How um what what is the hope for a single mom or a mom that has a husband who isn't doing what you're doing isn't taking his role seriously what advice or help can you offer for them yeah

on the one hand i'd say i do think it's almost easier for a single mom than for a married woman who has a husband who's totally educated and checked out because it is harder to honor your husband and simultaneously say, you don't want to turn out like your dad, do you? Well, that's not true.

Yeah, that wouldn't go so well.

It would not.

Yeah.

And moms really shouldn't do that because that creates triangulation.

It creates a whole different subset of problems where the wife is disrespecting her husband in front of the kids.

So can you practically give an example of what that would look like for an eight-year-old, maybe for your son's age, and then for a 15-year-old? And you gave some great examples for a grown man, but what about for those in the trenches of parenting?

Thank

you, God, for giving me Olivia.

Thank you that I get to be their dad.

And the privilege of fatherhood, I want them to feel like dad is happy and that God gave me to him.

Because I feel like in terms of their sense of dignity, their sense of value, their sense of the Father in heaven, I think communicating that affections, that's where play, warmth, connection, mutual enjoyment.

Can we laugh together? Can we enjoy creation together? All of those things to me are really the baseline, the foundation of this.

And when I talk about proactive, engaged dads, the dads that get affection and enjoyment, and there's like a sprinkle here and there of intentional, formal discipleship, those seeds tend to land and grow.

So do you have just kind of a comparative feminine framework that matches along this way?

And so why, as a pastor and a father, what led you to want to write your book, Authentic Masculinity?

Well, I'll say really one big thing is that we as Christians assume that people outside of the church are going to be confused on things like sex and gender and the goal and purpose of life.

But what actually surprised me and what led me to write this book was the confusion I saw within the church, especially within young men who had fathers who are also Christians.

There was a time I was speaking at a winter camp for middle schoolers maybe three or four years ago.

And there's this group of eighth grade boys standing around in a circle, and they're all kind of giggling about something they were talking about.

And I, like a good camp speaker does, inserted myself and said, what's up, gents? What are you talking about? And they had been talking about Andrew Tate.

I don't know if you're familiar with him or if your listeners are.

What would be your advice?

Right

...

the masculine/feminine distinction is weird.

So man's not God, so he must be humble.

That's chapter one of the book.

Chapter two is man's not a, uh, he's not like the other creatures, that he's, he's, uh, he's not just a creature, but he's image of God, and so he should have discipline.

And by discipline, I mean the capacity to rightly order your loves, the capacity to let greater desires supersede lesser desires.

Um, like, is that a moral mandate or a cultural norm? Like, if a man is not providing for a woman, is he sinning against his God-given masculinity?

Maybe there is a lack of clarity on something that I've been assuming." Um, so the big question here, Seth, is, like, what is real masculinity? Like- What is authentic masculinity? Let's just start there.

You know, I think the anxiety around that question is really person to person.

Largely, the way I started talking about it with people is talking to dads who are beginning to be preoccupied or anxious about not repeating the sins of their father.

You know, "My dad abdicated, he was passive, he didn't tell me about sex, he didn't tell me about money, he didn't tell me about Jesus.

He kinda took me to church, best case scenario, or was just kind of loosely involved." And so the, what I found is the guys who have the most angst about the masculinity question are the guys who had the worst experience of masculinity in their homes.

And so Kyle, you not having angst about it makes a lot of sense.

I similarly feel like I had very little angst about it.

How is the church uniquely situated to have this conversation?