Possibly related to Matt Chandler - The Role of Men 2 - Husbands on Huffduffer

Janet Chandler was gang-raped & murdered. Her case went unsolved for 30 years. Over 25 people kept the truth a secret, including her roommate https://tntcrimes.com/janet-chandler/

Today’s guest is Jack Donovan (@starttheworld), who is Mr Masculinity. From Jack’s about page: “Jack Donovan is the author of 'The Way of Men' a straightforward, politically incorrect theory of masculinity that became an underground hit around the world … Donovan has been blogging, writing and speaking about masculinity and tribalism since for over a decade … He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he leads a chapter of the infamous 'Wolves of Vinland' an esoteric tribe of Germanic pagans.” I don’t know if I need to say anything more as an intro! In this interview, we discuss masculinity, why it is not a dirty word and why we should undertake our own journey to become better men and more masculine men. What we cover - Who he is and why he is well known - What happened during the childhood that made him look in masculinity - How is masculinity being portrayed in today’s society - What is masculinity and who are the great role models of masculine energy? - Where he thinks modern day men are going wrong in society and the factors that affect their masculinity - How can we recreate the old rituals that boys undertook to become men like the old civilizations do but do it in our easy lives - Why do you need a tribe to truly become masculine and a man and how it needs to be set up/contain to succeed. - ... === Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2n_maw81bg Downloaded by http://huffduff-video.snarfed.org/ on Sun Dec 15 22:53:54 2019 Available for 30 days after download

Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men, sits down with Sam on the Wild Initiative to discuss masculinity. In this episode, they discuss examining the definitions of masculinity through history and various cultures, how masculinity can only be defined by men, the difference between being a good man and being good at being a man, testing yourself against other men, craving elements of danger in our lives, conserving masculine spaces and time just for the guys and the association between masculinity and violence. Also in this episode, they discuss Jack preparing to go on his first-ever hunt up in Oregon, the steps he’s taking to prepare and the difficulties he’s encountering along the way. Learn more on the show notes page at thewildinitiative.com/122. === Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkubcOYXDoY Downloaded by http://huffduff-video.snarfed.org/ on Sun Dec 15 22:35:37 2019 Available for 30 days after download

Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men, sits down with Sam on the Wild Initiative to discuss masculinity. In this episode, they discuss examining the definitions of masculinity through history and various cultures, how masculinity can only be defined by men, the difference between being a good man and being good at being a man, testing yourself against other men, craving elements of danger in our lives, conserving masculine spaces and time just for the guys and the association between masculinity and violence. Also in this episode, they discuss Jack preparing to go on his first-ever hunt up in Oregon, the steps he’s taking to prepare and the difficulties he’s encountering along the way. Learn more on the show notes page at thewildinitiative.com/122. === Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkubcOYXDoY Downloaded by http://huffduff-video.snarfed.org/ on Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:55:47 GMT Available for 30 days after download

Background and transcript: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/23/raymond-chandler-ian-fleming-bbc/ === Original video: https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/raymond-chandler-ian-fleming-bbc Downloaded by http://huffduff-video.snarfed.org/ on Sat, 10 Nov 2018 14:39:21 GMT Available for 30 days after download

Contrary to popular opinion, masculinity is not a social construct but instead is a unique aspect of men's physiology. In this video I discuss how we confuse essential masculinity for cultural aspects, and point the way toward a masculine ideal that is in concordance with what makes us unique. === Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-x8NyJyuts Downloaded by http://huffduff-video.snarfed.org/ on Sat, 22 Sep 2018 23:22:16 GMT Available for 30 days after download

TranscriptWell, a man talking about the sinfulness of women. Just not dangerous at all, is it? If you have your Bibles, let’s go to Genesis 3. That’ll be our primary text. In fact, it’ll be in that text that we kind of land and dig. There is one verse in particular we’ll kind of pick apart. If you’re a guest with us this morning and don’t have a Bible with you, my encouragement would be that you look under your seat or around you. There should be a hardback black one somewhere. If you don’t own one. That’s our gift to you. It’s just really important you see I’m not making anything up up here. There are some things rooted in history and rooted in the Bible that really, by and large, the world would agree with whether they are Christians or not. In the book of Romans, one of the things we see is that the apostle Paul, a guy who hated Jesus and then actually turns into one of the greatest missionaries of the Christian faith… He was actually a terrorist against the Christian faith, killing Christians. When he became one himself, he wrote that one of the interesting things about those who don’t believe in Jesus is that oftentimes, they’ll live or desire to live like Jesus would have them live without knowing that’s actually what they were doing. One of the things we’ve done as we’ve gotten into this series… We’re deep into this series now that we’ve called A Beautiful Design. What we’re talking about is manhood and womanhood and what that actually is and how that actually works. We’ve said some things that are important as we dive into today, lest we forget things that have already been said. I don’t have time to do an expansive overview, but what we have set up until this point is that men and women were created by God in the image of God and hold a higher place in creation than anything else in the creative order so that we, as man and woman, are far more valuable than say our dog or our cat or some other species of animal out there. That doesn’t give us permission to be cruel. It doesn’t give us permission to be brutal, but we are far more valuable. We know this intrinsically. We just know this intrinsically. Then we got into the fact that being male does not make one a man, and being female does not make one a woman. Again, the law, the un-Christian law, would say this is true. My son is 8. He cannot buy Daddy a 20-year bottle of Pappy Van Winkle for Christmas. He can’t do it. Do you know why? It’s because he’s 8, and that stuff is impossible to find. Right? They would say that my 8-year-old son is a boy, not a man. He can’t buy a gun. He cannot vote. He can’t buy his daddy a nice bottle of bourbon. He can’t do it because he’s a boy and not a man. Are you tracking? I have a 5-year-old daughter. No one is going to argue that she’s a woman regardless of their religiosity. They can be completely secular. No one is going to look at my 5-year-old and go, “Woman.” They’re going to say she’s a girl. She is biologically female. My son is biologically male, but he is not a man, and she is not a woman. There is something other than that is attached to them, a type of behavior, a way of living that biblically would lead to them being man or woman. Without those pieces, little boys just grow into being little boys in bigger, more mature bodies, and little girls grow into just being little girls in bigger, more developed bodies. They still act like children act. We started to kind of define manhood biblically and womanhood biblically. Here is what we said. We said that the man was given by God what we called headship. This is the unique leadership of the man in organizing or building out and ordering for human flourishing. We just said you can’t argue with that definition because sociologists, those who study economics, everyone would say where men are present, where they are serving, loving, and kind, everything flourishes. The home flourishes. The economy flourishes. Cities flourish. Where men are men, things go well, and where men refuse to enter in the space God created for them to walk into, things just don’t work well. You get into the poorest neighborhoods imaginable, and let me tell you what you’ll see. Fatherlessness and women who have been consumed and not honored or loved. That’s what you’re going to find, women who have been used as playthings rather than as those made in the image of God. We said that’s the role of the man. Then we talked about how man struggles, very much like we’ll do today with women. More on that here in a second. Here is how we defined the role of woman last week. A woman is, according to the book of Genesis, a helper fit for the man. We called it a helpmate, and here’s how we defined it. A helpmate is a woman who serves God by helping the man in the work of establishing order for human flourishing. We immediately needed to do some work around that definition so we could understand it most fully. God, most often in the Old Testament Scriptures, is our helper, is our helpmate. The woman being called a helper for the man is not and does not mean she is inherently inferior. Actually, God being the helper has elevated the role of helpmate to a position of honor. What we said a helper does is a helper serves the one who holds the primary responsibility. If you are helping me, it’s my responsibility, and I am too weak to get it done, so I need your help. I am unable. Either I don’t have the bandwidth, or I don’t have the ability. I’m missing some pieces, so I need your help because I cannot get it done. It does not mean that you are weak for having to help me; it means I am weak and therefore need your help. This is what we see happening when God looks at the man and says, “It’s not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him.” We talked about that little phrase “fit for him,” about the reality that men and women were built out as complementary. We need each other. We’re not opposed to one another, but actually the strengths of one help the weaknesses of the other. Where this happens, where men exercise biblical headship, where they are sacrificially loving, they are creating environments that honor and uplift the name of Jesus Christ, they’re establishing a place where the Word of God is seen and honored, and we understand God as he has revealed himself, and where they provide for, where that happens, and where women come underneath that, the idea of male headship might be attacked as a philosophy, but if they came into our homes, our wives would not want to be freed from anything. Really, men, here is a great way to gauge how you’re serving, loving, and practicing your headship. If the most secularized feminist in the world showed up in your home and began to kind of coach your wife toward freedom and liberation from your tyranny, our wives should be so well cared for, so nourished, so sowed into and loved, they would say, “What you’re describing is actually tyranny. I love where I am. I am honored. I am encouraged. My man sacrifices so that I might grow in my gifts. He will oftentimes lay down his own desires in order to serve me more. My husband goes to bed tired at night. He pours into our children. He encourages me. All that comes out of his mouth, sans a couple of little times here and there, is him building me up in love.” Men, here is a good opportunity. If you’re like, “Well, gosh, I don’t think she would say that at all,” then, men, I think on the way home, you should probably repent and confess before the Lord to your wife. Quit asking me about you, though. We’ve already covered you. We’re here to talk about the ladies. What we said about men is that because the sinfulness of the world has fractured this complementarian beauty, since it’s fractured, instead of filling the space like God intended them to fill, men are prone to selfish passivity or selfish aggression. Men are prone to do that. They tend to be selfishly passive or selfishly aggressive. They’re overbearing and dominating, or they are meek and refuse to engage. Any sin you could list to me that a man operates in can fit in one of those buckets. Do you want to talk pornography? That’s selfish aggression. Do you want to talk about domineering? That’s selfish aggression. Do you want to talk about abuse and violence? That’s selfish aggression. Do you want to talk about won’t lead, won’t engage, won’t love? That’s selfish passivity. Right? All the sins of man can be found in one of these two buckets. What I want to do today fearlessly, mind you, is lay before you the two buckets women most often find their sins filling. Here are the two buckets. We’re going to just tease them apart. The first bucket where we will find most of the sins of women is the bucket of comparison. The second bucket we will find most of the sins of women would be called perfectionism. As men are prone to selfish passivity and selfish aggression, women are prone to the disordered desires of comparison and perfectionism, and both of those lead to a type of darkness and destruction as to erode the very feminine soul, so women will carry with them under the weight of comparison and perfectionism the stench of death just like men carrying and walking in selfish passivity and selfish aggression will reek of death. With that said, our help here is found in Genesis 3, starting in verse 1. You can read that, but I want to just concentrate on verse 16. This is the fall. It begins to break down. Here is the curse given to the woman. Look at verse 16 with me. “To the woman he [God] said, ’I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’” Two things to consider in this text, just as we break it down, that God is laying on the woman in the same text that he lays some things on the man, not in 16, but in 17-19. On this, he starts with this. “I will surely [increase] multiply your pain in childbearing…” Now I’ve been in t

TranscriptA man teaching on the purpose of woman. What could go wrong? If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Turn to Genesis, chapter 2. True story. I was in California earlier this week doing some teaching, and then I flew back in. I only had Thursday in the office, so I came in on Thursday, and dudes were literally coming by my office just to make sure I was all right, asking, “Are you ready for this weekend?” I’m like, “I’m not going into battle; I’m preaching the Bible. I think we’ll be fine.” One dude hugged me like it was the last time he was going to see me. I was like, “I’ll be fine. We’ll talk about it afterwards.” If you’re a guest with us this morning, we are on the back end of our series we’ve entitled A Beautiful Design. What we’ve been talking about is God’s purpose and God’s design in men and women and how we interact with one another. Up until this point, we have almost exclusively talked about the imago Dei or us being made in the image of God, the difference between men and women and every other living thing in regard to us having an increased value above and over them, not to be cruel, but to steward appropriately for human flourishing. Then we got into manhood. We talked about manhood right up until last week. The majority of the sermon was on manhood, as we read the very text we’ll read today, in order to move us toward the purpose of the woman. We said this is the purpose of the man. This is what makes a man a man, because biology makes one a male but does not make one a man. Correct? Biology means my 8-year-old son is male, but his biology does not dictate that he is a man. In fact, he’s male but not man. I’ll lay it down. I’ve watched him. He’s not a man. He’s a male. In the same way, biology makes my daughters female, but it does not make them women. So there’s this other component, this other piece, that makes biological males men and biological females women. We dove into that on the man, and here’s what we said about the man. God’s role for the man is something we defined as headship, and here’s how we defined it. Male headship is the unique leadership of the man in the work of establishing order for human flourishing. We were unapologetic about that definition and have not backed down from it in any bit, because there’s no way to argue in any domain against that sentence. Whether you want to look at it sociologically or you want to look at it economically, no one could say with any intellectual credibility that the home is a better place when there aren’t men there, that what’s best for children is fatherless environments, what’s best for daughters is a man not to be anywhere near them, what’s best for women is for men to have no interest. No one would argue that. You couldn’t argue it sociologically. In fact, the numbers say the very opposite is true. Where men refuse to be men, things crumble. They fall apart. They turn to dust. You can look at it sociologically. You can look at it economically. You get into the poorest communities imaginable and here’s what you’ll find: fatherlessness, broken marriages, absentee dads. Now with all of that said, I’ll never say that sentence without following it up with this one: single moms, widows, where the ideal is lacking, grace always abounds. Don’t lose heart. In fact, I’ve said, and I need to do it… I need to preach a sermon on how God responds to the prayers of mamas. All throughout the Bible, mamas cling to the feet of God and plead for the lives of their sons, plead for the lives of their daughters, and God responds. Sometimes he takes quite a bit of time before he responds, but he responds. It’s a beautiful reality that where the ideal is lacking, where maybe, God help you, you got involved with a boy who could shave, where you got caught up with a guy who looked like a man but ended up not being one, and now you have a child, God is going to enter that space and he’s going to be merciful and gracious. So don’t lose heart. Now how is a man to exercise this headship, this unique responsibility to order things for human flourishing? Well, we saw from the Bible that he is to do this with sacrificial love. One of the first things we have to talk about when we’re talking about masculinity is that men give and boys take. What marks my 8-year-old as a boy right now is he’s still a taker. He’s not a giver; he’s a taker. “That’s mine. What about me? How about mine?” That’s taking. That’s how little boys act; it’s not how biblical godly men act. Godly men are self-sacrificing for the good of the wife, for the good of the child, for the good of the church, for the good of the community. Self-sacrificing love is a mark of biblical masculinity, and it is the only way that true headship is ever exercised or practiced. Where men are takers and try to operate in headship, they tend to be oppressive. They tend to rule with an iron fist. They tend to be this false bravado, insecure masculinity that reeks of the stench of death. Men aren’t takers; boys are. Men are givers. Self-sacrificing love marks the headship of men. Men practice headship not just in sacrificial love, but also in setting up the spiritual climate of the home and the church. We create environments in which God and his Word are seen clearly, worshiped passionately, and where the understanding in our home is, “We serve the Lord.” Again, you have to put these things together. It’s not that he sets the climate with an iron fist. No, no. He sets the climate with sacrificial love. Finally, the man exercises headship by providing physical care. I don’t want to repeat old sermons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the primary breadwinner, but it does mean he’s not lazy and his life is marked by hard work. There is no place in biblical masculinity for lazy men. In fact, I’ll tell you that the lazy men I have come across are some of the most miserable and some of the most damaging human beings I’ve ever come across. God has not designed the man to be bored. He has not designed the man to be lazy. Where a lazy, bored man is anywhere in sight, destruction and death are around him. So that’s how we defined the role of man. Now we want to do the same thing out of the same text when we talk about women. Let’s look at this together. Genesis, chapter 2, starting in verse 18. “Then the Lord God said, ’It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ’This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Three things stand out about this text in regard to ancient Near East manuscripts and thinking. (This isn’t the sermon; this is all free.) The first thing that stands out in this, outside of it being scriptural and just looking at it as a historical document, is there’s one Eve made. That sounds like a no-brainer to us, but in this day and age, this is a polygamist world where women are viewed as cattle, and the more women you have, the wealthier you are. God goes, “No, no, no. All you need is Eve, Adam.” He creates one woman. He pulls the woman from the man’s side with the connotations of intimacy and closeness. In the narrative, he doesn’t pull woman from the back, from the spine, from the behind. He pulls her from the rib. She will be intimate and close with the man. The last thing is it would have been considered and was considered scandalous that a man would leave his family and hold fast to his wife. Until we get some of this, the wife had better come into the man’s family. But God is going, “No, no, no. Time to leave Mama, bro.” That’s not how it reads in your text, but that’s what’s happening. “Time to leave Mama. Now you have a wife. Yes, you’re a part of this bigger family, but your loyalty, son, isn’t to Mom and Dad anymore; your loyalties belong to your wife. You will leave mother and father and hold fast to your wife.” Ladies, do not help me be the Holy Spirit right now. Don’t help me. I don’t need your help. Don’t be hijacking my sermon. Now with that said, what we saw concerning the man is that he was placed in the garden and commanded by God to work it and to keep it, and that’s where we got our idea of headship. Those two phrases, work it and keep it, are what helped us define the man. Now what we were given phrase-wise concerning the purpose of woman is this phrase, and every word in the phrase matters. If you don’t have all of the pieces, you think wrongly about what the purpose of woman is. Here’s the phrase (it’s used twice in this text): a helper fit for him. We’ll break up that phrase into two ideas: a helper and fit for him. Both of those are going to matter. This word helper is a difficult word in the Hebrew because it’s highly contextualized. The words around it are the only way to make sense of what it means. Let me give you an English equivalent. The word fast in English is a difficult word. It can mean speed. It can mean abstaining from food. It can mean stubbornness in position. “He holds fast to his position.” It can also mean a type of shady deal, fast business, fast dealings, a shady way of doing things. The only way to know wha

Transcript[Video] Male: Be a man. Be tough. Female: Be sweet. No one likes a smarty-pants. Male: Don’t be such a sissy. Handle it like a man. Female: You should go on a diet. Male: Play the field. Female: Be sexy but not too sexy. Male: Show them who’s boss. Female: You’re a princess. Male: You make the money. Female: Let him take care of you. Male: Pick yourself up. Female: Know your place. Female: Keep your mouth shut. Male:  The world tells us who we’re supposed to be, but it keeps changing its mind. Throughout time, throughout cultures, we can’t decide what makes a man a man, what makes a woman a woman. The message, the plan, keeps changing. But what if there was something else? What if there was something better, something that existed since the beginning, something untouched by time, something true and perfect? [End of video] Hey. How are we? Doing well? All right. If you have your Bibles, grab them. Open to Genesis, chapter 2. If you don’t have a Bible, there should be a hardback black one somewhere around you. If you don’t own one, that’s our gift to you. Starting in August, we wanted to kind of enter the fray of what I personally perceive to be a bit of madness in regard to the topic of mankind, its role in and on the earth, and really how we define ourselves as male and female. Really although there were a slew of illustrations I used early on, even in the last couple of weeks, there have been new illustrations presented to us that reveal we’re just not thinking well as human beings. Let me give you two of them before we enter into what should be for us a hinge week in this series as we start to move away from, “What is a man?” and move into, “What is a woman?” taught by a man, which is going to be hard for me. I can just let the Bible be the Bible, so that’s good news. The first bit of just kind of showing you that something is broken in our thinking is a couple of weeks ago, a nurse in Spain contracted Ebola. You know this is going around. In fact, it’s quite the scare. In fact, Dallas is on the map, right? This nurse in Spain contracted Ebola. They put her husband in quarantine, and they euthanized her dog. The fact that they euthanized her dog created an uproar in Spain. I mean, they near rioted. They marched all because this dog, Excalibur, was put down because he was carrying the plague. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how mankind is vastly different than the rest of the creative order when we will riot over putting down a dog carrying a virus that has a mortality rate of beyond 50 percent. We are not equal with dogs. Now we do have dominion, which means they should be cared for and never abused, but they are not our equal. Just common sense dictates we know this. The default is to maybe look at Spain and go, “Crazy Europeans with your fashion and your love for animals. Progressive weirdoes!” But then it just happened in Dallas, and we didn’t even euthanize that dog. We just quarantined the dog, and there has been near a million dollars raised to take care of the loneliness of this poor puppy that is used to running wild out, and the thing that’s probably carrying this plague. Now we’re raising a million dollars so it can apparently play PlayStation or something while it waits to see whether or not it’s carrying the virus. Trust me, I’m not an animal hater. I have a dog. His name is Gus, an Australian shepherd. He is awesome. I like him. He is not in any of our family photos, but I like him. We feed him. We spend money. He even has toys. Now he doesn’t have clothes, but he has toys. Clothes are a line I just can’t bring myself to cross, all right? I just can’t! I can’t cross that line. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying it’s not right. You literally are dealing with something that runs contrary to basic intellect when there is this type of outrage, not over Christians being slaughtered in Iraq, not over all sorts of oppression and madness we see all around us, but over a dog carrying a disease that could kill half this room. That’s the first instance that we don’t quite understand how we fit into God’s design for human flourishing. The second just on this kind of manhood/womanhood front was the hubbub down in Houston over the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if you’re paying attention to this, but the mayor of Houston put out an anti-discrimination law, which, as Christians, we should very much be against any form of discrimination. Yet in her bill, it is proposed that to tell a biological male who identifies as a female that he cannot go into the women’s restroom is illegal and an act of discrimination. A 40-year-old biological male who just says, “I’m not a male; I’m a female” is allowed to go into women’s restrooms, and to say he cannot is an act of discrimination, punishable by law. Look at me. Listen. That’s crazy. It’s just crazy! Now if this brother is struggling with identity issues, then let’s serve him. Let’s walk alongside of him. Let’s care for him, but he doesn’t get to go to the bathroom with my daughter. He doesn’t get to do that. That’s crazy! I don’t know. It’s like we’ve let something out of the box here, and it’s driving us. We’ve lost our minds. Some sort of revolution began that we cannot control, and it’s making us behave in a way that goes contrary to every aspect of historic logic and intellect. We’re just confused. We said starting in August we’re going to enter the fray. We’re going to enter into the madness and try to make sense of it. We said a good creator God created us in his image, in the imago Dei, as male and female equal in dignity, value, and worth. Being made in the image of God elevates us above all the other creative order so that we are to exercise dominion over creation, which means we don’t abuse and we don’t burn to the ground, but where mankind is being mankind, where we are engaged as image bearers, everything should thrive, including animals. We actually turned from there, and really we moved toward manhood and what it means to be a man. We stated clearly that biology alone does not make one a man, remember? Having a penis makes one a male but does not make one a man, right? I have an 8-year-old son. Does anyone want to vote that he is a man? I live with him. He is not. He is a boy, and he acts like a boy, and he dresses like a boy, and he treats ladies like a boy. He says things that boys say. He is not a man; he is a boy. He is biologically male, but as he behaves, as he talks, as he walks, he is a boy. If that is true, that means biology, men, makes you male but does not make you a man, which means you can be a grown-up, burly, hunting elk in the woods with a knife (not even a gun) male and still be a boy. We started to define what it means to be a man. Here’s how we defined it biblically. We said the man has been given by God something we defined as headship. Here’s what headship means. Male headship is the unique leadership of the man in the work of establishing order for human flourishing. Let me say it again. Male headship is the unique leadership of the man (this is how God designed it) in the work of establishing order for human flourishing. I want to say this repeatedly today. All we’re going to do is do the first part. In fact, the first probably 70 percent of this sermon is review over manhood. Then we’re going to let the door swing and move us toward womanhood where we’ll start next week and do womanhood, womanhood, womanhood, and one last sermon on Together for the Gospel. Then we’ll be in Advent. Right? Crazy! What we said about men in this call of headship is that even if you’re not a believer, you cannot deny that where men are present and men are being the type of men who have historically been exalted as real men, mankind flourishes. Where men step into the space God created them to fill, the home flourishes. Children flourish. Economies flourish. In fact, if you want to study it economically, study what happens in those communities in which men refuse to be husbands and fathers. Study what happens in communities where men are unwilling to sacrificially engage. Study it! I’m not talking “Christianese.” I’m saying economically study, sociologically study, what happens when males stay boys and don’t grow into men. Things fall apart. Everything suffers where men refuse to be men and, instead, are boys who shave. This is how God designed it to be. When secular economists, when secular sociologists, present facts that line up to this, they’re simply lining up with God’s good design. They’re not discovering anything new. As Christians, we should go, “Yeah, of course! Look what the Bible says here! The Bible says this would happen. In fact, it’s filled with stories of this exact same thing happening.” The man is to exercise headship, but how he goes about that is equally important. We said the man is given two jobs in the Scriptures. He is placed in the garden. He is commanded to work it and keep it. He is commanded to cultivate, to create order in which human flourishing can occur. We used two examples of where that plays out. We looked at the home and the church. We looked at Ephesians 5. Here’s what we saw. A man is to exercise headship through sacrificial love. A man exercises this role of unique leadership that leads to human flourishing via sacrificial love. Again, let’s consider. If a man is loving his wife with a type of sacrificial love where his driving interest built on the gospel in his devotion to God is seeing that his wife is protected, his wife is flourishing, she is growing in her giftedness, she is exercising her gift, and she feels valued and cherished, that marriage has a pretty big shot at making it, right? Where he is a taker and not a giver, chances are it’s not going to go so well. Where Dad is present and sacrificial, willing to have his life wrung out for the good of his family, kids feel safe. They flourish. Men practice headship via sacrificial lov

TranscriptHow are we? Doing well? Excellent. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. We’re going to start in Ezekiel 37. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be a hardback black one under your seat or around you. Go ahead and grab that. It’s always of utmost importance that you see the things we say in here aren’t really my ideas or something I’ve come up with but rather something we’re reading straight from the Word of God. So if you’ll grab that, we’ll get going. As a refresher, if you’re a guest with us, if maybe this is your first time here, we’re in the middle of our fall series. We’ve called that series A Beautiful Design. What we’re looking at is when it comes to humanity, specifically when it comes to manhood and womanhood, how has God, as our Creator, designed us in regard to origin, purpose, and design? We’ve covered origin and the purpose of man. We haven’t gotten to women yet. We’re going to turn the corner in the next couple of weeks and, where the last three weeks we’ve just focused on manhood, we’ll then start to discuss and look at what the Word of God has to say about womanhood. What we’ve already laid down is that, yes, in some ways, my biology makes me male, but there is something else that has to be present for me to be a man. Agreed? You have to agree if you have sons. Otherwise, you have to call my 8-year-old boy a man, and I wouldn’t do it. I know him. I wouldn’t do it. And there are little girls and there are women, so something is taking place that moves males to manhood and females to womanhood. This is what we’ve been digging into. We started out talking about God as Creator. If our God is Creator, that means he alone has the authority to determine design and function. It’s God the Creator’s role to say, “Here’s how it works best.” He is the designer of the machine, if you’ll remember the C.S. Lewis quote. He’s the one who designed the machine. He’s the one who knows how it works best. When we take matters into our own hands and say, “No, no, I know how to use the machine best,” we’re like someone telling the creator how it’s actually supposed to be used. So we covered that, and then we got into the imago Dei, what it means to be made in the image of God, that you and I have an elevated position among the rest of the created order. I made the joke for two weeks in a row that if the budget got tight and I had to decide between the horse, the dog, my wife, or my kids, it’s kind of a no-brainer on who has to go, right? It’s not my wife. That decision isn’t a mathematical decision. I don’t look at the budget and go, “Money is tight. Who’s costing me the most money? She has to go.” That’s a no-brainer. No one would argue to make decisions like that. Why? Because my wife, made in the image of God, has an elevated worth over any animal in the world. In fact, I used sweet Darrin… My boy Darrin here is worth far more than Secretariat. Literally, the most amazing horse that has ever been on the planet earth, just blowing by fools, a “movie made about him” kind of horse, a million-dollar horse, is not even in the same ballpark as my friend Darrin. Not even close. Why? Because Darrin has been made in the image of God. Secretariat hasn’t. God was pleased with the horse, right? I mean, repeatedly in the Bible he’s like, “I nailed that. That thing is awesome.” In Job he says, “How magnificent is the horse with its snorting? It makes men feel terror.” God kind of feels like he nailed it. Yet it’s an animal, and it’s not in any way any human being’s equal. All humans, male and female, bear the image of the Creator and have an elevated value and worth over the rest of creation and are stewards of creation, which is why, despite the fact of our elevated position, any type of abuse or neglect of the created order is wicked and not in accordance with our design. Where we are acting as image bearers, we will then cause humanity and really the created order to flourish. So that was being made in the image. That becomes imperative for a thousand reasons. Where the imago Dei is understood, almost all that we call wicked starts to vanish. Pornography is an imago Dei issue. Prostitution is an imago Dei issue. Abortion is an imago Dei issue. Genocide is an imago Dei issue. Racism is an imago Dei issue. Discrimination is an imago Dei issue. All of the horrors of humanity can be drawn back to a failure to understand that all mankind has been created in the image of God. In his image he created them, male and female he created them. Then, from the imago Dei, we moved into man and what is the purpose of man, and straight from the Bible we looked at the call on the man to work and keep the created order. I wanted to stay away from the word leadership when it comes to men, because women can lead. In fact, I’ve seen some women lead out in spectacularly amazing ways. So we pulled out this idea that’s a faithful idea to the Word of God of male headship. We defined male headship like this. Headship is the unique leadership of the man in the work of establishing order for human flourishing. Here’s what I said, and I’ll stick by it. No one even tried, because I don’t think you can argue with this. Where men refuse to be men, the world breaks down, and where men will step into what God designed them to walk in, mankind flourishes. Now I’m not speaking simply as a Christian, because if you want to study that economically, go ahead. You’ll see it’s right. If you want to study it sociologically, go ahead and study it. You’ll find out I’m right. When sociologists and economists are saying men need to be present in the home, in the neighborhood, for human flourishing, they’re simply tapping into the good design that is revealed in the Scriptures. As we read the economists and sociologists, I’m going, “Exactly,” because that’s what God said. Of course it’s not working. Of course absentee fathers create a crisis in identity in little boys and little girls. Now single moms, widows, I don’t want to say that again without saying this again. Where the ideal is lacking, grace abounds. Some of the godliest men I know right now did not grow up in homes where Daddy was overly engaged or grew up in homes where his engagement was dark. Don’t lose heart, sisters. The Lord enters into dark spaces and makes things new. Don’t lose heart. But in every domain of study, God has designed the man to have a unique role in human flourishing. He orders things for flourishing, and where men fulfill the role of biblical manhood, women also flourish in their gifts, in their zeal. In fact, the Bible would tell us that a wife married to a good man would flourish like a well-watered vine. So men, that’s a good little litmus test to your leadership. Is your wife flourishing? Now from there, Beau, Angry Beau, came out of nowhere last week… (I’m just kidding. I totally assigned him that topic. I know he outed me in his sermon too.) He comes and starts talking about the hurdles of men, because we can look at the data and say, “Yeah, yeah, men need to play this role,” but we can look at reality and see that they don’t and that they’ve punted on this responsibility and refused to fill this space. Instead of having biblically-formed, Holy Spirit-strengthened men, we have boys who can shave. We have little boys in grownup bodies. We have 8-year-olds in 50-year-old bodies. We have the abject refusal to enter the difficulty of manhood, because being a boy is easier. In fact, the frequency at which men are giving themselves over to comfort and couches when there is a war waging is staggering. The frequency at which men refuse to lead spiritually in the home. Men, you know that’s on you, right? God has not deemed your wife as spiritual priest of the family. That falls on your shoulders, men, to set the spiritual climate. The frequency at which men refuse to emotionally connect to wives and children. We’ll talk more about this in the future, because sometimes it’s not refusal. Sometimes we just don’t know how. But again, this refusal to even pursue being emotionally connected. Poor wives living with robots. The frequency at which single men refuse to pursue godly single women for deep friendships that might lead to marriage. These are all of those places where men are refusing to step in and deciding to stay in this extended adolescence, despite the fact that their bodies have matured to what would be defined as manhood. The voice has dropped. We have to shave, some of us more than others. Our physical bodies look like men, but our behavior would define us as boys. Beau began to unpack how this plays itself out, and he correctly defined it in two ways. (By the way, he killed that sermon. If you didn’t listen to that, he was unbelievable.) He said that men’s errors, men’s hurdles, are we’re prone to selfish passivity or selfish aggression. Because sin entered the world and marred the image, because sin has entered into the world and broken the man all the way down to the cellular level, where our iniquities, our bents, take us is toward a type of sinful selfish passivity or toward selfish aggression. Then he had such a brilliant little caveat, that even the passive man is not actually passive; he’s actively choosing not to fulfill the role God gave him. It comes off as passivity. It comes off as, “I’m going to refuse to engage,” but what he’s actively doing is refusing to engage as the Lord would have him engage, and it looks like passivity. In the end, it’s selfish passivity. Where this happens and men are given over to selfish passivity or selfish aggression, the stench of death lingers. It lingers in homes. It lingers in churches. It lingers in communities. It lingers in countries. Where men refuse to grow up, humanity’s chance at flourishing is nearly nonexistent. Now ladies, let’s chat for a second before we dive into Ezekiel 37. If you’ll remember, when we started manhood a couple of weeks ago, I said here are the two ways

TranscriptHello, friends! It’s good to see you, and also to those of you who are at our campuses in Dallas and Fort Worth and Arlington, it’s good to be seen by you. I know you’re there. I wish I could see you, but I thank God for you, and I’m excited tonight to walk through God’s Word with you. If you have a Bible, why don’t you take it and turn to Genesis, chapter 2? That’s where we’ll be for the majority of our time together tonight. We’ll read chapter 2 and then chapter 3. If you’re new here, I want to welcome you. My name is Beau Hughes. I’m one of the pastors and elders up at our Denton Campus, soon to be an actual new church you have had a part of planting and establishing up there in Denton. It’s my joy to be here with you. If you’re new, we are a few weeks into a sermon series called A Beautiful Design. We’re talking about the way God made humanity and what that means, specifically in terms of gender, what it means to be man and what it means to be woman, made in the image of God. Tonight we’re in the second week of a sort of series within a series about manhood. Last week, Matt covered the design of man, who man is supposed to be, what man is supposed to do in glorifying God and living in the way he desires and has designed for them to live. Last week we introduced this word called headship. We used that as a word to summarize the role of man, why God put man on the planet and in the home and in society. We talked about how men are meant to exercise leadership through loving, serving, and protecting. What we’re going to do tonight is pause and think, “Okay, if that’s true, if that’s why God has made men, and if that’s who men are supposed to be, where are all of these men?” That may be a little unfair, a little heavy-handed, but even last week after the sermon in Denton, I had a number of young men and women come up to me and say, “Hey, I hear what he’s saying about man and about what man is supposed to be, what they’re supposed to do, but I’ve just never seen that in my life. I’ve never seen a man like that. In fact, I’ve seen a man who’s the opposite of that. Where are all of these men?” I got five, six, or seven of these questions after the service last week. There are a lot of good answers to that. Part of it, I’d say, is a lot of these types of men we see are in this congregation. Praise God. We’re not perfect men, but by God’s grace he has saved us. He has rescued us. He’s transforming us. He’s increasingly making us men who exercise humble headship and leadership through serving, loving, and protecting. At the same time, I think even those of us God is doing that in would have to say we still feel so far from what we’re meant to be as men. We still feel so far from who God has created us to be in walking in a manner worthy of the Lord that really does image and exemplify even the way Jesus Christ lived his own life. This is not a cute theological conversation. Thinking through where all of the men are… We have a lot of boys, but where are all of the men? This is not cute conversation that we’re sitting here theoretically talking about, as we talked about last week. The answer to this question, where all of the men are and what’s hindering men from actually being men who are living in the way God designed and created us to live, has enormous ramifications for society, for the family, for our relationships, for our workplaces, and for our church. Whether you’re a male or a female, like we touched on last week, this is an important conversation. It’s a sermon on manhood and the hurdles to true manhood, but it’s important whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you’re black or white, whether you’re young or old. It doesn’t matter. This conversation matters for all of us, because where there’s an absence of men, like we talked about last week, society and the home and the church go a direction they were never created to go. So where are all of the men? Let’s look at Genesis 2. Before we start there, let me just pray that God would help us tonight from his Word to see God’s clear answer to this question and to really sit underneath it and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us through it. Father, we pray and we ask and we hope tonight that this hour would not be an exercise in missing the point. We pray now that by your Spirit, as we look into your Word, you would uncover our hearts in ways that draw us near to you, in ways that draw us into repentance. Lord, where we are knowingly or unknowingly living against the grain of your design for our lives, would you reveal that? Beyond just revealing it, would you convict us and humble us and lead us into repentance through your kindness? We thank you that you have not left us alone in this conversation. Whether we’re men or women, wherever we are tonight, you have spoken to us. So God, give us ears to hear now as we incline our hearts to hear. We ask these things in Christ’s name, amen. Genesis 2… I know we covered some of this last week, but I just want to read it. We’re really going to camp out on Genesis 3, but it’s helpful to get our minds and our hearts in the narrative that explains so much of what has gone wrong with manhood. Genesis 2, verse 7. This is the creation account in Genesis 2. “…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [his spirit], and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” Then skip down to verse 15. It picks up and says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” That’s what we camped out on last week. That’s what God created the man to do: to exercise headship by working and keeping, by leading and loving and serving and protecting. “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ’You may surely eat of every tree of the garden…’” That’s an amazing statement. “’…but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’ Then the Lord God said, ’It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ’This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” You see the trajectory of the whole story here, leading. They were naked and were not ashamed. Imagine, sense as you can, the picture of what this is describing. This is perfection. This is perfect harmony, perfect paradise, perfect shalom, the biblical word would be. This is God’s design. Not only is there man and woman walking in freedom and no sin has entered into the world, but there is perfection. They’re naked. They’re not ashamed. No shame, no fear, none of that. It’s perfect. Yet the story takes a surprising turn here, surprising to those of us reading it, especially if we’re reading it as if we’ve read it for the first time. It’s not surprising to God, but it’s a surprising turn for those of us reading it. A new character steps onto the scene. In the very next verse, in verse 1 of chapter 3, it says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” If you’ve never read this story, that should make you pause. I know many of us, if not most of us, in this room have read this story before, and I think the familiarity with it sort of numbs us to what’s happening here. This verse should make you anxious about reading on. It’s like there’s perfection. There’s harmony. Oh, what’s the Serpent doing there? He’s crafty… Even the description of the Serpent. What is this? I like watching sports on television sometimes, but do you know what I hate about watching sports on television? The instant replay of the injuries. Who are the sickos who want to watch that in slow motion? It’s like, “Look at the guy’s bone coming out of his skin. Let’s slow it down and try to get the trajectory of that.” That’s not good. As an athlete, you know, you twist your ankle… You just don’t want to see that. Every time I’m watching television and that happens, great. It’s sad. I’m going to pray for this guy in a better moment. Yet then they want to slow it down. I turn my head. I at least cover my eyes. I mean, I’m okay with hearing them describe it, kind of. Even that it’s like, “Is this fun?” It’s like, “What about the guy’s…?” I don’t like watching that. This story should be sort of like that for those of us who know what’s happening, but it’s not, because we’re familiar. This Serpent is now coming on the scene in the middle of God’s garden, and this is what it says. “[The serpent] said to the woman, ’Did God actually say, ”You shall not eat of any tree in the garden“?’ And the woman said to the serpent, ’We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ”You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.“’ But the serpent said to the woman, ’You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” This is when

TranscriptHow are we? Doing well? Excellent. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Genesis, chapter 2, is where we’re going to camp out today. While you’re turning there, just a couple of things. We are in week three of our fall series entitled A Beautiful Design. What we’re looking at is really what the Word of God has to say about origin. What are we? Purpose. Why are we here? Design. How that works. What we’ve said is if there is a creator, then that creator will know about purpose and design far more than anything that is created itself. If we are creation, then there will be times we think we know what is best for us, but in reality, the Creator himself knows what’s best for us. We’ve been looking at the design of God specifically in light of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. Ultimately, the series is about how God designed manhood and womanhood to work both as singular units (men and women) and then as the kind of complimentary relationship he meant it to be in regard to our relationship with one another. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve established origin. What are we? I preached last week on the imago Dei, the elevated worth of man in dignity over and above the rest of creation. In fact, if you were here last week, I got a text message from my mom. My mom is actually a member of this church, and she texted me, “It’s good to know you won’t put me down if I grow old and decrepit.” I just said back, “It was just an illustration, Mom. I might actually put you down.” I’m kidding. I didn’t say that. We said the imago Dei was this. Here’s our definition. The imago Dei is God’s investment in humanity of God-like glory and moral capacity to reign and rule the earth as his representatives. What we said is you and I as human beings have elevated worth, regardless of what we bring to society, regardless of whether or not what we bring to the table is helpful at all. I used the illustration of my good friend, Darrin Payne. Darrin Payne is usually at the 9:00 a.m. over here. He was at the five o’clock last night. He sits right there. He is highly autistic. He is never going to know the alphabet. He is never going to work a job. He is never going to have a paycheck. He is not going to bring anything to society and culture that is of tangible value. My boy Darrin is worth more than Secretariat. I used Secretariat (the horse) because if you pay attention in the Bible, it appears God is kind of proud of the horse. I mean, on repeat, he like is patting himself on the back about how majestic this creature is. You look at Secretariat, the amount of cash that horse brought in in stud fees because of how he was physiologically built and because of what he accomplished. Darrin, who will never know his ABCs and will never contribute as we have determined contribution should look, is worth far more. It’s far more of a tragedy for anything bad to ever happen to Darrin than it would be for anything bad to happen to that horse, not that we want bad things to happen to the horse. Darrin is more valuable and always will be more valuable because Darrin carries within himself the God-like deposit, the imago Dei, made in the image of God. Therefore, male and female made in his image are distinct and equal in value and importance and worth and should be seen as such. We began to walk through all the implications of getting the imago Dei wrong. That list was extensive last week of where you do not understand that people are made in the image of God, there will be all sorts of temptations to consume and use and belittle and rob them of dignity. Almost all of the massive systemic issues in the world are owning to a failure to understand the imago Dei. Now that we’ve established origin, I want to get to purpose and design. Here’s how I’ve built out this series. Starting this week and in the next two after this week, we’re just going to talk about manhood, what it means to be a man. Not biologically, because we know biologically males have penises… Is that the first time you heard that word in church, anyone? All right. Now my 8-year-old has one, and he is not a man. Right? No one is going to look at 8-year-old Reid and know biologically he is male so he is a man. No one would say that! He is biologically male, and he is a boy. Therefore, what it means to be a man cannot simply be biological. What it means to be male can simply be biological, but what it means to be a man cannot simply be biological. I’m going to put all my cards on the table, because I feel like to have this kind of conversation like we need to have it, we need to know each other better than we know each other now. So let’s talk. Just a couple of quick things. When women go off to women’s retreats… In fact, a friend of mine and I were talking in the foyer. When women go to women’s retreats, they just get encouraged. “You guys are awesome. You can do it! All right!” Men get blown up. You go to a man thing. You’re just going to hear how much you’ve failed and how bad you stink and why the whole world is broken because you’re so worthless. That’s kind of how we do it, and it’s the right way to do it. With that said, two things. I want to lean into us as men, and then I want to encourage us as men. I want to start with this. If you’re a woman in here, let me tell you why the next three weeks are so important for you. As members of the covenant community of faith, the reason why it’s so important for you to understand the next three weeks, for you to be dialed in, for you to care, for you to be paying attention, is the role you play in the beautiful design when it comes to manhood is to know what God has called us to as men so you then can, therefore, encourage that and expect that out of us. I said last week when we were talking about the imago Dei that since the imago Dei is true, then you as a woman should view yourself as extremely valuable and should never treat yourself cheaply because you have been made in the image of God. Let me help you. If you put the bar too low, you’ll find plenty of little boys who can shave who are willing to step across that little 2-inch bar you set for them. But if you will expect more of us, I believe that by and large we’ll rise to the occasion. Single ladies, if you’re like, “Do you know what? I like the look of you, but the way you act, the way you carry yourself, the way you live your life, no thank you,” that will send a brother off to maturation school. You can giggle all you want, but I’m telling you, ladies, you have a profound amount of power when it comes to an expectation of males being men. You put the bar on pre-pubescent ridiculousness, I promise you, you’ll find a herd of morons who will come trampling toward your door. But if you’ll put the bar up and go, “No, thank you. Get out of my face. No, I’m not signing up for that,” if you raise your expectations, we raise the bar on what we expect out of men, I think by and large by the grace of God, they’ll rise to it. You keep it low; they’ll stay low. I promise you. I promise you sin has bent us in that direction. That’s why this is important for women, that you might encourage and that you might expect. Then the last three weeks of this series, we’ll talk about women. Then the last week alone will just be a sermon I’ve called Together for the Gospel and what it means for us to do ministry together with one another. With that said, I’m going to put this on the table. I believe you cannot argue with it, regardless of whether or not you’re a secular atheist, a Buddhist. Regardless of how you want to argue, here’s a statement you cannot argue with. Where men fill the purpose and design of men as the Bible has outlined it, humanity flourishes, and where men refuse to step into the space that men are called to fill, the world burns. You want to look at it economically? You want to look at it sociologically? Just do a secular study of what happens when men refuse to be husbands and refuse to be fathers. Look at what happens. Everything breaks. Everything! When governmental, sociological, or cultural studies show that, they’re just tapping into what the Bible teaches is true about men. They’re not discovering some sort of, “Wow! This is new.” It’s always been true. When they discover the role of men and when men don’t engage, the family unit breaks down. When the family unit breaks down, the culture breaks down. When the culture breaks down, you have all sorts of crime rates shooting through the roof. You have drug use that skyrockets. All they’re doing is tapping into what the Bible has already said about the design for men. I want to talk about God’s design for us, why it’s beautiful, and then we’ll go from there. I’m going to use a word that needs to be redeemed. It has baggage. I didn’t want to, when we talked about the unique design of man… That’s what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about mankind. We’re talking about men. When I was trying to draw up a sentence on the unique responsibility of men, I wanted to, as best I could, stay away from the word lead. I’ll tell you why. I think men do lead, and they do lead in a unique way. I also know women who can lead and who do lead. In fact, I’ve come across some women who are bosses. Do you know what I’m saying? I mean, they get stuff done. They lead. They put together teams. They help those teams function rightly, and they lead out. So saying that a man leads as a kind of attribute of manhood that is not true about women would be incorrect. I want to introduce the word and maybe redeem the word headship. Doesn’t that sound old school right there? Headship. Let me try to explain why I like the term. Headship, if we looked at it in the Greek, which you probably don’t care about, is the Greek word kephale. It means where the brain is. I’ll tell you why I like that. If you’re a woman already starting to feel offense, breathe. Let’s talk. Here’s why. The head, the brain, does

Chandler, who died in 1959, wrote detective fiction set in mid-20th century Los Angeles. A magazine editor recently discovered a never-published Chandler story that had gone missing some 60 years ago. https://www.npr.org/2017/11/17/564752462/new-raymond-chandler-story-takes-on-health-care-industry

Women earn less than men for many reasons — especially job selection — but discrimination isn’t a huge factor. (photo: COD Newsroom) Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.) The gist: discrimination can’t explain why women earn so much less than men. If only it were that easy. Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript. * * * MEDIA CLIP:  Oh, hi. I’m Sarah Silverman, writer, comedian, and vagina owner. Women make up almost half the working population, yet we typically earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man makes in almost every profession. [MUSIC: Beware Fashionable Women, “Get It” (from Barak Schpiez)] I’m pretty sure you’ve heard this kind of statistic before — maybe in a political ad. POLITICAL AD: The gender pay gap is real and women still earn about 77 cents for every dollar a man earns for working the same job. Maybe even in a State of the Union address. BARACK OBAMA: Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong. And in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work. The implication is that women are being discriminated against. True, they earn less. But does that mean … CLAUDIA GOLDIN: Does that mean that women are receiving lower pay for equal work?  That is possibly the case in certain places, but by and large it’s not that, it’s something else. “Something else” – like what? That’s our question of the day on Freakonomics Radio, as we try to figure out the true story of the gender pay gap. If you’re looking for someone to explain the gender pay gap, you couldn’t do much better than today’s guest. [MUSIC: Chris Dupont, “The Vigil” (from Anxious Animal)] GOLDIN: Claudia Goldin, I’m a professor of economics at Harvard University. Goldin has been working on gender economics for years, and has personally done some of the most influential research. GOLDIN: So, I define my role by thinking about the issues of today and putting them in historical perspective and understanding what the roots are.  Because until you see the more distant past you really don’t know whether you’re looking at something that’s a little ephemeral transitory blip or something that’s important. DUBNER: And how important is it for you to get hold of good data in order to reach those conclusions? GOLDIN: It’s sort of essential. I always say that I do not live in a data vacuum. I find it very hard to breathe in a data vacuum.  In 1990, Claudia Goldin became the first woman to get tenure in the Harvard economics department. In 2014, she served as president of the American Economic Association, the AEA. Her lecture at the annual AEA meeting was called “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter.” DUBNER: You have argued — and I’ll quote you to yourself — “The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in the last century.” What do you mean by that, and why is it so grand? GOLDIN: I’m very much interested in converging roles having to do with the productive capacities of men and women. So that would be their education, their professional degrees, their life-cycle labor-force participation — meaning how many years have they been productive members of the workforce. And so, there are converging roles in these arenas and they have meant that men and women are significantly more alike in terms of how firms and employers would look at them and how they look at themselves. DUBNER: Now, we hear about the gender pay gap a lot.  We’re told repeatedly — including by the President of the United States in the State of the Union — that “women earn much less than men for doing the same work,” is one of the phrases that we hear — seventy-some cents on the dollar. So, first off, can you clarify what that really means?  How true is that, when we hear a statement like that, especially in a political arena? GOLDIN: Well, it is true that if you took individuals in the labor force and took those who were working full-time, full-year, and took all women, took the median annual earnings of those women and took the same thing for men, and divided the two, it would be .77 or around that, OK?  And that’s a number that has increased. In early 1970’s it was .59 and there was a mantra, “59 cents on a dollar, that’s not enough, OK?  We are equal to men, we deserve more.”  So, is this for equal work?  Is it equal individuals?  What economists do is they use data to figure out whether the individuals are the same; they try to make them comparable as possible; they squeeze out these differences and productive attributes; they look for individuals who have the same education, the same labor-force participation rates over their life cycle, etc.  And they squeeze those out and we still get a number that’s less than one. So, does that mean that women are receiving lower pay for equal work?  That is possibly the case in certain places, but by and large, it’s not that. It’s something else. DUBNER: If we are talking about a gender pay gap, of whatever size — somewhere between 23 cents and zero cents less per dollar than a man — let’s look at what factors might contribute to that.  So, number one, what about discrimination? What is the evidence that women earn less because they’re discriminated against on some dimension or another? GOLDIN: It’s hard to find the smoking guns, OK?  The smoking guns existed in the past. I have found many a smoking gun where you find actual evidence of firms saying, for example, “I do not hire Negroes.” Or, “I do not hire women.” I mean, you actually find these in 1939.  We don’t find those smoking guns now, but what we do try to do is hold everything constant that we can hold, get the best data that we can get. And what remains we don’t call discrimination, we call wage discrimination. Discrimination is such a loaded word that we don’t want to use that, so we use quotes around “wage discrimination.” And so the first thing is, what type of data do you need to do that? It would be incredibly rich data. And a couple of people have put together data using administrative records that are phenomenally good data that can hold lots of things constant, that can track individuals over their lifetimes and get to the answer. And the answer is that it’s a pretty small number, this number for wage discrimination once you hold lots of things constant.  It’s probably there, but we’re not quite certain whether these differences are due to the fact that women, even those without kids, have more responsibilities or take more responsibilities in their own families — taking care of their parents, for example.  So the answer is that we don’t have tons of evidence that it’s true discrimination. DUBNER: Talk for a moment about potential categorical differences between men and women that have shown up in some research.  The different appetite for competition, as some have labeled it. Or, in another instance, the willingness to bargain on salary or flexibility.  How much might those contribute to the pay gap? GOLDIN: I think there’s no doubt that they contribute to some degree. But let me tell you why I don’t think that they go the real distance. Some of the best studies that we have of the gender pay gap, following individuals longitudinally, show that when they show up right out of college, or out of law school, or after they get their M.B.A. — all the studies that we have indicate that wages are pretty similar then. So if men were better bargainers, they would have been better right then. And it doesn’t look as if they’re better bargainers to a degree that shows up as a very large number.  But further down the pike in their lives, by 10-15 years out, we see very large differences in their pay. But we also see large differences in where they are, in their job titles, and a lot of that occurs a year or two after a kid is born, and it occurs for women and not for men. If anything, men tend to work somewhat harder. And I know that there are many who have done many experiments on the fact that women don’t necessarily like competition as much as men do — they value temporal flexibility, men value income growth — that there are various differences. But in terms of bargaining and competition it doesn’t look like it’s showing up that much at the very beginning. DUBNER: Let me ask you about one more contributory factor. The parent penalty, what’s often called the mommy tax. How significant is that as a contributory factor? GOLDIN: Well, it seems as if it’s a very large factor.  That anything that leads you to want to have more time is going to be a large factor. [MUSIC: Laura Ault, “Roundabout Ways” (from The Greatest Thing)] The noted public-policy scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter, in a book called Unfinished Business, singled out what she calls the “care penalty” as a main driver of gender inequity. Here’s how Slaughter sees it: ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: If you take women who don’t have caregiving obligations, they’re almost equal with men. It’s somewhere in the 95 percent range. But when women then have children, or again are caring for their own parents or other sick family members who need care, then they need to work differently. They need to work flexibly, and often go part-time. They often get less-good assignments because their bosses think that they’re not going to want work that allows them to travel, or they’re not going to be able to stay up all night, or whatever it is. And so then you start — if you’re working part-time, you don’t get the same raises. And if you’re working flexibly your boss very typically thinks that you’re not that committed to you

How Braudy came to write about war and masculinity The ways in which ancient Greek and Roman warfare influenced their ideas of masculinity Why Odysseus was seen as less manly than Achilles in ancient Greek culture The ancient archetypes of masculinity Civilized vs barbarian warfare What honor meant in ancient times Warfare and nationalism in medieval Europe How technology, especially in warfare, changed ideas of manhood How democracy, and the development of nation-states, changed ideas of manhood Roosevelt’s idea of the strenuous life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries The World Wars and manhood, and how our collective memory of WWI differs from WWII The cowboy and detective icons in the post-war years How the modern war on terrorism has changed our ideas of masculinity Why Leo is optimistic about the future of manhood and masculinity

Introduction: This week’s guest is Dr. Diana Fleischman, an Evolutionary Psychologist at the University of Portsmouth. In this episode, Dr. Fleischman, Tucker, and Geoff discuss a wide range of topics including how nerdy guys can be attractive, men’s desire for sexual novelty, the importance of hygiene, ethics and attraction, and the importance of finding someone who fits with your personality. Podcast: You can click here (right click, then click save as) to download the episode directly. Click here to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.Click here to subscribe to the podcast on Stitcher. Video: [coming soon] SPONSOR: This episode is sponsored by Bookhacker. They do the reading, so you don’t have to. Check them out on Amazon or Bookhacker.net. If you want to sponsor the Mating Grounds Podcast, email [email protected]. Key takeaways: A nerd is someone who does a poor job marketing themselves. It doesn’t mean that they can’t be attractive. An honest signal is a signal that is hard to fake. Costly signals are honest signals that you are considering somebody and their thoughts, attitudes, and intentions in a way that makes it seem like you’re spending more of your mental effort on them than on competing interests like other women or status, and also, that you would be willing to do things that are painful or would potentially compromise your other interests in order to make them happy. It’s a way to show commitment, and show that you care and are thinking about her. Women want mental real estate. They want a big chunk of your brain going through cycles thinking about them, and all the things they might want. This is the reason behind statements such as “If you cared about me you would know this.” You want to date women who understand that guys will think differently, and appreciate it if you’re making an effort, even if you aren’t getting everything exactly right. An example would be if you get her flowers, and they aren’t her favorite kind of flowers. If she can’t appreciate that, it’s a sign that she may have emotional issues and you should avoid her. Men have an instinctive desire for sexual novelty, and women have an equally strong desire for costly commitment signals. Men have to kind of reign in their instincts, whereas women don’t feel much of an obligation to reign in theirs. In a healthy relationship, there needs to be compromise. Both sexes have to give up a little bit in terms of what they would instinctively want to do. It’s very attractive to have limits to what sort of behavior you’re willing to accept from somebody – don’t be a pushover. Women differ in how transparent they are with their desires and feelings. If you’re bad at reading social signals, you need to focus on being with women who are okay with that and who are generally transparent. You should still focus on improving your social and emotional intelligence, but women vary a lot in how transparent they are, and it’s important to be aware of that. Women have very different disgust sensitivity than men. Sexual disgust overlaps with moral disgust and anti-pathogen disgust. For example, if your apartment is dirty, women will get turned-off. A women who is disgusted by anything will become aroused at a significantly lower rate. It’s incredibly important to have good hygiene. This means cleaning your nails, having a haircut, bathing regularly, having any out of control hair trimmed, wearing clean clothes, etc. Ask a gay guy or a female friend to give you advice about this and to be brutal. Women don’t just have to worry about a man having good genes, they also have to worry about whether they will get a disease from somebody. And the disease burden and the disease risk for women is much greater. Be clean. If you’re on a date with a vegetarian, they are likely disgusted by meat. This means that if you eat meat around them, they will likely become turned-off. Other things that some women will find morally disgusting include being pro-gun, hunting, and being anti-welfare or anti-food stamps. There is also sexual disgust. Some women won’t like a crude sex of humor. Most women won’t like you talking about your sexual escapades. Your ethical standards are very important to women. It can be helpful to educate yourself about issues, even if it’s just to understand the other side. So, for example, if you’re at all curious about vegetarianism or animal rights, read about it. Don’t change your mind because of pussy, but it’s worth it to look into things. When you talk about your beliefs, be socially intelligent about how you talk about it. If you have what’s considered an extreme or weird political philosophy, and you’re on a date and talking about an example of why your view is good, pick the example that’s kind and pro-woman and compassionate and pro-child. Getting involved with charities can work well for guys, the charity sector is very dominated by women. If you do this, it has to be something that you actually believe in. Donating to charity is also good. It shows that you’re trying and doing what you can. Again, make sure it’s something you actually believe in and can talk about intelligently. Make sure you have reasons for whatever you’re doing, and make sure you can explain it in a clear way. You need to realize that political, religious, and moral values are very important to people. It’s important to respect other people’s values, and also to select the kind of women who appreciate your own values. It’s much easier to find a girl who will fit with you if you find a girl who has the same beliefs as you—not because you can only be with people who have the same beliefs, but because people who have the same beliefs often have deep similarities in other ways. Links from this episode The Effective Altruism Summit Joshua Tybur, Geoffrey Miller’s former student, on the three domains of disgust Dan Ariely on sexual arousal and decision making Case, Oaten, and Stevenson on the effects of self-reported sexual arousal on responses to sex-related and non-sex-related disgust cues. Giving What We Can Gallup Poll: Four Moral Issues Sharply Divide Americans Dr. Diana Fleischman’s Bio: Dr. Fleischman is an Evolutionary Psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, UK Dr. Fleischman studied for her PhD at UT Austin, advised by David Buss Dr. Fleischman’s main research interests are hormonal influences on female psychology, and how humans adaptively avoid cues of contagion including the regulation of disgust sensitivity. Further reading on Dr. Diana Fleischman: Dr. Fleischman’s website Dr. Fleischman’s blog on ethics and food choices, sentientist.org Dr. Fleischman’s Twitter Dr. Fleischman’s publications Dr. Fleischman’s academic CV Dr. Fleischman’s talk on youtube about cannibalism Podcast Audio Transcription: Geoff: Okay. So, welcome to the Mating Grounds Podcast. We’re here with Dr. Diana Fleischman who’s at University of Portsmouth as a senior lecturer in psychology. And she did her Ph.D. with David Buss and does a lot of cool stuff on women’s ovulatory cycles and sexually transmitted infections and all kinds of disgusting things. So, welcome. Tucker: Right, but we’re not going to start there though. Geoff: No. Welcome to the Podcast. Diana: Thank you. Tucker: I want to start with something you said which I think a lot of our listeners will be very interested in. Because you’re obviously very intelligent and very pretty. And you said, five minutes ago you said ‘Wow, I’ve spent most of my life dating like nerdy guys who didn’t get a lot of women. Those are the type of guys that are most attractive to me.’ Diana: Yeah. Tucker: So, I think, I think there’s a lot of guys out there that are like where can I meet Diana, you know? But tell us, talk a little bit about that, about the type of guys that you go after or why you like that guy or whatever. Diana: When I was younger, I was mostly interested in how intelligent people were and I actually didn’t care very much about how men looked. So, in Britain, you say he’s punching like he’s punching above his waist. So, I was engaged to a guy, for example, who’s like a really hard core vegan and had a Ph.D. in biochemistry and had not really had a lot of success. Well, I mean, he had a few girlfriends. Yeah, basically I dated a lot of men like that because I like the way they talked and I also liked… I sometimes feel people really deserve somebody special and that was something that I wanted to be for someone else but also, because I like men who can talk about interesting things. And I like men who are devoted. Tucker: Wait, hold on. Like you said everyone deserves something special but you’re not doing charity here. Diana: No. Tucker: These are guys you were very attracted to. Diana: Yeah, I was attracted to them because they were intellectual and they were intelligent and they were articulate, for the most part, even if it took a little while to dig down through the shyness, sometimes. Yeah. Tucker: So, you would actually be the aggressor with a lot of these guys? Diana: There was a guy that I dated and yeah, when I was an undergrad I definitely was the pursuer. And, yeah, he was worried that he was going to undermine his grades that term if he dated me. Tucker: He was one of those. Diana: Even though he had never had a girlfriend before, yeah. Tucker: Wow! Diana: So, yeah, that. Tucker: So, then what is it about? Intelligence, obviously, is a big thing, right? What other things about that sort of set of traits that you find attractive. Diana: Yeah. I just found them often very kind and compassionate and certainly, if you get a guy like that, he usually will bend over backwards to make you happy. Tucker: Right. Diana: So, that’s another problem, obviously. That ultimately you can’t respect somebody like that forever. But that’s something I definitely like in the initial stages or used to like very much in the i

Matt Chandler only gets three words into this sermon's text before stopping to exalt our sovereign God. Encouraging pastors to not cow to cultural pressures, Chandler exalts in the strength of God's omnipotence. Chandler reviews a recent trip he took to R... http://t4g.org/media/2016/04/gods-glory-as-the-base-of-our-courage-romans-1133-36/?format=audio

Introduction: Our guest today is one of the manosphere’s most influential and prominent thinkers: Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men. Most of our interviews are about how men can do better with women; this one is not like that at all. In this episode, we talk about his (excellent) book, about masculinity, and about other male-centered issues. If you’re interested in that stuff, you’ll love this discussion, but if you just want actionable information relating to women, you probably want to skip this one. Podcast: You can click here (right click, then click save as) to download the episode directly. Click here to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.Click here to subscribe to the podcast on Stitcher. Video: [coming soon] SPONSOR: This episode is sponsored by Bookhacker. They do the reading, so you don’t have to. Check them out on Amazon or Bookhacker.net. If you want to sponsor the Mating Grounds Podcast, email sponsors@thematinggrounds.com. Key takeaways: If you cultivate the traits that earn you respect from other men and that make them want you as a friend or ally or mentor or member of their gang, you’re almost 70% or 80% of the way there in terms of what women also find attractive. If a guy did nothing other than cultivate the traits that other guys respect they’d still be doing way better than most guys are in terms of heterosexual attractiveness. If you feel disenchanted or disenfranchised from the modern world, the first step you should take is trying to form connections to other men in your area who like similar things and you get along with. Build a network, create your own community. Forming close bonds with other men is important. Men bond over aggression, but it doesn’t have to be against each other – it can be aggression against nature, hunting, climbing Mt.Everest, doing something risky, or completing a task that’s really hard. As we’ve said before, the alpha/beta male distinction and the whole word ‘alpha’ is fucking stupid. The majority of the time it’s mentioned it’s someone referring to themselves as alpha, and if you have to say you’re alpha, you’re not alpha. It’s like saying “I’m part of the elite”. The elite don’t say that. Men can be very caring and empathetic and still be masculine. A lot of vested interests try to define masculinity and what alpha is for young men in a way that’s in their interests. For example, marketers tell you that you become masculine by buying their stuff, captains of industry say you’re masculine if you work hard, etc. Be skeptical of people who can benefit from telling you what masculinity is. Ask yourself “Who wants me to be this way and why?” Links from this episode Jack’s article on The Wolves of Vinland Jack’s interview with Paul from The Wolves of Vinland The Power of Clan Jack Donovan’s Bio: Author of The Way of Men, Androphilia, A Sky Without Eagles, and Blood-Brotherhood and Other Rites of Male Alliance Jack writes about masculinity and manliness, and is known for his critiques of feminism and gay culture(despite being gay himself) Jack contributes to Radix Journal, Counter-Currents, the Spearhead and Alternative Right Jack publishes a podcast called Start the World Jack Donovan’s Major Works: The Way of Men Jack describes this project as aiming to “develop a universal definition of masculinity” There is a difference between being a “good guy” and being manly – e.g. if Batman is manly, is Bane unmanly? No, of course not. Different groups will have different agendas that they try to impose: “Established men of wealth and power have always wanted men to believe that being a man was about duty and obedience, or that manhood could be proved by attaining wealth and power through established channels. Men of religion and ideology have always wanted men to believe that being a man was a spiritual or moral endeavor, and that manhood could be proved through various means of self-mastery, self-denial, self-sacrifice or evangelism. Men who have somethin gto sell have always wanted men to believe that masculinity can be proved or improved by buying it.” Argues that the only way to reclaim masculinity and return to honor and manly virtue is to start a gang. Says “there are no moderate solutions to the problems presented by global capitalism, multiculturalism and feminism. Pan-secession into tribal groups within a failing state is the only alternative I see within most nations.” (source) Qualifies this by saying “You don’t have to have a Liberian-style gang. That’s not the only option. It’s definitely not a “starter” option. Think of the Yakuza or the Mafia, or as I’ve said recently, underground networks of immigrants. I don’t think many of us are ready to be Liberians, and I don’t think many of us would want to behave as they do. There are shades of gray between being a complete slave to the State and 8-year olds shooting each other with AK-47s.” (source) The book highlights four “tactical virtues” – honor, strength, mastery and courage – which he talks about in this piece on Thought Catalog On honor, Jack says: “Caring about what the men around you think of you is a show of respect, and conversely, not caring what other men think of you is a sign of disrespect.” (source) On modern men: “Men today are so protected and coddled. They’re told that they deserve “respect” just because they’re breathing. Many don’t have fathers, and whether they do or not, they have mothers and teachers and the media telling them that no one should ever bully them or make them feel bad. They play games where everybody is declared a winner. We all post our pictures and thoughts and feelings online, and expect people to “like” them and make us feel good about ourselves. This constant affirmation makes men narcissistic, delusional and weak.” (source) This isn’t a quote from the book but it’s an indication of what he thinks. Androphilia Book is a criticism of gay culture Jack uses the phrase “androphilia” to describe himself as a man attracted to other men, but to distinguish himself from the connotations of the label “gay”. Quote: “Gay is a subculture, a slur, a set of gestures, a slang, a look, a posture, a parade, a rainbow flag, a film genre, a taste in music, a hairstyle, a marketing demographic, a bumper sticker, a political agenda and philosophical viewpoint. Gay is a pre-packaged, superficial persona–a lifestyle. It’s a sexual identity that has almost nothing to do with sexuality.” A Sky Without Eagles This is a collection of his essays and speeches, covering topics like the necessity of violence, masculinity, anarcho-fascism and becoming a barbarian. Some quotes: “The only ‘freedom’ that feminism offers men is the freedom to do exactly what women want him to do.”, “Violence comes from people. It’s about time people woke up from their 1960s haze and started being honest about violence again. People are violent, and that’s OK. You can’t legislate it away or talk your way around it”, “The pro-feminist male is a wretched, guilt-ridden creature who must at every turn make certain he is not impeding the progress of women in any way.” Further reading on Jack Donovan: Speech Jack gave at the New Policy Institute called “Becoming the New Barbarians” (27minutes long) Transcript of a good interview with Jack Another interview with Jack that addresses, among other things, his latest book and his position on race Interesting piece Jack wrote on women who lift weights or do Crossfit etc. Jack’s Twitter Jack’s Website Jack’s Wikipedia Page Podcast Audio Transcription: Tucker: Let me try–I’m going to hang up and call him first and then you. Jack: You have reached New Barbarian Tattoo and this is Jack Donovan. Leave me a message. Tucker: Oh wait. Hold on. Here he is. Here he is. Geoff: Okay. Tucker: Alright let me add him. Oh, man. Jack: There! Tucker: Yo, Jack. Jack: Hey! How’s it going? Tucker: Good. What’s going on, man? I’ve got Geoff Miller on the line, too. Geoff: Hey Jack. How you doing? Jack: Hey. Good to talk to you. Tucker: So, we just got your voicemail. I’ve got to tell you. That was a pretty fucking awesome voicemail. Geoff: Does it still say the thing about don’t leave me a message? Tucker: No, no, I was laughing. It might. I was laughing too hard at the New Barbarian Tattoo. Like this is Mr. Jack. That’s not even your voice, is it? Is that you? Jack: Yeah, it’s me. Tucker: It was awesome. It was like, like out of a movie like when you go in to like, you know, like the whatever. You’re getting your. It’s almost like. I felt like if I was going through like a Joseph Campbell like test of manhood like life passage type thing this would be the voice that would welcome me to like the underworld where I actually had to face the beast or something. It was amazing. Jack: I like that. Thank you. That’s exactly what I was going for. Tucker: So, I got to say, Jack, I read, I had not read The Way of Men until Geoff had told me about it. I don’t know, six months or a year ago and I was like. I put it on my pile and I was like okay, I’ll read it eventually and just never got to it. And then once we booked you for the podcast, I read it on a plane flight. And I was blown away actually by the book because– Well, just first off, I’m sure you’re about my age now. You’re like 38, 39, something like that right? Jack: 39, yeah. Tucker: 39. So, I’m about to turn 39. So, you probably know what I mean. Like we’ve kind of gotten, at least I’ve gotten to the age where it’s like obviously I haven’t read everything but I’ve read enough that it’s very rare for me to read a book that really either challenges my thinking or like sheds new, really original new sort of lights on things that I hadn’t thought of or something like that, you know? And Way of Men definitely, there were passages where like I sat it down and I was like fuck, I never thought about that like that. That’s really. Either I totally disagree

Vipp Jaswal spoke with Pastor Matt Chandler on the reason, purpose and limitations of God, like never before! Vipp asked daring and controversial questions like: • Do we need to forgive God for the pain he gives us? • Why can't God give us peace of mind? http://radio.foxnews.com/2014/05/18/podcast-pastor-matt-chandler-answers-should-we-forgive-god-too/

The Verge Book Club took a tour on the noir side in December, by reading one of the all-time classics in the genre: Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. The novel, which introduces readers to... http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5331310/the-verge-book-club-podcast-the-big-sleep-by-raymond-chandler