00:01:54.220All right, well, let's go ahead and dive right in.
00:01:55.780The first question that I wanted to ask you is, you know, you and I are both mutual friends
00:02:00.140of Michael Foster, and so I talked to him briefly before we recorded and said, hey,
00:02:04.240if I have Chris Wiley for an hour, you know, what are some, you know, top five questions
00:02:10.500that would be great to ask him that he's really good on?
00:02:12.660And he said as his first suggestion that I should ask you about how working with your
00:02:17.720hands produces spiritual maturity in men. Can you draw a correlation for us? How does working
00:02:23.360with your hands, physical labor, draw out spiritual maturity or form spiritual maturity in men?
00:02:30.420Yeah, that's a favorite topic of mine. So I think to put this in a kind of New Testament framework,
00:02:39.100it's important for us to remember that the Apostle Paul worked with his hands. So he was a tent maker
00:02:44.180and it was perfect trade for him if you consider life on the road i imagine that he you know
00:02:50.160arrived at a tent city outside of some metropolis like ephesus or philippi and set up his tent and
00:02:58.140then he had his wares you know with him and did business and i've often you know sort of playfully
00:03:04.540uh you know sort of speculated about paul's negotiating skills because i i think that i
00:03:11.040think a lot of christians are uncomfortable with the old uh sort of barter and uh you know approach
00:03:17.040to to doing business i imagine paul was good you know first of all he was jewish you know the old
00:03:24.580the old joke about how jews are good at that uh but you know did he just pay asking price i doubt
00:03:31.840it i imagine he uh made an offer and there was a go there was a there was a back and forth like
00:03:38.260you normally see in that kind of thing like when you're buying a car or whatever right uh but uh
00:03:42.980i also think he he because he worked with his hands he could identify with a lot of guys who
00:03:49.600did work with their hands furthermore he was a world-class intellectual so that's an interesting
00:03:54.500combination of things that we don't normally see today but you saw paul paul could hold it
00:04:01.420all together he could relate to the blue collar guy because he worked with his hands he could
00:04:05.420relate to the intellectuals because he worked with his mind he he spanned the divide but when
00:04:12.120you work with your hands you uh are you're sort of interacting with not just a set of ideas but
00:04:18.280a physical reality that in in certain ways shapes the way you think about the world
00:04:24.100you you realize that the world doesn't just do what you think it should
00:04:28.880you're interacting with with something that provides you some with with some resistance
00:04:35.020and then that resistance becomes the means by which your own sort of uh inner resources are
00:04:42.020developed and strengthened so there is wisdom that is developed when you're working with the physical
00:04:46.980world and that wisdom is informed by okay there's a structure here that's uh kind of embedded into0.97
00:04:53.840the nature of things generally speaking blue collar guys don't do stupid stuff like we see0.83
00:04:59.700today on social media with transitioning and all that kind of nice because they deal with the
00:05:05.880physical world and they know that there are just some givens you know the world is the way it is
00:05:10.480but when you when you work just with words and with ideas you can fall into the trap of thinking
00:05:17.780that the world is made of play-doh and it can just be shaped into any form that you decide
00:05:22.020you would like to see it take um so there is that part of it but there's also as you're developing
00:05:29.420um you know this appreciation for the world as it is the resources that um you bring to it sometimes
00:05:37.860you know uh what's called for is just more practice uh more discipline more uh self-control
00:05:47.220particularly when maybe things don't go your way and you, you know, smash your finger and lose a
00:05:52.660lose a fingernail. It happened to me one time I was in the middle of the woods working on a cabin.
00:05:57.800I was building for somebody. And, you know, when you're out there all by yourself and that sort of
00:06:02.200thing happens, you know, you're like, wow, that hurt. And there is nobody around to help me.
00:06:08.560But there are those sorts of things. But I think when you when you master a set of skills,
00:06:16.280it gives you a kind of quiet confidence so there's a marvelous author that i've enjoyed
00:06:22.700over the years his name is matthew b crawford he wrote a book entitled shop classes soul craft
00:06:27.220and when he wrote that book i don't think he was a believer but i've been told that he is one now
00:06:33.320so over the course of uh his professional life he's gone from i think probably just a kind of
00:06:39.460well not atheism but maybe agnosticism uh to an actual christian confession uh but uh when he
00:06:48.520wrote that book uh he was reflecting upon his childhood as a kind of a child of hippies uh
00:06:54.440his both his parents taught at berkeley in california and and he he kind of quips you know
00:07:00.720how do you rebel when your parents are hippies right he says what you do is you subscribe to
00:07:05.420soldier fortune magazine and you start working with your hands and that's what he did but uh
00:07:12.180what he what he notes is that when you are have mastered some sort of trade skills uh you don't
00:07:19.820need to brag you you just have a kind of quiet easygoing confidence that you can do things
00:07:25.540um you can you know when he was an electrician uh as well as a motorcycle mechanic when you wire
00:07:33.400the room and you flip the switch the lights on you don't need to brag you just did something that
00:07:37.740very few people can do and because you can do things that other people value uh your confidence
00:07:46.060has a basis and i'm not talking about pride i'm just talking about the kind of confidence that
00:07:51.860we would want to see any man possess you've got a a quiet confidence that that uh makes you um
00:08:01.660you know put you in a position where you don't need to brag you can just do stuff and it also
00:08:07.960increases uh your value in the eyes of others so people say well we can bring over joel he
00:08:13.360knows how to do that he can take care of that problem that kind of thing so uh i i think for
00:08:19.000those reasons um working with your hands is is is valuable for your spiritual development right0.98
00:08:26.040yeah that makes a lot of sense it also makes sense why i think so many blue collar you know
00:08:30.700individuals who do work with their hands are conservative and not you know and not progressive
00:08:36.080in the sense that conservatives think in terms of you know cost and liberties they think in terms
00:08:41.400well they're just um they're realist whereas a lot of liberals these days you know progressive
00:08:47.080liberals tend to be ideologues they think you know only in terms of solutions um you know hey
00:08:52.940there's poverty and so we should do universal income universal housing universal this you know
00:08:57.600um and that's all great that's like like me saying there's cancer uh we should we should cure it
00:09:03.220okay but you know great like great idea nobody's ever thought of that you know but the question is
00:09:07.580how how in the world the real world that we actually live in um that god designed and and
00:09:13.680that god set up the framework and rules for how is that actually accomplished how is it accomplished
00:09:18.060efficiently uh cost effectively um ethically you know all those different things um that was the
00:09:24.240same kind of idealism uh that we saw during covid where you know we're very earlier on you can see
00:09:30.780who the ideologues were the progressives uh that saying you know uh any cost is worth it just to
00:09:37.020save one life and say well you know your your car in your driveway uh exposes your hypocrisy i mean
00:09:45.000if that's really our standard then let's get rid of roads let's get rid of cars let's get you know
00:09:50.260because we have, I think it's, I forget the exact statistic, but I think it's 30,000 or 35,000
00:09:55.600deaths that occur in America annually because of motorized vehicles, you know, and in that case,
00:10:04.940it's not just, you know, the potential of killing yourself, but every time you get on the street,
00:10:09.320you have, you know, behind the wheel, you have the potential of killing someone else, and so,
00:10:13.460yeah, so that's just not the way that we think, and that's not just an American novelty,
00:10:18.900But all of humanity is always thought in the terms of costs and benefits and liberties.
00:10:25.460Is it worth having millions of people's straws dissolve in their drink at a restaurant in order to fight the sun monster, to lower the temperature one degree over the course of the next 10,000 years?
00:10:47.900And so anyways, all that being said, it seems like people who work with their hands, they have to work in God's world, the way that he made it. They can't afford to be ideologues. They have to be realist, which seems to draw the connection, the correlation to why when it comes to their politics and political civil expressions of their worldview, it tends to be more conservative because conservatives think in terms of cost.
00:11:10.300So all that being said, I wanted to move on and deal with, well, let's talk about pastors
00:12:14.340But here's the question for me and for any other young man who's thinking about going
00:12:18.920into ministry or perhaps already is in formal vocational ministry, what are some of the
00:12:23.680biggest deficiencies that you see both in young men and young ministers?
00:12:31.320Well, I think we've already touched on it a little bit.
00:12:34.380A lot of young guys have been shaped in terms of their expectations for ministry by either very, I guess, high-profile ministers who published lots of books, et cetera,
00:13:02.260or they're seminary professors who have not personally been involved in the ministry in most cases.
00:13:18.620So there's a lack of sort of connection I think a lot of these guys have
00:13:24.940with some really great people that would be helpful to them
00:13:31.180in terms of their growth and development
00:13:35.020and an ability to appreciate and connect with men in particular.
00:13:40.740So I think that's one of the reasons why some of the young guys
00:13:45.580find it difficult to relate to, say, for example, blue-collar guys.
00:13:51.660We just talked a little bit about that.
00:13:53.720But also guys who are just actually entrepreneurs, maybe business guys, these guys, a lot of these young guys seem to be most comfortable with kind of mid-level management types in corporate America.
00:14:09.680And that's because they have grown up in highly structured environments or developed in ministry in highly structured environments.
00:14:16.920And those folks are in highly structured environments.
00:14:19.080And when you're in those highly structured environments, you don't take risks the way that, say, other people do.
00:14:28.520You don't deal with tradeoffs like we just talked about in terms of, okay, if we do this, we can't do that.
00:14:34.300If we pursue that course of action, that means that we're not going to be able to maybe pull off some other things we'd like to do.
00:14:46.540So I guess just in terms of the practical aspects of life and ministry and being able to relate to guys, they're at a loss.
00:14:57.960So let me give you an example of a guy who was very helpful to me early in my ministry who was a mentor to me.
00:15:06.380He was a former Fortune 500 executive, but he was also an entrepreneur that had started a high-tech firm in Massachusetts.
00:15:16.540And he was probably the most, I think, capable person I've ever met when it came to working with people and organizations.
00:15:28.640I mean, he was the sort of guy that was able to get things done and really remarkable things in situations where most folks would just throw up their hands and say, well, you just have to kind of live with that.
00:15:45.600He's getting up there in years. But when I was with him, he was dealing with an insurance claim.
00:15:53.640So this was a personal matter. And he was having a hard time getting what he wanted from prudential insurance.
00:16:00.240So what he did is he wrote a letter and on the letter he addressed it to the person authorized to open this.
00:16:10.720now what do you think happened when that letter arrived at prudential insurance it got pushed up
00:16:19.360the chain of command all the way to the top and when the guy opened the letter uh he he called my
00:16:27.360my friend john and he was laughing he was a senior vice president at prudential insurance he says you
00:16:32.800got me what do you want now what what did john know and what did he teach me in that moment
00:16:40.200So John understood that fear is the primary motivator in any bureaucracy.0.98
00:16:47.160Basically, people don't want to take, you know, sort of stick out, stand out, make a stupid mistake and be punished for it.
00:16:54.680So if you're going to get things done when you're working in a bureaucracy, you need to know, OK, there are a lot of people here who are just showing up every day and don't want to keep their heads down.0.85
00:17:04.740You're not going to get much help from those folks.
00:17:06.700What you want is somebody with the kind of confidence that can make a call and has the authority to get things done.
00:17:13.340So how do you find that person? And sometimes that person is not where you think.
00:17:18.260Maybe that person is at the top. Maybe not.
00:17:20.880But that kind of savvy, that kind of organizational savvy is the sort of thing that I was able to see in John.
00:17:28.480Um, and, and that had nothing to do with, you know, uh, you know, the sort of the high
00:17:38.560profile ministry of a person, uh, or with, um, you know, seminary professors, that kind
00:17:50.660So what I, what I think a lot of young guys need to do is they need to find mentors who
00:17:55.080are good at that stuff. Because that's going to make a huge difference in your ministry,
00:17:59.760if you understand how life works, how people think, that kind of stuff.
00:18:03.920What do you think about a young pastor being mentored? Because it sounds like what you're
00:18:07.260saying, and it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but just being mentored by an older man who's
00:18:12.900not actually in vocational ministry, and perhaps never was, but who's godly and strong in the faith,
00:18:18.480but he's a businessman, maybe he owns his own business. Because there are people that I've
00:18:24.000thought, you know, one of the biggest credentials that I look for these days, I've finally gotten to
00:18:30.380the point where, you know, I'm like, man, I feel like that this, and this kind of leads into another
00:18:34.020question I want to ask you, but I feel like one of the strongest credentials that I see in a man
00:18:38.500is if he has grown children who haven't apostatized and left the faith. Because I can, you know, a lot
00:18:45.520of the guys that you were describing, you know, we didn't name any, but a lot of the guys that you
00:18:48.800were describing as high-profile Christian celebrity pastors who have published many
00:18:54.480books, you know, or have large churches who love the seats of honor and the Christian
00:19:01.620conference circuits, you know, and those kinds of things, I mean, it's a remarkable statistic
00:19:08.780of how many of them have at least one, if not more, apostate-grown children who have
00:19:15.500abandoned the faith, are not even a member in a local church, do not attend a local church,
00:19:20.460and some of them to the point where they are publicly antagonistic against the Christian faith
00:19:25.260on social media or in some public capacity. And this has gotten to the point where I don't even
00:19:33.760think we really, I don't even think we blush at it any longer. We've come to expect it. It's like,
00:19:40.480so-and-so is a great pastor. And of course, two of his five children hate Christ. But what are you
00:19:48.900going to do? And so anyways, I say all that to say, I feel like Doug Wilson is probably the guy
00:19:54.260that I heard this from, but he said, the strongest credentials that you have in terms of accolades
00:19:59.120are the laughter around your dinner table. That there's actually warmth and love and intimacy,
00:20:05.620love for the family, honor for the father, the head of the household, but most importantly,
00:20:10.260devotion, and love for Christ with every member of the household. Those children, if you have
00:20:16.380five children, if you have 10 children, your wife loving you and being happy. I think of Solomon,
00:20:22.720right? It's like one of the things that the queen of Sheba is like, it's not just the gardens and
00:20:27.400the temple and the palace and all the gold and the treasures, but she marvels at the fact that
00:20:33.560the lowest in his kingdom, in the hierarchy, the servants are happy. Happy are your servants.
00:20:38.780You know, and when a man has a happy wife and happy children, and they're happy with their dad, and they're happy also in the Lord, then if that guy's not a pastor, he's never published a book, I just feel like he's got some secret sauce, and I'd like to know what's going on there.
00:20:57.540Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great observation, and I know Doug, I've been at his table, I know his kids, I know his grandkids, and he's the real deal.
00:21:05.860I mean, the laughter he references there, I've heard it.
00:21:12.620So, but, and I'm blessed in this, in that regard as well.
00:21:43.880So anyway, to your point, what is the secret sauce?
00:21:48.460I think it's one of those things where there are a number of ingredients
00:21:51.780and kind of delineating all of those is not something I've done to this point,
00:21:58.980but there are a few things that come to mind.
00:22:00.880I think it's really important for a father in particular to have, as you noted, a really good relationship with his wife.
00:22:08.840That goes a long way in terms of how the kids are raised.
00:22:15.500There obviously needs to be a lot of agreement on, you know, the kind of nuts and bolts of raising the kids.
00:22:22.260There has to be wisdom in terms of how a father works with his wife and how a father or a husband maybe corrects his wife.
00:22:34.860So, for example, in our household, there were times where I thought maybe my wife's approach to a particular thing was not the best approach.
00:22:46.500I didn't say it at that moment in front of the kids.
00:22:49.360that was a conversation that occurred later at night when we were laying next to each other in
00:22:53.460bed and talking about the day. In other words, you don't make your wife look bad in front of the kids
00:22:58.640and your wife doesn't make you look bad in front of the kids. There's a sense in which there's a
00:23:02.240kind of an agreement that you've got to share that, you know, we're here to reinforce each
00:23:08.440other's authority and support each other. That's huge. But I also think there has to be a good and
00:23:14.560open relationship with your kids that you can as you know as well as you can develop so in my case
00:23:22.340I would take the kids out for one-on-ones at least once a month for breakfast it was just
00:23:28.520the time for that child and me to talk about everything you know and over the years you know
00:23:34.200the conversations became deeper and more significant you know when the kids are small
00:23:39.880you know it's just like how do you like your pancakes that kind of stuff you know it's just
00:23:45.140about having enjoying you know being in each other's presence and maybe you know maybe asking
00:23:50.280you know how things are going and learning a little bit about you know the child's perspective
00:23:54.340on things but then you know as time uh passes you're getting into some pretty heavy stuff
00:24:01.180um you know vocational choices what to look for in a spouse those kinds of things and you know
00:24:09.360even talking about perspective, uh, you know, mates and so forth. Uh, I have, I I'm of the
00:24:16.700conviction that it's a father's responsibility, not only to order his own household, but to help
00:24:21.220his children establish theirs. So, you know, really, you know, in the mid middle teen years,
00:24:27.080I would spend a lot of time when we, when I was driving them around or just, you know,
00:24:32.040with these monthly get togethers or even at the dinner table, talk about this stuff. And, uh,
00:24:37.380So consequently, my kids had a lot of coaching with regard to what to look for in a maiden, but also what they would need to be so that they could be a good husband or wife themselves as their homes were established.
00:24:52.860And when you have that kind of openness with your kids to talk about the full range of things that they're engaged in in life, you want to, you know, get at the real, you know, what's really on their minds.
00:25:08.220And there are, you know, ways to go about doing that.
00:25:12.160But if you have that kind of relationship with your kids, then I think it goes a long way toward connecting faith and life.
00:25:18.900because obviously this is also a big part of the conversation.
00:25:27.000And, of course, then the onus is on you to live up to it.
00:25:31.500And I think this is another thing to also keep in mind.
00:25:34.120Sometimes I see guys who seem to operate with the notion that they can never admit when they're wrong
00:25:42.040because it will undermine their authority.
00:25:44.080Actually, that's one of the quickest ways to undermine your authority.
00:25:46.560If everybody in the room knows you're wrong and you're pretending you're not and you're requiring them to go along with you, that actually undermines your authority.
00:25:56.160But if you're quick to say, you know, hey, in that particular instance, I made a bad call.
00:26:01.780What that demonstrates to your kids is that there's a higher standard than dad and that dad is trying to live up to that.0.99
00:26:08.100Now, if you make a habit of doing stupid things, then, of course, that will harm you in the long run.
00:26:12.960But if your kids see that you're applying yourself and you're working hard to live up to the standard that you are promoting with them, then they'll respect that.0.98
00:26:40.300And actually, I'm a big fan of repentance being in word and deed, mere course correction in deed in the realm of action, where you're doing something in terms of the outflow of your position, your conviction, your theological position.
00:27:05.860It's like, I believe this, I'm doing this.
00:27:08.160So, in the realm of actions, I'm doing one thing, and then in God's providence, some kind of
00:27:14.000circumstance occurs to where that prior theological conviction is pressed and tested, and you realize
00:27:21.640it actually doesn't hold up. This is not a full-orbed robot. It's not biblical. It doesn't
00:27:27.180work. And it only appeared to work for a short time because of these circumstantial elements,
00:27:34.300but it's actually not objectively true. And so then you do something else. And that's good.
00:27:41.800You should change courses. But sometimes, you know, guys will change courses and it's so obvious.
00:27:48.800Like what you said, everybody in the room knows you're wrong. But you're requiring them to go
00:27:53.160along with the, you know, humor. The latest narrative. Right, exactly. You're just, it's a
00:28:01.740show and you're requiring them to go along with the show even though everybody knows it's a show
00:28:06.140um and so being able to add you know repentance and word to our repentance indeed to actually be
00:28:12.720able to say dad was wrong i got this one wrong um and i and i feel like there's been you know a lot
00:28:19.160of opportunities with that outside of just households but on the public you know stage
00:28:24.920for the evangelical church especially in the last three years because um it's not like you know in
00:28:30.820you know, just for three years now, we've had people, you know, being progressive and people
00:28:36.160who are compromising on our truth. That's been going on for a very long time. But it did seem
00:28:40.840as though, you know, it got expedited, right? There was a catalyst in the equation and apostasy
00:28:46.860and compromise and those kinds of things, you know, seemed to heat up rapidly. And in God's,
00:28:54.320you know, mercy, that kind of ripped back the veil. We were able to see some things as they
00:28:58.400really were. And it's like all of us were given this option in the mercy of God of whether or
00:29:03.220not we're going to repent, you know, and all of us needed to repent for different things and all
00:29:08.640of us in different degrees, because not everybody was equally wrong. But for me, there were a lot
00:29:13.960of things that I just had never considered before, that all of a sudden, okay, I've got to actually
00:29:19.040think about what is my political theology? What is God's role for the civil magistrate? What is
00:29:26.080his role? Is Caesar autonomous? Or is he a deacon of God? Is Romans 13 prescriptive for Christians
00:29:33.460to submit to Caesar no matter what he says? Or is it descriptive about what the proper Caesar
00:29:41.000should look like? And that it actually has just as much, if not more, to say about Caesar's
00:29:45.900submission to the authority above him, namely God, than just our submission? And a lot of guys
00:29:51.880doubled down in their foolish prior views. And then some guys course corrected and did something0.96
00:29:58.800in terms of the realm of action that directly contradicted with their actions 15 minutes prior,
00:30:05.280but never said in terms of repentance in word, oh, hey, just so that you guys don't all feel0.99
00:30:12.500like I'm treating you like you're stupid, it might be valuable to point out. So I said this0.99
00:30:18.880and was doing this, and that was like last Thursday, and now I'm doing this, which is
00:30:24.380directly opposite, and I just want to go ahead and go on the record, not just in course correcting
00:30:29.940in the realm of actions, but also repentance in the realm of words, and say, yeah, this directly
00:30:35.080contradicts that, and the reason for this change is because I was wrong, which is not that crazy,
00:30:41.960you know, especially for older ministers who have been right for decades about so many things.
00:30:48.620You can afford, like what you're saying, if you're wrong every other week about something
00:30:53.940significant, then yeah, you're going to lose credibility.
00:30:56.900But for a guy who's in a position of authority with longevity from time to time, just a few
00:31:05.160times to publicly admit that he's wrong, that doesn't soil his perfect record.
00:31:11.380That adds, if anything, it bolsters and strengthens his credibility with those who are following
00:31:31.800The only other thought that I had, and this, you know, I've done a video on this, so it's not like I'm not dropping a bomb that I haven't dropped before.
00:31:39.840And so I am going to actually say the name here.
00:31:42.900um and i've said the name before but i you know i think about abraham uh piper and john piper
00:31:48.440and abraham piper you know grown son he's not under john piper's roof i think he's like i think
00:31:53.420he's in his 40s at this point so it's not even that he's 22 years old you know or um he's been
00:31:59.140out out of john piper's home for quite a while and uh but but he's it's not just that he's gone
00:32:05.640apostate and that he's left the church as you know and pretty much all of our listeners you know he's
00:32:09.540I think he's got like 800,000 or something, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers
00:32:14.420on TikTok and, you know, other social media, but I think that's a big one is TikTok.
00:32:19.900And a lot of his videos, not all of them, but a lot of them are just blatantly blaspheming Christ.
00:32:24.960So it's not just, I left the faith and that's what dad did and mom did and I don't do that.
00:32:29.680And you kind of keep your head down, you're quiet about it because you don't want to
00:32:32.780bring shame to your father, right? You don't love Jesus, you don't believe in Jesus,
00:32:36.520but you still love dad, and you don't want to shame dad,
00:32:58.720So it's not as though he's this brilliant guy
00:33:02.320who's got just tremendous insights that no one else has,
00:33:06.080And it's because he is apostate and a disappointment to his father and a rebuke, in a sense, that other people who, for whatever reason, have decided to apostatize.
00:33:19.380Or maybe they're just people who follow him because it's kind of the drama of it.
00:38:47.680They went to a separate building or a separate room at church, but they weren't in church.
00:38:53.180They weren't there with the Lord's Supper being served, with the preaching, praying, singing, and seeing the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and baptism, the only two images prescribed by the Lord.
00:41:29.960I don't know John Piper, uh, personally, so I can't reflect on anything, uh, that occurred in
00:41:36.640that household. But I think, uh, when it comes to the situations that I am aware of, um, yeah,
00:41:43.560the big differences are the ones you noted. Um, I think, um, you know, if we think about, say,
00:41:52.160for example, high profile guys, often their churches function like corporations, uh,
00:41:59.960They're dealing with thousands of people. They're managing staffs that are sometimes, you know, tens of people, dozens, maybe even hundreds of people.
00:42:12.880And everything seems to be designed to kind of provide a kind of an image of efficiency and high, I guess, high quality, so to speak.
00:42:33.540And very often the places where I've seen the best results are in smaller groups and with less opulence and less professionalism, but more genuine interaction between the generations.
00:42:55.440So I think all of your observations are right on the money.
00:43:01.040I just, I think in that particular situation that I'm aware of that people are at least familiar with who we're talking about when we talk about Doug and Nate and the others in that family.
00:43:14.580Yeah, so let me give you an example of how this maybe is counterintuitive.
00:43:19.920So when I'm with the Wilsons in a family gathering, you know who the person, you know, the person who speaks the least often is?
00:55:23.900Yeah, they're LARPing. Give an example of a guy who's not taking real risk, but he's making it look like he's risky and edgy and LARPing.
00:55:32.460Well, you know, I'm a gun owner. I own several. I have semi-automatic weapons. I've got all that kind of stuff.
00:55:40.560But I've seen a lot of guys who present themselves as sort of like the edgy dude with the guns, and they're not really taking significant risks in their life.
00:55:52.320they just are passing themselves off in this way and um that's just one example but i think
00:56:01.280having a bunch of guns but but you don't have the real estate to back it up you've got no
00:56:05.480you've got a gun to say get off my land but the problem is you don't own any land which
00:56:09.460that's a good way to put it yeah it's a good way which none of us do because of property taxes we
00:56:14.420all right right right but no that's a great that's a great that's a great point and i think
00:56:19.460that um you know that gives you also an order of things you know you've got to have something to
00:56:24.700protect in order to justify the weapon that's right by the way uh you know just because you've
00:56:30.400got the weapon doesn't mean that maybe uh the the wisest approach is to employ the weapon there
00:56:36.540might be some other much more effective approach that doesn't have that larping element but just
00:56:41.980gets the job done right um do you think that if anybody wanted to find more examples of a larping
00:56:48.800man that they could find some LARPing men on Twitter? Would that be a good place to look?
00:56:52.660Oh, yeah. I think that's definitely a place. The Manosphere is full of those
00:56:56.880guys. Yes. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, Chris, thanks so much
00:57:00.800for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. How can our listeners follow you?
00:57:05.120Well, I mean, I do have a website, crwiley.com, but I almost never put anything
00:57:08.880on it. Okay. That's just where I put occasionally some
00:57:12.600book reviews, and there are links for people to find
00:57:16.700of the books that i've written but you know i'm on facebook i'm on twitter i don't i i don't like
00:57:22.240cultivate it in a way to like to get a big you know sort of following uh but occasionally i'll
00:57:27.700post some things just to see how people respond because i'm working on an idea or something like
00:57:32.060that and what what are uh real quick list just at least you know two or three of your books so that
00:57:37.040if people want to go and check those out well we just talked about uh one early on when you referred
00:57:42.260to our last conversation that's the in the house of tom bombadil and that probably the the book
00:57:47.540that is the most uh popular is a book entitled the household and the word for the cosmos that's
00:57:53.860gotten a lot of uh positive feedback and i've appreciated that well those are a couple books
00:57:59.100my assistant nathan and i we've both read uh household in the war for the cosmos and then
00:58:04.220also man of the house oh yeah and we both feel like man of the house is better house oh good