Will Spencer: The Renaissance of Men is Now! Biblical Masculinity is Alive Feminism is Dead! DMW#217

Dead Men Walking

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:05

Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between, broadcasting from an undisclosed location,

00:13

Dead Men Walking starts now! Hello, hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast.

00:28

Thanks for listening, thanks for sharing with a friend, thanks for checking us out at dmwpodcast .com where you can support the show, find out more about me and what we have going on.

00:37

We've got our snarky merch there as well too, just sold another Wynum Dynum Romans Nynum shirt today, seems to be a good seller, gets the conversation started.

00:47

But first I want to talk to you about our sponsor, K &K Furnishings, you heard me talk about them before, love these brothers in the

00:52

Lord. Two guys started a furnishing business, 70 years pastoral experience between the both of them and they decided, you know, we understand budget constraints, we understand places of worship, non -profits, business, heck, even if you're working remotely from home and need to renovate that space, they got it all, chairs, lamps, seating, equipment, sound, whatever you need, you need to go talk to these guys.

01:16

If you're in Michigan, Indiana, or Ohio, they will come to you for a personal consultation.

01:22

If you're outside of those three states, they'll definitely jump on a video call, Zoom call, and let you know exactly what you need, walk you through that.

01:28

It's knkfurnishings .com, two reformed brothers in the Lord, love those guys, go support them. If your church or your business is in the need, they work with over 200 vendors nationwide, so they ship anywhere and they get you the best prices and give you quality furnishings.

01:41

All right. And we thank them for being a sponsor. Now that we have the business out of the way, as they say, yeah, it's been a good week for me.

01:49

Usually I chop it up a little bit, but I want to get right into it. When we have a guest, we try to jump right into it. They don't want to hear me talk about my personal life for 10 minutes.

01:57

Do what you got to do, man. Yeah. And that voice you just heard is Will Spencer. Will Spencer, he's an entrepreneur, traveler, and storyteller.

02:04

His path has taken him from Stanford University to the dot -com boom and through 33 countries on six different continents.

02:11

Along the way, his passion for personal transformation led him into the world of men's personal development, which he calls the

02:17

Renaissance. He hosts a podcast of the same name called the Renaissance of Men, where he conducts extended interviews with thought leaders working towards a great reconciliation of the sexist

02:27

Will Spencer, everyone. How are you doing? Well, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. No problem.

02:33

And I had become aware of your podcast last year, uh, and we'll talk about how long you've been doing it.

02:39

And then it went on one of those like auto download back burners where I have like 27 other podcasts to catch up on.

02:45

So I do apologize for that. And then we did the, um, we did the reform podcast bracket on Twitter.

02:52

You were included in that. You did very well in that. You got a lot of people supporting you and I went, Oh yeah,

02:57

I forgot I got that on my back burner. I got to start listening to that. And I had so many people on Twitter just saying, great podcast should win it all.

03:05

These guys, you know, this guy's awesome. Started listening. I went, yeah, this is a quality podcast. So I had to have you on and talk about it a little bit.

03:11

But can you tell us kind of why did you start the podcast? How long has it been going on and what's the goal of it?

03:18

I know we, I kind of, you know, did an overview right there a couple minutes ago, but give us a little more in depth on that.

03:24

Yeah. So I started the podcast in September, 2020 I think that was like wave two or three of podcast creation and uh,

03:31

I originally started it. Now I wasn't a Christian at the time I had been baptized, but I wasn't being discipled in any way.

03:37

It was during COVID so the churches were shut down and that was a whole process finding a church during that time. But what

03:42

I wanted to do with the podcast was I had become aware of this kind of global rebirth of masculinity.

03:49

So a whole bunch of content creators, youtubers, authors, right, who were talking about masculinity from all these different perspectives.

03:57

And I wanted to create a podcast where I let them all talk so that my listeners could hear the things that I had heard, all the different influences that I had taken in.

04:05

And what happened over time is, um, sanctification started to take hold. I started having more and more

04:11

Christian, uh, more and more Christian speakers and thought leaders on. And so the podcast over time, over the past three and a half years now, uh, has gone more towards Christian virtue, masculinity and femininity and bringing the sexes back together sort of a post feminist age.

04:26

Wow. That's very interesting. So you're probably the first person that I've had on in four years.

04:32

We started April, 2020, uh, that probably started without the idea of it being, you know, the worldview being either reformed

04:41

Calvinistic or Christian. Almost everyone I've talked to outside of some congressmen and senators, um, have started that have a podcast, um, have started it because of that.

04:52

So that's very interesting. So were you kind of wrestling with like that whole wave of, you know,

04:58

Joe Rogan had been around and he's kind of talking alpha male stuff. You have, uh, Oh, who's the guy that got arrested over in, in, uh,

05:05

Andrew Tate. Is that who it is? Oh, Andrew Tate. Yeah. Andrew Tate, all those guys that are kind of like, you know,

05:11

Jordan Peterson was getting big with, Hey, make your bed and take care of your own self guys. And so we had this thing rolling around in like 2020

05:17

I think you're right, where even in the secular world it was, it was a very big movement.

05:23

And then the Christian world kind of responded to that a little bit, I think more in the reformed world of, well, this is what biblical

05:29

Christianity looks like. I have a, I'm reformed Presbyterian and our church has a conference every year and we did it on a biblical masculinity.

05:36

And I was one of the breakout speakers and they said, Hey, we want to talk, go through and analyze all these guys that, uh,

05:42

Christians are following instead of maybe the Bible or what Christ says, they're going to the

05:48

Joe Rogans, the Andrew Tate's, the Jordan Peterson's. And it was very interesting because it's a very big subject over the last four or five years of like masculinity and biblical, even biblical masculinity, or even in secular masculinity, they're fighting that fourth wave feminism.

06:04

So it's, it's a very interesting subject, uh, for you to start a podcast on and it's done very well.

06:09

So anyone who's listening to this, pause this, uh, go listen and download and subscribe to the Renaissance of men and then come back here.

06:16

But is that how you started? Like what did you kind of start more on, like focusing on just like, uh, more like the secular side of like being a man and like what's, you know, psychologically and philosophically and physically good for you.

06:28

Is that kind of the mindset to begin with? Yeah, very much so. So I had discovered, um, men's initiations in 2013 and that was a big awakening for me.

06:38

I went on a weekend men's initiation. It was new age. It was young, young in, I was living in the Bay area at the time, but it sort of made me aware that there were more men than just me struggling with the question, what does it mean to be a man?

06:50

I was shocked to find out that this organization had initiated like 60 ,000 men worldwide.

06:56

And so that got me into men's groups in San Francisco that I did a bunch of traveling overseas to kind of test myself in various situations.

07:02

And that's when I discovered the Manosphere in like 2018. Um, so that was when

07:09

I discovered like Rolo Tomasi, who you may have heard of Jack Donovan, you know, the 21 convention that those sort of guys.

07:15

And of course Jordan Peterson was becoming very popular at the time. And so I discovered that there were a whole bunch of men around the world talking about men's inner lives, like emotions, memories, and feelings, right?

07:25

That was the men's initiation. And then I discovered there are a whole bunch of men talking about men's outer lives. So like finance, personal finance, fitness status, right?

07:34

And that was the Manosphere. And so I was looking at, you know, the men's inner guys talking about men's inner lives and then guys talking about men's outer lives and they didn't seem to know about each other and they didn't seem to be talking to each other.

07:46

And I had gotten a lot of benefit from both of them. And so I started the podcast because I wanted to have an opportunity for both these halves to kind of talk.

07:54

Now, as I said, I had just gotten baptized. And if you listen to the podcast over the past three and a half years, you can actually hear my worldview evolution, almost episode by episode as I start discovering that Christianity actually has all the answers for masculinity that I've been looking for.

08:12

Because the mythopoetic men's movement, the inner work guys were rooting things in more of like a psychological framework, like you find truth within yourself.

08:20

And then you had the sort of like the secular Manister guys, like the Andrew Tate's. He was sort of a side character at the time.

08:28

They didn't really have much of a worldview theological foundations. It was like, get rich, get laid is kind of what the way that they would think about things.

08:35

Maybe some of them talk about fatherhood or they would root masculinity in like evolution. So you had like psychology and evolution and those are both kind of shifting sands.

08:45

But when I discovered Christianity, started reading the Bible, started listening to people like Michael Foster and the men around him,

08:50

I was like, oh, this is actually the foundation that we can root masculinity on transcendently.

08:56

Oh, and that has implications for femininity and marriage and the family. And so you can hear that evolution take place over the course of my podcast as I've become a radical right -wing

09:06

Christian extremist. Right. You and I brother, we're all on all kinds of domestic terror lists by being white,

09:14

Christian and conservative. I posted Christ is King on Twitter so much for that. Oh yeah.

09:19

We're Nazis now. That's what some people say. If you say that, you're a Nazi. I am.

09:25

Christ is King. Yeah. You know, I think we had that long before anyone tried to co -op it.

09:32

But with that being said, so was the big shift for you, obviously saved, regenerated, new heart, heart of stone, heart of flesh, obviously we're not discounting that, but I'm saying when you were looking at those systems in the secular world, was it basically, hey, these are shifting sands, but over here

09:48

I have kind of a foundation on which we can build. And you saw that the biblical masculinity described throughout the

09:53

Old and New Testament was kind of very foundational and covered all that. Is that kind of what I'm hearing? Yeah.

09:59

It was also an encounter with, as I started reading scripture and I encountered who Christ was beyond the picture that I had been fed of him and sort of my liberal atheist kind of new age kind of world to actually see his behaviors and read his speech and see the way that he spoke to his disciples and spoke to the

10:17

Pharisees. I was like, wait a minute, this is sort of not what I've been told about who Jesus was. Here's this, you know, the

10:24

God man, right? And of course, reading the gospel of John and getting the whole picture and starting to listen to more theological content as I'm going through my own kind of sanctification process,

10:33

I'm realizing that here's everything that I have been looking for. It was in a sense right in front of me the whole time, but it was kind of the end of the journey as well.

10:43

So hopefully that answers your question. Yeah. So what this is kind of, you know, we have a few questions we went over pre -show, but I'm going to go off the path here since this is about kind of your journey.

10:53

And I'm interested in this because every time I have someone on to that kind of gets into testimonial and stuff too, they always go, we need more of those.

11:00

We need more of those, you know, because testimonies are so cool as well. But it sounds like what was the character that you had as kind of a leftist and an atheist of Jesus versus the actual character of Jesus that you found in scripture?

11:13

Can you kind of tell me what you kind of thought Jesus was when you were outside of the Christian worldview and then what you came to find when you actually read through scripture?

11:21

Yeah. So just a little bit of background on my own testimony. I grew up a liberal atheist

11:27

Jewish, bar mitzvahed, went to Israel. So that was a big part of my background. That's been a big thing on Twitter this week.

11:33

But there was never any real religious grounding in that. There was never any theological perspective.

11:38

It was just a bunch of stuff, rituals that we did. And so when I went to college, I went to college in the Bay Area and of course,

11:45

Northern California, major new age kind of hub. And so then I got into Eastern mysticism and all those kinds of like forms of spirituality.

11:54

So I never really had, between both of those, I never really had a great exposure to who

12:00

Jesus was, especially not the Christian message. I don't think I ever met anybody, at least not so far as I'm aware, that could give me a proper apologetic.

12:08

But from that world, I kind of observed that a couple of different things about Christianity.

12:15

One is that Jesus was a great wisdom teacher, he had a bunch of great wisdom to share, and he was generally very peaceful, maybe pacifist, maybe the meek and mild, but I never really fully bought that.

12:30

I never really fully bought that nice guy image, but I had an image,

12:35

I guess, of this detached kind of ethereal Jesus. Maybe he's glowing, you know what

12:40

I mean? And the phrases, judge not, lest ye be judged, like all the fortune cookie kind of stuff that's around there.

12:50

And then from inside the new age, it's more of like a Christ consciousness thing that Jesus was a man who achieved a higher level of spiritual awareness.

12:58

So that would be kind of the image that I had originally. So who did you find when the

13:05

Lord graciously saved you and you started reading through scripture and supporting that with writings and things like that of what biblical masculinity is?

13:12

What did you find about Christ and the Bible that was different from what you thought? Or specifically in masculinity,

13:19

I would ask, just because that's kind of where we're going with this episode. Yeah, I think the thing that struck me first was the way that Jesus spoke to his disciples, the way that he spoke to the apostles.

13:32

It was like, are you guys really not getting this? We've talked about this. The way that he's so forcefully speaking to them, right?

13:41

Like, guys, figure it out. Come on, we've talked about this. Are you slow of heart, slow of understand?

13:47

And there's a way in which he's so confrontational, but of course, in a loving and direct way with the men that are closest to him, almost like a leader, and they're still not getting it.

13:58

I remember that being really striking. I remember when I was reading the

14:04

Gospel of John and seeing the confrontation after the episode with Lazarus, and getting to feel this entire story is climactically building up to this moment where Lazarus is raised from the dead.

14:17

It's like, oh no, that did it. You can just feel the shift, right? And so it was kind of those, and seeing how direct he was with the

14:26

Pharisees, liars, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs, all of that. It was so different from the picture that I had had.

14:34

And also the way that he would speak gently, but also very clearly to the woman at the well.

14:41

There wasn't this ethereal, walking on air kind of picture. He was very grounded, very real individual, if you encounter the language for what it was.

14:51

And then what really blew my mind was, I think it was in Isaiah 53, where he was a man of no special majesty or beauty that we would look on him.

15:00

He wasn't this long -haired, hippie kind of handsome guy, just an average looking dude.

15:06

Jesus could have looked like the guy on the bus. That blew my mind. It was like that God would take such an average kind of form is so challenging to our notions of human beauty, and how we look up to actors.

15:19

You think of Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe, they have this chiseled features.

15:26

That might not have been what he looked like. And so all these things together painted a picture of a very real man, the

15:33

God man, but still a very real man who people worshipped as well. And so that just completely began rewiring my brain.

15:41

Of course, people talk about the temple, the turning over the money changers in the temple. Even that, that was kind of secondary to the things that impacted me.

15:51

Yeah, I'm kind of tracking with you because I have the same thing. And I think evangelical

15:56

Western Christianity has kind of feminized Jesus in both worship and preaching.

16:03

We've seen the blonde -haired, blue -eyed Jesus growing up our whole entire lives. And especially in my great aunt's dining room, she was a very, very strict

16:13

Catholic, and she had the velvet Jesus, a velvet painting. So even growing up in the church,

16:21

I said the sinner's prayer at seven and the Lord saved me at 24. Even growing up in church, I had this idea of, well,

16:27

Jesus was just kind of this hippie kind of pacifist, same thing you're saying. And what

16:32

I found striking when I actually started reading the Bible for myself was that he was a very well -rounded man in all areas.

16:40

Yes, he could be very compassionate and gentle, but he also called out hypocrisy.

16:46

He was a carpenter. He built things. He was a leader. He talked sternly. He used sarcasm.

16:52

He used humor. He was patient, but yet stern. I mean, there's all these examples where you go, oh, this is what a well -balanced man looks like in just about every area of their life.

17:04

And when I say man, I'm saying God, man, you know, as you're saying, yeah. But it's really crazy how we get a character, even of those in church, even if we're sitting under preaching that is not accurate, you can get a character of Christ and even masculinity just by how your pastor is exegeting the scriptures and preaching and how he used

17:29

Jesus. And I agree with you too. I think God totally understood how quickly we are taken in by stature and beauty and looks and things like that, because I mean, that was the main thing with Saul, right?

17:42

The first king of Israel. Oh, but he's a head taller than everyone else. And we want a king.

17:47

And he was very becoming, you know, as a warrior and a man. And the Bible doesn't tell the heights of very many people,

17:54

Goliath, Saul, and maybe one or two others. So it was very important. They left that detail in there that the

18:00

Israelites were kind of smitten with this character of a king instead of wanting the one true king.

18:05

So the fact that Christ came down and was very, very likely an average looking kind of you would pass them on the streets in Jerusalem or Galilee or Capernaum and go, yeah, it doesn't look like anything special.

18:18

I think that's God's sense of humor as well, too. I think he understands. Oh, yeah,

18:24

I'll show you how I'm going to take human form in a vessel that is so unassuming.

18:31

It really is going to have to be an act of faith on my part. And when I say my, I mean, God's part, of course, you know, to open your eyes to what

18:39

I'm talking about. But yeah, that's good stuff. So, yeah, that's a crazy journey because and thank

18:46

God you escaped it because Eastern mysticism, new ageism, Christ consciousness is still very popular.

18:52

We're seeing a resurgence in that since the late 80s and mid 90s. We've had quite a few converted mysticists and new agers on here who were, you know, one of them

19:03

Dorian Virtue. Gosh, she was making a couple million dollars a month off of her books and her website.

19:10

And the Lord radically saved her and she saw the error of her ways of what she was doing.

19:15

But so to come out of that, praise God that he gave you those eyes to see.

19:20

But I want to talk about masculinity a little bit, because that's what the podcast is about. Not strictly, but I mean, you know, the renaissance of men.

19:29

So in the podcast, too, before we get into it, do you kind of what are the subjects? Is it just like masculinity in the sense of what a man should be?

19:37

Or is it it kind of touches every tentacle of maleship? I would say that I try to touch a lot of different aspects of it.

19:46

And I also some of my most popular episodes, I interview women. Obviously, I don't interview them about masculinity and interview them about femininity.

19:54

And some of them ask me, like, are you expecting me to talk about masculinity? No, no, no. I want you to talk about femininity in the family, because you can't really talk about what it means to be a man without talking to women.

20:03

Right. And you can't really talk to women about what it means to women without talking to men. Right. Like we're not designed to be alone.

20:09

Right. As we know. So I touch on a lot of different aspects, the inner aspects of masculinity, some of the outer aspects, you know, in terms of I do talk about like personal finance, but I talk about Bitcoin is what

20:21

I tend to focus on. I talk about fitness, sometimes leading a family. Right. But what I really strive for is rather than single subject kind of interviews,

20:29

I try to do more well -rounded character portrayals of the people that I have on and the projects that that they're working on.

20:37

So for me, it's more about like, who is this person? What are they about? How can I help surface the best aspects of them and what they're working on?

20:45

So we can have a real conversation, let's say about their character. And so I try to, I try to show rather than tell through the podcast.

20:53

Yeah, no, that's good. And that reflects in some of the episodes that I've been listening to over the last few weeks, also very well produced the audio.

21:00

Well, thank you. You know, I've said this many times. You can have the best subject and be the smartest person in the world.

21:07

If your audio is not pleasing to these musicians, heirs, I'm turning off that podcast. I don't know what it is.

21:13

It's like, you know, nails on a board if there's echo and lag. And so very well produced on the audio to just throw that out there.

21:18

That's just for all my audio geeks out there that are listening. Go listen to his podcast. It sounds very well too.

21:25

By the way, I did the first 150 episodes myself because I have an audio engineering background. So when

21:31

I sat down to record my first podcast, I was like, I know microphones and data. I never thought I would use that again.

21:36

I thought I learned all that stuff. I'm like, I'm never going to need this. And then I sat down. I was like, wait a minute. I know all about this stuff.

21:42

Yeah, there you go. All right. There you go. I knew either you were an audio engineer or something.

21:47

Somebody was doing something because it sounds very, very good. So why is masculinity even important?

21:53

Why is a podcast like this important? Why are we having an episode about this? I mean, we can get into how secular society is attacking masculinity in general, but why is biblical masculinity important?

22:04

What do you think? You can think of biblical masculinity as if we're thinking of the human body, biblical masculinity would be like the bones that give structure and protection, give structure to the body and protection to the vital organs.

22:19

So if you just take away the bones out of your body, you just turn into just kind of like this loose, floppy jello on the ground, not really able to protect anything or go anywhere.

22:27

Right. Maybe you're still there, but you're not really, not really doing much. In the same way, if you're just, if your bones without organs and flesh and skin, you're just, you're just dry bones.

22:38

So you need both the flesh over the body and you need the bones within, and that's what biblical masculinity is to the body of Christ.

22:45

It's the bones, it's the legs, it's the arms, it's especially the spine. And that's how

22:52

I conceive of it. So the question is like, why is biblical masculinity important to asking me is like, why is your skeleton important?

23:00

Not that I, I know that you know that, but that's what I mean is like, well, but people don't seem to recognize that this is the case.

23:07

Like, oh, we don't need our skeleton, you know, so you get, you get even jellyfish.

23:12

That's how you get, that's how you get even jellyfish. Yeah. So true. And you know, it's, it's tough because we've seen we're now in fourth or I don't know, maybe fifth wave feminism, right?

23:23

They keep coming out with a new generation of feminism, which it's getting very interesting now since the secular world says that men can have periods and be pregnant and breastfeed and all these things.

23:34

So you know, there's a wreck on the waves thing, by the way, I think, but continue your question if, but I can speak to that specifically.

23:42

No, go ahead. Let's talk about the, yeah. Talk about it. Yeah. So I, I'm not entirely sure that there are actually waves of feminism.

23:52

I'm not, I'm not sure. Okay. It's not, it's, it's not to say that there aren't distinct phases where different topics have come to the forefront, but if you, if you look at, if you can go to Wikipedia and you can look up the definition of radical feminism, this is their own words, right?

24:07

The way that the radical feminists describe, um, describe feminism as they say, um, men's oppression of women is a trans historical phenomenon, meaning it's across all of history and it's the model that all other forms of oppression are built on.

24:24

So men fundamentally, fundamentally for all of history have oppressed women.

24:30

And that oppression is used as the model for all other forms. So racism, right?

24:36

Is a good example, right? Is that, um, is that male patriarchy is the model of oppression used for all other forms of oppression.

24:44

And so what they're making is a fundamental claim about the nature of reality itself, that men fundamentally, that's patriarchy.

24:52

Men fundamentally oppress women. And if you look at feminism, even back to the first wave of feminism, they were saying similar things that the nuclear family oppressed women, women had to have, had to have be free to vote and all these different things and be free of particularly sexual restraints on sexual behavior.

25:10

If you go back to like the French revolution and stuff. So I don't think that there actually are waves of feminism.

25:16

I think it's one singular infection that has become more virulent and lethal ever since it began.

25:22

That's my take on it. Yeah. I think I'm using that word kind of in that context of waves or phases or their, their idea, the principle idea has always been the same, but it's now taking on different forms.

25:35

And maybe we can even say it's matured. It's, it's come to full fruition of what they originally have stated, right?

25:43

75 or, you know, a hundred years ago, it was well vote, uh, and, you know, be able to, uh, go to place of business on Sunday, just like a man 20 years later, it's well now it's the workforce.

25:56

And then now it moves into, not only are we equal, but there's no difference between the two of us. We saw that starting to come out in the eighties and nineties.

26:02

Now, now I'm saying now we're coming to full fruition to where they're turning in on themselves and actually degrading and hating biological, uh, women by sex, uh, to where, okay, now a man can be a woman and things like that.

26:16

So now we've gone so far into this feminist movement that it's now kind of starting to turn in on itself, which is insane because I don't understand, you know,

26:26

I do a lot of stuff in politics. Um, I do a lot of, uh, well, I used to do, um, lobbying and things like that, but now just advising on bills and things, but I just see the far left how,

26:38

I don't know how it can be sustained because it's constantly folding in on itself, especially this thing with masculinity.

26:45

Um, you know, men are, men are evil. Men are bad. Men are oppressive. They're horrible. They're useless.

26:50

We don't need them. And you go, well, biologically you need them to, to continue the human race. Uh, they build up on that.

26:57

They're working on that. Yeah. They're working on that. But I mean, we, we, we build almost everything. We outwork, uh, the fair sex.

27:05

Uh, you know, we die earlier. We, we do the dangerous job. The whole society has been built by men and that's not to say anything bad about women, but I do believe they are the weaker sex in the sense of ones that need to be protected.

27:20

As the Bible says, that doesn't mean they're less than human. We're all image bearers of God. We all have value, uh, but the heart is weaker than the bones, but it's not less important, but please continue.

27:31

Yeah. So, so my thought is too, is how can this keep going on? I feel like we're going down this, uh, train track and we see the, uh, we see the brick wall, you know, the cave, the cave coming up the solid wall and we're, what are we going to do?

27:46

Just paint, uh, you know, in the cartoons, paint, paint a black circle on it and hope it turns into a tunnel.

27:51

It just feels like you have Christians over here going, oh no, this, this is what the sexes are for.

27:57

These are their roles. This is how God created it. This is how it works best. And by the way, here's a lot of proof on how it works best.

28:03

Some of your top achievers in both work and school and things are kids from nuclear families with one mom and one dad and you know, all these things, all the statistics back it up.

28:13

And it's just kind of crazy to me that we're just going to, what, throw that all out the window and say, no, that doesn't matter.

28:20

It's, it's just very frustrating for me. And I'm wondering if that kind of motivated you to, to focus on that or what you even think about that, of how you see a whole political ideology kind of wanting to destroy one sex, or at least demean it to the point of irrelevance when in fact it's, you know, males are very relevant and needed in this world.

28:39

Well, it's, it's unfortunately a very serious problem that goes back to the garden. And in the garden in Genesis 3, 16,

28:47

God cursed Eve, he cursed the serpent, he cursed Adam as well, but cursed Eve and says, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

28:54

And your desire will be for is only used one other time in the Bible. And that's in reference to Cain and Abel, where God says to Cain, sin will desire to master you and you must rule over it.

29:06

So what is woven into the fabric of women through the curse is the desire, the constant desire to usurp male authority.

29:14

That is woven into the fabric of every woman and has been woven into the fabric of every woman since the beginning of time and will be so until we achieve resurrected bodies or we're in glory.

29:24

And the thing is what feminism has done for the past 150 years, it's, it's taken that desire to usurp male authority and injected steroids into it.

29:35

It's, it's the, it's the, it's the curse on overdrive. And the, the, the problem, this is the enormous problem is that the

29:44

American evangelical church does not have the ability to call women to repentance for their sin.

29:51

It does not, will not, and often cannot call women to repentance for their sin and let them know that they have the sin of wanting to usurp male authority and to repent because their souls are at stake.

30:05

Men have our sin as well. Our sin is passivity. Adam was passive in the garden and now we have to, by the sweat of our brow, we will eat bread.

30:13

Life is a constant struggle that we now have to fight and we resist the urge to take on one more battle.

30:19

So our temptation as men is constantly to be passive. That is our sin that we have to crucify and repent of.

30:26

And plenty of men have and do. That's, that is our, I don't know if I would call it our root sin, but that's certainly the curse, the specific curse of men.

30:34

Women's curse is to usurp male authority. These curses interact. They, they reinforce each other in a vicious, in a vicious cycle.

30:42

And we are both individually responsible for them. So women who say, well,

30:48

I will, I'll be, I'll be respectful when he's loving. It doesn't work that way.

30:54

God calls you to be respectful for your husband as a command, independent of how your husband is behaving outside of leading you into sin.

31:02

And the American evangelical church does not have the ability to call women to repentance for this.

31:08

And so instead you have rebellious women usurping the authority of their husbands. You have particularly rebellious girls under the age of 30 who have decided that they're, they've been discipled by their mothers who were crypto feminists.

31:21

And they're deciding to pursue careers and fulfillment outside of the home. And then they reach 30 or 35 is like, well,

31:27

I guess I should pop out some kids time for me to get married. It's like, no, you've been in rebellion from God for years and the church won't do anything about that.

31:36

And so, you know, yes, American society is going over the cliff and it's going over the cliff, particularly demographically, because no one's here holding women to account.

31:47

We don't have a problem holding men to account. And I attend Apologia Church here in Phoenix with Pastor Jeff Durbin.

31:54

We had a guest pastor. He's from Germany, Riemenschneider, I think is his name.

32:01

I want to make sure to get it right. He did an hour -long sermon, full -throated, you know, the belligerence, the manly belligerence of Christ, where he challenged men from the pulpit in a loud voice with a

32:14

German accent, a rather strong German accent, to be better men for an hour. We don't have a problem saying that from the pulpit.

32:22

No one has had a problem for the past 50 years calling men to be better. And yet, if you were to try and deliver a sermon from the pulpit, calling women to repent and be respectful to their husbands and acknowledge the biblical curse and everything in Titus 2 and Ephesians 5, there would be a riot.

32:37

And that is why, literally, that— If you were a 5013C, you'd have the federal government there next week.

32:43

What are you talking about? You would. You would. And the thing is, everyone's looking around. Why is everything falling apart?

32:48

Why is everything falling apart? It's not politics. It's not culture. Yes, it is those things, right? It's the family.

32:54

It's always been the family. And to have a family, you need men and women, which means you need women, which means you need the next generation of women.

33:01

But you have pastors pulling back the sharp point of convicting women of their sin. They will say, women, be respectful to your husbands.

33:08

Would husbands be loving? They'll make sure to put a little pinch of incense on feminism. It's how it is.

33:14

And the thing is, this is just what's up. And the reason why you hear me getting animated about this is

33:20

I know so many single men that are having trouble finding any woman that wants to marry them, not because these men are not marriageable, but because the girls want their careers and they want their fun and they want to go and live their lives.

33:30

And they don't want to be wives because they don't want to be slaving over kids all day. Inside the church.

33:36

And so this is a very serious problem. And it roots back to feminism.

33:42

And why do we care about masculinity? It's like, well, you're seeing what's about to happen to a civilization that doesn't.

33:48

So saying all that, I 100 % agree with everything you said. And that was a great animated rant.

33:53

We'll have to clip that and throw that up there for the teaser. But the way the church goes is the way that society goes.

34:02

And I tell that to people and they say, what are you talking about? We didn't have trans this and gay that.

34:08

And he goes, no. But the way that the church goes for 50, 60 years, you've had men in the pulpit doing exactly what you have said, omission of certain subjects.

34:19

Because believe me, you can hear it in most churches. Men do this, men do that. And we get it. Actually, righteous men actually desire correction.

34:29

They need it. I go into a church and I go, I need my confession and I need my pastor to look me in the face and tear my heart out a little bit, cut the flesh a little bit.

34:39

I need that. And the way we pull back on women, it's almost it's so disrespectful.

34:45

One, it almost treats them less than it's doing the opposite effect is treating them as less than. And then if you're a shepherd, right, you're a proclaimed shepherd, a pastor, a minister, and you say,

34:56

I'm not going to hold women to the same biblical standard as men. That's right.

35:01

Oh, how hard for you on that day of judgment. Oh, how hard. And I would also add this, you know, anyone listening, maybe a guy or a girl that are listening goes, man, it seems like he went pretty hard on women.

35:13

Listen, as fathers and husbands, as men that are believers, we know that we are accountable to Christ.

35:21

And we know that we will bow our knee one day and we will be held to account of how we led, how we loved, how we preached, how we taught our wives and our children.

35:32

And they will be under our care. That's the biblical mandate. So I understand the heavy duty it is.

35:38

Yes, my wife has to respect me, but I have to love her in a way that Christ loved the church where I lay down my life for her.

35:46

Now, most masculine guys go, I'd take a bullet for my wife. No, no, no, no, no. We're not talking about, you jump out in front of a mugger and he shoots you and you die.

35:54

That's the easy way out. That's daily laying down your needs, your wants, your need to be right, to win an argument, to go do something for yourself, your me time.

36:04

Those things need to be laid down because you are now laying down your life in a way that Christ laid down his life for the church.

36:10

And so I would submit that we have the much, I don't want to call it a higher calling, but it's definitely a harder one to walk.

36:17

My wife is, understands this clearly. She goes, boy, did God give me a good role?

36:23

Because all I have to do is submit and respect. And I go, that's all. And she goes, it's very, because she has a little fun too, where I get super excited about a project.

36:30

And I say, Ooh, I'm going to do this. We, we should do this or this new thing. And she goes, well, pray about it.

36:37

And if God clears that for you, then yeah. If not, it's between you and God. If you make that decision based on your own selfish desires, this woman knows me well, she knows that I'm accountable to God first and foremost.

36:49

I think I'll start a podcast, babe. Right. When she throws that around, I go, ah, you're right. She knows. I mean, we've been married 18 years.

36:55

So she knows me too, you know, as an extrovert, getting excited about things that, you know, will never come to fruition.

37:01

But I think what you said is very important. I'm glad you touched on that because I just didn't want to spend all that time on feminism, but also in the church, there's been a real need for this.

37:10

So as the church goes, so the world goes. So now we see the world kind of falling apart. And probably one of the reasons why men are under attack is because of the lack of leadership by men in the church.

37:21

I would also say too, 78 % of evangelicals, and that was very broad across many denominations.

37:29

This was a survey came out three years ago. 78 % of the families surveyed the women picked the church.

37:36

84 % of all families survey had only the woman going to church and the man not.

37:42

So not only are men not in church, but the women are picking the church, picking the pastor, picking what congregation they want to go to weekly.

37:49

So of course, as a pastor, if you're running your church as a business, you would cater your sermons to the one who's picking where to go, where to give tithe, where to send their kids to children's church.

38:00

Now, I know that sounds very cynical, but I'm also a realist. Like if you just look at that, then you're going to go,

38:05

I'm going to cater to the decision makers as pastors running churches as businesses. And that's not every church and that's not every evangelical church, but you find it in the evangelical world very often and quite often.

38:18

So yeah, I think we're on the same tracks there. Sorry, now I went on my rant. That's okay. Go ahead.

38:24

No, I want to respond to the idea that I went hard against women. Like I have no problem going hard against men, right?

38:32

Men are passive. Men can be very lazy. Men can be rebellious in their own ways, prideful, sinful, abdicating.

38:40

Men can be abusive, right? That pornography addiction is a huge problem. Video games, which are in moderation are fine, but a lot of men can check out their whole lives into video games, right?

38:50

Men can avoid doing the hard things and we often do. Men can do wrong things and we often do.

38:56

And no one has a problem standing at the pulpit and saying that for an hour, countless sermons for years.

39:02

And if I speak for three minutes about the notions that women sin, women sin uniquely, women sin against men, women sin against men who don't deserve it, women are accountable for their sin to Christ in the day of judgment and another person's sin does not legitimize yours.

39:23

No one else's sin makes yours okay. In the day of judgment, neither I nor you are going to get up and talk to God and God's Well, your parents were mean to you.

39:32

So don't worry about following the rest of my laws. No, you will be accountable. And women need to hear this because this is treating men and women with equal weights and measures, right?

39:41

There's of course, we're two men talking right now, right? So two men talking, we'll speak very differently than speaking in person to a woman or an audience of women or an audience that includes women.

39:51

I get it. However, these things are still true. They're still true.

39:56

And I respect women enough to say, the Bible says these things. This isn't Will Spencer is the authority.

40:03

This is scripture as the authority. And by not sharing this with you, I'm disrespecting you.

40:09

I'm not giving you the full counsel of God. And you deserve that. Jesus spoke to women directly all throughout the

40:16

New Testament. He didn't ask the woman at the well, like, well, go get your husband and I'll talk to him, right?

40:21

He talked to her, called her to repentance. Mary, Mary anoints Jesus' feet with oil, right?

40:28

Because she recognizes that he's her savior, right? She doesn't send a man to do it as her representative.

40:36

She approaches him directly. And Jesus appears to women during the resurrection, which was so controversial at the time, like really what, right?

40:45

Proving their equality of status with men as sinners in need of a savior.

40:51

And yet we fear saying that. And we fear saying it precisely because that reason that whenever a man speaks to it, for just a short period of time, it's considered going too hard at women.

41:03

So here's my challenge. If we are truly strong and independent women, be strong and independent.

41:09

And you can hear this like men. If you want to be equal to men, then you can hear it like men do.

41:15

But it's not appropriate to be like, well, I'm strong and independent and I can hear things like a man, but then

41:22

I'm going to be a wilting flower when something like, you can't have it both ways.

41:27

And I don't want you to have it both ways. I want you to choose. I want you to choose to be soft.

41:33

I want you to choose to be, as the word is, submissive to your husband and all things, to be respectful, to honor male authority.

41:41

I want you to choose that because it's liberating. That's why the gospel says that.

41:46

She'll be saved by childbearing. It's a hard saying, but in a sense, it's an easier way of being than constantly wanting to use male authority, which

41:55

I think of as like drinking seawater. It's never satisfying. But I think we need to be able to have this dialogue.

42:04

And by men having to force their way into the dialogue would be better than like, okay, maybe we as a church need to talk about this because the world is on fire and the family can put it out.

42:15

But that takes both of us to do it the right way, to do it God's way. Yeah, that's really good.

42:21

And I just want to let you know, I wasn't accusing you of going hard. I would say I guarantee out of the tens of thousands of people that listen to this, and not all of them are in the same headspace or even worldview we are, they will take two of those minutes and go, oh, that's, you know, even if they agree with it, that seems a little harsh.

42:40

And that's, that's my point. That's where we are, even within the Christian world of women can't be called to repentance or correction.

42:48

We're very soft and we handle them with white gloves. And it's like, well, okay, yes, be gentle in certain circumstances, but not when we're calling people to repentance.

42:57

We don't play with sin like that. And like I said, I think it's very demeaning, disrespectful, and it makes them less than, and I think pastors do it in Western Christianity all the time, unfortunately.

43:07

May I add something to that? So one of the things I've heard, I don't see it much anymore, but one of the things I've heard is that Presbyterian churches, the pastor used to put on like a black cloak, right?

43:18

I don't see that so often anymore. And I always saw it from the outside and thought it had something to do with like a priesthood or something like that.

43:25

But I learned it's because when a pastor puts on the black cloak, the meaning behind that is I'm not speaking as a man.

43:31

I'm speaking as a representative of God's word. So separate the man from the word.

43:36

I'm doing a job here because I'm a sinful, flawed, imperfect man. But in preaching

43:41

God's word, I'm going to aim for whatever amount of perfection or accuracy is appropriate, right?

43:47

I don't know how I could say that, but I think you get what I mean. And I think by pastors taking off the cloak and just being everyday average guys like, hey,

43:56

I'm just a guy like you. I don't know. I can't, you know, I'm flawed. I can't call other people just like, no, you have to.

44:02

We need you to. Please, for the love of God, call us all to repentance, because then we'll truly have the revival of faith in America, which is the only thing that I think will save us.

44:14

I don't know what else will. I tell you what, the secular world's trying everything. And I see a lot of churches that are trying everything outside of the gospel.

44:26

And it's really crazy how horribly they're failing and how the Bible says it will be a horrible failure outside of the gospel.

44:33

So, yeah, amen. No, that's good stuff. So, all right, so let's put bookends on this. I'm going to go off script here and ask you to speak to our listeners for a minute.

44:42

If we've got a young man out there and he's struggling, let's say something similar to you or even me, early 20s, late teens, mid 20s, whatever, a little bit younger than me, a lot younger than me, let's be honest.

44:55

And he goes, okay, what are some things that I should do to seek biblical masculinity, to seek

45:02

Christ? Outside of reading the Bible, we understand that. But what are some practical things that will set me straight in knowing who

45:09

I'm supposed to be in Christ and what my biblical masculine role is in this world? And like I said, you don't know this question was coming, so it's off the top of your head.

45:20

But what would be some of your suggestions to that listener? Yeah, sure. So we'll operate under the assumption that he's listening or has listened to people like Andrew Tate and George P.

45:29

Peterson, which is likely, like Jordan Peterson. Okay. So what the secular world of masculinity will tell you, young man, is all the things that you are supposed to do, build wealth, build fitness, and build status.

45:44

These are things that men do. Now, what the secular world won't tell you is what men are for.

45:50

Men are for being husbands and fathers and building a legacy. So if you have the things that the world tells you to do, which is to build wealth, status, and fitness, and you only do those things with no higher purpose, when you build status for the sake of itself, it becomes fame.

46:07

When you build wealth for the sake of itself, it becomes greed. When you build fitness for the sake of itself, it becomes vanity.

46:15

And these are all sins. So if you do all the things the world tells you to do without a purpose, you will fall into sin, and that's what you see with men like Andrew Tate.

46:24

You see fame, you see vanity, and you see greed. Okay, but if you put that together with what the

46:32

Bible says you are for as a man, which is to be a husband and a father and to build a legacy, you can use your status to feed into building your legacy.

46:45

You can use your fitness and your wealth to become a husband and a father and to build a legacy. So make sure that whatever you hear the secular world telling you to do, that you maintain an awareness through daily scripture reading and prayer of what you are for as a man.

47:01

And when you take those two things and you put them together, you will find a greater fulfillment, because we're supposed to do all these things to the glory of God.

47:09

You can build status to the glory of God. You can build wealth to the glory of God as long as you make sure to order it rightly, tithing and all that stuff.

47:17

You can build fitness to the glory of God, but it's always in service of a higher purpose of being a husband, a father, and building a legacy of thinking long -term and not merely self -serving.

47:29

And if you follow those, that's what I tell young men. It's okay to do the things that some of the world tells you to do.

47:36

Not all of them, not spinning plates, not having hookups. You don't want to do that. You want to find one woman for life.

47:44

But the things that the world tells you to do, if you make sure to do them for the reasons the

47:50

Bible tells you to, I believe that you'll be blessed. And I believe that you have a long and fruitful life.

47:56

And that is ultimately what I think men want. Wow. Yeah, that's so good. Well, Will Spencer, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on.

48:04

Will, I'm going to link all this up in the episode so you guys can just click away and find them, but throw out your socials or where people can find you or where they can listen to the podcast.

48:13

Yeah. The best way to find everything is you go to renovmen .com slash links. That's R -E -N -O -F -M -E -N .com

48:20

like renaissance of men, but shorter. Renovmen .com slash links. And from there, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Renovmen.

48:26

And you can find my podcast on your favorite podcast catcher and YouTube as well. There you go.

48:32

Will, thanks so much for taking time with us, sitting down, talking about these very important things. I really appreciate you, brother.

48:38

My pleasure. Thank you, brother. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. As always, you can find out more about us at dmwpodcast .com.

48:46

Follow us everywhere at Dead Men Walking Podcast, except for Twitter. They wouldn't give us that when it really bugs me.

48:51

I like brand consistency. As you know, it's real dmwpodcast. One day, we're hoping to get that changed.

48:57

But guys, we appreciate you. Keep sharing with a friend. Let's bring glory to God in everything that we do. And remember, the chief end of man is to glorify

49:03

God and enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to check us out at dmwpodcast .com where you can purchase the best and snarkiest merch on the internet, support the show, and leave us a review or message.

49:11

Dead Men Walking can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at Dead Men Walking Podcast and on Twitter at realdmwpodcast. The Dead Men Walking Podcast is part of the

49:17

Fight Laugh Peace Network. For exclusive show content, be sure to download the PubTV app and become a member. If you're a business that needs to reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers, then your demographic podcast advertising might be for you.