The Art of Manliness - #126： Christianity, Masculinity and Some Manly Maxims With Stephen Mansfield

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so a few years ago

00:00:19.000 i got in the mail this book called mansfield's book of manly men has a really cool vintage

00:00:23.820 aesthetic to it looks like something you'd pick up from the 19th century full of vintage engraving

00:00:28.260 illustrations of winston churchill or teddy roosevelt and then with these life lessons on how

00:00:33.140 to be a man from these great figures from history anyways the book author is named steven mansfield

00:00:37.560 and brought him on the show to discuss his manly maxims and his ideals of manhood that he espouses

00:00:43.300 in the mansfield's book of manly men man it's a lot of manly there anyways this book is up geared

00:00:48.780 towards christian men but i think the ideas and principles that he talks about in there are

00:00:52.980 applicable to a man of any faith or lack of faith but on the podcast today steven and i discuss

00:00:59.220 some of the unique questions or challenges of manliness and christianity how the two can can

00:01:05.640 be congruent and why christian churches have such a hard time keeping a man's attention and getting

00:01:12.260 them actually into the pews and what churches can what they should be doing to remedy that and then

00:01:17.880 after that we start talking about just the manly maxims of stevens mansfield and the ideals and

00:01:23.480 what we can learn from great men from history to live a more manful life uh so really interesting

00:01:29.160 uh podcast i think a lot of great takeaways you'll think you'll feel a little invigorated and inspired

00:01:34.240 and feel a bit more virile after you're done listening so without further ado steven mansfield

00:01:38.720 and mansfield's book of manly men all right steven mansfield welcome to the show thank you very much

00:01:52.080 looking forward to it all right so your book is mansfield's book of manly men and it's a great

00:01:57.320 book and the thing to start off about it's it's directed primarily towards a christian audience

00:02:01.400 though i think a man of any faith or no faith could get something out of it well i think it's

00:02:06.900 interesting this whole christian angle because i think it's a great topic of discussion the

00:02:10.720 intersection of christianity and masculinity because something that my friends and i discuss

00:02:14.960 quite a bit it seems that the church has had a hard time reaching and resonating with men what is it

00:02:22.200 the way that christianity is portrayed that puts a lot of men off well you know there's a natural drift

00:02:28.360 in most christianity towards the feminine towards emotional experiences uh towards intensely internal

00:02:35.140 things uh towards even intellectual things which doesn't inherently mean non-manly but it can in

00:02:41.760 some cultures and and so if if we're not careful if we don't run our churches with in a man-friendly

00:02:47.700 way and realize that uh men are critical to the whole process then yeah we we can turn churches into

00:02:53.940 very feminine situations and that's why uh you know the stats show that about 70 to 80 percent of 1.00

00:02:59.460 most church attendance is by women yeah and this isn't a new problem either um i think it's fascinating 0.95

00:03:05.400 as i've done read books from the 19th century about masculinity um most of the books were christian

00:03:12.340 books uh and they were basically authors were trying to make the case to men that yes indeed christianity

00:03:17.660 is manly and christ was a manly figure and we should emulate him um so i think i think it's fascinating

00:03:23.560 that this problem that's been around since a hundred years and more is still going on today

00:03:28.640 there's no question you know i'm sitting in my office in nashville as we speak and i'm looking

00:03:33.520 across my desk here at a book called manhood at harvard uh it's about a movement that happened

00:03:39.600 right around the 1900 dawn of the 1900s with men like theodore roosevelt involved it was a great

00:03:45.900 surge of masculinity uh it produced a lot of his great works and and other leaders out of harvard and

00:03:51.620 yale uh you know this is described in a book by ann douglas that maybe you've read it's called the

00:03:56.480 feminization of american culture and she's a columbia scholar and basically she says that

00:04:01.240 when the pulpit when the churches uh turned liberal and thus turned feminine and she makes

00:04:08.100 that connection not me um that it lost manhood it lost division for manhood and then it started

00:04:13.340 losing men from the pews so that's you know it's a fascinating connection that we have to consider but

00:04:17.360 the the bottom line is you're absolutely right i mean when uh initially uh christianity was seen as a

00:04:24.560 a spur to manhood but by the time we get into the early 1900s that's been lost

00:04:29.480 yeah and yeah the whole muscular christianity movement where the ymca and billy sunday wrestling

00:04:35.440 with the devil uh i love that stuff it's it's a really fascinating parts of our history so okay so

00:04:40.920 here's the question what what can churches do to connect more with men because you know i'm in

00:04:45.380 oklahoma uh we have a lot of the big mega churches around here life church uh church on the move

00:04:51.060 and i've seen some of the things they've done to reach out for men and it's like have like a harley

00:04:55.740 davidson night um super bowl sunday and like incorporate football into the sermon and for

00:05:01.680 some men that really resonates but i've had some of my friends who go to these churches where they

00:05:04.860 sort of roll their eyes and they feel sort of patronizing um what can men do or what can churches

00:05:10.100 do to connect more with men well you know i celebrate anything that churches can do that draw men so

00:05:15.900 if the super bowl does it or you know the breakfast on saturday morning that's fine but i think i i'm

00:05:20.900 with you i think a lot of that can tend to be um you know like having a soap opera party for women i

00:05:26.260 think women would not be all that happy about that either uh but the bottom line is we need to 0.99

00:05:30.400 understand the nature of men uh men are not uh engaged simply by processing emotions and uh sitting

00:05:38.400 and contemplating things they're engaged by doing you know they they have uh they've done a number of

00:05:43.420 studies over the years where they'll put children male and female in a room with chairs and toys

00:05:48.720 and they basically let them do what they want and they observe them the girls turn the chairs just 1.00

00:05:53.640 opposite each other look at each other and finally one of them says you know i like your hair and then

00:05:59.060 uh the guys though turn the chairs side by side shoulder to shoulder and little boys will start

00:06:04.920 looking around and saying things like hey i bet we can climb up on that cabinet hey i wonder how we

00:06:08.980 can pull her hair wonder we can set that door on fire you know or whatever how much how much 0.99

00:06:12.900 dynamite is take to blow up the cat i mean they start thinking of things to do so i think this is

00:06:18.300 a key to how men think throughout the old testament whenever a man is commanded to teach his son there's

00:06:24.380 always a phrase in there like you know on the way while you're walking as you're going while

00:06:29.380 you're doing things so to circle men up in a fellowship hall and say process your emotions and

00:06:35.160 check on each other is is uh not the optimal way the best way to do it uh the best best way to

00:06:40.880 engage men is to have them connect and build manly relationships as they're doing significant

00:06:45.960 things uh as they're doing things they care about it's in the doing i think that men really come to

00:06:51.240 the fore so that's a major difference and if churches will pay attention to that i think it

00:06:55.760 would make a big difference there's one other thing i'll mention briefly and that is uh that you

00:07:00.320 know the vast majority of most church staffs are female uh about 80 percent and where pastors have

00:07:08.740 decided to change that not to go anti-female at all but to make sure there's there are prominent

00:07:13.620 manly men so to speak on the staff in the administration in every kind of position uh it

00:07:19.660 you know people become what they behold the church will change in its composition uh if the leadership

00:07:24.760 has a lot of uh of really engaged men in it and so that's that's been a major tactic too

00:07:30.400 okay so be action oriented as opposed to emotions or feelings based

00:07:35.640 yes exactly and i think i think that you know since our churches have tended in recent decades

00:07:42.080 to turn a little bit therapeutic a lot of what passes for men's ministry is men circled up

00:07:46.820 talking about each other's emotions and i that that may last for a short while it won't carry us

00:07:51.480 long term and it won't make us the kind of people who are changing society and that's why i celebrate a

00:07:55.980 lot of what you do because you know it's about uh getting men connected yes but also getting them

00:08:00.040 busy doing the right things yeah i've been to a few of those men's fellowship things in the

00:08:03.860 morning the donuts were good but like yeah like i i gave it like a shot you know a couple weeks and

00:08:10.200 i was like i just stopped going because i just felt like i'm not getting anything out of this and

00:08:13.460 i don't know it wasn't invigorating i guess exactly exactly i consider myself a pretty manly guy i hope

00:08:19.960 i am i'm i'm okay on on football and watching football i don't hunt i'm not interested in

00:08:25.240 motorcycles i'm a city boy um you know there got to be other ways to go so really the key is to know

00:08:30.680 your culture know your men uh and build in that direction but keep in mind uh i'm saying this all

00:08:36.280 pastors all leaders keep in mind that the basic nature of men which is processing the eternal sitting

00:08:41.560 around and thinking thoughts is not the best way to engage them we've got to set them in motion okay

00:08:45.960 so let's get to your book um and i love how you begin your book you talk about a moment when you were

00:08:51.880 in damascus and this is when you were a grown man and you had children and that you said that was the

00:08:58.560 night you became a man can you recount that story for our listeners i think it's a really cool

00:09:03.540 story well thanks and i can uh i was part of a relief team that was going in and out of iraq to

00:09:09.660 work with the kurds back some years ago and on one of my trips my papers got messed up and i got stuck

00:09:15.500 in damascus and uh i was there pretty much alone there was a syrian parliamentarian this is back before

00:09:21.880 syria ended up in the mess that it's in now um who knew i was there he was a christian he uh was

00:09:27.480 concerned that i was alone and you know just every day trying to get my papers filed right

00:09:31.880 and he finally decided to have a little gathering on the roof of a hotel in damascus well he invited

00:09:37.240 a bunch of uh arabs of course who could hardly speak english i don't speak any arabic and we sat 1.00

00:09:42.420 around we ate we nodded at each other we said what little we could said and finally uh one of the guys

00:09:47.380 uh turned to me and broke in english and said do you have a son i said i do he said what is his name

00:09:53.200 and i said it's jonathan and as though he was announcing you know something miraculous in the

00:09:57.520 room he said well then you have a new name everybody stopped and looked at him he said your

00:10:02.520 name is abu john well it turns out that in arab culture when a man has a son it's considered such

00:10:08.360 an honorary thing such an amazing thing for him that he's given an honorary name an honorific they call it

00:10:13.620 in arabic and um what it means is that uh they take uh the word abu which means father and they put it

00:10:20.080 with a shortened version of the son's name and that's the honorary title uh for the father from

00:10:24.520 that point on so my son's name is jonathan they started calling me abu john well that was sweet

00:10:29.680 to know but the next thing that happened was these guys realized i had i did not know that they had

00:10:34.600 never celebrated that with me um and so they began the manliest partying that i've ever been a part of

00:10:40.560 uh they brought out food they turned up the music they started dancing some of the bad uzis in their 0.99

00:10:45.620 hands you know and when uh when a guy's got an uzi in his hand and he's dancing with you he

00:10:49.740 leads you know so we danced and we danced and uh and finally about in the wee hours of the morning

00:10:54.500 they've they've kind of back slapped me back to my hotel and uh wished me well but they had spent

00:10:59.540 hours celebrating me as a father well i have to tell you at that time i was in my mid-30s finishing

00:11:06.400 a doctorate had a wife two children obviously a son um had lived a pretty normal american life

00:11:11.600 military brat you know football baseball basketball lived all over the place i had never in my entire

00:11:17.620 life been celebrated as a man there had never been a moment when men said we know who you are

00:11:23.900 we know what this means whatever it is you know becoming an adolescent going to college marrying

00:11:28.600 whatever it is there had never been a ritual in my life that had sort of commemorated and deepened the

00:11:36.440 experience of some of some passage from one stage to another and so here these these muslim guys

00:11:42.400 in damascus syria some of them probably terrorists for all i know i mean i didn't i couldn't even talk

00:11:47.280 to them dancing and celebrating me as abu john it profoundly changed me you know i'm a protestant

00:11:53.540 christian i'm not jewish we don't have a bar mitzvahs we don't have any ceremonies for manhood

00:11:57.540 um and i gotta tell you that really began to make me realize that you know we're not we're not

00:12:04.120 recognizing we're not helping boys grow we're not committing we're not marking these transitions

00:12:09.180 with men and i'm always reminded when i tell the story of the african proverb uh from the villages

00:12:14.600 that says if we do not initiate the boys they will burn the village down and that's very much what's

00:12:19.820 happening in our society and i wasn't in any danger of burning anybody's buildings or village

00:12:24.460 but i definitely was a man with an aching empty soul when it came to manhood and that was the turning

00:12:28.820 point for me so i mean that's a great point that one of the problems there's lots of problems that

00:12:34.780 are facing many days the sort of lack of a rite of passage um what's the solution to that because

00:12:41.120 there's lots of organizations and groups out there that sort of provide that provide rites of passage

00:12:45.840 experiences is that the solution where you sort of you go to this organization or you go to does it

00:12:50.060 need to be more organic right like within the family or within a man's i don't know tribe if you want

00:12:56.780 to call it whether that's your church or their close group of friends like how do you incorporate a

00:13:00.080 rite of passage into your culture well i think it does have to be done first and formally in other

00:13:07.160 words the father the immediate men around a boy around a young man needs to take responsibility

00:13:11.500 for it doesn't have to be highly organizational or even or even liturgical or ceremonial um you know

00:13:17.480 when my son was about to turn 13 we had what we called a christian bar mitzvah for him we had people

00:13:23.640 in who knew him and said positive things about him we gave him a sword but before that i just drove up

00:13:29.120 with him into the mountains we had a big old sex talk along the way we listened to some tapes by

00:13:33.900 some uh some wise psychologists who were talking to young boys and uh you know we went up in the

00:13:39.100 mountains and we swam naked we you know junk food until four in the morning and we watched old movies

00:13:43.780 and and we just had a great time i think he considers both of them to have been the marking of

00:13:48.320 his passage in the adolescence i tried to do the same thing when he uh went to college and he's not

00:13:53.680 married yet but when he is i'll do the same thing then so what we can do is simply start shifting

00:13:58.160 some of these moments that we recognize as transitional moments uh you know into having

00:14:03.900 an emphasis on manhood he even you know i got married and had children no one ever talked to

00:14:08.880 me as a man celebrated me as a man or a father and i think that uh we can we can certainly do that but

00:14:14.040 then i'm i certainly welcome uh more ceremonial approaches and churches men's organizations shoot

00:14:19.700 even amongst a few friends or in a business you know there's there's certainly anything that we do

00:14:24.380 that confirms a man confirms his journey calls out the best in him and points them towards a

00:14:30.620 valiant future maybe gives them some symbols some lasting things he can keep that that speak of all

00:14:35.400 that i think it will really change lives and we know the value of ceremony but you know we shouldn't

00:14:40.420 have to be in the military or the boy scouts you know or a highly liturgical church to uh to have

00:14:45.260 these moments okay so be proactive be intentional yes you lay out what you call your manly maxims

00:14:52.420 there's four of them what are those four manly maxims that sort of guide the rest of your book

00:14:57.220 well i wanted to give men a simple on-ramp for for masculinity if they didn't have one the first 0.99

00:15:02.780 one is manly men do manly things now of course i'm having some fun with this we call them

00:15:06.820 mansfield's manly maxims but the first one is manly men do manly things and the idea is simply to

00:15:12.400 get men focused on the doing i'm a little concerned that a lot of our emphasis on men and

00:15:17.320 our programs and ministries and what have you uh really focuses on the emotional and men retreat

00:15:23.400 from that you know i've had guys say to me when i invite them to one of our you know gatherings do

00:15:26.940 we have to hug and stuff you know they're just afraid somebody's going to grab them and look in

00:15:30.900 their eyes and sing kumbaya or whatever and so what what i want to do is get them and focus on the

00:15:36.700 doing um the second one is that manly men tend their field the thing they're doing is tending their

00:15:42.220 field now this is language that comes from the apostle paul when he said uh you know i i know

00:15:47.620 the field assigned to me i know what god's given me to do and i start asking men what are you

00:15:52.300 responsible for what are you have you been given to do because the opposite of great manhood is that

00:15:57.580 you are irresponsible that you're sitting in your you know recliner while the house falls apart

00:16:01.880 you're neglecting your white who's bitter and gaining weight the kids who are doing things they 0.85

00:16:06.040 ought not be doing and everybody's lonely and hurting well this is this is your responsibility and i

00:16:10.260 think men grow in strength authority wisdom uh and certainly honor when they take responsibility

00:16:15.500 um the third one is really the one that really galvanizes in my mind and that is that manly men

00:16:21.620 build manly men in other words i'm all for seminars conferences books every kind of thing

00:16:26.620 um but ultimately i think that noble righteous manhood gets built into a man when he has a band of

00:16:33.220 brothers and uh i think you every man's got to have a band of brothers and there's got to be in

00:16:38.180 among those band of brothers a free fire zone where anything can be said that needs to be said

00:16:42.880 to make me better and i'll do the same for you my band of brothers we have a lot of fun along the way

00:16:47.540 we do a lot of rowdy things we do a lot of social service things but we make each other better and

00:16:53.060 there's a free fire zone and then finally my fourth one is that manly men live to the glory of god i i'm

00:16:58.640 of the opinion uh that a man really can't do what he's made to do do it well do it powerfully

00:17:04.420 uh on his own strength he's got to have the gift of god the grace of god the guidance of god the

00:17:09.280 counsel of god uh to do what he does and so those are the four and they're not everything a man needs

00:17:15.260 to know but at least they're the on-ramp that i think helps most men get up and running yeah the

00:17:20.140 one the two that really stuck out to me i mean all of them are great um was the the tending your

00:17:24.700 fields i never thought of it responsibility in that that light and i love the metaphor um and then

00:17:30.060 also the yeah the importance of of building other men up because i think one of the problems in our

00:17:35.800 our modern culture is it's very self-centered right uh but like it's not in a it's yeah we're all about

00:17:41.900 self-actualization self-improvement and then we forget the other and then in my experience maybe this

00:17:47.440 is your experience too that i've always become a better person whenever i'm serving others right

00:17:53.800 for some reason it gives me more motivation to improve myself when i feel like i'm building

00:17:58.820 someone else up well i couldn't agree with you more you know i i think that what we've done is

00:18:04.560 we've defined this issue of destiny and becoming what we're supposed to be or what we want to be

00:18:08.160 uh in terms of a very self-focused process like you say but i tell men look you have a destiny

00:18:13.620 but your destiny is fulfilled by investing in the destinies of others i mean this is this is the

00:18:18.600 truth of almost every great religion it's the truth of uh certainly what i believe as a christian

00:18:22.660 it's the truth that i see practically lived out around me um i don't get better by you know getting in a

00:18:27.780 room by myself and focusing on myself and looking in the mirror and you know just doing doing things

00:18:32.480 to build up myself i get better as a man as i invest in other men as i invested in my son my

00:18:37.380 daughter my wife as i as i man the boundaries of the field assigned to me sacrificially if necessary

00:18:42.940 so i couldn't agree more and that's why even in scripture for example we we see so many examples

00:18:48.800 and direct statements where you know if a man's going to be a good man to his wife he's going to have to

00:18:52.600 lay down his life i mean this is the pattern so you're absolutely right the the self focus of our

00:18:58.380 age our society i think works against great manhood all right so you you have a chapter where you the

00:19:04.920 title is from a famous line from the bible and it's an exchange between king david of israel

00:19:10.440 he's about to die and he's giving his final blessings on his children he tells his son solomon

00:19:15.400 to be strong and show yourself a man what does it mean to show yourself a man and how can men do that

00:19:22.860 today well first of all just taking a little bit of information about that verse you know there are

00:19:28.220 very few times in the bible when the word man means uh the characteristics of a man the nobility of a

00:19:34.680 man the good things a man ought to be doing and not just males and that's one of them david didn't turn

00:19:39.540 to solomon and say be a male he said be a good a righteous a noble man and i think that the beginning

00:19:47.300 of it is very much what you and i are discussing i think a man needs to recognize that he's put on

00:19:52.520 earth for certain purposes and his own pleasure and personal fulfillment is not it alone and that he

00:19:59.540 needs to invest in the lives of others uh build a manly culture bring up the boys around him and not

00:20:05.760 just his own by the way but others uh in that manly culture and begin to do good in the world

00:20:11.180 when men really begin to understand the gift that it is to be a man and invest that gift in society

00:20:18.500 in the young in their wife in noble causes that's when i see men really engage and other things start

00:20:25.300 to get easier it's like it's like it's like you're grabbing the ski rope and once you grab the ski rope

00:20:29.500 and you're balanced on the skis now things start moving forward before that you were just plowing water

00:20:34.100 and a lot of guys are plowing water but they're not they're not really up and moving quickly and

00:20:39.040 engaged when they make this critical change and begin to realize that manhood is a powerful thing

00:20:46.060 but it has to be invested in others to really have its power fulfilled its purpose fulfilled

00:20:51.000 uh that's when men become noble when they become great men and it's it's it's absolutely wondrous to

00:20:56.520 behold okay so the the rest of your book after you lay out your manly maxim sort of this road

00:21:01.840 this on-ramp and then this ideal of showing ourselves or shooing i love the the king james

00:21:07.060 version of show shoe yeah that's great um that's our goal you you dedicate chapters to virtues or ideals

00:21:15.500 that we should aspire for and what i love about it is that you you take a famous person or famous man

00:21:21.720 from history and look at his life and and how that individual represented that ideal and what lessons

00:21:28.980 we can take from that and you include like all my my all-time favorites and then one of them

00:21:33.840 is winston churchill what virtues or ideals of manhood can churchill teach us today well in all

00:21:41.980 the book i what i wanted to do was take some of our heroes and show the dark side of their lives and how

00:21:46.820 they overcame that in other words i i i love celebrating these guys and could have written you

00:21:51.680 know real positive happy chapters but i decided to go to the dark side and with churchill uh perhaps the

00:21:57.360 most damaging potentially deforming thing in his life uh was that his father hated him people often

00:22:03.260 don't know this uh his father was descending into a form of madness throughout most of churchill's young

00:22:09.000 life um probably induced by a disease of some kind um but churchill was simply a disappointment to

00:22:15.400 his father even as if his father had not been in some kind of medical condition and uh churchill's

00:22:20.860 father treated him horribly um and so churchill lived in his shadow lived in fear of him uh lived

00:22:26.980 wounded by this man and uh later in life uh churchill literally thought that his father was appearing to

00:22:33.900 him um and taunting him even when he was prime minister of england but what i find powerful about

00:22:40.060 the whole thing is that when when lord randolph churchill's father died uh churchill had to make a

00:22:45.440 decision am i going to live now in bitterness and regret and let that define my life or am i going

00:22:52.560 to live out my father's legacy am i going to pick up his discarded legacy so to speak because uh lord

00:22:58.460 randolph ended his life pretty much in some shame and and you know popular disrepute um or or churchill

00:23:04.800 had to think will i live out his legacy or will i just be crushed under it and he decided uh as he wrote

00:23:11.600 in his book my early life uh that he would take up his father's legacy and cause and live it and he did

00:23:17.200 that publicly for the rest of his life and i think that's a very defining moment in churchill's life

00:23:22.340 there are a number of them as you know but um when he decides not to be bitter not to be angry not to

00:23:27.840 live a life of regret and snarling anger but to live out his father's legacy and see him see himself

00:23:34.000 as a champion of his father's cause i think that's when churchill takes major steps up towards what he

00:23:40.320 would become and we all know that many men you know and certainly in my own life i could i could

00:23:44.640 choose to others could choose to allow bitterness towards their fathers to crush them um but that's

00:23:50.300 a major defining issue right there how will you live out a sense of family destiny how will you extend

00:23:56.280 your father's cause in the world and i think that's uh that's that's one of the things that defines a

00:24:01.100 great man yeah i love the whole idea of like connection to family in a way even if your your family

00:24:08.060 you're not there's nothing to really be proud of about your family in a maybe there's some some

00:24:13.120 skeletons in your family's closet but using that right like like churchill did to sort of go against

00:24:20.060 that and like i'm going to do something different i don't have i'm not trapped by this i can take my

00:24:23.320 family's legacy and make it something different uh i think it's really inspiring well that that's what

00:24:29.000 i've had to do in my own life even um i don't have the near the level of abuse in my life that

00:24:33.820 churchill did i come from a long line of military commanders fairly high-ranking military commanders

00:24:38.440 in the american military and they were all terrible fathers i just have to say love them as i do they

00:24:43.660 were all terrible fathers and i've sat many times with my children and said listen you know what we

00:24:49.320 can receive from these men is not just you know pride in their accomplishments and their medals and

00:24:53.540 their rank but we can receive the the sense that we have a family called to fight in noble causes we

00:24:59.640 have a uh we have a family that that that really is charged with living for uh something passionate

00:25:06.820 maybe having to sacrifice for it well man my kids eat that up it's not that's not something i'm just

00:25:11.020 making up i really believe that you know that's what's passed on to them and then i explain to them

00:25:15.940 that you know it within the soil of your of your greatness are the seeds of your destruction so to

00:25:21.040 speak and and uh and that these these guys weren't great parents so my kids none of them are married

00:25:25.920 you know they're too young but um but i'm telling you they are ready to be great parents and to

00:25:30.680 overcome sort of the negative family history so uh you know you usually can find even in a troubled

00:25:36.880 family something to pass on to the next generation and something to live out yourself and i think that's

00:25:42.400 again the the great benefit of churchill's example so in the next one of the chapters you make a case

00:25:48.020 that men need to learn or relearn the skill of friendship why are friends so important in a

00:25:56.160 man's life and why is it so difficult for grown adult men to make friends you know it's one of the

00:26:03.280 great questions of our age i think that most men simply friends friendships happen so naturally in

00:26:10.620 early life that unless someone teaches them how to build friends how to build a band of brothers the

00:26:16.440 priority and importance of it and the skills of it then they just sort of uh outgrow their friends

00:26:21.300 in a sense i don't mean that they wouldn't benefit from them most of us have friends when we were in

00:26:25.640 high school you know before uh playground friends up to sports college it's fairly easy you know you're in

00:26:32.180 dorms you go into class with people but then most guys get married have children get busy and a

00:26:37.280 decade later they you know a friend is someone you call once a year if you if you call it all

00:26:41.500 um most guys don't have those skills but men are need other men number one uh they they are most of

00:26:50.460 what they're made to do they are not made to do alone women bond quickly easily uh those those 0.60

00:26:55.900 relationships are meaningful uh women they can function alone usually better than men uh most of

00:27:01.840 the studies show but men need other men they need the reflections of other men they need the insights of

00:27:07.420 other men um and and i think that our society just isolates um and causes a man to turn towards his

00:27:14.520 entertainments for whatever manly input he's getting rather than to other men so to shut off

00:27:19.280 the tv and the devices to build a band of brothers uh to do noble things and to create that free fire

00:27:24.620 zone where men are uh speaking into each other's lives what they need to know to be great men i think

00:27:29.220 that's just essential i mean where do you start i mean can you do you start at church do you if you

00:27:33.460 don't have a church like can you go to work i mean how do you find these other men well most men are in

00:27:39.520 a sea of casual relationships and so that the art of this thing is to take the relationships you have

00:27:46.040 at whatever level and move them towards relationships that are beneficial to each other uh and then include

00:27:54.040 discussion of the serious matters of what it means to be a man as i teach men how to do this it's usually

00:27:59.260 just a matter of starting to turn the topics that are discussed in light conversation over lunch at

00:28:03.900 work or you know the basketball game once in a while whatever turn the discussion turn it to uh you

00:28:10.440 know what do you think about this i'm struggling with it what do you think about that how do you

00:28:13.380 overcome that have you ever had to battle that just turn it from the some of the caca we tend to 1.00

00:28:17.760 discuss you know just in just to buy the time and deepen them a little bit and to see to see who

00:28:22.980 responds and the guy responds well then now you may you may be moving from friendship to a real

00:28:27.700 brother um you know keep doing things keep having fun but but see if this person won't partner with

00:28:33.680 you in the great project of being a man and sometimes to do your own transparency is the

00:28:38.240 best way to do this you know uh you know i'm really i mean i'm on i'm on the porn all the time

00:28:42.800 have you ever have you had to overcome that have you had to battle that or you know i've i'm really

00:28:47.360 i'm just eating myself to death here banking well how do you stay trim and and you know how do you

00:28:52.500 break through the whole lethargic man thing you know and just just start to really get enlist

00:28:57.500 people and purposes most men want a bond they want to help their friends they want to be tight

00:29:02.960 we've just simply lost the skills so it takes one guy i think uh starting to turn the friendships he

00:29:08.040 has at a very light level towards something deeper and meaningful and then i think it starts to take

00:29:11.800 on a life of its own okay so i was pleasantly surprised to find humor on your list um because

00:29:17.980 in running the site you know we hit some really serious topics and we were really serious and

00:29:22.720 earnest about helping men become better men in their lives but every now and then we'll do something

00:29:26.880 that's just fun and when we do these fun things you always have like the sourpuss like church lady 0.97

00:29:31.900 types are just like no you need to be serious and like being you know manhood is a serious topic and

00:29:36.840 you shouldn't joke around and it's just like a buzzkill but i love how you use gk chesterton one of my

00:29:43.420 favorite writers to sort of exemplify this ideal of humor why is humor important in a man's life

00:29:48.460 well a man communicates a great deal through his humor and we not only need to lighten up and see

00:29:54.580 the humorous side churchill said if we can't see the humorous side of life we're not going to be able

00:29:58.240 to deal with the most serious side of life uh but but i really think that uh for most men more is caught

00:30:04.140 than is taught in the sense with humor a little boy falls skins his knees crying his father says you

00:30:09.920 know did you kick that sidewalk don't kick that sidewalk the kid stops crying he you know starts

00:30:14.500 to laugh and then we can go to mom get the medicine i mean this is the way men are we comfort each

00:30:19.220 other we encourage each other um i've been in iraq during the war listening to soldiers talk and

00:30:24.620 they're always talking smack and humor it's about lightening the load it's about saying we're going

00:30:28.600 to be okay so so uh one of the philosophers said that humor is the way we explore the difference between

00:30:34.200 the way things are and the way they ought to be and i think that's what men do inherently with

00:30:39.560 humor well when when they start to get into hyper serious situations and start to get talked out of

00:30:44.400 their humor i think it's evidence that they're losing their souls they're losing their groove

00:30:48.640 they're losing uh who they are on the inside and so um i think you're absolutely right we don't need

00:30:53.600 church lady men we need men who you know know how to be serious and do do things in a focused way

00:30:58.340 but know how to play talk smack tease each other encourage each other and break up some of the

00:31:03.240 hyper seriousness that keeps us from really being the best we can be

00:31:06.400 um so you include the virtue of wildness or being wild and what's interesting because a lot of

00:31:13.160 when you go to church there seems to like you know they de-emphasize that like no you got to be

00:31:18.320 calm and meek and you know nice and don't don't don't don't be wild that's that's what we're trying

00:31:24.620 to get rid of but you make the case that no you know men if they want to be good men need to

00:31:30.260 harness their wild side why is that well i think men are made for confrontation for controlled

00:31:37.940 violence uh you know men we all know you put three men in a break room uh and close the door they're

00:31:44.180 going to fold up a piece of paper and turn it into a triangular football and wreck the room and play in

00:31:49.140 a football game men need to bark at the moon they they need to blow something up they need to pee in 0.94

00:31:54.120 the sink they need to be outside the boundaries and uh i think that most men need some controlled 1.00

00:32:00.040 wildness by that i mean they don't need to go crazy and kill themselves hanging off a mountain

00:32:03.740 but some controlled wildness in their lives um it keeps us alive it keeps us awake and in a church

00:32:10.120 situation i have to say it's a little bit weird that we go to church uh to worship jesus this is the

00:32:15.120 same jesus uh who was a carpenter who got furious and flipped tables and made a whip to drive people out

00:32:21.360 of his father's temple you know he was a man of passion he wept um i can just see him walking

00:32:27.000 along to see a galilee dumping peter into the water and then start the free-for-all i mean i don't i

00:32:31.640 don't think i think we've got the wrong image of jesus as a guy in a bathrobe with a sheep under his

00:32:35.820 arm and that's why we all think that religion is just you know behave yourself um but really i think

00:32:41.480 the spirit of god in us and the example of jesus wants us uh to know how to be passionate fully

00:32:47.180 engaged and fully throttle full throttle and that's why um you know having some some wildness

00:32:52.980 in your life having some confrontation um you know hitting hard i think that's that's something

00:32:57.920 we should never lose i love how you use teddy roosevelt to exemplify that yeah you know teddy

00:33:03.640 roosevelt is a great example for men to read about but you know his mother and his wife died in the

00:33:10.140 same house on the same day and he was devastated and how did he recover himself uh he he had a

00:33:17.060 little property out the dakota territories and he went out there and basically lived as a cowboy

00:33:21.300 um for the better part of two years and uh it restored something in his soul and every historian

00:33:27.280 and roosevelt himself says he would never have been what he became um if he hadn't had that time

00:33:32.860 recovering himself in wildness i think men are overly domesticated and we suffer for it yeah i love that

00:33:38.220 idea of getting out into the like actually getting out into nature get into the wilderness like not

00:33:42.420 only teddy roosevelt did that um who said that being out and taking a sojourner in the wilderness

00:33:46.920 was beneficial uh jack london uh he said that he's kind of in a funk and he went out into the dakotas

00:33:53.300 or not the dakotas alaska to go pan for gold and he said that he found himself in the wilderness

00:33:58.180 uh jesus you know started his ministry went to the wild yes that's exactly right so there's something

00:34:04.260 about that um so that's like a post i need to write um so you also you i thought this is interesting

00:34:12.120 you included suffering as an ideal or virtue why what what is it that about suffering or embracing

00:34:18.380 it that can help us become better men well we're living in a generation where the hardship of life

00:34:24.200 itself is seen as an evil but but men really improve through hardship hardships the price of things i mean

00:34:31.160 none of us liked you know the harder parts of football practice or baseball practice or you

00:34:36.440 know whatever we were doing none of us none of us like having to do those hard things but that's how

00:34:40.760 we improve and so if we don't see suffering as a as something that that is part of life then we're

00:34:46.840 going to be in trouble we're going to we're going to shy away from it but but embracing suffering

00:34:51.040 throwing yourself into suffering realizing the person's suffering times are his best improving times as

00:34:55.940 one philosopher said uh that that's how we grow and i think men have a special gift from that i have to say

00:35:02.020 when i go to the weight room uh when i see guys you know working hard doing extreme sports uh it's it's like

00:35:08.320 something comes together in a man's soul when he has a struggle and a battle and uh so so the so to convince

00:35:14.520 ourselves that that pleasure and comfort is the ultimate goal and to be shocked and offended by hardship and

00:35:19.960 difficulty and suffering i i think that's going to cause us to be less than we're made to be so i'm not a guy who wants to

00:35:24.960 build a you know whole culture of suffering i don't i don't have some kind of weird cult idea in mind

00:35:28.880 but i do believe that we've got to throw ourselves into uh the hardships that come our way and see them as

00:35:34.400 redemptive so you you in the book um i love this that there's this ideal of presence in a man or a manly presence

00:35:42.420 i've can you describe what that means i because i know i've i've seen men who've embodied that but what do you

00:35:48.420 mean by a manly presence well probably the best way for me to explain it is to tell briefly the story i told in the book

00:35:54.780 and that is that i had the privilege in college of spending the day with john wooden famous coach

00:35:58.740 from ucla and i there were many things he said to me and taught me that day uh as he as he

00:36:03.980 high college sophomore but the but the main thing i noticed was him having been a champion athlete

00:36:10.140 being this noble and famed coach uh and having lived and having built all that really on certain

00:36:16.040 solid principles it emanated in his life it was a presence it was something strong that emanated from

00:36:21.580 him i don't mean anything occult or weird here i didn't see some aura you know wafting off of him

00:36:26.700 but he had he he there was a presence and i'm i mean this is going to sound very mystical but

00:36:31.720 he would walk into a room and i would see people with their backs to him sort of straighten up and

00:36:36.800 turn around to see what had changed about their immediate environment we went down to the big

00:36:40.860 basketball arena at my college and um you know that the basketball team was practicing down there

00:36:46.340 and they all stopped playing and turned in our direction we had walked in from a direction that

00:36:50.420 nothing usually happens and some of the players just started walking over in our direction and

00:36:54.660 finally they they saw john wooden and of course were thrilled but but he had a presence it changed my

00:37:00.200 life um it was a combination of authority uh and uh sort of a favor sort of a positive you like

00:37:06.260 this guy kind of thing um but it was a weightiness i think the main thing to say about it is when he

00:37:11.260 walked in the room there was a gentleness and a love but there was gravitas weightiness there was

00:37:16.740 authority he what he's a small man by the way i'm six four and a half uh he was a small man and so i

00:37:22.300 dwarfed him physically but i had nothing to do with it you wanted to get down on your knees and ask him

00:37:27.360 to teach you and it's because he simply carried with him something that you felt beyond just looking

00:37:33.220 at him and i think that's what a man has when he steps up to his responsibilities walks in the

00:37:38.720 ways of noble manhood um and and exercises his his authority and strength in a righteous and

00:37:44.740 virtuous way i think it emanates from his life and briefly very very briefly i'll tell you that i

00:37:49.780 used to my daughter used to go to a school where i had to pick her up and she said dad it's very

00:37:54.700 strange when you walk in the door and a boy is talking to me uh he'll have his back to you but when

00:38:00.020 you walk in the door this great big room uh they this boy some of the boys i'm talking to will change

00:38:05.440 they'll they'll kind of get more to get gentler maybe some of them get a little bit more polite

00:38:09.820 she said one boy actually called me ma'am and then got all confused and looked at me embarrassed because 0.80

00:38:13.900 he he just felt i think she said i think they feel your presence without seeing you and i think well

00:38:19.580 of course of course you know i'm her father i pray for her you know disciplined her raised her and

00:38:26.300 yeah i have authority for her life i think that's how it works but this is something you can't fake

00:38:30.640 right like this is something you can't do like you know stand up straight and like wear certain

00:38:35.200 clothes and then talk like this is not something you can sort of acquire through artificial means

00:38:39.560 it requires you living a life of virtue and integrity yeah i think it's spiritual and i think

00:38:46.900 that what men are sometimes trying to do is recreate that in the natural sense i mean i'm not picking on

00:38:52.320 how anybody dresses or looks or whether they have tats or piercings or whatever i don't care

00:38:56.100 but but some guys you know are trying to compensate for the lack of gravitas and authority in their

00:39:01.700 life by you know sort of developing a commanding style or something that's not what i'm talking

00:39:06.660 about john wooden was dressed rather blandly uh he was smaller than i was there was nothing about him

00:39:12.300 to commend him physically um but he commanded without moving a muscle every place he was because he was

00:39:19.100 john wooden with all that history with all that you know everything from from prayer to practice to

00:39:24.060 devotion to love all of it uh and yeah it's not something that you can fake it's not something

00:39:29.460 you can recreate naturally it's something that comes from living the life a man is supposed to live 0.95

00:39:34.140 all right well steven this has been a fantastic discussion where can we learn more about your book

00:39:38.020 and your work uh best place to connect with me is stevenmansfield.tv and from there all the twitter

00:39:45.160 facebook pinterest instagram everything is mansfield rights just mansfield rights one word

00:39:51.120 so i'd love to hear from everybody fantastic well steven mansfield thanks so much for your time

00:39:55.200 it's been a pleasure great to be with you thanks for all that you're doing too thank you our guest

00:40:00.420 today was steven mansfield he's the author of the book mansfield's book of manly men and you can find

00:40:05.280 that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere and for more information about steven's work go to

00:40:09.720 stevenmansfield.com

00:40:11.200 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:40:18.400 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com and if you haven't already

00:40:22.620 please check out store.artofmanliness.com it's our online store full of art of manliness swag we got

00:40:28.300 a cool coffee mug a journal inspired by ben franklin's virtue journal posters featuring

00:40:34.860 roger kipling's poem if and we just included or just added this cardboard skull that's a puzzle you

00:40:40.660 put it together and when you're done you put on your shelf and it'll serve as a memento mori

00:40:45.140 art piece so you can meditate upon death and try to live life with a bit more vigor

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00:40:53.560 fascinating history go there your purchases will support the podcast as well as the content we

00:40:57.460 produce on art of manliness.com so until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:41:04.860 okay

00:41:08.460 so

00:41:14.080 okay

00:41:17.060 okay

00:41:20.520 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - August 04, 2015

#126： Christianity, Masculinity and Some Manly Maxims With Stephen Mansfield

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