. They claim that doing these activities does not make you masculine and lead towards boasting in yourself rather than God. In this episode Harrison and Pastor Tim explain why exercise and using firearms are in fact valuable past times that do make men more masculine and do not inherently keep you from boasting in God.
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- They'll basically, they'll just come after you and say like, oh, you must hate Charles Spurgeon then.
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- And it's like, well, no, but I don't think Charles Spurgeon was, you know, perfect in every way and blameless in every way either.
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- I certainly appreciate a lot of the things that he's written and a lot of the things that he said and taught, but I don't agree with him in every single thing.
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- And I don't think he was perfect. I don't think he was without sin. And so I just don't understand why we can't, you know, why we can't say these normal things that the
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- Bible also says. And then just because of, you know, some theologians, some pastor who's extremely accomplished and has done a lot of good in the name of the
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- Lord, you know, but had some weak areas, you know, why all of a sudden, like, we are just not allowed to appreciate them in any way.
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- Morning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished
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- Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies. Viewer discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.
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- The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone. Hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.
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- The issue is that humanity is in sin and the wrath of almighty
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- God is hanging over our head. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.
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- God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the father where he sits now to make intercession for us.
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- Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.
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- Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.
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- We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age old question, should men lift weights and play with guns?
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- Now, Tim, as we kick this episode off, what Bible verse do you have for us? I know, I know you found one about AR 15, so go ahead and read us that Bible verse specifically.
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- Yeah, I kind of did. Psalm 1831, for who is
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- God but the Lord and who is a rock except our God? The God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless.
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- He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the height. He trains my hands for war so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
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- There you go. All right, so it was a bow of bronze, though, not an AR 15, so I feel like that, you know, unless you find the
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- AR 15 verse, you know, I just don't know how we can defend shooting AR 15s.
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- Yeah, you're right, I can see the point. It's not there. Oh, no, obviously that's ridiculous if we're expecting the
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- Bible to specifically mention every single thing that, you know, directly.
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- He had a ranged weapon, man. It's a ranged weapon. Yeah, he had a ranged weapon, you know. I mean, the verse doesn't say, but, you know, he probably had an extended mag on his bow and for sure, at least a red dot on there.
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- I mean, don't you think? I mean, definitely, man. Probably a flaming arrow enchantment.
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- A flaming arrow. I mean, it could have been actually lit on fire. That's not impossible, you know, and that definitely would have been,
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- I mean, or later on in the Bible, it talks about, you know, the flaming arrows and fiery darts, so definitely not, definitely not, you know.
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- Outside the realm of possibility. Yeah, definitely not outside the realm of possibility, but no, no, okay, so we're talking about this topic because it really seems to be something that,
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- I don't know, Tim, it just kind of feels like it constantly, this idea constantly comes back up all of the time, especially in Christian, you know, circles online where you have people who come along and say, hey, men need to exercise, right?
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- You know, basically, men need to do manly things, right? Stereotypically manly things.
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- The stereotypically manly things, and then you have other Christians come along, you know, essentially saying, hey, we shouldn't,
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- Christian men shouldn't be people who boast in our strength. We should boast in our weakness and, you know, boast in God who is our strength, which isn't necessarily like a wrong thing, right?
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- But you have these two sides constantly butting heads, and it's always really weird to me that this is such a controversy all of the time because,
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- I mean, it just seems like a normal thing to just say, hey, guys should go to the gym. Like, we live in a world that is increasingly sedentary, increasingly hooked on entertainment and all of these things, and yet we are weirdly against oftentimes, you know, doing things that would take care of our body, doing things that are stereotypically manly.
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- And I just, I don't know that I understand people being so opposed to this all the time.
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- So I need you to help me, Tim. I need you to explain all of this to me. You need me to help you understand, like, stupid?
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- I get, I was trying to word it a little softer than that, but if that's what it is, then that's what it is.
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- So, yes. It's one of those things that, yeah,
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- I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense objectively, but then there's definitely a logic to it that does make a whole lot of sense.
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- What I mean is to say that this problem, you know, the guy shouldn't be strong problem is the same as the lady shouldn't be beautiful problem.
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- And both of these things are, you know, they're pushing in two different, in the same direction, essentially.
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- So what you have is you have a remarkable push within the secular world right now for androgyny in general.
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- So there's a push to basically blur all distinctions between male and female, such that they're basically just interchangeable parts.
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- So part of what's happening is that, that's like, that's the move that Satan is running as it relates to the egalitarian framework.
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- So Christians are being taught that men and women are fundamentally the same, essentially. And then whatever masculinity is, and whatever femininity is as it relates to these concepts, like these concepts basically reduce to being, you know, biblical masculinity as the sage people will say, you know, these wise people.
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- They'll basically define it as generic Christian faithfulness. And the same thing is true of femininity.
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- So then it's being defined as generic Christian faithfulness. So part of that is related to the egalitarian playbook, meaning we're basically the same.
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- So there's nothing different about us. So part of it's that, and then part of it is also related to the sensibilities of women, which is strange because you're talking about a man topic, but then you do have some of the sensibilities of women that are kicking in at this point.
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- Meaning like there was a generation of men who, you know, they felt a little strange.
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- They felt a little weird. They didn't like playing football like the other boys like playing football. And, you know, they weren't necessarily attracted to all the stereotypically masculine things.
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- And so then what's happening is as culture is pushing androgyny as hard as you can possibly push it, then you have a lot of mama bear impulses to basically protect these, you know, beta male kind of guys that never fit into the right kind of categories.
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- And I saw a lot of that when I was at seminary where, you know, I was just growing up in the jock world and then
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- I'm going to seminary and I'm surrounded by a bunch of guys who, I mean, they literally, they could throw like a ball, you know?
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- Like - They literally, hang on. They literally couldn't throw a ball. They couldn't, man.
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- I mean, without embarrassing themselves, you know? So there's a lot of guys like that where it's just like, oh, I'm in a different circle here, you know?
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- I don't know what to make of this. But then, you know, what there is is there's this mama bear kind of push to protect these kind of guys.
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- And then, you know, there's a whole, we'll get in touch with their feminine side stuff related to the androgyny push and everything else.
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- But what's happened is that we've basically just, a lot of Christians who should know better, they then come along and they don't realize where they're at in the story, okay?
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- So they don't understand their place in the larger story that is history and what the moves are being made at this point.
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- And there's a lot of Bible verses that you can latch on to that are not being balanced by other
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- Bible verses that will keep you from jumping to the wrong conclusion. So there's a lot of Bible verses that can come along and basically say, hey, you know, don't boast in horses and chariots.
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- You know, our boast is in the Lord. He is our strength. Like God is a victorious warrior for us.
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- He will fight our battles and everything else. So you have all these verses and these concepts that are basically being used in such a way to advance the satanic agenda, okay?
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- So you have that satanic agenda, which is basically just to make men as weak as they possibly can, as girly as they possibly can be, as, you know, unmasculine as they possibly can be.
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- In general, you have that push and then you have a lot of thoughtless Christians coming along and basically trying to protect the, you know, the less manly men out there, right?
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- And facilitate this agenda. And what you end up having is they latch on to like these verses that are supposed to, what they're supposed to do is they're supposed to reorient a man's natural impulses into something that is even better.
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- But then the passages aren't meant to replace the normal, natural.
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- What they're meant to do is say, hey, you know, you're going to want to be strong because you're a man, right?
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- So a lot of these passages, they basically reduce to that. You're going to be, you're going to be, it's right and natural and normal for you to want to be strong and to trust in your strength as a man because you're going to need that strength to basically accomplish every single role that God has given you to accomplish.
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- But, you know, ultimately you can't trust in that. That's what you're going to naturally be tempted to do.
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- You can't trust in that. You're going to have to trust in the Lord. But then what those verses that are encouraging you to trust in the
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- Lord are not foreseeing, they're not speaking to, right? I'm not saying that the Bible doesn't foresee this because there's other passages which are corrective.
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- But what they're not trying to do in those moments are to say it's fundamentally wrong to pursue strength at all, okay?
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- Pete Right, yeah. So the verse says, you know, don't boast in horses and chariots. It doesn't say don't have horses and chariots, right?
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- Jared Right. And that's like the simple move. That's just a simple observation that it's just baffling that it's so complicated for people to make, right?
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- And so, I mean, you can hear people saying these kinds of things as it relates to both directions.
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- I mean, I think even James White got caught up in this a little bit and maybe he was speaking a little bit hyperbolically, but to where he was saying, you know, men shouldn't be pursuing strength and then women shouldn't be pursuing beauty is what he said.
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- And then he walked it back and basically said, like, ultimately they shouldn't be pursuing that as like their chief end.
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- That wasn't really necessarily what he said at first, but then he was baffled that all the pushback he got from it, right?
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- Pete Yeah. Jared But then the issue is like, you have to take, what he was saying is men don't need to pursue strength, they're strong and women don't need to pursue beauty because they're beautiful.
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- It's like, but, you know, you're not looking at the world that you actually live in right now or that's filled with all the
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- Wally people. And like - Pete My brother in Christ, Lizzo is not beautiful.
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- Jared Lizzo's not beautiful. So you're not living in that world that we're living in right now where like women are pursuing ugliness with everything that they have to make themselves as undesirable as they possibly can.
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- And men are pursuing weakness with every fiber of their being. You're not like, that's the world that we're living in right now.
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- And the corrective to that is not to say, hey, you're fine the way you are, just trust in the
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- Lord. The issue is like, we've gone the exact opposite way and we've chucked all the necessity for us to be what we were made to be and accomplish the roles we were designed to accomplish.
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- And then we turned it into just spiritual pious sounding platitudes at that point. It's like, hey, we're missing the distinctiveness of men and male and female here by going to war against them in the way that we're doing.
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- And this really isn't, this is the kind of thing that it only makes sense at our place in history, okay?
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- So just take a step back. If Hamas, the friendly neighborhood Hamas terrorist want to immigrate to your neighborhood.
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- And they're a little bit ticked off by this. There's a rally war thing, right? And they declare that it's natural, it's a national beheading day or whatever, right?
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- So some of the stuff that's happening in Europe right now, I mean, if that's living next door to you, then what you're gonna realize very quickly is like, do you wanna be next to these guys like Nathaniel Jolly and Gabe Hughes and all them?
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- Do you wanna be on their side? Like, do you want them to be your neighbors or do you want the guys they're critiquing with their
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- AR -15s and like who are lifting weights? Do you want them to be their neighbor on national beheading day?
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- Like, so like the issue is like we're living in a time right now where there's the expectations are that the police officers are gonna be a man for us, right?
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- Like that's the expectation. So like, you don't have to be a man. Like if you're a man, you don't have to be a man and protect your family or your neighbors because it's the police's job to be the man for you, right?
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- Right, yeah. Like, so in that kind of world - That's what my taxes pay for, man. My taxes pay for me to not have to be a man and let the police be the man for me.
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- Now, the problem with that is, you know, I don't know if you, there was recently that video online that was circulating with the,
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- I think he was like a left -wing journalist or whatever who got stabbed. Yeah, yeah,
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- I saw that. Now, I don't know that, like I didn't see the video of it actually happening, but I saw basically the preliminary stuff that was happening on Twitter or whatever.
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- But I mean, he just kinda, he was there, you know, he's just your standard American, you know, no backbone, no spine, no preparation, no training, no weightlifting, like never been in a fight before in his life, right?
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- So never, like probably didn't wrestle with his brothers growing up or anything like that, probably raised without any of all that.
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- And he's just, you know, and I'm making assumptions there, but you could just look at the guy and see that he didn't know how to carry himself.
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- Yeah. And didn't know how to protect himself. I mean, if you're a person who knows anything about physical combat, you could see people who know how to carry themselves and don't.
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- And it's not hard to tell the difference between just some basis of intangible mannerisms, how they carry themselves and everything else.
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- But this is a guy who just, he didn't know what to do, right? And he gets just stabbed to death in the middle of the street because he didn't know what to do.
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- Now, that's not most of the people who are making these comments. That's not their world.
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- They're living in a nice, safe, middle -class neighborhood that's free from all those kinds of concerns.
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- But then as I'm saying, like if we get overrun by the Hamas, you know, friendly immigrants, what are they going to do at that point?
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- Then we're not going to be saying, like no one's going to be saying at that point, oh, you better not lift weights or have your gun, you know, because that would be carnal, you know, and you're just way too obsessed with all these things.
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- And like, you know, you're making a caricature of manliness and that has nothing to do with biblical masculinity whatsoever.
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- Like the issue is you can only say that in a nice, safe, middle -class neighborhood with the cops, when the cops have a job to be the man that you're supposed to be.
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- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that makes total sense. Like, I mean, imagine living, you know, imagine living in some rural place, you know, thousands of years before, oh, thousands of years ago,
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- I mean, and it's like the police aren't coming. You don't have a cell phone, you know, to dial 911 when you have the bandits coming by to, you know, rob you of your livestock and what, and probably even worse things, you know, so it's like, what do you do in that situation?
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- Well, it seemed pretty obvious what you do. I mean, I mean, you prepare yourself as much as you can.
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- Now, I don't think that means that you must be able to stop every single instance of evil that might come your way, right?
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- But you at least need to be reasonably prepared, right? And it feels like, it feels like some of these people who are pushing back on the things like weightlifting, on the things like using, you know, so we, by the way,
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- I'll mention this, we framed the question as, you know, should men lift weights and play with guns? You know, obviously guns aren't necessarily something that you want to play with, right?
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- But then using guns regularly, like, I mean, that seems like a pretty reasonable thing, you know, for men to do, especially as the protectors of the home.
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- And as I, as I read pushback from some of these, from some of these guys who do, who have, you know, significant followings,
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- I mean, they have significant platforms and they're essentially encouraging people not to pursue these things, you know, they feel, they, whenever I'm reading their stuff, it feels like one, just one step up from John Piper's whole, you know,
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- I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna stop the guy who's raping my wife. You get, do you get what
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- I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, I think what you have is you have individuals who formerly wouldn't be pacifists on paper, but then when it comes right down to it, they don't have any kind of category for, or they have very little category for, that's just,
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- I mean, it's not their world to prepare for such things because they're living in a time of safety and ease and plenty and prosperity.
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- I mean, we're living in one of the most safe times, prosperous times that you can imagine. So for most people who are making these comments that like their world is not, they're not in Australia or whatever, or wherever it is, where they're being raided by the
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- Africans. I can't remember where that is. Oh, I haven't even heard of that. I don't know.
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- It wouldn't be Australia, but I can't remember where it was at that point where they're, we're just living in a nice, safe world right now.
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- And I think it is one step away from the Piper stuff, but then on paper, they don't actually believe it, but they just don't have any necessity or need for that because they've just allowed the police to be their dad basically, the man that they should be, right?
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- So they're more than happy for the police to be that. But it's just one of those things where you read a passage like I read in Psalm 18, for who is
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- God but the Lord, who is a rock except our God, the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless.
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- So, I mean, you just think about something like that. He equipped me with strength. What does that mean? Like I didn't pursue strength at all whatsoever because that would have been carnal and worldly and my boss is the
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- Lord. I just woke up one day and I was Hercules. That's obviously what it meant. Now people, they don't think, they don't understand this about David that you're trained to think of David as just the brave little boy run to the litter or whatever else.
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- But by that time in David's life, he had killed a lion. He had killed a bear at that point.
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- Yeah, yeah. Like, and you know - Two things I've never done. So obvious, like the idea, you know, in most people's mind was that, you know,
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- David just had a sling and, you know, he never knew how to swing a sword in his life or whatever. And, you know, he just, he was just this little kid and God supernaturally caused the rock to go at, you know, 100 times the speed or something like that and get a headshot or something as if he hadn't trained it.
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- I mean, David at that point killed a lion, he killed a bear, you know? And not just, you know, he struck him, like David was really strong, okay?
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- Right. So the God who equipped me with strength, David trained to be equipped with strength, right? He made my feet like the feet of a deer and set me secure on the height.
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- He trains my hand for war. What do you mean God trains your hand for war? He just, is this like the matrix or something?
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- You sat down in your chair and you're uploaded with like kung fu information or something like that?
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- No, but think about it. Like he trains my hand, he equipped me with strength. He trained my hand, he trains my hand for war so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
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- Like what you have is David, like this is your weightlifting, train your gun passage.
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- Like this is that. Now the whole idea is that God, David's recognizing that God was in that training, right?
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- Pete Right. Jared God gave him the life, the health, the strength, the training, the knowledge, the natural ability, everything.
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- Like, and none of it matters if David goes into battle without God on his side, right? Pete Right.
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- Jared But with God on his side, but what this isn't is some kind of harsh disjunction between him doing anything and making any effort and then on the one hand, like, and that just be like, there's not some disjunct between that and trusting the
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- Lord. It's all in the same package, right? So you train David, David trained himself in running.
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- He trained himself in war, right? He made him, he made himself strong. He practiced and then he gave what he did to the
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- Lord and God blessed it and he was in it and he used it. And so the idea though is if the
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- Hamas terrorist moved next door, do you want the guy who trained his hands for war, learn how to use an
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- AR -15 of bronze? Pete Or at least a bow of bronze, like bare minimum, you know, like right, the bar is at least, you know, bow of bronze.
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- So, but like in that - Pete With the red dot and the extended mag. Jared So, just take a step back, okay? What does God, God made a glory of a young man is their strength, okay?
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- Glory of a young man is their strength. God made men strong. He tells men repeatedly in the
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- Bible be strong and courageous and like God has girded men with strength and then he's told them to pursue it, right?
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- Pete Right. Jared In order to do the jobs that he's called them to do, so the ground would be cursed because of man's sin.
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- And so that meant that man would, like the ground would yield its fruit by the sweat of man's brow. That's going to require strength to do that in a way that a man has natural workhorse in a way that a woman isn't, okay?
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- Like a woman isn't made to do the same hard, long physical labor as a man. So, God's given men strength to cultivate the ground, to subdue the earth, to protect people.
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- So, then when you're talking about what is masculinity, masculinity is fulfilling the roles that God has given you to do for a man, which involve protection and providing a significant feature of that, which requires actual strength, right?
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- So, now we're living in a world right now where you don't necessarily, like you can provide a paycheck or whatever for people by sitting at your desk all day long and not moving.
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- But then, yeah, you're soft and you're fat and you're lazy and you're easy plunder, man.
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- You know, so whenever these terrorists come over, you're going to be the guy who's just like getting stabbed and dead, you know?
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- Because you didn't expect that that would ever happen because you're living in more of a civilized world so the issue is like the nature of masculinity hasn't changed.
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- What's changed is we're living in a safe society right now that's fairly civilized, but that could change rapidly.
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- And I think what's happening is I think the younger generation that's coming along, they say, hey, you know, men aren't made to be fat and lazy and uncoordinated, right?
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- And unprepared, like there's real dangers out there and you have men who say, hey, it's my job to protect people, right?
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- Protect people and you know what? I don't want all these preventable diseases that come from just being a marshmallow person or something like that, right?
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- And so God's made me to be strong. I should pursue strength and that will help me in a lot of different areas and I can be ready to help people when there's danger and everything else.
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- And I mean, that's just, the issue is all those things are tied to man's roles and what's happened is we've kind of chucked all of it, like the idea that men have roles.
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- We've chucked it all and now we're basically all just generic human beings doing our nice, easy jobs at an office and everything else.
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- And then what you have is you have just a bunch of morbidly obese pastors online who are the first to come along and say, hey, you don't need their stupid guns and you don't need to lift your weights.
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- Ha ha ha, focus on the real stuff that will matter for all eternity. And it's just like, you know what?
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- You know what? When the terrorists come over to behead you, you're going to be the first to go, right?
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- So you're going to be the first to go. And not only that, it won't be that you're, like this is a, you're being martyred for your faith kind of moment.
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- This would just be, man, you were just fat and lazy and easy pickings. Ha ha ha, to all that.
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- You were unprepared, right? You were unprepared for all the, like the real evil that's out there that we've been sheltered from.
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- And so like all that's going to happen, I mean, all that would need to happen is, like we're only a few steps, like we're one
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- EMP blast away from anarchy here, you know? And then in that, in those days, then you're going to, you're going to wish you tried a little harder because you have a lot to make, a lot of ground to make up, you know, when you're fighting over food and everything else.
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- And so that's not to say that, you know, okay, well, when you're living in a time of, ease and plenty and prosperity and everything else that there's no necessity for any of these things.
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- And it's only when you're in extreme situations, but I'm just using the extreme situations to say, hey, there's something about the nature of manhood that we don't realize at the current moment based on where we're at.
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- But that doesn't mean that masculinity has ever changed. And so then when you have a bunch of guys who are being as unmanly as possible and calling it spiritual, that can only happen when someone else is going to be the man for them, okay?
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- And that, again, so that's the only time it can happen, but then it, you know, there's, it doesn't take a whole lot to happen in a society to change things dramatically where you realize that, oh, you know, maybe there's a, maybe
- 29:25
- I can't rely on the government, you know, now that they're evil and they're had their guns pointed at me, maybe
- 29:31
- I need to figure out what I'm doing really quick and you're just going to be way behind at that point. But whatever you do, I mean, I think you can, you can only take these kinds of postures when you've really lost track with the basic, you know, roles and responsibilities of being a man and you develop this kind of Gnostic, you know, despising of the body kind of thing at that point.
- 29:54
- But I mean, it really is bizarre for sure. So is it possible to take the, you know, like pursuing, pursuing physical strength, for example, and take that and make it something that is actually inappropriate.
- 30:14
- And if that is possible, what does that look like and how do you avoid it? You're saying, is it possible to make it into something inappropriate?
- 30:23
- Yeah, like, is it possible to take weight training, for example, or, you know, training with your firearms and make that, which you're saying like, hey, that is a normal thing for, that a man should be doing to prepare in general.
- 30:42
- Take that and make it a bad thing. Jared Oh, sure. Yeah. And I think that's the predominant temptation that the
- 30:51
- New Testament is addressing and the Old Testament is addressing in general, is addressing that temptation.
- 30:57
- So I think that people who are noticing it are not like conjuring it out of thin air as if it's not a thing.
- 31:03
- But then like, it's the same thing with the beauty discussion. So, I mean, no matter what you say, you know, whatever, no matter what you say, most women are going to have an obsessive kind of concern with beauty.
- 31:17
- And that's the way the world works. No matter what you're allowed to say. In the same way that most men are going to have kind of a, are probably going to have like a over -focus on strength, right?
- 31:31
- So that's just, that's the way it works. And I mean, that's why the football stars, the basketball stars, the sports people are what they are.
- 31:40
- And, you know, I mean, if you think about how you make money as a man in the world, you know, significant money, like we pay for the things we value, we still value, you know, the
- 31:50
- MMA fighters. We still value the, you know, football stars, the, you know, basketball, whatever like you do because you admire the strength.
- 31:59
- So like the issue is that's the basic human temptation that's there. But then part of the problem is like, we're living in a society right now that's so far the opposite, like that is now just like on paper with what we're allowed to say, we're not allowed to say what's obviously happening, even though we're not allowed to say it.
- 32:20
- Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So we're not allowed to just acknowledge that, yeah, you know what, ladies, they don't, then on mass, they don't really like the wimpy guys, you know, as much as they're being shoved down their throat.
- 32:33
- They don't like them as much. They would rather have someone who takes care of themselves reasonably well.
- 32:39
- And men, you know, they don't like the girls who don't take care of themselves near as much as they do the ones that do, you know?
- 32:45
- So you want to get ahead in the world, you're living in a society that values certain things, even though they're not allowed to say it, they still value those things because that's the way
- 32:54
- God made them. So the issue is the Bible is taking those natural intuitions and saying, hey, you know, your boast should be in the
- 33:03
- Lord, not in your physical strength, right? Bodily exercises of little profit, but then godliness is profitable in every way.
- 33:12
- So those kinds of admonitions come along to a vain narcissistic people and say, hey, charm is deceitful, beauty is fading.
- 33:20
- A woman who fears the Lord will be praised. So don't trust in your looks. If you're a woman, don't trust in your strength.
- 33:27
- If you're a man, trust in God. Now, that message needs to be said and it needs to be said to our society and then a lot of the people who are advocating, you know, for the guns and the weightlifting, it may be that they're a little bit imbalanced in those ways.
- 33:42
- But, you know, but they don't need the Wally kind of guy to come along and say, hey, you know, big
- 33:54
- Michelin man kind of guy to come along and say, hey, you know, all that matters is godliness. Like that guy is actually not qualified to make that comment.
- 34:02
- You see what I'm saying? What you need is like, you need people who have prioritized it rightly to make those kinds of comments.
- 34:10
- You don't need the kind of guys who just look like they haven't, you know, touched a weight their whole entire life and are, you know, look like all they've eaten is a bunch of Twinkies all day long, every day of their life with cans full of Mountain Dew.
- 34:25
- Like you don't need them to be the ones who are coming along and saying, hey, I think you guys are a little bit too overzealous here.
- 34:30
- And that's just what the Bible says. I mean, why do you see the specters in your brother's eye when you have a log in your own?
- 34:36
- So what you don't need is like all the gluttonous fat, you know, obese pastors come along and saying, hey, just let the policeman be your dad here, you know, be the man that you, you know, that it would be wrong for you to aspire to be.
- 34:50
- Let them do it for you, right? So there's obviously an error, like there's obviously an error on the other end.
- 34:56
- And, you know, I think Peter was a manifestation of that error going for the ear decapitation.
- 35:05
- Yeah, yeah. Immediately, but so, I mean, there's obviously an error there, right?
- 35:10
- I think what you need is you need responsible people to show the way forward and what the way forward looks like is not gonna look like some, you know, 400 pound guy railing against these young whippersnappers who are about one, you know, week away from dying of a heart attack, you know?
- 35:30
- Yeah, yeah, one week away from it. I did see a post along those lines where, you know, they basically compared
- 35:37
- John MacArthur, who has been in shape, you know, as a football player, kind of his whole life, and then
- 35:43
- R .C. Sproul, who's been kind of poorly his whole life. And he made the observation, you know, could it be that R .C.,
- 35:52
- you know, left a lot quicker than what he could be under the sovereignty of God because of how he took care of himself.
- 36:01
- And so, I mean, we shouldn't be non -stakes, we shouldn't despise the body. And, you know, a lot of the preventable illnesses that we're suffering from are because we're not prioritizing these things.
- 36:09
- And so, what you need, what you don't need is you don't need a bunch of, you know, lazy, obese pastors coming along and saying, hey, you know, you guys don't get too carried away with all that stuff.
- 36:21
- Be like me, you know? Like, donate while they eat the donut. You know,
- 36:28
- I saw the same thing and I've seen, you know, I think the guy who posted that ended up taking it down because I guess he had some people, you know, asking him to out of respect for R .C.
- 36:40
- Sproul. But I found myself largely agreeing with what he was saying, especially when he brought up, you know, the point that R .C.
- 36:48
- passed away, you know, just a few years before we had all this COVID stuff going down. And so, imagine the impact that that would have had to have him and MacArthur both, you know, defying the government stuff that was going on at the time.
- 37:05
- And, you know, at the end of the day, obviously - Jared Well, could you imagine if R .C. Sproul was there with his respirator or whatever and, you know, shutting everything down at what that would have caused if that would have happened?
- 37:16
- Pete Right, yeah. And so, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot that can be said there.
- 37:22
- And, you know, obviously at the end of the day, God is in complete control. God doesn't need any one person to accomplish
- 37:29
- His will. He will accomplish His will. So, it's not like, you know, we're questioning is
- 37:34
- God's will actually being fulfilled because R .C. Sproul didn't take better care of himself, you know, for example.
- 37:41
- But it's weird too because you'll just, you'll see people point to guys like him or guys like Charles Spurgeon, you know, who was overweight and say, you know, they'll basically, they'll just come after you and say like, oh, you must hate
- 37:58
- Charles Spurgeon then. And it's like, well, no. But I don't think
- 38:03
- Charles Spurgeon was, you know, perfect in every way and blameless in every way either.
- 38:09
- I certainly appreciate a lot of the things that he's written and a lot of the things that he said and taught.
- 38:14
- But I don't agree with him in every single thing. And I don't think he was perfect. I don't think he was without sin.
- 38:20
- And so, I just don't understand why we can't, you know, why we can't say these normal things that the
- 38:26
- Bible also says. And then just because, you know, some theologian, some pastor who's extremely accomplished and has done a lot of good in the name of the
- 38:38
- Lord, you know, but had some weak areas, you know, why all of a sudden, like, we are just not allowed to appreciate them in any way whatsoever.
- 38:48
- Jared Yeah, that's what, I mean, we had plenty of people on some of the posts I made. They were basically making that comment. I bet you hate
- 38:54
- Spurgeon or whatever. And it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have any, I don't have any kind of contempt or disdain for Spurgeon whatsoever.
- 39:04
- Like just, but just because, you know, I mean, Spurgeon might've had some issue, like blind spots in his life too.
- 39:11
- And so, I mean, if the Bible says, like, here's the thing. And I mean, like Bible says, like, why do you try to remove the speck out of your brother's eye when you have a log in your own eye?
- 39:23
- And then it says, first remove the log out of your own eye in order that, you know, in order that you might be able to see clearly to remove the speck that's in your brother's eye.
- 39:33
- So the whole point here is just to say, hey, if you're the kind of person who obviously is making no effort whatsoever to be a fair protector of any of the people you love in your life, right?
- 39:51
- Like if you're taking that role of being a protector and just being reasonably healthy and you've thrown that in the dumpster and you're basically just look like you could care less about what you look like and about your quality of life and like all that, like the issue is at that point, you're not the best person to come along and critique the excesses on the other side.
- 40:16
- So yeah, Spurgeon was a great person, but that doesn't, like he was a great pastor. He was a godly guy.
- 40:22
- That doesn't mean he was perfect. And that doesn't mean that every single, like, you know, people bring him up in the area of depression, like he was depressed at certain points.
- 40:30
- So therefore, you know, you're basically, it's like, yeah, he's fat and he's depressed, right?
- 40:37
- Big shock, you know, maybe if he would have gotten in shape and wasn't so overweight, maybe if Spurgeon wasn't so overweight, he wouldn't have been given to despair as much as he was.
- 40:49
- And, you know, I mean, I, about three years ago, I lost a significant amount of weight and I felt a lot better.
- 40:56
- You know, I felt a lot, lot better, you know, losing the weight that I lost.
- 41:04
- And so like the issue is like, and this is what people don't understand. They look at that and they say, hey, well, no one's perfect.
- 41:09
- So, you know, you just basically ignore it all. And it's like, no, I mean, if you have a sin that you struggle with, if your
- 41:16
- God is your belly, if you're glorying in it, man, like the issue is you're not the best person to speak to this issue.
- 41:24
- So yeah, no, like we shouldn't look to Spurgeon for advice on health, right?
- 41:31
- Anyway, right. So he's not our model. So we don't need to look to him for that. We can look for him for advice in other areas that he was excelling in.
- 41:39
- He had a lot more, you know, a lot of areas he excelled in way more than I ever excel in and that kind of thing. But he's just not the model for that.
- 41:45
- And that's just a very simple concept to grasp. So yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of excesses on the other side, but I don't think what we need is a bunch of, you know, people who've shown contempt for their body and show contempt for their roles to come along and be the ones who are providing the correctives.
- 42:01
- I think you need, you know, someone who's a little bit more balanced to provide the correctives on those areas for sure.
- 42:09
- Okay, well, I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation on. Probably certainly one that we will eventually have to come back to if I had to guess.
- 42:21
- But it's good to talk about nonetheless, especially with, you know, like you mentioned towards the beginning, especially with so many people pushing for men to be as weak as possible.
- 42:34
- And I think, and that's on purpose, obviously. That's certainly, because men are meant to be leaders, because men are meant to be protectors, the weaker you can get them, ultimately the weaker your society is going to be at the end of the day.
- 42:49
- You know, both in terms of like safety and prosperity, but then also in terms of spiritually, I think as well.
- 42:55
- So it is a good thing for us to talk about, you know, from time to time, I believe.
- 43:01
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- 43:08
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- 43:26
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- 43:32
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- 43:41
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- 44:13
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