The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Rebuilding The Patriarchy

00:00:00.500 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:00:10.600 This is Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries. We're coming at you with another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:16.960 Today I'm privileged and honored to have as our guest. We've got Anand Tenet and we have Michael Foster.

00:00:23.480 They are co-hosts of a podcast called It's Good to Be a Man.

00:00:27.100 I have been a listener to that podcast for a while now.

00:00:29.960 Now I've been blessed by their ministry and the ways that they directly address men in

00:00:36.320 the church and really even just in culture in general from the word of God today.

00:00:40.980 So I'm blessed to have you guys.

00:00:42.080 Could you take a moment and just introduce yourselves to our listeners?

00:00:44.640 I will go first because I was mentioned first.

00:00:46.500 I am non-tenant.

00:00:47.400 I live in New Zealand.

00:00:48.840 I am a reformed Christian and I do web design and copywriting for a living.

00:00:55.100 So that's where my expertise lies.

00:00:56.840 that's uh how i primarily contribute to our ministry is through writing and designing stuff

00:01:01.360 the website and so on it's funny to hear you describe us as a podcast because it's always

00:01:05.360 interesting hearing how people think of us like i don't think of us as a podcast i think of a the

00:01:09.460 podcast is one thing that we do and it's actually kind of a minor thing in some ways what we're

00:01:14.120 working on really hard at the moment is actually a book so that's that's where i see all of our

00:01:18.440 fs right at the moment go michael sure i'm michael foster i am a pastor i live here in

00:01:27.460 cincinnati ohio i'm prepping to move where my church is which is in batavia ohio which is about

00:01:33.200 30 minutes from where i'm currently at just outside of cincinnati cool and i tweet and talk

00:01:42.160 and speak and write with none so and we both have lovely wives and children best anyone forget

00:01:49.900 that's right praise god for that your ministry in general so apparently you guys do more than

00:01:56.100 just a podcast which i assumed you did because i hear you talk about it on the podcast but that's

00:02:00.260 been my main exposure to your ministry and uh and to your teaching which i've appreciated so could

00:02:05.540 you tell us just about the podcast or your ministry in general or a little bit about the book and

00:02:10.080 really, what's the big idea? What's the big mission, the big purpose behind your ministry

00:02:15.240 to men? Sure. So I started with this idea that we needed a podcast that was reaching groups of men

00:02:28.440 that seemed like the church, they were falling through the cracks at the church, or they were

00:02:33.200 being neglected or their issues weren't being, uh, spoken to. And that came through just a lot

00:02:40.540 of study on my own, uh, just trying to be helpful as an, as a pastor in a church. And a lot of the

00:02:46.500 questions that were coming my way weren't questions that I even really dealt with. Uh, I I'm 40 years

00:02:51.680 old, you know, so I, I grew up right before the internet took over. Right. So I experienced some

00:02:59.020 of it in high school, but not in any way that most millennials did. I'm a really old millennial

00:03:05.000 or really young Jet X, whatever you want to call it. So as those questions were coming up, I went

00:03:10.540 to YouTube and looked where these young men were going besides the church because they weren't

00:03:15.000 finding answers in the church. And to be frank, I wasn't able to give them a lot of good answers

00:03:19.120 at times. So I discovered Jordan Peterson and the Red Pill movement, which is Red Pill is just a

00:03:26.660 metaphor that comes from the movie the matrix it's having your eyes open so it's having your

00:03:31.740 eyes open to the real nature of sexuality and that's a movement uh largely uh dominated by

00:03:38.020 pagan uh men who apply uh evolutionary psychology to intersexual relationships but with a lot of

00:03:47.580 times what they're identifying is really this god's design for the world right the the way

00:03:52.620 creation works. And so there's some truth there. Plus, they don't deny the goodness of the human

00:03:57.240 body. They actually probably go the opposite direction, where in a lot of churches, it tends

00:04:03.700 towards a Gnostic take on things. So as I started to play around with the idea, seriously, like

00:04:11.720 within several weeks, I realized Nan, who we had been, you know, online friends and read and

00:04:18.440 interacted here and there I somehow figured out that non I don't even remember how was reading

00:04:23.520 and thinking through a lot of the same things which if you were to talk about that about those

00:04:28.040 books and topics and blog posts and polite you know mixed company people would really raise their

00:04:33.060 eyebrows so I was didn't really know who to work through these issues with and so I was blessed to 0.99

00:04:38.500 find non and we started on a project to create a practical theology for men and it turned into a 0.96

00:04:46.220 podcast and a website. And that's kind of my side to it. I don't know. What do you want to add,

00:04:52.040 Don? Well, I came at it. My story is, my perspective is quite different to Michael's.

00:04:57.240 I came at it from a study perspective. I stumbled onto Red Pill in the process of studying

00:05:02.960 the relationship between kingdom theology and, well, a number of things were going on in my head

00:05:10.260 that made me think, you know, how does, how do gender roles fit into everything that I'm currently

00:05:14.600 doing in theology which was mostly unrelated to generals and stumbled onto the l rock and uh

00:05:22.660 rational mail and spent a lot of time reading those and then went through a cage stage from

00:05:26.420 which i would say michael rescued me but it's nice that he sees things in such a rosy light

00:05:31.080 and we started he started it's good to be a man and i kind of joined him is how i see it

00:05:35.540 but what particularly attracted me to it was the desire to have a positive doctrine of manhood

00:05:42.460 what is it that men are supposed to do because so much of the red pill like one of the things that

00:05:46.660 really bothered me even in my cage stage i was like i know that these things are wrong and i want

00:05:49.800 everyone to know about them and ranting and raving about everything that's wrong with the world and

00:05:54.500 not having any actual answers or solutions except to just kind of yell at men that they need to do

00:05:59.340 better you know that's not helpful so the idea of having a practical doctrine of masculinity that we

00:06:05.460 could actually flesh out what does it mean to be a man and what are the key principles that

00:06:09.480 scripture talks about and the virtues and the duties and all that kind of thing that was very

00:06:13.300 helpful to me and i believe it's been very helpful to lots of other men as well yeah yeah i'm one of

00:06:19.280 them cool um well uh one word that people are bothered by of course uh especially in our culture

00:06:25.860 today and sadly in the church as well is the word patriarchy and so you guys use that word a lot and

00:06:31.560 so i wanted to uh give you an opportunity to define biblical patriarchy and perhaps flesh out

00:06:37.140 maybe some of the distinctions between patriarchy and what often we would refer to as

00:06:44.020 complementarianism that we find in the average evangelical church today. What would you see

00:06:49.220 as being the primary differences between what the Bible describes and what you might find in your

00:06:55.200 average Calvinistic, complementarian evangelical church today? Do we use the word patriarchy a lot,

00:07:01.760 Michael? I don't think we use the word patriarchy that much. I think we're associated with people

00:07:06.320 that use it well i think i i i've i've done some uh some speeches or lectures and i use the word a

00:07:13.380 bunch that might be yeah i mean what it means is uh it means father rule right right and so what

00:07:21.200 we mean by it is that god so when we use the word cosmos we're talking about the structure of

00:07:28.620 existence right so it's not just the carl sagan cosmos where it's like you know the orc cloud and

00:07:36.020 rings around saturn but it's the the whole way everything is made and god has built the cosmos

00:07:41.980 in such a way that men are um are rulers so and so that's called patriarchy so men are the rulers

00:07:50.900 in the home and they're the rulers in the church but they're also the rulers in society because

00:07:55.860 society is a collection of households right so it would make no sense to have men be the heads of

00:08:02.720 of their household and not be the heads of society um the problem with patriarchy is that

00:08:11.240 there are virtuous manifestations of it and wicked manifestations of it and the easiest example of

00:08:18.160 that would be the devil is uh is called a father right jesus says you're you're uh your sons of

00:08:25.200 the devil right so that's clearly patriarchy can be evil um just like heterosexuality is natural

00:08:31.620 but it can also have evil manifestations so it is with patriarchy right so a lot of people get

00:08:39.120 triggered by it because they first want to say sexuality or the sexual nature that god's given

00:08:45.140 us masculinity is evil those people are wrong those people are being evil okay but then some

00:08:50.000 people that are trying to compensate for that make a mistake where they act like all forms of

00:08:55.240 patriarchy are somehow good or unquestioned you know which is just silly clearly they're not so

00:09:00.640 uh that that's what patriarchy is i think non can explain to you the difference between

00:09:05.400 patriarchy and complementarian at least broadly speaking yeah well the reason that i asked about

00:09:12.160 how often we use the word patriarchy is because we don't actually try to shy away from it but we do

00:09:16.520 recognize that it triggers a lot of people and to receive a wide audience we tend to speak rather

00:09:22.600 of gendered piety we see patriarchy is very much the idea that men represent god's rule which is

00:09:29.340 is not really all there is to being a man or to being a woman for that matter so we're quite

00:09:34.440 concerned not just to affirm that men represent god's rule which is true but also to say what are

00:09:40.260 the other aspects of being a man what are the duties of being a man what do men have to do

00:09:43.540 what do women have to do so we call that gendered piety but in terms of the distinction between that

00:09:48.820 and what complementarianism teaches it fundamentally comes down to whether or not there is actually a

00:09:54.700 a purpose to the design for the sexes so complementarians are eager to affirm things like

00:10:01.660 men need to be pastors you can't have female pastors depending on how soft they are they 0.94

00:10:07.920 get pretty close to that line they'll have women acting in pastoral ways without technically having 0.64

00:10:12.900 the name but they want to say that men should be heads of the church and heads of the family but 0.99

00:10:17.500 they don't want to say that men should be heads of the society because that's obviously terrible

00:10:22.060 and that would exclude women from being presidents.

00:10:25.000 They also don't want to say things like women shouldn't vote 1.00

00:10:27.080 and they don't want to say things like women shouldn't be police officers

00:10:29.780 or work in the military. 0.97

00:10:32.340 And the reason for that is that they don't actually have 1.00

00:10:34.900 an ordering principle around which gender duties are designed.

00:10:38.140 They don't have some kind of fundamental baseline that says 1.00

00:10:41.300 the reason that men exist is for this

00:10:43.260 and the reason that women exist is for this. 0.90

00:10:45.400 They just have isolated verses they've taken from scripture 1.00

00:10:48.200 and they can see clearly the scripture says this.

00:10:51.340 so you have to believe this but it's almost like it's just an arbitrary command that god gave um

00:10:56.160 there's no particular reason he said that women can't be pastors it's just that he said that

00:10:59.620 um it's not it's not rooted in their nature you know so it's a question of what is the nature of

00:11:04.520 man and the nature of woman and complementarianism i think because it has lost um it started as a

00:11:13.840 response to feminism and it was always highly conditioned by feminism it's kind of a shame

00:11:20.720 theology it's a it's a theology that is ashamed of scripture and tries to

00:11:25.700 retrieve as much of scripture as is um impossible to deny exegetically while eliminating all of the

00:11:34.880 other things that could be called shame by the culture such as the idea that women actually

00:11:38.940 have different natures to men right that's the history of complementarianism which is helpful

00:11:44.180 to understand is that that uh wayne grudem and the guys that are working on it during the um

00:11:49.820 Evangelical Theological Society and the creation of the Danvers Statement was working towards a

00:11:54.480 coalition, working towards a compromise consensus statement. And so the idea was to try to pull

00:12:00.980 people together and then work towards greater reform on the topic. And that's why some

00:12:05.020 complementarians, we would not really differ from them in our understanding of sexuality,

00:12:12.460 where other complementarians like are really uh they treat sexuality based on roles as opposed

00:12:20.840 to nature right and that's why i will say that complementarianism modern the the broadly accepted

00:12:26.760 stuff that you see at at this moment on like a gospel coalition website or or preached by

00:12:32.220 like matt chandler or kind of these well-known evangelicals it presupposes a sort of androgyny

00:12:39.180 where more or less men and women are human right they're just humans and and the roles are

00:12:48.340 interchangeable right and so androgyny has kind of two understandings one is there's a mixing of

00:12:56.940 the sexes right so you can think of like david bowie back in the 80s he was kind of pushing that

00:13:02.620 idea where is it a guy is it a girl you know michael jackson yeah yeah michael jackson a lot

00:13:08.080 a lot of those pop stars especially in the 70s and 80s were doing that but the other aspect of

00:13:13.640 it is just simply to say that maleness and femaleness is somehow interchangeable between

00:13:20.940 the sexes which is really a logical insanity so and that's that's what we're trying to push back

00:13:28.120 and say like look if there's a female nature and there's a male nature that nature extends to all 0.90

00:13:33.700 of life and you got to work it out and that's why complementarianism was doomed it was doomed the

00:13:39.260 moment they didn't root it in nature not because those guys all were bad people they didn't have

00:13:44.680 good intentions they weren't working towards things like many of them were when i listened to

00:13:50.680 a lot of the things that john piper says i think he's one of the better complementarians now as

00:13:56.200 he gets old he should probably maybe stop talking but um right but uh right so that's where we fall

00:14:03.340 At least about politics. John Piper, God bless him forever. But with politics, he needs to just go ahead and sit a play out or two.

00:14:10.180 He's shown a good way to be a pastor, but maybe stay in your lane.

00:14:16.160 Yeah. No, that's super helpful, guys. Everything you're saying is encouraging because I've been listening to your podcast and reading other guys.

00:14:24.100 And I preached through Genesis about a year and a half ago at my church in San Diego. I'm now in Texas.

00:14:31.580 but when i was pastoring there in san diego we preached through genesis um and i remember when

00:14:36.300 i was in chapter one and chapter two my big you know preacher line was uh that it's not male and

00:14:42.240 female roles he assigned them but male and female natures he designed them it rhymes it had to be

00:14:49.080 true and so um but anyways but just helping people see that you know it's it's not just that uh you

00:14:54.340 know god calls birds to fly and calls fish to swim well he also gives fish gills and fens and he gives

00:15:01.260 bird's wings and a hollow bone structure it's not just that hey they're exactly the same and they

00:15:06.020 just have two different roles it's no they're ontologically two distinct creatures designed

00:15:12.040 for their roles and they're and they're differently designed for those different roles and i think

00:15:17.220 male and female you guys are absolutely right it's really become like just this uh duty and

00:15:22.120 role on the surface that's interchangeable um and uh and it's it's like um i don't know it's

00:15:28.240 almost like a ice cream you know like you have a like a chocolate shell around the vanilla ice

00:15:32.920 cream and and one is you know it's a dark chocolate and another one's like maybe it's a strawberry you

00:15:38.340 know but but on the center it's both just that creamy vanilla goodness you know and uh and we

00:15:43.180 think of men and women in those terms like it's it's just on the surface and it doesn't go all

00:15:47.400 the way down it relates back to what michael mentioned about the gnosticism that we have

00:15:52.040 in evangelicalism where the body is downplayed and there's a kind of general consensus that

00:15:58.000 everyone has that really we're all kind of androgynous spirits and the bodies are just

00:16:02.940 incidental god happens to give us a male or a female body but deep down inside the soul the

00:16:07.860 spirit is androgynous and when we die we won't really be male or female that's like that's not

00:16:13.180 necessarily how they think about it but that's kind of how it works out if you actually take it

00:16:17.040 to its logical extreme yeah i used to i used to think that i mean you're describing the view that

00:16:21.940 i i mean i can't remember how long ago it was but there was a time where i thought and part of the

00:16:26.020 reason was because you know it's good to be a man well it's also good to be a woman if you're a

00:16:29.560 woman a biological woman and uh and part of me just didn't think it was good to be a woman and

00:16:34.800 so i i literally thought like you know if you're a christian faithfully serving jesus then you'll

00:16:39.540 be rewarded as a christian woman at the end of your life that you'll no longer have to be a woman

00:16:43.600 you know that men and women you know just gender will cease to exist and you know and i still

00:16:48.040 thought you know i knew we would have a physical body because i believe in a bodily resurrection

00:16:51.540 but I remember thinking like we'll have a physical body but gender won't be a part of it on that note

00:16:57.340 just a kind of a side question for you guys um until the resurrection a day of a resurrection

00:17:03.540 to be absent from the bodies to be present with the lord uh so I know that that both of you as

00:17:08.500 orthodox believers believe that you know if if we died tonight you know that we would be with

00:17:13.280 the lord Jesus um but there's a physical bodily resurrection that we're awaiting uh so what about

00:17:19.640 that intermediate um period i have some thoughts but i'm curious what what what do you see is that

00:17:24.380 intermediate period where we're present with the lord but we're awaiting this bodily resurrection

00:17:29.260 what what is that like and how does gender work into that what weird thoughts do you have on that

00:17:35.100 what trouble will you get us it's so interesting that you ask that question i don't have much in

00:17:42.200 the way of thoughts i i don't have um a very strongly held opinion on what kind of dualism

00:17:50.320 is correct so i can't give you any ideas there but i do think that you will still be a male

00:17:55.760 when you are in the spirit with the lord you will have a male spirit that will be in some way

00:18:00.640 identifiable as a male spirit in the spirit realm you'll be able to tell men from women and you'll

00:18:05.780 be able to tell angels from humans i like that that's great i guess what i would say is that

00:18:11.680 the intermediate state is is not a denial of your human nature right whatever it is like we will be

00:18:20.640 reunited to our body so we'll be fully glorified in the sense that the the fullness of resurrection

00:18:26.300 has been consummated right but um my spirit isn't like i to be human is to be spirit

00:18:36.420 and body it's a spirit body composite right and so i'm not something other i'm just without my

00:18:43.540 body and the fact that that existence can happen is very strange right yeah but the reality is is

00:18:51.080 that heaven is not going to be a rejection to the goodness of god's design or the intermediate

00:18:57.040 it's not whatever it is and uh in sexuality binary sexuality is part of the goodness of god's design

00:19:03.680 and this is the idea of an androgynous spirit world is rooted in greek mythology um and and

00:19:10.680 pagan paganism which is almost always androgynous right right um and so if someone holds that and

00:19:19.420 And we hear that in some of our critics that even claim to be complementarian, especially the female ones, that there is a real sense, I think, that they believe in the afterlife that we're just going to be androgynous spirits.

00:19:35.520 And that is actually on the verge of rank heresy, right?

00:19:41.200 Yeah.

00:19:41.340 That's because it attacks the nature of man, but more importantly, the nature, as you said, at the beginning of this segment, of Jesus.

00:19:49.420 Right. That's right. Yep. I, so for me, because of that, I tend to think, and I, I don't know, it's, I don't have a lot of strong biblical support, but I just tend to think that, you know, because I'm not Gnostic, I just can't even comprehend the existence of a human being apart from the body.

00:20:10.600 it's just that body spirit connection um is just so strong so i i tend to think that uh that we

00:20:17.000 will have a physical body it just won't be the one here from earth this one will be waiting in a tomb

00:20:21.120 like a loner still have a fleshly male body for the three of us and and women will have spirit 0.99

00:20:27.680 and a female body just a intermediate so not just an intermediate state where you're solely spirit

00:20:33.300 but an intermediate state with an intermediate fleshly body because there is no human existence

00:20:38.500 apart from spirit and body and then you'll be reunited with a better body namely your previous

00:20:43.520 body but now glorified i don't know if that holds up theologically but that's that's kind of where

00:20:47.940 i'm at so well i'm not sure it holds up theologically either but i would i would say

00:20:54.020 that i i can meet you halfway i think that we will need to have bodies we god will accommodate

00:20:59.940 our fleshly nature in the spiritual world by making it by um essentially i i see the spirit

00:21:07.460 world as kind of like a shared dream and in a dream you still have a body even though it's not

00:21:11.640 your you know it's not really your body because it's a dream okay even the nature of the angelic

00:21:16.580 is weird because they're non-corporeal non-corporeal entities that can interact with

00:21:22.220 the physical realm right and so a lot of our problems is it comes from how we conceive of

00:21:29.560 spirit a lot of times like so many of our theological issues is that what we have to

00:21:34.720 realizes how much we've absorbed from non-christian sources right and even cartoons and stuff and

00:21:42.120 movies or whatever but the spirit is like um it's like a white shadow that you can put your hand

00:21:48.560 through like these are how people imagine or you know like and is that even correct well we know

00:21:53.560 that um that god is a spirit he doesn't have a body um at all and yet he can interact with the

00:22:00.220 physical realm so how this all uh shakes out will be an interesting experience you know cool well

00:22:09.120 let me bring you guys back to something you said earlier because i know some of our listeners

00:22:12.460 going to be like whoa non non said that very non said it in a nonchalant manner but did he say

00:22:19.840 women shouldn't vote so so let me let me bring us back there real quick and and let me kind of

00:22:24.560 frame it for a moment real quick and people are going to want to know so um so for me because 1.00

00:22:32.160 i i agree with you guys and uh and and it's the same kind of thing it's not just male and female

00:22:37.460 roles he assigned them but male and female natures he designed them and i love what you said michael

00:22:42.040 just because it's so basic and so logical i think it's easier for people to to you know um to grab

00:22:47.140 on to, but this idea that if, if husband is head of, head of wife and, and, and society is made up

00:22:54.820 of, of households and families, then, I mean, you just do the basic logic math and, and you wind up

00:23:01.560 with men being not just heads of households, but heads of society. And we, I think all three of us

00:23:06.900 would agree that there's, you know, three primary spheres. I like Schaeffer and I like his seven

00:23:10.500 mountains and media, you know, and the marketplace and stuff, but three primary divine, divinely

00:23:15.580 instituted spheres of human society the home the church and the state and and a lot of the

00:23:20.800 complementarian guys it seems like they're always addressing the home and the church and the home

00:23:24.940 and the church and the home and the church um but but i i completely agree with you guys i think

00:23:29.480 that with the state certainly um certainly military and combat i think should be men because

00:23:35.040 the husband lays down his life for his wife but but we know it's beyond that right so i think

00:23:40.800 that's part of the problem is like men have zero authority outside of just a husband with his wife

00:23:45.580 but but what's chivalry then chivalry is that even that woman that I'm not married to if we're on the

00:23:50.460 Titanic and it's going down women and children first that I have this male obligation that's

00:23:56.700 beyond merely my household that there's a priority to my household but there's there's just something

00:24:01.900 about being a man even with a woman that I'm not wed to that my life is expendable that that men

00:24:08.180 can be replaced um and and and that i should die for her as christ dies uh for the church and so

00:24:15.320 even you know with military and combat but even with you know the president of the united states

00:24:19.440 and things like that i i completely agree i think that that's commander in chief is is very clearly

00:24:25.100 a male headship leadership role but in terms of voting because you you said that and i just i

00:24:31.860 thought it was interesting and i i just kind of wanted to press a little bit and hear some more

00:24:35.660 thoughts what what what do you think about uh women voting i would let lydia vote okay all right 0.99

00:24:44.680 and could you explain why sure she's the head of a household i mean the church meeting in her home 0.57

00:24:51.800 yeah yeah so well she appears to be a wealthy widow is how a lot of commentators think and

00:24:57.860 that's suggested what i would say with the voting issues so these are litmus tests and um everyone

00:25:04.420 and like I had a young guy reach out to me and asked me if I was post-millennial or theonomic.

00:25:08.840 And I said, I don't know. What do you mean by post-millennial or theonomic? Right. And that's

00:25:13.040 not me being a smart aleck. That's the fact that people grab these little, they grab these labels

00:25:18.320 and throw them around. They have no understanding of it. Right. And I was like, asked him what books

00:25:22.400 he had read. He hadn't read any books. And I was like, well, maybe start with three views on the

00:25:26.260 millennium. Right. Just like start wrapping your head around these topics. And, you know,

00:25:31.100 um because i'm not gonna i'm not gonna do it so voting is a lot like that suffrage

00:25:35.660 is where the feminist movement really uh took off in our country you know um and therefore it's like

00:25:43.780 this um untouchable thing and a litmus test on whether you're just a monster um uh now what i

00:25:54.020 would say though is that i i don't think uh i probably don't think that landowners

00:25:59.300 or non-landowners should be voting so i don't i'm not i'm not a big believer in universal suffrage

00:26:05.560 for men or women but to me like this is one of those things kind of like why are we talking

00:26:12.640 about this like where are we at in culture like we gonna we gonna stop women from voting is that

00:26:18.120 what is that what's on the um the agenda right now and are we and so the when people have these

00:26:25.320 conversations you have to recognize it for what it is uh one if it's happening out among friends

00:26:30.620 that's fine but if it's happening in a public um space yeah public forum like space and i take

00:26:39.500 obviously i take you to be a friend but um but it's usually us just like trying to decide who's

00:26:47.120 broken the rules of orthodoxy and who's a terrible person and not actually getting work done and

00:26:51.540 that's why i personally shy away from it because i'm like i don't care and i don't care if you

00:26:55.980 care um right but i will tell you in our church uh to the shame of all my patriarchal listeners

00:27:01.820 like we we do allow uh female members to vote um i assume it gives two votes are you baptist

00:27:09.380 yeah right no that's a good point are you baptist presbyterian i'm pauline so presbyterian

00:27:15.540 nice okay non what are you presbyterian i am unclear i'm unclear more more presbyterian in

00:27:25.540 my polity and i'm presbyterian in my covenant theology but i am not presbyterian in terms of

00:27:32.160 baptizing infants so that's another rabbit hole that we could go down but it's yeah yeah so i'm

00:27:38.140 i'm 1689 and so i'm reformed baptist but not a calvinistic baptist a reformed baptist so i'm

00:27:44.220 confessional and sabbatarian and covenantal in terms of a 1689 federalism so not truly

00:27:50.140 covenantal to the presbyterian you guys wouldn't recognize that but uh but anyways so yeah i'm as

00:27:56.220 close as you can get uh to being truly reformed without being presbyterian so that being said um

00:28:02.520 a lot of my friends you know most of my friends i tend to have more in common with my presbyterian

00:28:06.220 pastor friends than the baptist guys because baptist is just you who knows what you're going

00:28:10.440 to get it's just so broad um i mean the southern baptist you know convention and you just have no

00:28:15.800 clue but uh but with that you know a decent amount of my friends and some of my reformed baptist

00:28:20.340 friends they have you know when it comes to voting so i'm congregational that's one of the

00:28:24.320 big differences as you guys know between westminster and 1689 is uh that you know the

00:28:28.740 chapter on the church we have 16 paragraphs in the 1689 all about the church and then you got

00:28:33.420 synods and councils and it's just blank because we're baptists so we're going to rebel and uh

00:28:38.840 protest everything and and you know there's we believe in local church autonomy no ecclesiastical

00:28:43.740 authority outside of the local church um so that being said you know uh i'm congregational and we

00:28:49.820 believe the highest uh the highest authority earthly authority the highest authority is the

00:28:53.940 bible but the question is uh who gets to say what the bible says so the highest earthly authority

00:28:58.200 we believe is the congregation so the congregation would have a vote um over primary matters like our

00:29:04.060 our statement of faith um when it comes to ordaining elders and deacons or church discipline

00:29:08.920 uh removing someone from the lord's table that would be a congregational matter uh secondary

00:29:14.040 tertiary matters we go to the the elders and deacons and we do hold to a male diaconate

00:29:19.040 we believe that deacons are not male and female but just like elders and men a guy that's going

00:29:23.520 to be i'm just curious as we're talking yeah yeah so a guy that's like going to be um excommunicated

00:29:29.220 or removed from the table for a time does that go to a vote like people get to vote whether or

00:29:34.040 be removed from the team that's the baptist way uh 51 percent or what like how did you arrive at

00:29:40.000 the percentage right um that's a great question um so you know we have our bylaws um but i know

00:29:46.300 what you're asking you don't care about my bylaws you want to know like no no no no by what bylaws

00:29:50.180 you know it tells you a percentage majority super majority yeah so for us it is a simple majority

00:29:56.180 um with elders 49 of the people can like be like that dude that dude should not be communing with

00:30:04.340 the lord jesus through the lord's table in a baptist church at least theoretically and he

00:30:08.980 could do it yeah and he could keep michael you're such a troublemaker well i'm just thinking about

00:30:13.840 doesn't it sound miserable it does it sounds intense and that's and that's why so but think

00:30:20.140 of it like this in a nutshell i would say that's why baptists local baptist churches split is

00:30:25.480 because of our polity and that's why you presbyterians your denomination split because

00:30:30.060 a whole denomination goes liberal and the only way you can have guys who are faithful with the bible

00:30:34.240 is you get you know it's pcu usa and then it's pca and then it's got to be pc and then it's got

00:30:39.080 to be p and split peas is what they call it man that's right so so it's basically you know you

00:30:44.180 have presbyterians splitting at a denominational level and then you have baptists kind of splitting

00:30:47.960 at local so either way you slice it i think both polities have their their their strengths and

00:30:54.000 their weaknesses but anyways all that being said when it comes to a congregational vote we have

00:30:58.480 you know now they would have to be a baptized believer and we believe you know we're credo

00:31:03.000 baptists and so they would have to be baptized um but that's where it gets wacky you know and

00:31:08.020 and i'll at least say difficult for reform baptists is you know if i'm going to baptize

00:31:12.940 for instance a 12 year old because they've made a credible profession of faith before the church

00:31:18.440 and it's not just on the basis of mom and dad and their testimony but he's met with the elders and

00:31:22.740 sat before them and we're saying yeah we can't withhold the Lord's Supper from him any longer

00:31:27.100 but we're not going to give him the Lord's Supper without what we believe is the initiating oath

00:31:31.820 sign which is baptism and then the renewing oath sign it's a renewal of the covenant when we come

00:31:36.560 together and take the Lord's Supper is the way that we would view that so we got to baptize this

00:31:40.380 guy now he's a baptized believer and for me and trying to be consistent in my polity I don't

00:31:45.520 believe in what what I think many Baptists do believe in which I would call partial membership

00:31:50.340 where they're they're ministering baptism and the supper um but but they're technically a

00:31:56.260 congregational church but they're not giving him voting rights so he's a partial member of the

00:31:59.840 church right he can take the supper he can get baptized but he doesn't have so anyway so that

00:32:05.200 being said we would we would see the child the wife right so the female so it's not just men

00:32:09.740 and women but it's also children if if we're going to baptize them all of a sudden you know

00:32:14.660 that 12 year old could be voting to remove me as his pastor if things go really really bad

00:32:19.200 in a members meeting and so all that being said i i i don't know how to get away from and and the

00:32:25.260 big one is and maybe you guys can help me but galatians i think galatians 3 you know there is

00:32:29.700 neither male nor female and i know that gets taken out of context but i feel like at at the lord's

00:32:35.100 table um male and female slave or free you know jew or greek um and and so the way i see it is

00:32:44.120 like the one area so that doesn't mean because we still have ephesians 5 right so there's

00:32:48.860 neither male nor female husband head of the wife wife submit and everything uh to her husband and

00:32:55.180 so we know that doesn't just whitewash everything when paul's you know writing in galatians but i

00:33:01.040 feel like the one area where where women have that equal voice is um through their vote as a

00:33:08.180 regenerate church member and so for me i would really have a hard time ecclesiast i would have 0.97

00:33:13.580 an easier time not allowing women to vote in a presidential election than not allowing

00:33:18.560 christian women baptized christian women to vote in my baptist church does that does that make

00:33:24.020 sense and i think it's i just love to hear your thoughts i mean i think people's ecclesiology

00:33:28.820 is um i think people's political understanding almost always reflects your ecclesiology

00:33:34.120 so you're not surprised that the church of england right is modeled on a monarchy and america

00:33:41.120 was at least originally largely modeled on Presbyterianism

00:33:46.840 with a healthy dose of very reform-leaning congregationalism, right?

00:33:51.940 So you go back to what's happening in Virginia and South Carolina

00:33:56.140 in the 1700s leading up to that.

00:33:58.340 The fact is the only guy that signed was a Presbyterian minister, right,

00:34:02.740 Witherspoon.

00:34:03.780 But so I think I don't know how you get around it.

00:34:09.580 I believe in representative government, and I think that – but I – then again, I allow women to – I will – we will allow women to vote in our church.

00:34:22.940 And that's more of just because we're working towards reform.

00:34:29.280 I think of it as a long line of dominoes.

00:34:34.020 Just imagine that a lot of the things people want to talk about is the domino at the very end of the line.

00:34:41.420 And when they're like that, I take them not to be serious people because, like, I want to get there, friend.

00:34:49.560 We'll talk about it.

00:34:50.960 But there's all these things towards the front.

00:34:53.460 Like, we've got to flip those dominoes first to get down there.

00:34:57.660 And so for me, that might not be a reform that happens underneath me.

00:35:02.240 Someone could say that you could just do it right away. And I would say, well, yeah, but you limit the number of people you can reach. And then they would say, that's pragmatism. And I'd say, ha ha, true, it is. We're all pragmatists, right? Like, let me enter your life for five seconds and I'll dissect you, right? And you dissect me and then we'll all like realize like, it's very difficult to work these things out right now.

00:35:23.240 right i think the theonomy question goes the same direction it's like how do you work out

00:35:27.700 the particulars of these is very difficult like i think a 12 year old voting whether someone should 0.96

00:35:32.700 be a pastor is asinine and insane um but then again what you do as a baptist yeah right what

00:35:40.360 you do as a baptist is you just you don't baptize a 12 year old and but it gets difficult because 0.99

00:35:45.400 then you have to have some legitimate reason besides just the fact that he's 12 right i think

00:35:50.800 that's more consistent if you're a baptist i don't think you should baptize them if you're a baptist

00:35:54.280 until like they're 20 or something when they truly individuated from the parents and then you know

00:35:59.400 that their faith is their own and they're not just doing it because daddy's a christian that would

00:36:03.180 make more sense to me i think but no what's your thoughts brother i think the question is very

00:36:09.580 simple democracy is the rulership of the people so who is allowed to rule in the people democracy

00:36:16.720 the only people who should vote in a democracy are people who are qualified to rule

00:36:20.320 yeah i get you i think that's good i like the household vote i so i'm theologically i'm not

00:36:28.980 there but i i like it because what you kind of described earlier um michael i see actually the

00:36:36.300 harm being on the on the other end of the aisle other side of the aisle that if um in the baptist

00:36:43.180 world congregational vote every you know baptized believer is a member of that church and has one

00:36:49.020 vote i see it as like that guy who's a super faithful church member and him and his wife and

00:36:54.800 he has six kids and let's say his youngest at this point and it's this multi-generational still

00:37:00.300 in the church and let's say he's in his 60s his oldest is you know 35 and his youngest is 18 and

00:37:06.540 well that wouldn't work let's say they're still in the home i'm ruining my analogy but let's say

00:37:10.520 they're all in the home there's six children from 12 to 18 years old that doesn't work but

00:37:14.480 the math but you get the twins you know 10 yeah 10 10 to 18 six children all baptized him and his

00:37:21.060 wife baptized a household of eight if it's a household vote then those eight regenerate church

00:37:25.920 members and my baptist framework they get one vote and that single woman who's 23 years old 1.00

00:37:32.060 and a liberal who is getting close to being put underneath church discipline because she's

00:37:38.000 she's just she's her views are horrible and she's outspoken and being divisive and we've 0.99

00:37:43.540 already so what you need is an electoral college yeah but we'll see and so now this 23 year old 1.00

00:37:49.620 single woman is getting an equal amount of voting power if with the household vote to my rock star 1.00

00:37:56.880 lay elder you know for instance and his wife and six baptized children so that's that's part of 1.00

00:38:03.060 We all need to return to aristocracy. And the first step in that process is returning to the idea of having a free and transparent election. 0.57

00:38:11.520 Until we can do that, there's not much point having any further discussion about who should be ruling.

00:38:15.120 Free and transparent election. We nailed that. I thought we just nailed that. I think we got that down.

00:38:22.220 Okay, I'll move us along. So what's, I'll just ask these two together, and we'll start to wrap up. And we've got a bonus question for our listeners who are club members. So these two questions I'll ask together. What's one of your biggest concerns for Christian men today? So men in the church, not the pagan, but the one who professes Christ. And also, what do you think is one of the most severe, harmful effects of feminism on the church today?

00:38:52.220 i think michael should take that first question because he's a pastor and i'm not okay great

00:38:58.300 i mean my biggest concern is that men don't fear god i mean

00:39:05.720 i don't have any special answer that men don't fear god and that they don't live a life to

00:39:13.740 glorify him and if if i want to tie that into feminism i would say that we live in a culture

00:39:20.600 where men have been conditioned to be validated by women and those particular men will live their

00:39:28.660 life to get feminine approval and or they'll kind of react against that and then they'll tend to

00:39:37.180 look for some sort of like guru like guy like a an expert a father figure that might not be a good

00:39:45.660 father figure. So I think men that haven't had good godly men as fathers, whether they're

00:39:52.400 biological or men that have discipled them and mentored them in some way, those guys are very

00:39:58.020 vulnerable and easy to manipulate and control. So I think we live in a society that is full of 0.89

00:40:04.200 men that are fearful, seeking validation, and easy to manipulate. And that's true of the church. 0.72

00:40:09.680 and that's why we can't call spade a spade nowadays that's why pastors have to look over

00:40:16.760 their shoulder if they they preach something because they know that in their congregation

00:40:21.260 and often on their elders board or sessions that there's men that if their wife or daughter get

00:40:27.320 offended that those men are going to throw you under the bus to keep the peace at home 1.00

00:40:30.940 so now you could say that that's a concern about feminism right but ultimately it's a concern 0.99

00:40:38.500 about fearing god right like like back off woman like i i believe god's word i think that what the

00:40:46.280 pastor said was right and and sometimes that hurts our feelings that are it's good that our pride is

00:40:51.480 hurt that's what that really usually means right it's like which feeling was hurt is a lot of times

00:40:57.180 what i like to ask people like what was the categorized feeling for me because i think it's

00:41:01.840 your pride um so i think that's the the biggest problem we have right now is men that aren't

00:41:07.340 masculine and the masculinity non and i are working on a chapter right now that's all around

00:41:12.520 this is that no for no fraternity no masculinity and that fraternity starts with the fatherhood of

00:41:17.860 god and if guys don't fear god um as as a father and see identify themselves as a son of god

00:41:24.960 they are going to be manipulated by the ton of grifters out there you know i see some of these

00:41:31.540 guys selling masculinity courses in the church. And I'm like, dude, you, there's nothing masculine

00:41:36.800 about you. You, you look at a dirty, worthless hipster trying to take advantage of these young 1.00

00:41:44.140 men out here that are hungry. These men, we don't do a course. We thought about it. Everyone does 1.00

00:41:49.060 like these manhood courses. We got bills to pay too. We thought maybe that's the way to monetize

00:41:53.020 it. Oh, we couldn't do it. We couldn't bring ourself to do it. And so I see a lot of guys

00:41:57.420 taken advantage of these men and then these men are fools to often marry brassy loud mouth ungodly 0.98

00:42:04.840 women um who have went out there and ran around and got themselves in all sorts of trouble the 1.00

00:42:10.580 very women and i'm using words and concepts directly from proverbs chapter 7 um and these

00:42:17.780 guys are getting these terrible marriages and then we have to counsel them right and uh and so this

00:42:23.300 is this is not a good scenario for those men but but especially for the children right for the

00:42:29.820 covenant of the future uh the of the church and so those are probably the issues that i i i see

00:42:35.960 practically played out so i'm trying to get men to fear god i'm not trying to get them to make

00:42:40.360 their wife submit more right like i want that i want there to be a healthy relationship in the

00:42:46.980 home but again the first domino to drop there is a proper understanding of the nature of our god

00:42:54.800 who's a father right and we relate to him through the son and the spirit empowers us to live bold

00:43:01.800 lives that's good non any thoughts i think that in terms of the effect that feminism has had both

00:43:11.440 on society and the church the effect is the same for both and that is primarily that it has

00:43:17.300 kind of through conditioning and kind of through men just not wanting to fight with women

00:43:23.620 it has resulted in a way of thinking that is a default female way of thinking now a female way 0.99

00:43:32.620 of thinking is a great thing in the right place but when you put it into the wrong place it becomes 1.00

00:43:38.220 essentially a conduit for ensuring that orthodoxy is gradually undermined and any kind of heterodoxy

00:43:49.820 that can be smuggled in under a certain sentiment is raised up and lionized and the reason that

00:43:58.960 that happens is because people who defend orthodoxy tend to be somewhat abrasive and will

00:44:05.260 ruffle people's feathers because they tell them that they're wrong whereas heterodoxy

00:44:09.220 tends to be brought in by false teachers who are by nature flatterers and they use smooth speech 0.91

00:44:14.160 and women are their entire mode of existence is based around establishing social bonds it's based

00:44:25.360 around ensuring that there is kind of this conciliation between people no one's left out 1.00

00:44:30.660 and what that results in practically is that women aren't able to fight without splitting there has

00:44:36.720 to be ostracization going on if there's some kind of a threat it needs to be put out in order to 1.00

00:44:43.160 protect the harmony of the whole and that means that anyone who brings in any kind of masculine

00:44:50.020 even it doesn't even have the ideas it can just be someone who thinks that there ought to be a

00:44:54.480 debate about something if you're willing to debate something and you think that it's important to

00:44:58.060 debate something that makes you threatening it's scary and so you get put out and the people that

00:45:02.060 are willing to tow the line and not rock the boat they're the ones that are kind of the order there

00:45:07.040 is preserved and so they are raised up as being models of how to live in society and this happens

00:45:12.040 i've seen this happen both in the church and in society at large it's very difficult we we always

00:45:17.520 walk on eggshells these days because we don't want to offend people this is where cancel culture

00:45:21.020 comes from and this is the idea that you can um you essentially it's a sin to offend people now

00:45:28.800 the 11th commandment thou shalt be nice is where this idea comes from as well so it's all a result 1.00

00:45:34.440 of feminine conditioning and not placing feminine ways of thinking underneath the rulership of

00:45:40.500 masculine ways of thinking which is how god designed it that's really good maybe a way to

00:45:45.680 Back to our subject that we had earlier, take subjects like suffrage because it's so inflammatory to some people and I don't want to deal with the emails and I don't want to deal with the argument and I want to deal with the tweets and all that stuff.

00:46:00.700 I don't want to talk about it, right, to some degree.

00:46:04.380 And that's not a good place to be in a society where we can't – there needs to be a space where people can talk about ideas and think out loud and work through them.

00:46:15.680 and not be punished for it or like us guys we can we can sit around in a non-recorded place

00:46:23.000 and talk about whatever we want uh like a good group of guys that know each other and we'll

00:46:27.760 throw out crazy ideas and um i've got a lot of like crazy ideas in genesis you know in particular

00:46:34.560 that i've worked through with friends and some of them are like no that that's a little too wild

00:46:39.420 but at least i could i could uh put them out there and think through it with people when you're in

00:46:44.860 environment like that everything gets reduced down more and more and more so it's mere christianity

00:46:50.520 mere sexuality mere everything and even what's mere is shrinking and so i think people are in

00:46:57.800 churches that can't have these conversations and we're now at a time where it all is starting to

00:47:04.080 matter in dire ways and they weren't allowed to have those conversations and the people aren't

00:47:09.500 prepared and they're looking at their pastor saying why didn't you prepare me right and that's

00:47:13.900 like the moment we live in right now. Yep, I completely agree. All right, well, that's been

00:47:20.820 very interesting, very helpful. I think our listeners are going to really enjoy this episode.

00:47:26.860 Before we go, let me go ahead and just kind of whet the appetite for our club members and those

00:47:32.280 who are not yet a club member. If you're not, please become a responder and support Right

00:47:36.280 Response Ministries. If you do, you get access to the bonus portion of each of our interviews on

00:47:40.860 theology applied. And the bonus question for Michael and Nan that they're going to stay on

00:47:46.240 and answer here in just a moment is this. What do you see as one of the clearest sins with Christian 0.98

00:47:50.900 women today that pastors should be willing to address from the pulpit? So if you're not a club 1.00

00:47:56.100 member, if you're not a responder, we encourage you to join our team, help support us, and check

00:48:02.360 out some of the bonus footage with Michael and Nan. The question again, what do you see as one of the

00:48:07.780 clear sins with christian women today that pastors should be willing to address from the pulpit so as

00:48:13.260 we go ahead and conclude the episode michael non could you just let our listeners know how they

00:48:17.620 could follow you keep up with what you're doing and be praying for you i can be found uh on gab

00:48:27.380 it's kind of exclusively where i am at non-tenant and the non is has a silent b b n o n i also have

00:48:35.180 website and on.com but the main thing to look for is our website it's good to be man.com and you can

00:48:40.000 find our podcasts you can find our content a fair amount of our content is on the website some of

00:48:44.780 the best content we have is on there and especially at the website you can sign up for a newsletter

00:48:50.160 which is probably the better the best way of getting content from us is the newsletter because

00:48:55.640 it's high quality notes every saturday and a lot of that stuff is what we create all of our other

00:49:02.540 content from so you get to see it early cool yeah that's what i would say i would say go to

00:49:07.560 the website it's good to be a man and sign up for the newsletter that's where a lot of the stuff

00:49:11.400 that we create across multiple platforms is tabulated and made more useful i'm on twitter

00:49:16.980 for the moment at this is foster and on gab at this is foster and those are the two best places

00:49:22.040 to find me great thanks guys for coming on the show yeah thank you as a special thank you for

00:49:29.240 your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.

00:49:33.660 To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.com slash offer. We highly recommend

00:49:39.740 Pastor Joel's book, Am I Truly Saved? If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about

00:49:44.700 the love of God, this would be a great resource. As a reminder, to get this offer, go to

00:49:49.640 rightresponseministries.com slash offer. And thank you for your generous support.

00:49:59.240 You

The NXR Podcast - March 03, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Rebuilding The Patriarchy

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