Theology in the Raw - Raising Boys, Masculinity, Jordan Peterson, and Why Wrestling with Your Sons Keeps them Out of Prison: Dr. Anthony Bradley

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

In this podcast conversation, we talk about raising boys, biblical masculinity, Jordan Peterson, toxic masculinity vs. biblical masculinity, the so-called "war on men," and other related issues.  Dr. Anthony Bradley (Ph.D. Westminster Seminary) was most recently professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Human Flourishing at The King’s College, Theologian-In-Residence at Redeemer Presbyterian Church—Lincoln Square, and now serves as a distinguished research fellow at The Acton Institute and Research Professor of Interdisciplinary and Theological Studies at Kuyper College. His books include: Liberating Black Theology (2010), Black and Tired (2011), The Political Economy of Liberation (2012), Keep Your Head Up (2012), Aliens In The Promised Land (2013), John Rawls and Christian Social Engagement (2014), Black Scholars In White Space (2015), Something Seems Strange (2016), Ending Overcriminalization and Mass Incarceration (2018), Faith In Society (2019), Why Black Lives Matter (2020), and Heroic Fraternities (2023). Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, do you remember when I had Dr. Lee Camp on the podcast to talk about a Christian political identity? It was episode 1139 and it was a fascinating conversation. Anyway, Lee is one of my favorite Christian writers and thinkers and he also hosts a super engaging podcast called No Small Endeavor. It's kind of like The Old General actually. On No Small Endeavor, Lee will have curious conversations with theologians, philosophers, bestselling authors, all to explore what it means to live a good life.

His diverse range of guests include people like Amy Grant, Tish Harrison Warren, Philip Yancey, Malcolm Gladwell, Eugene Cho, Miroslav Volf, and many others, all asking what it means to live a life worth living. So if you like theology in a raw or even if you hate theology, you've got to go check out no small endeavor on whatever app you use to get your podcast. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology. And my guest today is the one and only Dr. Anthony B Bradley, who has a PhD from Westminster theological seminary. And he is also, or is currently serving as a theologian in residence at Redeemer Presbyterian church. He's a distinguished

research fellow at the Acton Institute research professor of interdisciplinary and theological studies at Kuiper college is the author of several books, including the recent Horelic fraternities, faith in society, why black lives matter, and many other books. He's got a long rap sheet. I'm only reading part of it for this podcast conversation. We talk a lot about fatherhood, masculinity, biblical masculinity, toxic masculinity, Jordan Peterson and all that fun stuff. And yeah, I've just really appreciated Anthony's voice from a distance. He's got piles of wisdom as you will see in this really engaging conversation.

So please welcome to the show for the first time. Do you want to know the doctor Anthony B Bradley? All right. I'm here with the doctor, Anthony Bradley. This is a conversation. It's a long time in the making in my heart. At least I've been wanting to have you on for years. My, I want to, so anyway, thanks for coming out the Algenar. Anthony, happy to be here. Thank you. You don't know this, but I first heard of you at an ETS meeting, ETS, eternal, evangelical theological society, the annual meeting. You

gave a paper. I want to say it was over 20 years ago. You might've been a PhD student at what Westminster? I think maybe, maybe you're at covenant at that time. It was on the emerging church back when that was the thing. And you said something like the title was emerging church and the subtitle is something like, yeah, right. And it sounded so what we would call like Theo bro now, but your hope, I still did. I don't remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, let alone papers from the theological conference 20 years ago. I still remember though you're you began that page. I can't believe I remember this. You'd be half the

paper was kind of critical thoughts and everything. But then you started to say, well, here's some good things about this movement. So yeah, right. But then you're like, yeah, right. Like, yeah, this is right. Like some of the critiques they had and dude that I just was like, first of all, that usually doesn't happen to ETS kind of like a nuanced critique of something. Everybody just wants to bash. And I was like, see, this is what we need. We need people to be able to see like, is there something good in this? Is there something bad? Let's have a critical evaluation with lot. And that's not throw the baby out the bathwater. So anyway, do you remember that paper? Did I summarize it?

Yeah. It's interesting because I remember they had to switch rooms. It was so big. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. And I was, I was teaching at covenant seminary at the time. And back then I can say this publicly now, although I don't know if I could have said it back then, but back then I had a pretty, I had, I had two feet fairly planted in Mark Driscoll's world, but I also had another foot very, very securely planted in Rob Bell's world. Oh, interesting. So I knew this whole landscape in ways that people had no idea about. No idea. I did not know that because that's, that's right. When they started to kind of partying ways, right? Yeah. Yeah. At the beginning, they were, they were kind of seeing eye to eye and a lot of things at least. It's just so fascinating because both their churches were named Morris Hill and you also

had, it was really sort of the split between, I'd say, the Acts 29 expression of this versus the Brian McLaren expression. He has some kind of organization, I don't remember the name of it now, but it was sort of the Acts 29 version versus the Brian McLaren version. And everyone in a traditional denomination, the PCA, the Presbyterian Church of America or the Southern Baptist, were trying to figure out how to navigate between these basically non-denominational expressions of the emergent movement. And I was just really fascinated by it in part. And in fairness, I think you see some of these issues reemerged in the deconstruction, ex-evangelical conversation.

But there were some gaps that a lot of young people experienced in their spiritual nurture from childhood and maybe even some wounds. And they didn't have a space to work those things out. And one of the things that you saw with both in Mark Driscoll's space, but also Rob Bell's space was an opportunity for a lot of emerging young adults at the time. It's interesting, right? Those young adults now have minivans and kids in college. But it provided a third space for them to work out some of those issues. And this was before TikTok and YouTube and things like that. So they didn't really have a, another, another contact or that, which was why those new mes were so huge.

So there's Rob Bell, Numa videos from back then. So I was, I was fascinated by that. And I'm glad that you remember that. Cause I was this deeply swimming in the, the ocean of the emergent trades, trying to figure out what the heck's going on and where do I fit in there? That's yeah. You mentioned without the holy emergent church movement, early 2000s prior to social media. What I wonder what that would have looked like in this day and day. Well, it might be the deconstruction exit. What would be the Mark Driscoll? Well, we don't need to get into that. It's not, I'm curious what the Mark Driscoll route of that would have been that remained very evangelical,

but very kind of like gritty, you know? And, and yeah, I remember at the time, the early Driscoll, I found it refreshing because I came out of like MacArthur circles. So, but then I'd moved away from that. Like, I really understood like, like, like contextualizing the gospel, um, see, getting outside the walls of the church and getting out into the actual real world, like hanging out with real world people, but still being gospel center. Like Driscoll really hit that early on. I wasn't, I probably listened to maybe four sermons in my life of him. I read maybe one book or something. It wasn't like I was a huge follower, but I saw something here. I'm like, Oh, I

kind of resonate with this. And then once things started to go south there, I was like, Ooh yeah, that, that seems pretty toxic, but I was never that deep into it. Anyway. Well, Anthony, I brought you on because I really want to talk to you about masculinity. I know you've been thinking through this a lot and I'm almost embarrassed. So people watching this video are going to see that I have glasses on for the first time in theology and around history. I actually do wear glasses when I drive and stuff, but I'm actually trying to cover black eye that I can't because I was wrestling with my son, which usually happens about three times a day and he's getting older. He's getting bigger and, and it's not uncommon for me to

get injured after that. So, but yesterday he w we was throwing, I was throwing my suitcase out of me, throwing a soccer bag at me. We're waiting outside the airport coming home from a trip and the soccer bat hit me in the face and it got all bloody. I'm like, dude, I got like interviews, the world stuff. So anyway, I, I feel a little embarrassed. I feel like I got beat up by my son and then I'm going to talk to you about masculinity. And you have any thoughts on that, Anthony? You know, you could have just asked your wife to put some makeup on you or something. I mean, you could have just, you could have, you could have gotten, you know, makeup to come on the show. Actually, this is really important and I want everyone to, who's, who's

listening to pay attention to this fact. One of the things that we know in the psych data is that boys who rough out with their dads are much less likely to struggle with video game and porn addictions. They're also much more likely to have growing expertise and practice in delayed gratification. They're much more likely to be self-regulated in terms of their emotions. They're much more likely to understand the limitations and the range in terms of how

their bodies work. It's actually like, it's like a magic pill. It's the secret sauce and really low impact training for men in terms of how to be really mature adults. When I was teaching college, it got to a point when I discovered this data. And by the way, this data comes from a book by Warren Farrell. He has a co-author, I think John Gray. The book is huddled, The Boy Crisis,

there's a whole chapter on, there's a whole section in the book on this, but rough housing is something that every father needs to do because it really sets sons up for success. So when I was a college professor, got to a point where if I found a young man who was spiritually grounded, had an even-killed temperament, his grades were good, I would just simply

ask the question. First question, not where you're from, first question, did you and your father roughhouse? And the answer was always yes. It was always yes. And sometimes the rough housing dropped away in middle school or high school. Sometimes it dropped away early, but in terms of a boy's development, it is absolutely vital and necessary. And I would go so far as to say this, that boys who don't rough house with their dads are the ones who end up in juvenile detention in high school and in prison as early adults. And the fact that you have that wound, that scar on your face,

your son learned a really valuable lesson about the limitations of his strength. He learned a valuable lesson that he can actually hurt someone. And so now he's much more likely to self-regulate the next time because he doesn't want to see his dad bleed unless he thought it was really funny. But yeah, he's much more likely to actually learn how to regulate his physical strength because he knows, oh, I can't put my knee here, right?

I can't put my knee here, right? I can't put my hand here. I can't swing a bag of balls, soccer balls at my dad's head. These are some things I can do. These are some things that I can't do. And it's really, really vital. And I will say this here lastly, the delayed gratification value and variable here is massively important because one of the

things that rough housing does is it puts it puts the sun in a position where he anticipates the reward of the play of a rough housing so basically as a parent you can say this we can rough house when you finish your homework we can wrestle when I come back from the, we can rough house when you finish your homework. We can wrestle when I come back from the trip. We can do this after you do what your mom says, right? After you do X, Y, and Z, we can do this. And it always, always works. And it teaches you ratification. And the very last thing I say, that's my last one, but this is actually the very last point. It actually builds intimacy and connection.

So boys who roughhouse with their dads are much more likely to share problems. They're much more likely to bring to them their questions. They feel safe. They feel secure. They're much more likely to take risks, et cetera. So I always tell dads, listen, as much as possible, for as long as possible, a rough house with the lads. And I don't care if he's 17, six years old, or 22.

When he comes home, just go ahead and tackle him and see what happens. You're always going to experience laughter, always gonna experience laughter and smiles. And both, both the father and the son get releases of dopamine and oxytocin in the, in the context of that. I, this is blowing my mind, dude. So I, I always want to ask the question causation

correlation. It sounds like you're saying there's a lot more. This isn't just like going back to like keeping them out of prison or something. Does that just happens to be correlated or is there something more causative? And it sounds like you're saying causative. You're building a bond. You're, I mean, all these, it's fostering all kinds of different virtues and relationship bonding and everything. So it's not just correlation or saying, yeah, because one of the things that we see in the, in the, in the site data is the absence of this leads to a, a set of pathologies, right? Now it's not determinative. So here's what I'm not saying. What I'm not saying is like, well,

unless you, unless you rough house with your boys, he's going to end up being an ax murderer. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying that at all. And I'm also not saying, well, if you rough house with your son, he'll end up being a priest or something, right? He'll just be godly and things like that. But there are strong associations with the level and the frequency with which men physically engage their children.

Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, and it actually benefits both the dad and the children. You know, dads' brains change in terms of the more interaction they have with their kids. And the data is also pretty clear on this that that empathy is learned from fathers, not mothers. Really? Absolutely. Yeah. And it's counterintuitive for most. But one of the things, for example, that happened in the context of your play, and this is often where empathy is learned

is during play, is that is that you now have a, you now have a scar on your face. And so your son, in the context of play, and seeing this wound on your face is now going to be more empathetic to his impact toward other people because he sees that he can hurt someone. So now he's thinking, well, I need to, I need to think about my dad. I mean, I'm getting bigger. I can take the man now. Right. I can, I can hurt it. Yeah. That's not going to get him on this podcast. Yeah. He slipped on it. It's like, yeah, you can take him now. Can't you actually, he keep, he probably can't.

We have this thing called old man strength, but he, but he's, he's, he's learning to sort of think about your, your, your body in the context of the exercise of his physical strength. It is fathers who are actually the rule enforcers. Kids can work their moms. Dad's the one that says, no, do what your mom says. Go to bed. You broke the window. I'm going to take you across the street. You're going to apologize. You're going to buy the window. And in fact, you're going to help the man paint the thing. I'll teach you how to do it. I'm going to take it to Home Depot. You're going to take your allowance. I'm going to go buy it. And so this other centeredness is actually, is actually fostered by the dads. And, and the data is really clear on this as well, that the more time children spend with their

dads, the more empathetic they are. If their dad is modeling that, if, if, if their dad is, is actively fathering them, actually forming them, actually engaging them on the virtues of wisdom and thinking about other people. He doesn't even need to use the word empathy. Doesn't need to say, hey, be empathetic or be compassionate. He doesn't need to do that. But if he relates to his son and his daughter, if he relates to his kids in such a way that has them think about the impacts of what they do on other people, if that's kind of a, if that's the nature of some

of the things they discuss, etc., they're going to, because they respect their dad, love their dad, listen to their dad, etc., they're going to be the one to actually internalize empathy. And we know this in the juvenile space. A criminal deviance, by definition, is in part a lack of empathy, right? You don't care if you steal the car. You don't care about their feelings if you steal their jewelry, if you murder someone in their family. The whole basis of restorative justice is empathy. So when single moms, and by the way, when I say this, I'm not blaming single moms and saying that single moms are

deficient, But it is no accident that the large majority of juveniles in the juvenile retention space are boys raised by single moms because they actually need a father's presence to help form empathy as a way to cultivate impulse control, aggression management, and also to help them form the habits of thinking about other people's feelings on the basis of their own activities. And yeah, you said it before, and I just want to reiterate, you're speaking in generalities, not absolute. I mean, so like I was raised by a single mom. My dad never wrestled with

me, you know? Well, no, when I was actually, when I was little, he did, he left when I was 10. Yeah. But I didn't end up in prison. I didn't, you know, all that. So I'm, I'm, I would be more the exception. So these aren't absolutes. And I guess that I do have a question about that. Like, what do you do with the father listening? Whose kid doesn't like rough and tumble play maybe. Yeah. I know both boys do, but some boys don't. And then I almost, I want to flip it around real bad. Girls is it, is there any kind of crossover for graph? Three daughters and one son. And my third daughter loves to wrestle.

Her problem is she's, she's taken jujitsu and she can actually choke me out. Like she can really long, strong legs. And if she wraps you, she's like a boa constrictor. So I'm like, there's been times when she's literally taught me out, but like, is there cross? So two questions. What do you do with the son who just it's, is there, are there sons where it's counterproductive? They just don't like it. It doesn't, it has a reverse effect. They're just wired differently. And then is there crossover with fathers and daughters? Great, great two questions. So absolutely. I mean, there, there are, are some, some boys, their temperament isn't necessarily wired that way, which is

perfectly fine. Right. Those tend to be more the exception, the rule, but absolutely. So what parents need to do in that sense, because all your kids are different, is to figure out a way of connection and a way of fostering the same level, the same sorts of outcomes in terms of delay gratification, impulse control, anger regulation, aggression regulation, impulse control, anger, regulation, aggression, regulation, emotional regulation. It doesn't necessarily have to be through rough housing, but it does typically happen through play. Okay. Like that's usually the mechanism that these things are fostered is

during play. So it may not be, it may not be rough and tumble play, but it could be some other form of play. Okay. Right? So playing with your kids, doing activities together with your kids is really important. And like I said,

it needs to be something where there's some frustration, right? There's some challenge or some obstacle and you get to love and care and communicate important things in the context of that struggle and them encountering the limitations of their capacity but also being able to see that they also have the ability to cause harm. So those are really the context, the principles that really matter. How that's done, a rough and tumble play or a chess match, right? You know how

sometimes kids get frustrated when they lose. I mean, those are the sorts of context that matter, but it really, really does. Particularly in our era, those things are developed in the context of play. Now, for girls, absolutely those sorts of physical interactions are important, but the rough and tumble play with girls is going to be different, and dads are going to naturally regulate the ways in which they toss and tumble their daughters, right? There's a great video I've seen of a dad doing this on social media where he basically grabs his son's leg and kind of does that, throws him on the bed, but with his daughter he does, he cradles her, does a spin around and then lays her down. That gives the appearance of being hard, but he has her head cradle in his hand and then bounces her down like that. So the rough and tumble play has some variance, right? There's age appropriate,

right? You have to do that in terms of thinking about how you go about it. You're not going to wrestle a four-year-old in the same way You're gonna wrestle your 15 year old, right? but also, you know your kids and Because you are their father You know exactly what some of those limitations are and you as a dad know the best way to do it So there are probably going to be no to follow the expressions of these activities but again the the the important thing is to play and to do whatever is necessary to be physically engaged with your children to create laughter and fun.

Those are the sorts of things that open the door later on for the types of trust, like I said earlier, that allows them to feel safe and secure when they have struggles and problems to bring you later on. Hey friends, my book Exiles, The Church in the Shadow of Empire is out now. I am so excited and a bit nervous about the release of this book. This is a topic I've been thinking about for many, many years and finally put pen to paper to write out all my thoughts. Specifically, I'm addressing the question, what is a Christian political identity? As members of Christ's global, multi-ethnic, upside-down kingdom scattered

across the nations, how should we as members of that kingdom think through and interact with the various nations that we are living under? So the book is basically a biblical theology of a Christian political identity. We look at the nation of Israel, we look at the exile of Israel, we look at several parts of the New Testament, the life and teaching of Jesus, several passages in the book of Acts, the letters of Paul, do a deep dive into 1 Peter and the book of Revelation, and then explore some contemporary points of application. So I would highly encourage you to check out my book, Exiles, and would love to hear what

you think. Whether you hate the book, love it, or still thinking through it, I'd love to hear what you think by dropping a review on Amazon or, I don't know, post a blog, just, you know, rip it to shreds. I don't really care. I would love for you to just wrestle with this really important topic in this really volatile political season that we're living in. Anthony, what got you into this conversation? I mean, you're a theologian, your research

professor. You've done lots of scholarly stuff that this, is this always been something you thought through? Or is this more of a recent thing? When I say this thing, I'm talking about like, yeah, fatherhood, masculinity and so on. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So this all started for me a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I was, I was in grad school at Westminster seminary and I was teaching ninth grade Bible at Philmont Christian Academy.

And one of the things I noticed when I walked in the school as a 9th grade teacher is the is the demonstrative difference between the boys and the girls. You see it even more starkly now. The girls were confident, shoulders back, they had clear vision. I mean these girls were just unbelievably sharp. I mean it was it was amazing, right? But the boys, they were walking around with their heads down, their shoulders were slumped over, they were experimenting with drugs and alcohol, which is almost always a sign of emotional distress in an adolescent. A lot of depression, not so much anxiety, but a lot of depression and hopelessness. They were lost.

This is 25 years ago and this isn't like, Yeah, I mean, this is 1999. It's 1999. Right? So it's interesting, right? This boy crisis, crisis, I've been talking about this since the mid nineties. For some reason, everyone's like, Oh, we have a crisis. And a lot of us are saying, hey, hey, woohoo. We were talking about this a long, long time ago when Bill Clinton was president. And I said, well, this is really strange.

So a colleague of mine at the Christian school decided to have an open access for all boys. It was a men's, a Bible study, a lunchtime, once a week Bible study for these lads. And we opened it up to the whole school, all right? Now we knew some boys in the school who didn't have great dads. They were really struggling.

And then we opened it up to the school and the boys who showed up, who said they like really needed this stuff, were the sons of the elders in the community and the pastors, the pastors boys and the professor sons. And we were like, wait, what? And so one of the things that I recognize and I saw over the years is that the levels of boys brokenness was irrespective of their parents' social and economic status, their status in the church. Like, it had nothing to do with any of those things.

And that boys were really struggling to try to figure out who they were, how they fit in society. And it was in the context of that ninth grade Bible study that we met weekly that I began to see some real kinks in the armor here. I was like, something is wrong. And so after that, I spent several years of volunteering in churches and youth ministry in the suburbs of wealthy communities in St. Louis.

And I saw lots of guys coming from homes where they had literally everything, but they were also chronic potheads. And I'm like, what is happening? Right? Then I get, and then later on, I'm teaching seminary. And then my seminary students are coming to me with all these stories of a lot of woundedness and brokenness and things like that. I'm doing men's retreats. I have 45, 50 year old men balling in the woods because they were sexually abused and had never told anybody about it, or their dads had never told them they were proud of them or that they

loved them. And so in every city I've moved every institution I've been in, I started to see these same sorts of issues. And so I just decided that, well, listen, I can't help out the whole world. But wherever I am, I'm going to try to help the guys out in my context, and that just opened me up to wanting to do some reading. And the more reading that I did, the more I saw just the extent of the brokenness

and the woundedness and some of the dysfunction. And then I thought, oh my goodness, we're about to hit a major, major crisis in the country, particularly on issues like marriage and family. I mean, if we have a whole community of just really broken men, who are your daughters going to marry? Right? Who's going to be the fathers of the next generation of kids if we don't have a really good set of dads right now. So one of the things that I focused on at King's was to do whatever I could do to get as many guys as I could ready for marriage and fatherhood.

For me, their careers were tertiary, right? I didn't care so much about that, but my main focus at King's was doing whatever I could to make sure that I could get as many guys ready for marriage and being dads. So I would teach classes on this. I would have a group of guys do independent studies. And I'm very proud to say that whenever I had a group of guys do these studies within about a year after the course ended, 40% of the guys

would either be married or engaged. So I was just really trying to get them ready. There's just a lot of pain out there and a lot of men struggling in silence. And churches don't have a lot of opportunities for men in particular to work out and get some insight on how to handle some of these, some of these issues. What about on that note, I don't want to take us too far in a different direction, but like, how do you avoid the assumption that marriage is an inevitable part of their future? I just, I'm concerned about sometimes the assumption that like the gospel promises that everybody will get married. And then when you're 30, 35, 40, especially for women, there's this pressure that your womanhood is intrinsically

connected to getting married. And there seems to be a pretty low view of singleness in the church. Obviously, I think it's obvious, most people will get married and you know, that's, I think there's even, you know, we can the natural law and design and we're oriented towards each other and so on. But there is this rich theology of singleness in the New Testament too, that's pretty unique. How does that factor in? Like with preparing guys for marriage when there's a chance that might not be

what God intends for them. Yeah, that's a great question. So that preparation makes you a certain kind of person, right? It makes you think about yourself in relation to others a certain kind of way. It forces you to frame the ways in which you interact with women a certain kind of way, to think of yourself as a brother to women, et cetera, right? So that sort of disposition that I'm the type of man who is marryable is really the practice of chastity, right? It's you being a certain kind of person.

It's almost like, for example, I'm not a dad. I don't have any kids of my own, but there's, as I've been told, I have a fatherly disposition toward my students, right? So that's a certain, that's a vocation, right? That's being a certain kind of person. And whether that is, I might say operationalized within a particular institution like marriage or family.

I'm not sure that's the point necessarily. The point is to develop the habits and the formation and the temperament, the values, et cetera, of being the type of, of, of person that serves that role in community. Right? So to be a fatherly presence in a room, in a community, even if you don't have any kids of your own, to be a motherly presence in a context, even if you don't have kids of your own, but also to think of yourself as the sort of things

I would say the scriptures invite us to think about that would make a man marryable, said one who would be desirable. Those sorts of virtues of kindness and gentleness, I would say the cardinal virtues, but also the spiritual virtues also we see in Ephesians 4 and 5 and the second half of Colossians 3. Yeah, cultivate those things because you're being formed into a certain kind of person and the community needs these men and women with these values and virtues, even if they don't enter into those institutions formally. That makes perfect sense.

Yeah, I get that. Yeah. And so Catholics are much better at this, right? Because they have vocations where, I mean, you call a priest father, right? I mean, a nun's called a sister, okay? Monks are called brothers. And so, there's a way of becoming a certain kind of person in preparation for certain sorts of institutions.

And that preparation, for example, doesn't necessarily change just because you were in a formal institution or not. So I might say it this way growth in spiritual maturity and chastity doesn't change if you're married or single. Yeah, that's good. No, that makes great sense. All right. Here, here's a, I guess it's a controversial question, but I don't intend it to, it's a genuine, for me, it's a genuine question, but, and I'm not really, I haven't not paid attention to the, to the zeitgeist nearly as much as you have. I mean, I have a social media account and you see stuff and, but is there a war on men? Is there a war on masculinity? What role does

this whole idea of toxic masculinity play in? Has there been an overcorrection to that? You know what I'm getting at here? I mean, yeah, anyway, I'll just throw it to you any direction you want to go with that. Why is Andrew Tate so popular these days? I have a question about your thoughts on Jordan Peterson and yeah, Speaker 3rd-5 So Nancy, Pierce, he has a really great book on the cultural history of toxic masculinity. I think she does a really good job of framing how we got here and how that phrase emerged. That language of war is often used. I think what we've seen is a hyper-correction to the abuse of women and the neglect of women in

the past. And it sort of took a life of its own, facilitated by some contemporary movements. So if we look back, of course, in history, there has been a lot of bad men. There's also been a lot of women who've experienced a lot of neglect and oppression. One of the things that we do in this country is that we institutionalize solutions. Not only that, we try to encode or embed those solutions in public policy and in institutional policy. So one of the things that happened after the 1950s, rather after the 1960s,

when a much more egalitarian spirit emerged in public education, so much of the emphasis began to be on getting girls up to the same education and professional outcomes as boys and men. The problem with the ways in which some of those were worked out is that boys were often on the one hand neglected, but also, and I think more potentially damaging, when boys would express the search of things that boys typically do in social settings, that became a problem that we needed to solve. And one of the ways in which we began to solve those problems, particularly in the 80s, was

medicating boys, diagnosing them with ADD and ADHD, and medicating them. I remember I saw this data about 10, 15 years ago that the US, we medicated our boys, diagnosed and medicated our boys for ADHD and ADD five times more than any developed country on the planet Earth. In fact, at the time, a boy in France couldn't even be diagnosed with this quote unquote disorder

because it didn't exist in France. Boys were just boys. That phrase, boys was just boys, doesn't exist anymore. Or boys will be boys. And so as the pendulum sort of swung back and forth, we began to see some of these hyper reactions. And in the K to 12 space in particular, boys were often punished and penalized for things that boys typically do. I'll give you a great example. Let's say a third grade boy was given crayons and they were say draw a story and the boy draws a story

about a about a dragon who eats a cow right and he draws blood and things like that they would call the parent and and request a conference because the boy might have some sort of behavioral issue. I'm like, no, but he's just drawing a dragon. Boys fantasize about violence all the time, it's what they do. If you take a group of boys outside with no weapons, they will find something and use it as a weapon. It'll be a stick, it'll be your dog. They're going to find something to do that invites them into violence. And so, we

begin to see those sorts of things happen. And the more that we focused on elevating girls, we forgot about the boys. And then, and then, anything that boys did was some sort of signal that they were, that they fit into the historic framework of men who were bad and who had done bad things. So when a boy showed aggression, when he couldn't sit still, when he lost his temper, oh, there he goes. He's just like those, those really, really bad patriarchal misogynists from 1920. It's fascinating because I actually heard a state legislator in the state of Washington say this, and I couldn't believe he said it.

We were talking about the boy crisis and how boys are struggling across the board and he said this, he said, well, because men have been historically privileged in the past, we can't really support any programs or policies to help boys now. And he said that. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. So what we're seeing right now is a lot of boys and young men are paying the price of the indiscretions and failures of men from previous generations. And it's really, really tragic to see that. And they're completely lost about what to do. what to do and they don't know where they fit and no one says that they're valuable, that they're needed. No one says that they're, they are worthy of being cared about. And so Jordan Peterson says, Hey, you guys matter. Joe Rogan says, Hey, you guys matter. David Goggins says, Hey, you guys matter. Right? Rollo Tomasi. Hey, you got, you guys matter.

The red pill space. Hey, you guys matter. The white supremacist space. You guys matter. The Hebrew Israelites. You guys matter, right? I mean, I could just name a whole, a whole list of, and that's a spectrum. Each name I'm like, Oh, that one's pretty good. Ooh, that's not good. And that's a blunt, you know, like it's, so you're not saying these are all like on the same page. No, no, but they are, they're all tapping into this void where no one's telling boys and men, not just that they matter, but why they matter and how they matter. And so they're looking, they're kind of searching for some content on that because it doesn't, doesn't exist. And unfortunately they've just been told that because they're, they're male, they're bad.

And I cannot tell you how many times, and we see this now in the data, that boys, young men, when I say young men, I'm talking 15 to 24 year olds, will say that one of the reasons they don't approach women, because 58% of men between the age of 15 and 24 never approached a girl. Not once. Okay.

So why? Because I asked a 22 year old about this. He said what he said to me, he said, the reason I don't do that is because I don't want to be considered a creep or perv, right? I don't want to be considered weird. So I just don't approach them. So the only way they can approach him is to maybe slide in their DMs, right, or maybe do a dating app. So it's kind of created this

state of affairs where guys are afraid to do things because if they do something, they'll be considered toxic, or racist, or, or a misogynist or patriarchal. So they actually do nothing. And then we shame them for doing nothing. I see this a lot, like just in like classic chivalry, like even I, even I don't know what to do anymore. Like, do I open the door for a woman? Is she going to scoff at me? Like, what do you think? I can't open doors, you know, like, or even just yesterday I was on a bus and this older lady had this couple of heavy bags and she was kind of loading them up. And, and I hesitate it like five to 10 years, you know, up until five years ago, I would have jumped up out of my seat, taking her bags,

put them. But now I had so many thoughts going through my head. Like, is she going to be offended at that? Is she going to think I'm taking her bag? Am I going to get accused of assault or something? You know, maybe, you know, but like he came at me or, you know, like, so I said, I hesitated for like a few seconds and then somebody else, you know, helped her out. And then I was like, and she was like, Oh, thank you so much. I was like, gosh, what, what, you know, I don't know. Like, or even open the doors for girls and stuff. I, I, I, I would say sometimes I do sometimes I don't just cause like, I'm just like, I'd read the situation. I'm hesitant. So I'm like, I don't want to be perceived as this like patriarchal misogynist person. And some people might interpret it

that way. You know? What are your thoughts? Like, is that comment? I mean. Well, I mean, I, I, I do the same thing. I mean, I guarantee you if, if, if you ask the average man, he's going to self-regulate just like you said today, and especially if he's a high school or college student or in his twenties, I guarantee he's going to have a whole list of things that he doesn't know what to do because he doesn't, he doesn't want to get accused of something I mean I I do the very same thing if I'm in an elevator with a woman. I'm not small talking I'm not I'm just not gonna happen on my phone and when the door is open

I leave first right every single time because I wanted to think maybe he's following me, you know I just like no no, I'm not looking at you. I'm gonna leave first and if you think I'm rude I guess I'm just going to you. I'm gonna leave first. And if you think I'm rude, I guess I'm just going to have to be rude. So what I don't wanna do is hold the door and say, you know, you go out and I walk behind you and then you get nervous and think it's just a stalker or something.

So door is open, I just leave first. I mean, and those are the sorts of things that guys are having to do. And this is really confusing right now. And this is why they're so drawn to guys who just tell them what to do. And this is really confusing right now. And, and this is why they're so drawn to guys who just tell them what to do, right? So they're they're drawn to the self improvement movement. On YouTube, they're drawn to these dating coats, you

guys who tell them how to date, right, give them eight points on a YouTube video in terms of how to date. They're really, really drawn again to the the Andrew Tate's of of the world and because they just tell them what to do. And then they just they just do that. They trust those guys. And they believe that well, I got to do something because not having direction and not knowing is is is way too debilitating and confusing. So they they they essentially are drawn to this content for some direction because they really just don't know what to do.

I mean, it's so fascinating because I've both heard, and this is in the college space, I've both heard girls complain that guys ask them out all the time, and I've heard them complain that guys don't ask them out Right. And so guys are like, well, what are we supposed to do? I mean should we ask you out or should we not ask you out and they they often don't know those sort of signals aren't really there and and the other thing is that Just sort of just talking about relationships. I think unfortunately a lot of parents have done a, have inadvertently, and this isn't on purpose of course, but sort of dropped the ball on forming their kids

and how to start relationships, right? Teaching you how to flirt, right? How to engage, how to start a relationship, what kinds of things should you do? They're just out there on their own, right? We focus on their schooling, we focus on sports, we focus on hygiene, everything else. But the kind of questions that guys are having and girls are having about relationships, we often wait until they're in one before the advice comes. Instead of saying, hey, if you want a relationship, if you want a good one, these are the sorts of things

that you should do in order to form one. Yeah, that's good, man. Hey friends, if theology in the raw has blessed or challenged you in any significant way, would you consider supporting the show financially? You can do so through Patreon at patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. All the information is in the show notes. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month.

And in doing so, you get access to all kinds of different premium content. And most of all, you just get access to the theology in the raw community. We have all kinds of awesome chats and messages back and forth. And it just, it means the world to us that you support the show as the show has grown. So have all the expenses and all the work that goes into pulling it off. So again, if you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology raw. And I just want to thank my, uh, the people that are already supporting the show, thank you so much for keeping this show not only going, but also thriving. So patreon.com forward slash theology in Iran.

What are your thoughts on Jordan Peterson? I know he's such a cultural, I mean, I will almost an icon. He's a cultural something, right? Cultural signal or? Yeah. I was looking at one of his books on Amazon, the 12 Rules for Life book, and I think it has something like 70,000 reviews. And that was like, how is, I mean, I have a book, it has 10.

I'm like, how did this happen? So Jordan Peterson is a classic example of a Jungian psychologist. And we saw this very same phenomenon happen in the mid-1990s in that first kind of Ms. movement with Sam Kean, who was at Harvard, and Robert Bly, and all those guys. And they were also tapping into these Jungian categories of archetypes. And so, Jordan Peterson, as a Jungian psychologist, is true to form and he basically took what we were talking about in the mid-90s and took that exact same conversation to the present. But

here's what was different, no social media. So what did he do? It was brilliant. He took clips of his class and put them on YouTube. Brilliant. Right. So now everyone could sample in sort of like three to seven minute chunks the applications of Jungian psychology, the use of archetypes and things like that. So guess what? He blew up. Right. Now as Jordan Peterson goes on the psych stuff, I really learn a lot from that. I have been exposed to a lot of Jungian psychology over the years, and I think on the psychology stuff Jordan Peterson is pretty spot on in that Jungian framework. When he leaves psychology, I just kind of ignore him, really. So, he's on this Bible tour. I think he's doing Exodus right now,

or his lecture's on Genesis. I just ignore that because what he's doing is what Carl Jung did, which was instrumentalize the biblical story as utility, as an example, as an archetype of certain principles in Yagin psychology. So Carl Jung, people don't realize this, has a commentary on the book of Job. He does? Yeah, of course he does. Yeah, yes he does. He does, right? So Peterson's not doing anything that Jung didn't do. And I think people are so used to Freud. They're so used to Freud. Yeah. They're so used to the Freudian school

and the Freudian framework that they don't understand that the Jungian school has a long history of practitioners but also theorists that continue to operate. And they tend to operate in really gendered, gendered, gendered spaces. Now, one of the things I did at King's is in a class, cause people were like, oh, Jordan Peterson. I mean, I got the 12 rules of life book and I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

This is right in the book of Proverbs. So this is what I did in class. I had my students read Jordan Peterson's book, the 12 rules of life and the book of Proverbs at the same time. And what was the big aha moment? read Jordan Peterson's book, the 12 rules of life and pro and the book of proverbs at the same time. And what was the big aha moment? And I knew this would happen. He is saying nothing. That's not already in the wisdom literature, nothing. So he has, he has rules like, like do not lie. Yeah. Wow. Don't, don't lie. That's amazing. And so I went to one of his, I went to one

of his, his lectures and he's on say extolling the virtues of being truthful and why telling lies is a really bad thing. And people are taking notes. They're on their phones, you know, they're going crazy. They're just like, oh my gosh, like, I cannot believe the power of not lying. I don't know. Did you hear what he said? He said we shouldn't lie. Oh my God, I can't believe he said that. I mean, did you know that we should lie? Bro, we shouldn't tell lies. I mean, being truthful and honest, right? And being precise in our speech. Can you imagine? He sees this is one of the other rules be precise in your speech and he and people are like Be precise in your speech man, like

Right And I'm thinking and I had the student see this This is already here thousands of years of reflection on this has already been had. So what I basically had them ask is, why is it, well, I asked them this, we reflected on this, why is it that people are drawn to Jordan Peterson

and not the Book of Proverbs? Since the content on some of that life advice is really not that different, right? Like what is it, what is it about it? And essentially, and this is kind of my own conjecture is that what Jordan Peterson is really good at is application of why those things matter, right? Which is our principle in preaching, right?

The main thing your sermon should do is be applicable. People need to see on the ground where it matters. The Africans refer to it as foot on the ground theology, right? So, when people aren't able to read the scriptures for themselves and then immediately know how it applies in their life. It seems that the biblical narrative is distant and far away. And I think potentially people are in context where their practical applications are not very apparent or they just don't get them. So, this is what I see. When I see young men drawn to Jordan Peterson, drawn to Rillo Tomasi, drawn to David Goggins, here's the difference, and I rant about this at conferences. It is immediately applicable. They'll watch a four minute YouTube video and then that day there's a context for them to do it because they're given really specific things to do and Unfortunately in a lot of Evan in the evangelical world giving people thing to do has been somehow poo pooed is legalism

Right. And so so this is what's happened inadvertently What we need what we need boy what we need young men and boys to do is just understand the gospel Know the gospel because anything if you try to get them to do anything, oh whoa whoa, hold on! You're putting, whoa, whoa, hold on! You're putting the imperative in front of the indicative. I can't do that. Can't do that. We're gonna have a whole conference about why the indicative must come before the imperative. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me, dude. Like, have you ever read this Bible book? I mean, it's a both-and. It's not like step one and then step two, and they're so—and what happened, this is so tragic. Because there's been so much of an emphasis

on this framework that you can't tell people to do anything unless they get the gospel right, can't tell people to do anything unless they get the gospel right, has basically left a whole generation of boys and men lost. Because what they need is very clear direction, but they also need that direction situated and explained in the appropriate context to know why and how it matters, and to not have necessarily their identities defined by their success or failure at doing those things. That's really more the issue, right? And so what do these YouTube self-improvement guys do? There's a guy named Hamza Ahmed. He's got about, I haven't looked recently,

but maybe two million subscribers. I stumbled upon him when he had maybe 50,000. In the span of, and I'm not exaggerating, three or four years, he's gone, he's risen. And what's Hamza Ahmed doing? He's giving them extremely practical wisdom on how to do things like manage your money, how to stop, how to break your porn addiction, how to break

your video game addiction, how to work out, how to talk to girls. This practical stuff. And so Jordan Peterson is incredibly practical when he does that Jungian psychology stuff. Now I haven't really sampled all of the biblical stuff. I have heard that on his most recent tour, he's a bit more esoteric and a lot less applicable. But in those early days, he would just say, and this is one of the things that I would show with videos in class and watch students react. You know, he says things like this. You can't bend the morality that's in the universe. He would just say stuff like that, just classical, young and stuff.

And he says this, I've never seen anybody get away with anything ever. He said in his counseling practice, I've never in my life seen anybody get away with anything ever. It eventually catches up with you and undermines you. And I'm like, that's exactly right. In fact, the Bible says that too. Right? So when he tells guys, he says, guys, listen, you have to be honest in your dealings with people. Right? You can't cheat them. You can't be a scoundrel because you will not get away with it. So he'll give an example. When you're at work, do this. When you're with your spouse, do that, right? So he makes it really, really concrete.

And that level of applicability, where they can see where and how it matters, I think a lot of young men are not experiencing that, that level of applicability in their churches because their churches are just so incapacitated by the fact that they have to get their theology right first, which is exactly what Jesus didn't do. The disciples didn't get it until after the resurrection, maybe. No, I'm kidding. But like, the whole time Jesus was with them, they didn't get it.

But what did he do? Even with jacked up and impartial theology, he sent them out jacked up and impartial theology, he sent them out to heal the sick and to cast out demons. They were busy doing the work, even though they didn't understand it completely. And we don't treat boys and young men that way. And unfortunately, I think there's been some distance that's been introduced between what the Bible says and how to live and these, and these influencers are filling, filling that gap. I think that's a great, yeah. I love that you're looking at not just the, the narrow specifics of what maybe Jordan Peterson's saying, but the, the what's, what's, let's step back and look at how can we understand this cultural moment and why he's having maybe

such an impact. And it's coming waves. For me, I see like two different Jordan Petersons. There's the old one and the new one old one. I was intrigued by it. I thought he, yeah, more out that, you know, I listened to a lot of like long form interviews, you know, where he, where his humanity really came out. Seems like a really genuine, honest person. You like I'm genuinely curious, you know, and honest with where he's at with things and, and his self help stuff that I've read most of the 12 rules for life. And it's like, cause I, you know, he got thrown into so much controversy with the, with the transgender stuff. And I was, I think that was unfortunate because when people think of him, a lot of people

think it's just that, well, that was something he was kind of drawn into and he was trying to figure out how to navigate that. But he's primarily a union self-help guru. And a lot of the stuff he said, 12 rules for life. A lot of it's just like, like you said, I was like, this is all good stuff. It's not new, but it's yeah, it's great. But then there's a newer Jordan Peterson. Once he went to like the daily wire and he just seems a lot more angry, more just militant ish. I don't know. I just, it just feels kind of different now, but, but I'm more interested in how can a guy go and give a two and a half hour lecture on a short passage in the old Testament and thousands of people, most of whom are even religious will pay money

to go hear that. I'm more interested in that in a day when preachers are like, you know, how can I get people to attend church more than once, maybe twice a month? How can I keep them engaged during my 30 minute sermon? And these are Christians. So how can we learn? What is he doing? And he, he is practical, but he he's also incredibly yeah. Esoteric in depth. I mean, I listened to one on the flood he did years ago and he spent like two hours of introductory introductory material. It was a fight. It was one of the funniest lines I've heard. You know, he's like, he's going on and on and on and on. And it was like, you know, he's already two hours in. He's like, all right.

So that's all introduction. Now let's get to the, you know, can you imagine? And he's got people paying money to hear in whether he greets it or not. It's a, it's an incredibly academic ish lecture on the Bible. So what, what can Christian preachers preaching to people who actually say they want to hear, you know, who are believe this stuff? What's he doing that we're not doing? You know? Yeah, that's, that's a great question. One, one of the things I hear from, from young men in particular is they, they believe that Jordan Peterson cares about them. I would a hundred percent agree. If you listen to his long form conversations and I know some people just don't like them and whatever, but like it's, you listen to his long form conversations and he, I think he's a genuine, I, yeah, I think if he's in

a room, I think he's going to listen to anything you have to say genuinely. Yeah. So whenever I, whenever I go to college campuses and speaks of fraternities now, one of the, one of the comments I always get from these guys is, thank you for caring about us. And I was like, wait, what? And at first it kind of shook me. But they'll say things like, man, nobody talks to us. Because I try to encourage them to be great men.

It's like, well, no one talks to us like this. They feel completely abandoned. Like, no one cares about us. Like, no one cares about us. And that's really the, we talked about toxic masculinity earlier. I think that's part of the signal they've been receiving, is that no one cares about us. And that's really the, we talked about toxic masculinity earlier, I think that's part of the signal they've been receiving is that no one cares,

no one cares what happens to us. No one cares about us, no one cares about our struggles, our pain, our issues, no one cares about us. So what am I gonna do? I'm just gonna resign and play video games, like a porn, smoke weed, and maybe door dash, right? Cause no one really cares about me. So they act like no one cares about them but Jordan Peterson community case that

he cares about them and I I I also think that a lot of evangelicals have been have have unfortunately listened to two months corporate BS about what people want yeah right like listening these marketing gurus and these business guys like hey your servants you're serving, you shouldn't talk to people for more than 20 minutes. You need to have slides. You've got to have, you know, you got to make them laugh. So these pastors like comedians and stuff like that, and that whole thing's a big, a

big show. You can't on stage, you can't have a pulpit. And I'm like, this is just so stupid when that when the guys when the speakers that are drawing the Biggest audiences are all long form. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, right? They're long form people are dying for deep content and what Jordan Peterson does is he gives deep content, but also makes it applicable and it's long form. I think people also respect him because he's smart. Yeah.

Right? And they can tell that they trust him because he's smart. And we began to see this, I'm not saying this to be offensive. It's just historical. But in the 1840s, we saw a shift in who went to seminary in America. Before the 1840s, it was really prestigious to be a minister, right? We know the Ivy League started as minister training institutions. Well, right where the industrial

revolution began to really pick up steam, no pun intended. A lot of really sharp, competent, smart men, the brain drain went there. It went to building things, creating things, et cetera. Beginning around the 1840s, we began to see men that weren't as competent or as analytical enter in a seminary. So the pastorate became a sort of, became a different type of leader. And so it's pretty rare. I think Tim Keller was one of those exceptions, just pretty rare that you see men, young men who are like, oh, my pastor is brilliant, I wanna be like him. Cause he's really smart, he reads a lot of books, he's really, really impressive.

And I mean, I don't know a lot of young guys who say, if I asked them like, name a man that you wanna be like, they would name a pastor. Right? But what happens? Cause I mean, when they go to seminary and they want to be like their seminary professors, okay, they want to go get a PhD, and they come back and teach seminary, etc. But I think a lot of young guys, they see Jordan Peterson. He's smart,

he's competent, he knows his stuff, he has a stage presence, and he's compassionate. And they're like, I want to be like that. I trust what he says. And I will listen to him as long as I need to listen to him to get some, some really practical nuggets to help me, help me improve my life because I believe that this man cares about me and people, people like me. That's a great analysis. Real quick. I know we're out of time. What should a Christian parent, leader pastor take away from this? Like what, what's the Christian response? I know we've kind of gone in various directions, but what is the Christian response to this over for lack of a better terms, overcorrection maybe against kind of masculinity. Yeah, so what it seems that boys and young men need

is a third space that's not home, that's not school, where older men are forming them, where they're cared about, where they're listened to, where they're challenged to do hard things, where they have a space where they can ask the quote unquote dumb questions, where they have a space where they can bring their struggles and troubles. And they have a community of adults that care about them. One of the things that we're seeing right now emerge in some of the psych data about adolescence is that the most predictive variable in thriving and happiness for young adults is

if they had a network of older adults who cared about them when they were when they were pre teens and teens. Right. So what they really need, they don't need more travel sports, they don't need more nonprofit volunteer hours. What they need are relationships. They need they need people other than their parents who care about them individually and deeply. They need mentors, they need coaches. I'm reading this book right now called Never Enough, which is about raising kids in high achievement culture. And this one group of moms just decided with these girls in Palo Alto, California, that each girl has five moms

to serve as a 911 call right five moms each girl gets five adult women that they can talk to you about stress about dating about grades about whatever you're right drugs and alcohol whatever they have five moms they can call on that's the level of engagement and interaction and relational formation that our teens really need to thrive. This idea that they need a lot of good peers on one hand is right,

but what really leads to long-term thriving, what the data is really clear about, is adults. They need to be deeply embedded in an adult community. And so what parents and pastors and leaders can do, particularly in a church context, and this is really, really controversial, I would say that what they need to do is upend their youth ministries

or maybe dismantle them completely and think about, how do we integrate our pre-teens and teens into relationships with everybody else in the church? Isolating them from adults is actually undermining their long-term thriving, both spiritually, emotionally, etc. And this is really low-hanging fruit. I mean, this is low-hanging fruit, right? If you have a men's retreat, bring the boys on it. If you have a women's retreat, bring the girls, right? If there's a small group, the teens should be a part of that. They shouldn't be separated from that. Those are the things. So, what I'm seeing when I go around the country and talk, and this is, again, this is not rocket

science, is that the boys just need to know that they're cared about. And they need to experience that in multiple ways, both inside their home and outside of it in a community. And I just think the church is the best place for boys to be celebrated, to be, to be cared about, to know that they're missed, to know that they have value and, and to know that, that their presence is miss is is felt, sorry, that their absence is, is felt at their presence really does bring a difference. And there's nothing better than to have a group of adults to actually do that. Real quick. I have to ask this question because this is really relevant for me. Non-parental other adults is, are there just limitations on how much the parent can pour into their

kid or the certain it's just inevitable that your kid is going to want to maybe share things with other adults and not with their parents, even if your parental relationship is just as perfect as it can be. Yeah, I've read one book by Stephen Bulldap, and I think the book is called How to Raise a Boy. He has a whole chapter in there on why parents need to choose a mentor for their son and how good that is. Now that naturally happens in things like sports, right? It's probably a coach or something like that. It naturally happens in something maybe like Boy Scouts, even in

band. It could be the band teacher, you know, something like that. But yeah, every every boy needs a mentor. He needs somebody else that's not parents to basically reaffirm exactly what the parents are teaching. Now this has happened to me for years and years and years and years. I'll have a student come to my office and tell me something. I'll tell them, hey that's a bad idea you should do that and they'll be like, uh-huh, huh, wow. My parent was right on the wall. Guess what? That's what my mom said. I'm like, well your mom is right. Orhuh, huh, wow. My parent was right on the wall. Guess what? That's what my mom said. I'm like, well, your mom is right. Right? Or like, huh, that's what my dad said. So I've got several friends of mine

where I've been able to form some really close relationships with their kids, right? So sometimes I'll get a phone call from one of my friends' kids in high school or college. We'll just talk about stuff, right? Now, because I'm friends with their parents, I'm not going to tell them anything that their parents aren't going to tell them, right? But they have another person, another voice, another trustworthy context space in which they can share and ask questions. Because the context of relationships is a bit different,

the shame potential, right? The level of trust, is punishment going to come? Those are the things are really changed, are really different. But yes, I mean, and this goes back to Christian Smith's early work that pre-teens and teens need a network of adults, a network of adults. And in previous generations where we weren't, we weren't isolated in the suburbs with fences

and garages when we lived in dense communities and when we lived in close proximity to our family members. That a hundred years ago those other adults would have naturally been uncles, cousins, grandparents, right? It was just a part of how we live, but now because we chase careers and we live in big gated communities and you don't know your neighbor, etc., it's really become incumbent upon churches and parents and leaders to provide a network of adults that provides a sense of mattering for kids. It is absolutely vital,

even if your relationship with your kids is fantastic. One last point here for me is that some of the best results that I've seen in the mentoring I've done over the last 25 years or so has actually been with boys and young men who were close to their fathers. Oh, wow. It's yielded unbelievable adult results. And it's not because I was filling a void, but I was another champion of them and reinforcing the sorts of things that they got that they got from home. And those have been some of the greatest long term results that I've seen in the lives of men. And I've been I've been doing this since 1999. And

I've been trying with the same group of guys and the ones who were who were doing exceptional They also had great relationships with their dads I've just come alongside to support and champion those those very same things So if you're a parent of a teen or a preteen, it's a really really good idea for you all this parents to choose someone else to Mentor you might use the phrase disciple, or to make contributions to the formation of your children.

And the parents need to be the one to do that. We used to have this role of God parent. This is what God mothers and God fathers were actually designed to do. And, and, and a lot of traditions, we've moved away from that, but that's the role that, that God fathers and God mothers were supposed to take. Anthony, thank you so much for being on theology and raw. This has been a fascinating conversation. Where can people find you and your work? Just Google me. I am, you can, you can Google me Google me and put the word Twitter in there or X.

I'm there. You can also Google me and the word website. You just Google Anthony Bradley and website and it will pop up. I love when people ask me, so where can people buy your books? I'm like, what year is this? Like really? I know. I know. I know. I know. Yeah. You can just Google my name just, you can Google my name, you can find the people that love me and the people that hate me that way as well. Definitely have both, as we all do. Well, thanks again for being on the show, man. Really appreciate you. Thanks for having me. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.