Is This a Christian Masculinity Podcast? Also Preaching the Gospel is Not Enough (Obviously)

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All right, everybody. Welcome back to the channel. It is Monday, November, November. Where did that come from?

It is January 13th, year of our Lord, 2025, and I've got a few topics today that I want to talk about, and so we're going to talk about it.

Hopefully, you enjoy it. All right.

All right. I hope you had a good day at church yesterday. I know I sure did. We kicked off adult

Sunday school, well, really just all Sunday school. Again, we took a few weeks off for the holiday season, just so people could be with their families and stuff like that, but we're back at it again, and started a whole new series on the topic of unity, which is a topic

I think about all the time. One of the things that I try to do when I'm sitting there in Sunday school is

I try to limit my participation as much as possible, because I'm always thinking about things all the time, and I've always got some two cents to add, but I try to be as respectful as possible with the elders of the church, because number one, theologically,

I'm a little different than they are, and I want to give them the respect to be able to set the tone, theologically speaking, 100%.

That's something that I definitely want to do. And number two, a lot of times,

I have things to say that are not necessarily theological disagreements, but they're of the more spicy variety, and I really don't want to disturb the peace at all.

So I really try my best to avoid any comments that could potentially be construed as confrontational in any way.

That's what I try to do. But I do talk, and I do say some things that I think are important. Anyway, one of the things today—or yesterday, rather—that we talked about was that the unity of the church—well, one of the things was that it seems sometimes, like the elder said, it seems sometimes like disunity is very common in the church, where, you know, you would think that we would have more unity.

And so he says that that's an area where, you know, you sometimes see this, you know, maybe more so than even out there in the world.

And then he also said that unity takes a lot of work. It's very hard to maintain the unity.

You need to work for it. You need to strive for it. And I think that, you know, on the surface,

I was thinking about that a lot during the lesson, and then also even afterwards, I was thinking about that.

And I don't necessarily disagree totally, but I think I have a slightly different perspective on unity, because there's a couple things that I think are going on here.

So number one, I don't believe for a second that disunity is something that we see commonly in the church.

Like, almost like as if it was—he didn't say this, but the way he presented it was almost like it's more common in the church than it is outside the church.

And I don't believe that at all. But what I do believe is that it's recognized as disunity more in the church because we're more aware of the ideal of unity.

You know what I mean? It's almost like sometimes you'll talk to a believer who's been a believer for a long time, and they're thinking about their lives, and sometimes there's a little bit of despair because it's like, man,

I'm not improving as much as I thought I would. I still sin. I still sin all the time.

In fact, sometimes I feel like I sin more. And you talk to them about their sin habits, things that they're doing, or whatever.

And from an outsider perspective, a lot of times you can see that they're really not sinning more at all.

But what's happening is that they're more aware of it the longer they become a Christian. They're more aware of the insidious nature of sin and how it does infect things that you would never have thought of before when you were a younger believer.

But as an older believer, as a more mature believer, you see it infect things that you never thought it would.

And it's not that it wasn't doing that before. It was. You just weren't aware of it. And so you're more aware of your sin, and so it feels sometimes like, man, why am

I not getting better? You really are, but the awareness of your sin is growing. And that's not always the case, but that's often

I find the case. And I think in the church, we have this ideal of a unified church, and don't get me wrong, there's a lot of misunderstanding about unity in the church,

I think, but I think we have this ideal. And so we know, we kind of feel, we know, and we're aware that it should be different than it is.

And so when it's not that way, it really sticks out like a sore thumb. And when there's disunity out there in the world somewhere, it doesn't always stick out as much because there's really nothing to compare it to.

It's like we don't have that ideal situation out there in the world. And so the disunity that exists, maybe it flies under the radar a little bit more.

That's what I think is going on there, number one. And then number two, the working hard for unity.

And I don't disagree with this at all. I think that sometimes unity does take work, and we need to strive for it, we need to maintain it and all of this kind of stuff.

And that takes effort, right? Of course, we understand that takes effort to maintain the unity of the church, right?

But I think, though, that one of the things we often forget when we're thinking through unity in the church is that it's an objective reality, too.

You know what I mean? Like, it's not just something that we strive for and we work for and all of that. It is something that is objectively true of the church, right?

We have unity. And so while we work to maintain it, we work to strengthen it and all of these kinds of stuff, nothing can take away the unity that we have, right?

If I'm in Christ, I'm in Christ with all the rest of the believers out there that are in Christ.

And so we might disagree on things, we may fight, we may argue, we may not see things eye -to -eye, but there is a wonderful and 100 % true objective unity that we have in Christ that cannot be taken away from us no matter what.

No matter what. And I think sometimes, though, we get all wrapped up in the outward expressions of this and some of the things that are out there in the natural world.

You know, like, obviously, like, we understand that there's a real kind of unity that we have with other

Americans that we don't share with Egyptians and stuff like that. And there's cultural unity and there's all kinds of different unities out there that are real.

They're not any less real than the unity we have in Christ, but they're of a different kind.

They're of a different, there's a different nature to them, right? And so we get all wrapped up in, you know, how the church looks and, you know, that's where all this weird diversity stuff comes in, you know, my church is too white, it's too white.

Don't we have unity with the brothers, the dear brothers in the Lord that are dark skinned and all this kind of nonsense.

But it's like, I feel like sometimes we're talking, we're trying to mesh together two different things that aren't necessarily meant to be meshed together.

Of course, they have unity with a believer in Egypt, in Christ. And there are certain things that are true of that believer that are also true of me.

And that's something that can never be broken, never taken away and all that kind of stuff. But there's also real differences between me, a believer in Keene, New Hampshire, and a believer in Cairo or whatever.

I think sometimes this issue gets all mixed up and confused, but one of the things

I really do think we need to focus on is the reality of our unity in Christ, regardless of what else is going on, right?

That's what I think about this. So I don't know, we'll see. We have a 10 -week thing that we're doing on unity, and I'm looking forward to it, because these are topics that I've thought about quite a bit, quite a bit.

And there was also, I've got to get my pastor to send me this, there was also a quotation from Dustin Benj that he used that I, like,

I've got to get the quotation. It was something about, like, I don't know, like rejecting yourself or something.

And it didn't strike me as very helpful or good, but maybe

I misheard it, I don't know. Because the thing is, when you have unity in Christ, you yourself don't disappear.

You don't no longer have a self, right? You're still, you are still you, you know what

I mean? The body has different members, right? But that doesn't mean that the fingers suddenly are just the body now, and the head is just the body now, and the heart and the lungs, they're not lungs and hearts anymore, they're just the body now, we're all just the body.

That's kind of how the quotation sounded. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. I like Dustin Benj from what

I've seen online, but I don't know, does anyone know that quote? Maybe I messed it all up,

I'm totally open to having misheard that quote. In any case, that was one thing

I wanted to talk about, unity, yeah, unity. I'm all about that. That's what this channel is all about, unity.

That's right, you heard it here first. In any case, I also wanted to talk about this whole situation, it's come up again,

I guess Andrew Tate has said something or done something, I have no idea, but people are starting to talk about Christian masculinity and Christian masculinity influencers and podcasts and stuff like that, and talking about are they good, are they bad, you know, why don't you just follow

Christ, all that kind of stuff, there's lots of Jesus -juking happening left and right all over the place, and I don't really know what's going on with Andrew Tate, who knows?

I don't know. I actually have muted Andrew Tate on Twitter for a long time, for probably like a year, so I forgot he existed, but every now and then something gets through, because I only have

Andrew Tate in quotations muted, so sometimes if someone just says Tate, I'll still see it and stuff like that, so some things will slip through the cracks, but in any case, one thing

I noticed, and I was hoping to get some feedback from the channel, one thing I noticed is that I, myself,

A .D. Robles, I regularly get counted in as a

Christian masculinity podcast, right, like people say, and this is both from friend and foe, people who hate my guts will call me a cringe

Christian masculinity red pill bro, and then people that like me will say, hey, if you want some good takes on Christian masculinity, you should watch the

A .D. Robles YouTube channel, and I'm not offended by that, that's fine, that's great, because I am a man,

I'm a man, but I'm always confused by that, because I very rarely talk about Christian masculinity or masculinity in general, ever, like I don't know that I've ever done an entire episode about it, and if I've ever mentioned it, it's always in passing, it's always just kind of off the cuff, it's just really not a core thing that I talk about,

I just very rarely talk about it, so I always find it interesting that people want me in there, and I wonder, what do you guys think?

Why do people do that? I'm not offended by it, so you don't have to stop if you do that, I'm totally fine with it, why do you think that is, you know what

I mean? I'm curious, I'm curious, I've got some theories, I've got some theories, because I do think that there is, when it comes to the grand scheme of what's offered online, as far as Christianity and Christian culture and stuff like that, so much of it is just so latent with effeminacy, it's just, even the colors that are chosen to market the stuff, pretty much every gospel coalition thing that's ever existed is all female coded, and things like that, and I'm not that way,

I don't code, I don't do the channel for women, you know, some women watch this channel, I think my audience is like,

I don't know, maybe 10, 20 % at most female, but it's overwhelmingly male, and that's not a mistake, because when

I think about who's listening to me when I do the video, because it's helpful sometimes to have an audience in mind when you're doing a video,

I'm always thinking of a group of men, and so, you know, everything

I do, even from the examples I use, I often choose examples from sports, instead of, you know, whatever it is women do, whatever they do,

I don't know, knitting or something, I use examples from sports, I use examples from sopranos, you know what

I mean, I don't expect that the sopranos had a very female -driven audience, you know, stuff like that, like I'll use examples that are, you know, coded for men, you know what

I mean, that kind of thing. And so I think that when you see someone doing that, when typically what you get is female -coded completely, it just kind of like, you just kind of assume that this is

Christian masculinity content, right? I think that's part of what's going on, I've got a few other theories as well, but what do you think?

Why does the Aidy Robles YouTube channel get, you know, get slandered?

That's not slandered. Why do I get lumped in with the

Christian masculinity content out there? Because there really is some of that out there, and it's good stuff,

I mean, I like it, it's all good, I'm not against that kind of content, it's totally fine, I think it's great. But I always get lumped in with them, and I'm not 100 % sure why, what do you guys think?

Why do I get lumped into this kind of content? Speaking of Sopranos, I had a dream two nights ago, let me know if you guys are interpreters of dreams, let me know what you think of this one.

It was right before I woke up, in fact I had already woken up, and I had gone back to sleep for half an hour or so, and I had this dream.

And in the dream, I was at a get -together, it was like a mob get -together, and Tony Soprano was there, and Phil Leotardo was there, and Tony starts talking to this friend of mine, and they're kind of whispering to each other and stuff like that, and I could tell that he was saying, hey, it's time for you to get made, you know what

I mean? And he was kind of looking at me a couple times, just glancing over to see if I was paying attention,

I could tell that he was going to get made soon. And it almost, the way he was looking at me,

Tony, was like, that I was going to be jealous, like I thought I should have been made, right? But in the dream,

I was glad I wasn't being made, like I didn't want to be made. And so they go off, and then

Phil Leotardo approaches me, and you know, the Shah of Iran, and the

Shah of Iran starts asking me all kinds of questions that I feel like he should already know the answer, like where are you from, where'd you grow up, stuff like that.

And it's kind of threatening, almost, I feel threatened by it. And he's like, follow me. And as he's walking away, he's asking me all these basic questions about me.

And I start to feel threatened. And that's where the dream ends. That's where the dream ends. So anyone who interprets dreams, let me know what you think of that one.

That was an interesting one. It's very vivid, very vivid dream. In any case, I want to talk about the

Trash World Conference, right? I see a lot of people out there that are going with this line of argumentation against the

Trash World Conference. And they're saying, oh, you want to know how to defeat

Trash World? It's simple. Preach the gospel, end of conference. You know what

I mean? They're saying stuff like that. They're gospel juking. I saw, who did I see say that? I did not come up with gospel juking, but I thought it was really good.

They're gospel juking. You know, preach the gospel. That's how you defeat Trash World and stuff like that.

And man, I got to be honest with you. It is so tiresome to see that kind of argumentation because what it's doing is it does a few things at once, right?

When you say something moronic like that, that's moronic. To say, oh, you want to know how to defeat our enemies?

You just preach the gospel. You preach the gospel. That's moronic. Here's what they're doing with that.

This is what the work they think this is doing. Number one, in a low -key, without directly saying so way, what they're saying is the people at that conference, they don't believe that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

They actually downplay the gospel. They don't think it's all that important, right?

That's the first thing that it does. So how could you have a conference about defeating Trash World when, of course, the only answer is you preach the gospel?

There wouldn't be a conference. So obviously, they don't think the gospel is that important, so they're talking about all kinds of other stuff, right?

That's the first thing it does. The second thing it does is it tries to put you in a superior position, right?

You know, see, I preach the gospel. I know how important the gospel is.

I understand that it's the power of God unto salvation. I am a gospel -centered

Christian. So on the one hand, it throws shade at the conference. On the other hand, it shows how much greater you are, how much more pure you are, how much more spiritual you actually are.

And then the third thing it does is it also throws shade—let's just be honest about this—it throws shade at anyone trying to do any work that is not overtly

Christian ministry work. It throws shade at everybody doing that. Oh, you've got political things you want to do?

Well, it doesn't matter. It's not spiritual enough. Oh, you've got businesses you want to create? Doesn't matter.

It's not preaching the gospel. It's not going to work. And often they'll temper it. They'll say, it won't lead to lasting change.

If you want lasting change, you must preach the gospel. And so that's what they're doing when they say stuff like this.

And this is brain -dead stuff, right? It's brain -dead stuff because it's all wrong, by the way. It's all wrong.

On the one hand, pretty much everyone to the man, pretty much, that's at that conference understands full well how important, how necessary, how central the actual gospel message is.

You know, the pure, reformed, awesome gospel. Everybody at that conference, pretty much to the man, understands that.

But here is the truth. The gospel is not enough.

You can clip that if you'd like. The gospel is not everything. And here's why.

Because, yes, the God gave us the message of the gospel. Christ and his mercy and his grace in his sacrifice on the cross saves sinners from a certain destruction, a permanent, eternal destruction that we earned with our sin.

And the gospel is the only truth, the only reason any of us cannot die eternally is because Jesus Christ died on the cross, bearing the sins of his people on his own body, dying in our place for our sins so that we could be made righteous before a holy

God. That is true, 100%. But we were saved not just so we could enjoy eternity forever, not just so that we can say, hey, we're saved, we're one of God's people.

All that is great stuff, by the way. It is good to be one of God's people. There's many benefits that come with being one of God's people.

It is fantastic, it is great, it is something that everybody should have. Simple as that.

But we were saved for a reason. We were saved unto good works.

We were saved so that we could do good works. And so the gospel is important, it is necessary, it is everything when it comes to our eternal state.

But God has work for us to do, which is why he saved a people for himself so that they could go out there and do good works.

And there's so much that goes into these good works, so much. And so of course one reason we were saved is so that we could take the gospel to the nations, and of course that's great, and that's wonderful, that's very important work, it's necessary work.

But not all of us are missionaries. Not all of us are pastors.

Not all of us are preachers. Not all of us are in ministry.

Most of us aren't actually. Most of us have other vocations, most of us have other things that we do in our days that fill up the time in our days, right?

Most of us have other assignments. And that is where the lack of effectiveness has been completely apparent for decades.

We have not been effective in the good works area. And look,

I'm not saying that we haven't been doing the good works, but if you look at the results, there are results, but ultimately in the grand scheme of things, we haven't been as effective as any of us want to be.

And so we are doing a conference about that side of the equation.

The gospel will be presented at this conference. That's obvious, guys, that's obvious.

Anyone who's trying to throw shade as if, oh, they're not going to even talk about the gospel, these people are idiots.

Don't listen to them. They're brain dead. They're brain dead. But this conference is about other things.

It's about the work that we have to do as individuals, as family members, as citizens of various towns, states, countries, nations, whatever you want to say.

There's all kinds of things that we have to do, and we have to do it in a way that honors

Christ as Lord, Christ as King. Christ is not just this aloof king that he's just, yeah, he's the king, but he really doesn't have much for us to do.

He just kind of sits there and yeah, he saves us, that's true, but he just kind of sits there and doesn't really have missions and plans and quests for us to go on.

That's not it at all. He's a king who sends us out on missions.

He's a king who sends us out on quests. He's a king that when he sends us out, he expects results.

He expects a return. And that's what's been so missing from so much of what

I grew up learning. I'll just speak for myself, and I know this resonates with many people.

It's been missing from so—because I think there's even a book like this.

Why would this book exist if this wasn't a need, right? Well, I guess I shouldn't ask that question, because there's lots of books that exist that there's no need for.

I just refuted myself. I just refuted myself. But I remember very vividly thinking this, and I may have even asked my pastor this at one point when

I first converted. It's like, all right, I'm safe from my sins.

I know that I've got personal sins that I need to deal with. I get all that part. So now what?

What do I do now? What next? You know what I mean? And I'll be honest,

I had a good pastor, and so he did understand this to a certain degree. But a lot of times the books that he would recommend

I read and stuff like that, they would just say things like this. And I don't know why people say this, because it's not helpful most of the time.

Well, just preach the gospel to yourself. Just preach the gospel to yourself. Just remember

Christ on the cross. Remember. He died on the cross. Remember it.

And it's like, yeah, I know, but I want a family. Oh, just remember

Christ died for your sins. Like, what? What do I do to find a wife? Like, I've got things

I want to do here. I think that's honoring Christ. I want to find a wife. Like, I was never taught how to find a wife.

How do I do it? And it's amazing to me.

Like, this is an obvious area of need. And it's amazing to me to watch the people addressing this.

You know, there's many men out there that do address this kind of stuff in detail. You know what I mean? Practical steps that you can take.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Michael Foster do this, where he talks about very simple things that you should do if you're looking for a wife kind of thing.

It's amazing to see consistently how all of this gets gospel -juked,

Jesus -juked. As if it's some kind of like, oh, you know, it's legalism.

It's like as if Michael's saying, this is how you get saved. It's unbelievable. It's absolutely unbelievable.

And so, of course, the Trash World Conference is going to include the gospel.

The gospel is not enough. When you're thinking about how to accomplish good works in 2025, there's been a massive failure on our part as the church to really address some of this stuff.

So much so that I saw somebody posting about how she's a teacher at a Christian church or something, and she claims—I mean,

I don't know how true this is. This could easily just be a story. Who knows? She claims that all of her students are really into Andrew Tate.

Andrew Tate's brain -dead. He's brain -dead. I mean, it's not fair to say he's brain -dead, but he's got no answers.

That's the truth. He just doesn't have the answers. I saw somebody with a tweet that said, you know, if the person you're listening to says, this is based and this is gay, then you're listening to a retard.

And on the gay side, it was a man with his family enjoying life. And on the base side, it was

Andrew Tate in what looks like female underwear, just smoking a hookah or something.

It's just—it's unbelievable. So it's gotten so bad that people are—I saw,

I think it was Eric Kahn say, someone who's dying of thirst, he'll drink toilet water.

You know what I mean? He doesn't care where it comes from. He's dying of thirst. He'll drink anything. And that's true.

And that's true. But instead of any self -reflection, like, why are they listening to Andrew Tate? You know,

I've been talking about the gospel for years, and yet they're listening to Andrew Tate. Instead of looking inside and saying, could

I possibly be to blame for some of this? Instead of doing that, you look outside and say, look at all these cringe

Christian male masculinity influencers. Look at the Trash World Conference. I mean, are they even going to do the gospel?

Have you ever heard of preaching the gospel? It's not helpful. It's not helpful.

It's unbelievable. And I'm not trying to get you mad at people, because I know a lot of this advice comes from a good heart and a good place, where it's like, okay, what do

I do now? I'm a Christian. I clean my life up. I don't drink anymore. All this kind of stuff.

I don't look at porn anymore. I'd like to find a wife. What do I do? Oh, preach the gospel to yourself.

I know they're trying to help, but it's not enough. It's not helpful enough.

It doesn't really mean anything. What does it mean? Preach the gospel to yourself?

What does that mean? I know what it means, but when someone's question is, okay, what do

I do now? That's not the answer. I'm sorry. It isn't the answer.

In any case, that's all I want to say today. That's it.

That's all I got for you today. I really do think that a lot of the people that I used to read, and again,

I'm going to own, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was the one who misread it. I don't know. But so much of what

I used to read when I was a young believer, it's not that good works weren't mentioned, and it's not that what you should do now was completely ignored, but it was downplayed to such a degree that it was almost sinister if people were talking to you about good works.

It was almost treated like it was almost anathema. You start looking at people sideways.

Do you even understand the gospel? You start talking about good works and the things that you do that you were saved for.

The very thing you were saved for. The very thing that the gospel was for. Bring glory to God and to save you to good works.

It was just neglected. It was neglected. And maybe you talk about those good works in big sections, like summary statements, but the second anybody starts talking about particulars that could actually be helpful, people start to look.

What is it? Legalism? You could talk about good works as long as it's generalized. As long as it's summarized.

The minute you start talking about specific things that maybe you could implement in your life that will actually help, what's this? Legalism? This is the new legalism.

That guy's one of those Pharisees. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I saw a really good tweet.

You know what? Let me find it, because this is related, I think. All right, so I saw this tweet from an Anon. I mean, look, you guys want to counter -signal

Anons, well, I'm going to show you Anons that have actually good things to say here. This is from Crusader Pepe. If there's ever been an

Anon, it's this guy. There's the Anon. He'll drive all your favorite pastors crazy.

Anyway, here's what he says, and I think this is very, very helpful. He says, one thing modern churches do to repel men is saying, quote, you need to love

Jesus, which came out of the seeker -sensitive movement. This is correct, but men also need to be told they have a duty to Jesus.

They have to fear and respect God. They owe Him their loyalty and honor.

The overemphasis on love exclusively was because of the church being feminized and designed to pander to women.

Saying you need to love Jesus is true, but it also stops short unless the love is exhaustively defined, which many churches don't do well.

Men tend to struggle with love, especially the modern overly emotional definition of love, which is actually antithetical to what the

Bible teaches, but they do understand loyalty, duty, honor, respect.

Well said. That is so true. I cannot tell you as a committed

Christian, I'm telling you, I love Reformed stuff. I love

Reformed theology. I'm so Reformed that I've said this a number of times, I wish there was 20 points of Calvinism.

I'm very Reformed. I love Reformed stuff. But one thing that I hear from modern

Reformed people all the time is all this kind of language, it's like John Piper language, where it's like, you must fall in love with Christ.

Just over words like that, like pleasure, you know when you find your pleasure, your adoration, all this is good stuff,

I'm not against that stuff, right? But it's got to be in context for people. It really does. It has to be in context for people, because for men, the love, the respect, the adoration, all that kind of stuff, it comes with a duty.

It comes with a duty. It comes with an honor. It comes with a loyalty, right? And the Bible itself defines these terms.

That's what's so important about this. All these biblicists out there, you know this is true. The Bible talks about love.

It talks about your obedience. You love me? Keep my commandments.

Christ himself says it. You love me? You want to love Christ? You want to abide in the love of Christ?

Keep my commandments. Keep them, follow, obey them.

Loyalty, duty, respect. Look at the book of Kings.

I was just reading the book of Kings today, right? It's talking about all the bad kings and stuff like that. But one of the things that I noticed today is it talks about how

God doesn't completely destroy a certain king out of love for David, because David loved him.

He was a man after his own heart. He had adoration for him, all this kind of stuff. He had love for him. What is that love based on?

It's based on his actions, his obedience. In fact, even one passage says David loved God. He did everything he said, except for the one incident with Uriah and the wife of Uriah.

The adoration, the love, all that kind of stuff that John Piper would be all about, it's all founded and based, and the foundation, the proof is in David's loyalty to Christ, loyalty to God.

Obedience is what the foundation is. I'm not saying you can't talk about love at church.

Of course you should love Christ. But for men, that love has to be biblically grounded in obedience, in loyalty, in a duty that you have to Christ.

How can I say I love Christ if I don't see myself have a duty to obey him, and to accomplish his good works, and to accomplish the missions that he sets forth before me?

Anyway, I feel like I rambled a little bit in this video, but that's okay, because this is the 80WorldBiz YouTube channel.

Christian red pill masculinity. This is where you come for that kind of stuff. In any case,