The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Why Do The Children Of Believers Abandon The Faith？ with C.R. Wiley

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00:00:40.060 Why do so many Christians today have grown children who have gone apostate, who have left

00:00:45.900 the church, who have abandoned the Christian faith? This is one of the questions that I address

00:00:51.980 with my special guest, C.R. Wiley, on today's episode of Theology Applied. We deal with a host

00:00:58.900 of other questions, but all of them fall under the banner of one primary subject, and that is

00:01:04.900 biblical masculinity and Christian fatherhood. If that's your interest, then tune in now.

00:01:12.100 Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:21.980 All right, so welcome to another episode of Theology Applied. I'm your host, Pastor Joel

00:01:25.720 Webman with Right Response Ministries. And in this episode, I'm very privileged to have as a special

00:01:30.740 guest, C.R. Wiley, or Chris Wiley, returning now, I believe, for the second time. We talked about

00:01:36.020 his book on Tom Bombadil from the Lord of the Rings series, the first time he came on. Today,

00:01:41.260 we're going to be talking about biblical manhood, households, fatherhood, young men in pastoral

00:01:47.480 ministry, the whole nine yards. So, Chris, welcome to the show.

00:01:50.940 Well, thanks for having me back, Joel.

00:01:52.320 It's great to be with you.

00:01:53.460 Absolutely.

00:01:54.220 All right, well, let's go ahead and dive right in.

00:01:55.780 The first question that I wanted to ask you is, you know, you and I are both mutual friends

00:02:00.140 of Michael Foster, and so I talked to him briefly before we recorded and said, hey,

00:02:04.240 if I have Chris Wiley for an hour, you know, what are some, you know, top five questions

00:02:10.500 that would be great to ask him that he's really good on?

00:02:12.660 And he said as his first suggestion that I should ask you about how working with your

00:02:17.720 hands produces spiritual maturity in men. Can you draw a correlation for us? How does working

00:02:23.360 with your hands, physical labor, draw out spiritual maturity or form spiritual maturity in men?

00:02:30.420 Yeah, that's a favorite topic of mine. So I think to put this in a kind of New Testament framework,

00:02:39.100 it's important for us to remember that the Apostle Paul worked with his hands. So he was a tent maker

00:02:44.180 and it was perfect trade for him if you consider life on the road i imagine that he you know

00:02:50.160 arrived at a tent city outside of some metropolis like ephesus or philippi and set up his tent and

00:02:58.140 then he had his wares you know with him and did business and i've often you know sort of playfully

00:03:04.540 uh you know sort of speculated about paul's negotiating skills because i i think that i

00:03:11.040 think a lot of christians are uncomfortable with the old uh sort of barter and uh you know approach

00:03:17.040 to to doing business i imagine paul was good you know first of all he was jewish you know the old

00:03:24.580 the old joke about how jews are good at that uh but you know did he just pay asking price i doubt

00:03:31.840 it i imagine he uh made an offer and there was a go there was a there was a back and forth like

00:03:38.260 you normally see in that kind of thing like when you're buying a car or whatever right uh but uh

00:03:42.980 i also think he he because he worked with his hands he could identify with a lot of guys who

00:03:49.600 did work with their hands furthermore he was a world-class intellectual so that's an interesting

00:03:54.500 combination of things that we don't normally see today but you saw paul paul could hold it

00:04:01.420 all together he could relate to the blue collar guy because he worked with his hands he could

00:04:05.420 relate to the intellectuals because he worked with his mind he he spanned the divide but when

00:04:12.120 you work with your hands you uh are you're sort of interacting with not just a set of ideas but

00:04:18.280 a physical reality that in in certain ways shapes the way you think about the world

00:04:24.100 you you realize that the world doesn't just do what you think it should

00:04:28.880 you're interacting with with something that provides you some with with some resistance

00:04:35.020 and then that resistance becomes the means by which your own sort of uh inner resources are

00:04:42.020 developed and strengthened so there is wisdom that is developed when you're working with the physical

00:04:46.980 world and that wisdom is informed by okay there's a structure here that's uh kind of embedded into 0.97

00:04:53.840 the nature of things generally speaking blue collar guys don't do stupid stuff like we see 0.83

00:04:59.700 today on social media with transitioning and all that kind of nice because they deal with the

00:05:05.880 physical world and they know that there are just some givens you know the world is the way it is

00:05:10.480 but when you when you work just with words and with ideas you can fall into the trap of thinking

00:05:17.780 that the world is made of play-doh and it can just be shaped into any form that you decide

00:05:22.020 you would like to see it take um so there is that part of it but there's also as you're developing

00:05:29.420 um you know this appreciation for the world as it is the resources that um you bring to it sometimes

00:05:37.860 you know uh what's called for is just more practice uh more discipline more uh self-control

00:05:47.220 particularly when maybe things don't go your way and you, you know, smash your finger and lose a

00:05:52.660 lose a fingernail. It happened to me one time I was in the middle of the woods working on a cabin.

00:05:57.800 I was building for somebody. And, you know, when you're out there all by yourself and that sort of

00:06:02.200 thing happens, you know, you're like, wow, that hurt. And there is nobody around to help me.

00:06:08.560 But there are those sorts of things. But I think when you when you master a set of skills,

00:06:16.280 it gives you a kind of quiet confidence so there's a marvelous author that i've enjoyed

00:06:22.700 over the years his name is matthew b crawford he wrote a book entitled shop classes soul craft

00:06:27.220 and when he wrote that book i don't think he was a believer but i've been told that he is one now

00:06:33.320 so over the course of uh his professional life he's gone from i think probably just a kind of

00:06:39.460 well not atheism but maybe agnosticism uh to an actual christian confession uh but uh when he

00:06:48.520 wrote that book uh he was reflecting upon his childhood as a kind of a child of hippies uh

00:06:54.440 his both his parents taught at berkeley in california and and he he kind of quips you know

00:07:00.720 how do you rebel when your parents are hippies right he says what you do is you subscribe to

00:07:05.420 soldier fortune magazine and you start working with your hands and that's what he did but uh

00:07:12.180 what he what he notes is that when you are have mastered some sort of trade skills uh you don't

00:07:19.820 need to brag you you just have a kind of quiet easygoing confidence that you can do things

00:07:25.540 um you can you know when he was an electrician uh as well as a motorcycle mechanic when you wire

00:07:33.400 the room and you flip the switch the lights on you don't need to brag you just did something that

00:07:37.740 very few people can do and because you can do things that other people value uh your confidence

00:07:46.060 has a basis and i'm not talking about pride i'm just talking about the kind of confidence that

00:07:51.860 we would want to see any man possess you've got a a quiet confidence that that uh makes you um

00:08:01.660 you know put you in a position where you don't need to brag you can just do stuff and it also

00:08:07.960 increases uh your value in the eyes of others so people say well we can bring over joel he

00:08:13.360 knows how to do that he can take care of that problem that kind of thing so uh i i think for

00:08:19.000 those reasons um working with your hands is is is valuable for your spiritual development right 0.98

00:08:26.040 yeah that makes a lot of sense it also makes sense why i think so many blue collar you know

00:08:30.700 individuals who do work with their hands are conservative and not you know and not progressive

00:08:36.080 in the sense that conservatives think in terms of you know cost and liberties they think in terms

00:08:41.400 well they're just um they're realist whereas a lot of liberals these days you know progressive

00:08:47.080 liberals tend to be ideologues they think you know only in terms of solutions um you know hey

00:08:52.940 there's poverty and so we should do universal income universal housing universal this you know

00:08:57.600 um and that's all great that's like like me saying there's cancer uh we should we should cure it

00:09:03.220 okay but you know great like great idea nobody's ever thought of that you know but the question is

00:09:07.580 how how in the world the real world that we actually live in um that god designed and and

00:09:13.680 that god set up the framework and rules for how is that actually accomplished how is it accomplished

00:09:18.060 efficiently uh cost effectively um ethically you know all those different things um that was the

00:09:24.240 same kind of idealism uh that we saw during covid where you know we're very earlier on you can see

00:09:30.780 who the ideologues were the progressives uh that saying you know uh any cost is worth it just to

00:09:37.020 save one life and say well you know your your car in your driveway uh exposes your hypocrisy i mean

00:09:45.000 if that's really our standard then let's get rid of roads let's get rid of cars let's get you know

00:09:50.260 because we have, I think it's, I forget the exact statistic, but I think it's 30,000 or 35,000

00:09:55.600 deaths that occur in America annually because of motorized vehicles, you know, and in that case,

00:10:04.940 it's not just, you know, the potential of killing yourself, but every time you get on the street,

00:10:09.320 you have, you know, behind the wheel, you have the potential of killing someone else, and so,

00:10:13.460 yeah, so that's just not the way that we think, and that's not just an American novelty,

00:10:18.900 But all of humanity is always thought in the terms of costs and benefits and liberties.

00:10:25.460 Is 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?

00:10:45.800 You have to think about those things.

00:10:47.900 And 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.

00:11:10.300 So all that being said, I wanted to move on and deal with, well, let's talk about pastors

00:11:17.300 for a little bit.

00:11:17.820 So I'm a young minister.

00:11:19.820 I'm 36 years old, pastoring my second church now.

00:11:23.700 I pastored in Southern California for a while.

00:11:25.520 I handed it over.

00:11:26.220 I moved to Texas.

00:11:27.500 This is where I was born and raised.

00:11:29.080 My family was here, my parents, and then also my wife's family.

00:11:32.880 She was born and raised in Southern California, but eight years before we made the move, her

00:11:37.480 parents made the move to Texas.

00:11:39.180 And so now we've got both sides of the family, all within actually about 15 miles, which

00:11:45.540 is awesome for our children to have both sets of grandparents.

00:11:49.020 So it's been a huge blessing.

00:11:51.240 And so now I'm planting another church, by God's grace, called Covenant Bible Church,

00:11:56.380 north of Austin, Texas, in Georgetown, Texas.

00:11:59.540 And it's been great, but there are plenty of lessons that I'm sure I still have to learn.

00:12:04.380 I've been able to avoid plenty of pitfalls that I made in my first rodeo.

00:12:09.140 And by God's grace, the second endeavor, there haven't been, at least yet, there haven't

00:12:13.240 been many pitfalls.

00:12:14.340 But here's the question for me and for any other young man who's thinking about going

00:12:18.920 into ministry or perhaps already is in formal vocational ministry, what are some of the

00:12:23.680 biggest deficiencies that you see both in young men and young ministers?

00:12:31.320 Well, I think we've already touched on it a little bit.

00:12:34.380 A 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,

00:13:02.260 or they're seminary professors who have not personally been involved in the ministry in most cases.

00:13:15.100 And those who have, it was years ago.

00:13:18.620 So there's a lack of sort of connection I think a lot of these guys have

00:13:24.940 with some really great people that would be helpful to them

00:13:31.180 in terms of their growth and development

00:13:35.020 and an ability to appreciate and connect with men in particular.

00:13:40.740 So I think that's one of the reasons why some of the young guys

00:13:45.580 find it difficult to relate to, say, for example, blue-collar guys.

00:13:51.660 We just talked a little bit about that.

00:13:53.720 But 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.

00:14:09.680 And that's because they have grown up in highly structured environments or developed in ministry in highly structured environments.

00:14:16.920 And those folks are in highly structured environments.

00:14:19.080 And when you're in those highly structured environments, you don't take risks the way that, say, other people do.

00:14:28.520 You don't deal with tradeoffs like we just talked about in terms of, okay, if we do this, we can't do that.

00:14:34.300 If 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.

00:14:46.540 So 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.

00:14:57.960 So 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.

00:15:06.380 He was a former Fortune 500 executive, but he was also an entrepreneur that had started a high-tech firm in Massachusetts.

00:15:16.540 And he was probably the most, I think, capable person I've ever met when it came to working with people and organizations.

00:15:27.000 He was a bureaucracy buster.

00:15:28.640 I 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.

00:15:42.200 Let me give you an example.

00:15:43.100 So his name was John Bowen.

00:15:44.780 He's still alive.

00:15:45.600 He's getting up there in years. But when I was with him, he was dealing with an insurance claim.

00:15:53.640 So this was a personal matter. And he was having a hard time getting what he wanted from prudential insurance.

00:16:00.240 So what he did is he wrote a letter and on the letter he addressed it to the person authorized to open this.

00:16:10.720 now what do you think happened when that letter arrived at prudential insurance it got pushed up

00:16:19.360 the chain of command all the way to the top and when the guy opened the letter uh he he called my

00:16:27.360 my friend john and he was laughing he was a senior vice president at prudential insurance he says you

00:16:32.800 got me what do you want now what what did john know and what did he teach me in that moment

00:16:40.200 So John understood that fear is the primary motivator in any bureaucracy. 0.98

00:16:47.160 Basically, people don't want to take, you know, sort of stick out, stand out, make a stupid mistake and be punished for it.

00:16:54.680 So 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

00:17:04.740 You're not going to get much help from those folks.

00:17:06.700 What you want is somebody with the kind of confidence that can make a call and has the authority to get things done.

00:17:13.340 So how do you find that person? And sometimes that person is not where you think.

00:17:18.260 Maybe that person is at the top. Maybe not.

00:17:20.880 But that kind of savvy, that kind of organizational savvy is the sort of thing that I was able to see in John.

00:17:28.480 Um, and, and that had nothing to do with, you know, uh, you know, the sort of the high

00:17:38.560 profile ministry of a person, uh, or with, um, you know, seminary professors, that kind

00:17:45.780 of thing.

00:17:46.280 He understood how life works.

00:17:47.860 He understood how people work.

00:17:49.800 Yep.

00:17:50.140 That was it.

00:17:50.660 So what I, what I think a lot of young guys need to do is they need to find mentors who

00:17:55.080 are good at that stuff. Because that's going to make a huge difference in your ministry,

00:17:59.760 if you understand how life works, how people think, that kind of stuff.

00:18:03.920 What do you think about a young pastor being mentored? Because it sounds like what you're

00:18:07.260 saying, and it doesn't sound like a bad idea, but just being mentored by an older man who's

00:18:12.900 not actually in vocational ministry, and perhaps never was, but who's godly and strong in the faith,

00:18:18.480 but he's a businessman, maybe he owns his own business. Because there are people that I've

00:18:24.000 thought, you know, one of the biggest credentials that I look for these days, I've finally gotten to

00:18:30.380 the point where, you know, I'm like, man, I feel like that this, and this kind of leads into another

00:18:34.020 question I want to ask you, but I feel like one of the strongest credentials that I see in a man

00:18:38.500 is if he has grown children who haven't apostatized and left the faith. Because I can, you know, a lot

00:18:45.520 of the guys that you were describing, you know, we didn't name any, but a lot of the guys that you

00:18:48.800 were describing as high-profile Christian celebrity pastors who have published many

00:18:54.480 books, you know, or have large churches who love the seats of honor and the Christian

00:19:01.620 conference circuits, you know, and those kinds of things, I mean, it's a remarkable statistic

00:19:08.780 of how many of them have at least one, if not more, apostate-grown children who have

00:19:15.500 abandoned the faith, are not even a member in a local church, do not attend a local church,

00:19:20.460 and some of them to the point where they are publicly antagonistic against the Christian faith

00:19:25.260 on social media or in some public capacity. And this has gotten to the point where I don't even

00:19:33.760 think we really, I don't even think we blush at it any longer. We've come to expect it. It's like,

00:19:40.480 so-and-so is a great pastor. And of course, two of his five children hate Christ. But what are you

00:19:48.900 going to do? And so anyways, I say all that to say, I feel like Doug Wilson is probably the guy

00:19:54.260 that I heard this from, but he said, the strongest credentials that you have in terms of accolades

00:19:59.120 are the laughter around your dinner table. That there's actually warmth and love and intimacy,

00:20:05.620 love for the family, honor for the father, the head of the household, but most importantly,

00:20:10.260 devotion, and love for Christ with every member of the household. Those children, if you have

00:20:16.380 five children, if you have 10 children, your wife loving you and being happy. I think of Solomon,

00:20:22.720 right? It's like one of the things that the queen of Sheba is like, it's not just the gardens and

00:20:27.400 the temple and the palace and all the gold and the treasures, but she marvels at the fact that

00:20:33.560 the lowest in his kingdom, in the hierarchy, the servants are happy. Happy are your servants.

00:20:38.780 You 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.

00:20:57.540 Yeah, 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.

00:21:05.860 I mean, the laughter he references there, I've heard it.

00:21:12.620 So, but, and I'm blessed in this, in that regard as well.

00:21:17.120 My, I have three grown kids.

00:21:18.660 They're all believers, doing really well.

00:21:21.760 I think, yeah, and I've been in the homes of high profile ministers whose kids are not where we'd like to see them.

00:21:33.920 And I've sensed the kind of the strain and the awkwardness of that.

00:21:42.160 I've seen that firsthand.

00:21:43.880 So anyway, to your point, what is the secret sauce?

00:21:48.460 I think it's one of those things where there are a number of ingredients

00:21:51.780 and kind of delineating all of those is not something I've done to this point,

00:21:58.980 but there are a few things that come to mind.

00:22:00.880 I think it's really important for a father in particular to have, as you noted, a really good relationship with his wife.

00:22:08.840 That goes a long way in terms of how the kids are raised.

00:22:15.500 There obviously needs to be a lot of agreement on, you know, the kind of nuts and bolts of raising the kids.

00:22:22.260 There 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.

00:22:34.860 So, 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.

00:22:46.500 I didn't say it at that moment in front of the kids.

00:22:49.360 that was a conversation that occurred later at night when we were laying next to each other in

00:22:53.460 bed and talking about the day. In other words, you don't make your wife look bad in front of the kids

00:22:58.640 and your wife doesn't make you look bad in front of the kids. There's a sense in which there's a

00:23:02.240 kind of an agreement that you've got to share that, you know, we're here to reinforce each

00:23:08.440 other's authority and support each other. That's huge. But I also think there has to be a good and

00:23:14.560 open relationship with your kids that you can as you know as well as you can develop so in my case

00:23:22.340 I would take the kids out for one-on-ones at least once a month for breakfast it was just

00:23:28.520 the time for that child and me to talk about everything you know and over the years you know

00:23:34.200 the conversations became deeper and more significant you know when the kids are small

00:23:39.880 you know it's just like how do you like your pancakes that kind of stuff you know it's just

00:23:45.140 about having enjoying you know being in each other's presence and maybe you know maybe asking

00:23:50.280 you know how things are going and learning a little bit about you know the child's perspective

00:23:54.340 on things but then you know as time uh passes you're getting into some pretty heavy stuff

00:24:01.180 um you know vocational choices what to look for in a spouse those kinds of things and you know

00:24:09.360 even talking about perspective, uh, you know, mates and so forth. Uh, I have, I I'm of the

00:24:16.700 conviction that it's a father's responsibility, not only to order his own household, but to help

00:24:21.220 his children establish theirs. So, you know, really, you know, in the mid middle teen years,

00:24:27.080 I would spend a lot of time when we, when I was driving them around or just, you know,

00:24:32.040 with these monthly get togethers or even at the dinner table, talk about this stuff. And, uh,

00:24:37.380 So 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.

00:24:52.860 And 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.

00:25:08.220 And there are, you know, ways to go about doing that.

00:25:12.160 But if you have that kind of relationship with your kids, then I think it goes a long way toward connecting faith and life.

00:25:18.900 because obviously this is also a big part of the conversation.

00:25:22.580 What does the Lord think?

00:25:23.560 What are the standards we see in Scripture?

00:25:25.680 That kind of stuff.

00:25:27.000 And, of course, then the onus is on you to live up to it.

00:25:31.500 And I think this is another thing to also keep in mind.

00:25:34.120 Sometimes I see guys who seem to operate with the notion that they can never admit when they're wrong

00:25:42.040 because it will undermine their authority.

00:25:44.080 Actually, that's one of the quickest ways to undermine your authority.

00:25:46.560 If 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.

00:25:56.160 But if you're quick to say, you know, hey, in that particular instance, I made a bad call.

00:26:00.580 Please forgive me.

00:26:01.780 What 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

00:26:08.100 Now, if you make a habit of doing stupid things, then, of course, that will harm you in the long run.

00:26:12.960 But 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

00:26:23.920 Yeah, that's really good.

00:26:26.720 Yeah, demonstrating, you know, my wife and I have talked about it in terms of the example we want to set for our children.

00:26:34.080 We want to demonstrate righteousness.

00:26:36.100 And when we fail to do that, we want to demonstrate repentance.

00:26:40.080 Right.

00:26:40.300 And 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.

00:27:05.860 It's like, I believe this, I'm doing this.

00:27:08.160 So, in the realm of actions, I'm doing one thing, and then in God's providence, some kind of

00:27:14.000 circumstance occurs to where that prior theological conviction is pressed and tested, and you realize

00:27:21.640 it actually doesn't hold up. This is not a full-orbed robot. It's not biblical. It doesn't

00:27:27.180 work. And it only appeared to work for a short time because of these circumstantial elements,

00:27:34.300 but it's actually not objectively true. And so then you do something else. And that's good.

00:27:41.800 You should change courses. But sometimes, you know, guys will change courses and it's so obvious.

00:27:48.800 Like what you said, everybody in the room knows you're wrong. But you're requiring them to go

00:27:53.160 along with the, you know, humor. The latest narrative. Right, exactly. You're just, it's a

00:28:01.740 show and you're requiring them to go along with the show even though everybody knows it's a show

00:28:06.140 um and so being able to add you know repentance and word to our repentance indeed to actually be

00:28:12.720 able to say dad was wrong i got this one wrong um and i and i feel like there's been you know a lot

00:28:19.160 of opportunities with that outside of just households but on the public you know stage

00:28:24.920 for the evangelical church especially in the last three years because um it's not like you know in

00:28:30.820 you know, just for three years now, we've had people, you know, being progressive and people

00:28:36.160 who are compromising on our truth. That's been going on for a very long time. But it did seem

00:28:40.840 as though, you know, it got expedited, right? There was a catalyst in the equation and apostasy

00:28:46.860 and compromise and those kinds of things, you know, seemed to heat up rapidly. And in God's,

00:28:54.320 you know, mercy, that kind of ripped back the veil. We were able to see some things as they

00:28:58.400 really were. And it's like all of us were given this option in the mercy of God of whether or

00:29:03.220 not we're going to repent, you know, and all of us needed to repent for different things and all

00:29:08.640 of us in different degrees, because not everybody was equally wrong. But for me, there were a lot

00:29:13.960 of things that I just had never considered before, that all of a sudden, okay, I've got to actually

00:29:19.040 think about what is my political theology? What is God's role for the civil magistrate? What is

00:29:26.080 his role? Is Caesar autonomous? Or is he a deacon of God? Is Romans 13 prescriptive for Christians

00:29:33.460 to submit to Caesar no matter what he says? Or is it descriptive about what the proper Caesar

00:29:41.000 should look like? And that it actually has just as much, if not more, to say about Caesar's

00:29:45.900 submission to the authority above him, namely God, than just our submission? And a lot of guys

00:29:51.880 doubled down in their foolish prior views. And then some guys course corrected and did something 0.96

00:29:58.800 in terms of the realm of action that directly contradicted with their actions 15 minutes prior,

00:30:05.280 but never said in terms of repentance in word, oh, hey, just so that you guys don't all feel 0.99

00:30:12.500 like I'm treating you like you're stupid, it might be valuable to point out. So I said this 0.99

00:30:18.880 and was doing this, and that was like last Thursday, and now I'm doing this, which is

00:30:24.380 directly opposite, and I just want to go ahead and go on the record, not just in course correcting

00:30:29.940 in the realm of actions, but also repentance in the realm of words, and say, yeah, this directly

00:30:35.080 contradicts that, and the reason for this change is because I was wrong, which is not that crazy,

00:30:41.960 you know, especially for older ministers who have been right for decades about so many things.

00:30:48.620 You can afford, like what you're saying, if you're wrong every other week about something

00:30:53.940 significant, then yeah, you're going to lose credibility.

00:30:56.900 But for a guy who's in a position of authority with longevity from time to time, just a few

00:31:05.160 times to publicly admit that he's wrong, that doesn't soil his perfect record.

00:31:11.380 That adds, if anything, it bolsters and strengthens his credibility with those who are following

00:31:16.420 him.

00:31:16.560 So anyways, all that being said, I think, yeah, modeling righteousness for our children and when we fail, modeling repentance.

00:31:23.500 I have one other thought, but do you have anything that you wanted to respond with to that?

00:31:27.140 Well, I think that was great.

00:31:28.160 I liked your comments.

00:31:29.820 I agree with you completely.

00:31:31.080 Cool.

00:31:31.800 The 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.

00:31:39.840 And so I am going to actually say the name here.

00:31:42.900 um and i've said the name before but i you know i think about abraham uh piper and john piper

00:31:48.440 and abraham piper you know grown son he's not under john piper's roof i think he's like i think

00:31:53.420 he'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

00:31:59.140 out out of john piper's home for quite a while and uh but but he's it's not just that he's gone

00:32:05.640 apostate and that he's left the church as you know and pretty much all of our listeners you know he's

00:32:09.540 I think he's got like 800,000 or something, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers

00:32:14.420 on TikTok and, you know, other social media, but I think that's a big one is TikTok.

00:32:19.900 And a lot of his videos, not all of them, but a lot of them are just blatantly blaspheming Christ.

00:32:24.960 So it's not just, I left the faith and that's what dad did and mom did and I don't do that.

00:32:29.680 And you kind of keep your head down, you're quiet about it because you don't want to

00:32:32.780 bring shame to your father, right? You don't love Jesus, you don't believe in Jesus,

00:32:36.520 but you still love dad, and you don't want to shame dad,

00:32:40.320 Abraham doesn't care about that.

00:32:41.660 He's fine shaming dad, shaming Christ. 0.63

00:32:44.520 And so go ahead, go ahead. 0.61

00:32:46.540 No, yeah, and there's another element to this,

00:32:49.440 and I think Abraham is dishonest,

00:32:52.380 because he's built his following on being the son of John Piper.

00:32:58.200 100%.

00:32:58.720 So it's not as though he's this brilliant guy

00:33:02.320 who's got just tremendous insights that no one else has,

00:33:06.080 And 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.

00:33:19.380 Or maybe they're just people who follow him because it's kind of the drama of it.

00:33:25.780 But, yeah, I don't respect that.

00:33:29.780 And I don't respect him.

00:33:32.960 He owes his father a great deal.

00:33:35.100 and uh this is how he has um this is the nature of his return for what he owes his father and

00:33:43.420 his mother and and it's uh it's uh contemptible yep i agree it's shameful um but in addition to

00:33:52.460 that i you know so and this is where you and i would differ some and you know and it's it's it

00:33:59.160 matters. Um, but you know, so you're Westminster, uh, I'm 1689 would be my, my reformed confession

00:34:06.100 that I would hold to. Uh, but I get in trouble with my 1689 friends all the time because they,

00:34:10.980 they say I'm too Presbyterian. Um, you know, and so I, I would have some, some different ways of

00:34:16.320 expressing covenant theology. Um, but I, I believe, you know, so I, I would, I would hold as much as

00:34:22.740 a Baptist can, I would hold to covenant succession. I do believe that Christians should have

00:34:29.400 an eager expectation that their children would succeed them in the faith by covenant,

00:34:35.400 not nature, but covenant nurture. And because unconditional election, which you and I both

00:34:42.460 hold to, is not synonymous with arbitrary election. God works through means, and God's

00:34:48.460 predestinated ends are never severed from those predestinated means. And so, if a child grows up

00:34:53.900 in a home with a faithful mother and father who are saturating that child in the truths of God's

00:34:59.440 word, both law and gospel, and then bringing that child to a true biblical evangelical church that

00:35:07.740 also is going to submerse them in the ordinary means of grace, Lord's Day after Lord's Day after

00:35:13.240 Lord's Day, that kind of faithful parenting doesn't work the God of the universe into our

00:35:18.560 debt to where he owes us the salvation of our children. And so, it's not a 100% guarantee,

00:35:24.300 but we can get a good idea, not a definitive idea, but a good idea of what God's predestinated

00:35:31.540 ends might be by looking at the same grace that brings about salvation, that grace is present

00:35:38.180 in the means by which the salvation comes about. And so, if God is day after day, year after year,

00:35:45.080 decade after decade, supplying the necessary grace for me and my wife to raise our children

00:35:50.400 in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and that's from their education and what school they go to,

00:35:56.340 the whole nine yards, and God supplies that grace daily for 18 years, I'm expecting, even as a

00:36:06.620 Baptist, I'm saying, yeah, my kid's going to be saved. Not because God owes it to me, because it

00:36:12.480 was all grace, but because God's not schizophrenic, because God's not arbitrary. Because yes, there are

00:36:20.260 some people who hear the gospel again and again and again, and God sends out his word. It never

00:36:24.700 returns void. Sometimes God sends out his word and submerses someone in his word only to further

00:36:31.080 justify him to the praise of his glorious justice. Not always grace, Ephesians 1, but to the praise

00:36:37.640 of his glorious justice, that God might be further justified, as it were, in his just condemnation of

00:36:43.180 that individual who hardened their heart, not one time, but thousands. And so that is possible,

00:36:48.940 but I don't see that within church history. I don't see that within even scripture as the

00:36:53.980 normative pattern. And when Christ says, you know, I haven't come to bring peace, but a sword to

00:36:57.760 divide. From now on, a household of five, two against three, three against two. I don't look

00:37:02.620 at that as Jesus giving a prophetic prediction, prescriptive text for what Christian households

00:37:12.080 will look like for all of Christendom until his final return. But rather, I see that as a

00:37:17.520 descriptive text that absolutely was true of first century Jews when the gospel, and I think

00:37:24.320 still to this day when the gospel comes into a culture that is not previously christianized

00:37:28.800 and it's a first generation you know christian family you're going to see a lot of division

00:37:33.940 but but on on the heels of 500 years of christendom or a thousand you know in the west

00:37:39.240 from king alfred i don't think that the pattern that we should be expecting that god would save

00:37:44.040 half of our families and again all this within i i feel like i can affirm within a 1689 framework

00:37:49.260 even more so, you know, Westminster. And so, my point is this, I think when kids go apostate,

00:37:55.120 and a lot of them seem like they are right now, a lot of grown children are apostatizing. And I

00:38:00.960 think, you know, Baptists and probably Presbyterians too, but I'll speak for the Baptists,

00:38:05.280 you know, they like to say, well, you know, there's that unconditional election, you know,

00:38:09.340 he has mercy on whom he has mercy and hardens who... And I want to say, yeah, but don't you

00:38:16.380 think i mean don't you think call me a conspiracy theorist but don't you think some of this might

00:38:21.120 have to do with the fact that that over the last you know 30 to 50 years christians you know have

00:38:27.300 been sending their kids to public schools in the name of a missionary narrative my seven-year-old's

00:38:31.620 a missionary right like i mean don't we take our seven-year-olds and give them swords you know and

00:38:36.180 shields and send them overseas into battles right that's what you do with the seven year like so

00:38:39.980 you're sent you sent your kid to a godless atheistic school that teaches public atheism

00:38:45.440 And then they never went to church.

00:38:47.680 They went to a separate building or a separate room at church, but they weren't in church.

00:38:53.180 They 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.

00:39:07.900 And so, they went to a public school.

00:39:10.200 They went to a children's daycare, but not church.

00:39:13.180 and your family worship was spotty at best, if there at all, but the Lord, he hardens whom he

00:39:21.300 hardens. No, I want to say you failed. Now, that being said, that's the difficulty. Well,

00:39:29.700 what about John Piper, right? And so, I say all that to say that I wonder, there is faithfulness

00:39:36.600 in the home being saturated in the gospel and biblical truths and homeschooling your kids or

00:39:40.840 putting them in a classical Christian school, whatever it might be. There's all those things.

00:39:44.580 Family integrated worship, I think, is key. I think that's important. There's all these

00:39:48.960 different things. Repenting, like what you were saying. So, all the things we've talked about

00:39:52.860 so far, but I can't help but think with back to full circle to Doug Wilson for a second

00:39:58.540 and the secret sauce, I can't help but think that what you were describing, what you did with your

00:40:02.840 kids on your monthly daddy-daughter date, it's the talking about life.

00:40:10.840 And in talking about life, as a Christian man, you're therefore applying scripture to all of,

00:40:16.760 it's the all of Christ for all of life. I keep thinking about Abraham Kuyper, you know, and

00:40:20.800 Kuyper can be wrong about some things, but you know, just the quintessential, not one square

00:40:25.880 inch, right? Like all of Christ for all of life. And I can't help but think that part of the reason

00:40:32.180 Nate Wilson is doing so well is because his dad probably never made him feel like he needed to

00:40:36.960 be in ministry, probably never made him feel like he had to be a pastor, probably made him feel like

00:40:40.600 if he wants to write about dragons and dungeons and, you know, soldiers and knights for his whole

00:40:48.320 life, that would be valuable and that Christ is there in it. And it's, you know what I mean? Like

00:40:53.340 that truly reformed sense of bringing, you know, it's not just the clergy, but it's, you know,

00:40:58.420 it's the person behind the plow. And I'm not, I don't have enough to say John Piper didn't do that.

00:41:04.560 But I look at guys who seem, at least, visually, they seem less spiritual than John Piper.

00:41:14.920 But some of the guys who seem less spiritual than the conference circuit, Christian, big names, they seem less spiritual.

00:41:21.980 They're very practical.

00:41:23.220 They're down to earth.

00:41:23.900 They're blue-collar.

00:41:25.040 Their kids seem to be doing better.

00:41:26.960 Is there a correlation there?

00:41:28.660 Well, I think so.

00:41:29.960 I don't know John Piper, uh, personally, so I can't reflect on anything, uh, that occurred in

00:41:36.640 that household. But I think, uh, when it comes to the situations that I am aware of, um, yeah,

00:41:43.560 the big differences are the ones you noted. Um, I think, um, you know, if we think about, say,

00:41:52.160 for example, high profile guys, often their churches function like corporations, uh,

00:41:59.960 They're dealing with thousands of people. They're managing staffs that are sometimes, you know, tens of people, dozens, maybe even hundreds of people.

00:42:12.880 And 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.

00:42:33.540 And 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.

00:42:55.440 So I think all of your observations are right on the money.

00:43:01.040 I 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.

00:43:14.580 Yeah, so let me give you an example of how this maybe is counterintuitive.

00:43:19.920 So 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?

00:43:28.800 Probably Doug.

00:43:29.500 he's just kind of sitting there with a bemused expression on his face and listening in on the

00:43:35.180 arguments between his kids and his and his grandchildren and uh and these are lighthearted

00:43:41.240 fun kinds of arguments you know not not bitter you know it's you know it's things but but there's

00:43:47.640 just a lot of fun uh in the in the in the room and it's not as though i think that people when

00:43:55.840 they think about doug they think about a guy who's got to always be the center of attention

00:44:00.280 who's always got to be right you know i've been in in conversations with doug and i'll reference

00:44:06.980 a book and doug will pull out his phone not because he's distracted but because he's ordering

00:44:11.980 the book i just i just mentioned that kind of thing he's he's listening he's learning uh he

00:44:18.820 he uh cares about what people think and um yeah he he's you know got the serrated edge you know

00:44:26.500 he's a kind of a kind of a cross between a abraham kuiper and a gk chesterton right that kind of

00:44:35.100 thing uh and he's he's willing to mix it up uh but a lot of times it's it's with a kind of a

00:44:41.460 twinkle in the eye and i don't think people see the twinkle they just they just they just are

00:44:46.420 more concerned about maybe the thing that was said that made them sort of uncomfortable but anyway uh

00:44:53.300 so i can i can say uh i probably know the the wilsons about as well as a person who doesn't

00:45:01.940 live in moscow can yeah you know i'm there four times a year interacting with a lot of folks

00:45:07.300 um i know his brothers i even know his estranged brother evan so i you know all this kind of stuff

00:45:14.240 is that is that the the guy he's a universalist well yeah yeah evan's an interesting guy i've

00:45:20.940 been in his house uh we spend an evening smoking cigars and talking about fantasy art because he's

00:45:25.500 really into to bury uh windsor smith who is an artist that you know he appreciates and i appreciate

00:45:32.580 so we spent all night talking about that and cs lewis so he's a cool guy uh but you know he just

00:45:38.440 disagrees with doug about a number of things okay um but uh anyway uh i guess long story short is

00:45:46.260 is uh i haven't found the skeleton in the closet i've i've known these people for years and i'm

00:45:51.860 there a lot right and i hear them accused of all sorts of things and i'm like i what you've just

00:45:58.180 accused these people of i i don't see any evidence for on the ground you know at any of these in

00:46:05.140 fact when i first met doug uh and he was trying to get me to be involved with a few things

00:46:11.460 he said i gotta let you know i've got cooties right and i said yeah i've heard about those

00:46:18.340 cooties and then he said here is a website where uh you know everything i've been accused of i've

00:46:25.760 been on that website exactly like here's here's all the big skin whether it be steven sittler

00:46:30.340 you know and if you just but nobody reads his defenses nobody cares but if you just read the

00:46:35.580 defenses you're like oh well that that makes a lot of sense or oh that that's a huge piece of

00:46:40.060 the puzzle that wasn't included by your accuser and so and the fact that he directed me to that

00:46:45.180 was i just said doug that's all you need to say i know i knew about all that stuff

00:46:50.460 the fact that you're not trying to and then he's never tried to control anything i've ever

00:46:55.540 a set or anything you know he's just kind of like we've got a nice congenial relationship right

00:47:02.240 yep no i i yeah i appreciate that too you know uh gabriel wrench with cross politic he's on our

00:47:08.520 board with right response and you know when they they had their infamous uh episode where they

00:47:13.660 said that um you know baptist what was jason jason farley who said it but baptist you know

00:47:18.680 caused transgenderism which i just laughed you know i wasn't bothered but for me you know i i

00:47:23.180 wanted to have the guys on the show, and I did some follow-ups, but I wasn't able to get all of

00:47:26.700 them on the show. But I wanted to get them on the show and just say, what I love about that episode

00:47:30.900 is I think too many evangelicals, what they're not willing to admit is that the theology of the

00:47:36.320 church has real-world implications, right? It's that worship is warfare kind of sentiment. Do

00:47:42.860 Do we actually believe that our theology impacts the world in which we live?

00:47:52.460 Or are we just this radical two-kingdom kind of where everything's chopped up and segregated?

00:47:57.560 So I love that. 0.96

00:47:58.780 And so what I want to say is, yeah, from your perspective, the Credo-Baptist position is at least a cause for transgenderism.

00:48:07.560 transgenderism. And from my position, the pedo-baptist position is the cause for that lib

00:48:14.280 mom who is dressing her son as though he's a girl, calling him what he actually isn't.

00:48:23.380 So, you could go either way with that. The question is just which position is true? That's

00:48:29.640 what it comes down to. Is credo-baptist true? Is pedo-baptist true? But the idea that whoever is

00:48:35.020 wrong because we both can't be right whoever but the idea that one of us is wrong and whoever is

00:48:39.300 wrong um there are actually uh implications in the world at least at some level of being

00:48:46.200 wrong about god's word yeah yeah that's important of course but i say all that to say you know but

00:48:53.300 doug on on the issue it's like um yeah doug doug didn't sit the cross politic guys down as far as

00:48:59.340 i'm aware you know i've talked to him about it it's like he didn't like all right you guys are

00:49:02.660 you're getting me in trouble like like half of doug's trouble isn't caused by doug at this i feel

00:49:08.560 like in this day and age at this point of you know his his ministry half of the trouble is caused by

00:49:13.300 somebody else who's you know somehow associated with doug and and instead of him trying to batten

00:49:18.660 down all the hatches and and you know be authoritarian and say i'm sorry guys like you

00:49:22.520 you know you can't do this show or you need to run your content by me first or what it's just like

00:49:26.640 yeah you know people are gonna hate me what you're gonna do you know and he just lets them do it so

00:49:31.740 So anyway, but all that being said, you know, I think the all of Christ for all of life,

00:49:35.460 like when you have children, and I'm in the beginning stages, but when you have children

00:49:39.300 in hearing their dreams and hearing their aspirations and not giving the sense of like,

00:49:44.500 well, that's insignificant.

00:49:46.260 That is like God, Jesus doesn't care about your fantasy novels that you're working on.

00:49:53.940 Like, you know what I mean?

00:49:54.840 When Jesus does care about that immensely.

00:49:58.280 And so.

00:49:58.740 Yeah.

00:49:59.160 Yeah.

00:49:59.600 And, and Nate's had a remarkable, I think, uh, range of influence because of that stuff.

00:50:06.660 And Nate has paid a real price.

00:50:08.700 I mean, he's pretty much been blackballed in the, uh, kind of secular, uh, publishing

00:50:14.940 world because, uh, he's, you know, uh, owned, um, a number of things that people wanted

00:50:23.740 him to disown.

00:50:25.820 Right.

00:50:26.800 Yep.

00:50:27.060 You're absolutely right.

00:50:27.820 Well, any other thoughts on just biblical manhood, men avoiding some of the deficiencies that we see in young men today?

00:50:37.760 And then the last part of the conversation that we were having in terms of doing our best.

00:50:43.020 God ultimately is sovereign, but doing our best as far as it depends on us by God's grace to ensure that our children stay in the faith.

00:50:50.900 Any final thoughts for us?

00:50:52.960 Well, as we talked about, I think, before we started recording,

00:50:57.760 I've been thinking a lot about the subject of risk.

00:50:59.740 Oh, yes.

00:51:01.100 So I think that a lot of guys have, through their actions,

00:51:10.640 demonstrated that they're risk-averse.

00:51:15.200 And I don't think you're going to develop, as you should,

00:51:22.200 as a man by avoiding risk. So it doesn't mean every risk is a good one. You need to be

00:51:29.720 judicious, prudential in terms of how you approach these matters. But I think you run the risks that

00:51:38.220 you should run for the sake of some really important good that you're trying to achieve.

00:51:44.660 So in the case of, just to give you an example, in my own case, I've gotten involved in real estate

00:51:50.660 at a pretty significant level in terms of commercial real estate,

00:51:56.260 both as an investor but someone also that helps other people with it.

00:52:01.940 And what prompted that wasn't just simply an interest in having resources

00:52:07.660 for their own sake, but because I was in a denomination at the time

00:52:13.560 that I could see was going down a road I didn't want to go down.

00:52:17.820 I'm no longer part of that denomination,

00:52:19.900 But I knew I needed to create an exit for myself.

00:52:25.020 And at the time, I had children at the ages of yours right now.

00:52:29.520 And my wife was, you know, homeschooling them full time.

00:52:33.000 You know, she was utterly dependent upon what I was bringing in.

00:52:37.660 Right.

00:52:37.960 The kids were too.

00:52:39.180 And so I knew that in order for me to take to take to make the move that I was going to make, 0.88

00:52:45.720 that I could see was going to be inevitable with regard to that denomination, I needed to take some

00:52:51.880 risks before that time that would put me in a position in which I could make that risky move

00:52:58.720 in a safer way. So in other words, the risk made, you know, things safer when the next risk came.

00:53:06.360 And I think that's one of the things to kind of keep in mind. So when I eventually did leave that

00:53:11.260 denomination i had 18 tenants i owned property in three states i had a couple people who worked

00:53:15.740 for me and i was still a full-time pastor uh even so even when that was going on but it wasn't just

00:53:21.100 like i said because i had this you know drive to own stuff that was that played into it a bit but

00:53:28.760 but the main objective was i need to i need to run these risks so that i can provide the security

00:53:35.880 that my wife and kids need right that's the paradox and by the way there's a there's a

00:53:43.720 marvelous book entitled millionaire next door i don't know if you're familiar with the title but

00:53:47.380 in that book uh it's basically a couple of sociologists who actually studied self-made

00:53:53.040 millionaires and what they discovered is not only are uh 95 of those self-made millionaires men

00:53:59.440 there those those men are family men with three or more children and a traditional wife

00:54:07.040 and that's one of the things that comes out and so they don't dig into this but as i was reading

00:54:12.440 the book i said i think i know why because when you have the pressure to provide that's right and

00:54:19.780 you know that um you know you're not going to do it with the nine to five uh you need to do some

00:54:26.620 other things then it forces you to to do some things that maybe you wouldn't do if it was just

00:54:32.180 you living in your mother's basement playing call the duty right because then there is no risk

00:54:37.260 yeah there's you know nothing's on the line there's no because there's no responsibility

00:54:41.440 there's no duty that yeah that's really yeah so when you when you when you uh pile on the

00:54:47.740 responsibilities with regard to wife kids etc uh what that actually does is that forces you

00:54:53.900 to take some risks in order to make certain that you're in a position to

00:54:58.160 provide for them. And I think that's, that's,

00:55:00.180 that's what's lost in a lot of young guys today.

00:55:02.520 Yeah. That's a great last word. Yeah. That men, I think, and you know,

00:55:07.900 and you, you said this, I think, I think before we were recording,

00:55:10.960 I think you said this, but men don't take risks.

00:55:13.940 And then some of those men who don't take risks, they do,

00:55:17.720 they will make it look like they're taking risks, but they're not.

00:55:20.760 Yeah. They're LARPing.

00:55:22.440 Yeah. Yeah.

00:55:23.900 Yeah, 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.

00:55:32.460 Well, you know, I'm a gun owner. I own several. I have semi-automatic weapons. I've got all that kind of stuff.

00:55:40.560 But 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.

00:55:52.320 they just are passing themselves off in this way and um that's just one example but i think

00:56:01.280 having a bunch of guns but but you don't have the real estate to back it up you've got no

00:56:05.480 you've got a gun to say get off my land but the problem is you don't own any land which

00:56:09.460 that's a good way to put it yeah it's a good way which none of us do because of property taxes we

00:56:14.420 all right right right but no that's a great that's a great that's a great point and i think

00:56:19.460 that um you know that gives you also an order of things you know you've got to have something to

00:56:24.700 protect in order to justify the weapon that's right by the way uh you know just because you've

00:56:30.400 got the weapon doesn't mean that maybe uh the the wisest approach is to employ the weapon there

00:56:36.540 might be some other much more effective approach that doesn't have that larping element but just

00:56:41.980 gets the job done right um do you think that if anybody wanted to find more examples of a larping

00:56:48.800 man that they could find some LARPing men on Twitter? Would that be a good place to look?

00:56:52.660 Oh, yeah. I think that's definitely a place. The Manosphere is full of those

00:56:56.880 guys. Yes. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, Chris, thanks so much

00:57:00.800 for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. How can our listeners follow you?

00:57:05.120 Well, I mean, I do have a website, crwiley.com, but I almost never put anything

00:57:08.880 on it. Okay. That's just where I put occasionally some

00:57:12.600 book reviews, and there are links for people to find

00:57:16.700 of 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

00:57:22.240 cultivate it in a way to like to get a big you know sort of following uh but occasionally i'll

00:57:27.700 post some things just to see how people respond because i'm working on an idea or something like

00:57:32.060 that and what what are uh real quick list just at least you know two or three of your books so that

00:57:37.040 if people want to go and check those out well we just talked about uh one early on when you referred

00:57:42.260 to our last conversation that's the in the house of tom bombadil and that probably the the book

00:57:47.540 that is the most uh popular is a book entitled the household and the word for the cosmos that's

00:57:53.860 gotten a lot of uh positive feedback and i've appreciated that well those are a couple books

00:57:59.100 my assistant nathan and i we've both read uh household in the war for the cosmos and then

00:58:04.220 also man of the house oh yeah and we both feel like man of the house is better house oh good

00:58:09.240 No, no, no.

00:58:11.020 Well, I'm glad you do.

00:58:12.500 It's great.

00:58:13.660 Okay.

00:58:14.580 Well, great.

00:58:15.140 Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:58:16.480 We appreciate it.

00:58:17.180 God bless.

00:58:18.160 Yeah, thank you, Joel, and God bless you.

00:58:20.540 Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?

00:58:24.040 Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry, and from the bottom

00:58:28.240 of my heart, I say thank you.

00:58:30.440 I cannot thank you enough.

00:58:33.080 However, some of you, you just, you can't afford it.

00:58:36.140 In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it. Let's be honest. I mean, we're living in Joe

00:58:42.300 Biden's ridiculous economy. Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds 0.99

00:58:51.240 over the last three years due to COVID. We have written checks that we simply cannot cash. It

00:58:58.520 doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession. We are living in a recession right

00:59:04.660 now regardless. Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.

00:59:11.220 You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you, but you could still

00:59:18.380 help us tremendously. I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one minute of your

00:59:25.440 time. Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, iTunes, Spotify, whatever that

00:59:32.640 might be, this is the way the system works. We want to be innocent as doves, but shrewd as vipers.

00:59:39.500 We need to be strategic. You leave us a five-star review and our podcast shows up for more people.

00:59:46.740 And the Word of God and courageous theology applied in practical ways to every realm of life

00:59:53.860 gets out there. Help us get it out there. Thanks for tuning in.

The NXR Podcast - February 07, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Why Do The Children Of Believers Abandon The Faith？ with C.R. Wiley

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