Foreign.

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.

New episodes release every Friday.

My guest this week is Dr.

Jared Longshore.

He is the Associate Pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, the Dean of New St.

Andrews College, the author of the Case for the Christian Family, a Husband, Father, and a bunch of other things that we'll get to in a moment.

Now, I want to kick off this introduction with a quote from a book and as I read it, I want you to take a guess when it was written.

All right, here we go.

How common is it to see young men with big heads, high minded and impatient of any counsel?

How often they're rude and uncourteous to everyone around them thinking they're not valued as they deserve?

How often they won't even stop to listen to a hint from an older person?

They think they know everything.

They're full of conceit about their own wisdom.

They think elderly people, especially their relatives, are stupid, dull and slow.

They want no teaching themselves.

They understand all things already.

It almost makes them angry to be spoken to like young horses.

They can't bear the least controlled.

They must be independent and have their own way.

They seem to think like those job mentioned.

You are the people and wisdom will die with you and all this is pride.

End quote.

So when do you think this was written?

If that's what you're thinking, you'd be wrong.

It's from Thoughts for Young Men by J.C.

But man, Ryle could have been writing today because young Christian men are in trouble and they've gotten themselves there.

Just a quick scroll through X and my mentions shows a generation of young guys who despise their fathers or any older men in authority positions.

These young men have decided that they can wrap fundamentally boyish behavior and memes, quips, verbal jabs and inside jokes, sprinkle a couple Bible verses on top with some muscled up crusader AI artwork and call that Christian.

And and you know what?

More than a few men with pastor in their title are egging them on.

Why?

Because muh effeminate church?

Because ma boomers, because muh feminism.

And now it's increasingly because muh Jews and ma Israel.

Now I could tell you what I think about all that, but I'd rather show you because to me it looks a whole lot like Adam's tragic pointing in the garden after eating that forbidden fruit, Adam is standing there utterly naked, hiding, being called out like a child by the Creator who breathed life into his very nostrils.

When Adam opened his eyes for the first time, God's face was literally right there.

And the only response Adam can come up with for his undeceived sin is but what about her?

And guys haven't stopped pointing since.

So now here we are today, with men pointing fingers at their father's failures.

And yeah, fair enough, many boomers kind of drop the civilizational ball and they pointed at their menal veteran dads too, by the way.

But all that doesn't mean that standards for men's behavior have gone out the window because of instead of Muh Eve, we now have ma dad.

And I'm not a fan.

So earlier this year I decided to find out if there actually was a book that spoke to timeless standards for the Christian life.

And I found J.C.

ryall's holiness, which I first heard Pastor Jeff Durbin recommend from the pulpit at Apologia Church as a book he reads every single year.

Now, holiness, or being set apart, that's a word we don't hear much anymore.

Because not only is the world very much with us, Christians are very much with the world.

Whether it's getting caught up in social media trends, drowning in news headlines, or binging movies from crumbling Los Angeles, many Christians have just forgotten that they're called to be set apart.

And so have young men because they've taken giant hits of the manosphere, the red pill, and 4chan, with all of their quips, jabs and memes to become just as worldly as those they claim to fight against, just in a more Internet friendly way.

So I thought Holiness would be the perfect remedy to point to and say, guys, you're probably not going to like this, but there actually is a standard that you're accountable to, totally independent of your father's failures.

Sorry, not sorry.

Which brings me back to my guest.

This week I picked up the Canon Press edition of Holiness and and saw that Dr.

Jared Longshore had written the introduction.

So I thought, great, here's a chance to read Ryle, all 460 pages of holiness, plus another 70 pages of thoughts for young men and have a solid chat with a good man about it.

But you know what they say, people make plans and God laughs.

Because what actually happened was something very different.

Dr.

Longshore and I didn't talk about Ryle nearly as much as I thought we would.

Instead, we got into Jared's background, his upbringing, his young Adult years working construction in Florida, no less, plus his college athletic achievements and more.

And I realized, here's a man whose voice I think young guys really need to hear, because it's hard to argue with Jared's credentials on these topics.

And one principle of this podcast has always been don't listen to me, or take my word for it, listen to the men and women who actually know and make up your own mind.

Because I want you, young man, listening right now to know that I hear you.

I had the chance to throw some pitches Dr.

Longshore's way and see what he'd do with them.

I asked him questions, trying to mimic the exact tone and language I've heard guys ask me.

And typical of an experienced pastor who shepherds young men instead of just exhorting them like I do, he answered differently and honestly better than I would have.

So if I could have it all my way, what I'd want is for you to listen to this interview, really consider Dr.

Longshore's words, then go read his introduction to Holiness.

And just keep reading, because holiness is a remarkable work, like drinking from a fire hydrant of Christian virtue that someone just cracked open.

It's marvelous, and I think every believer should read it at least once.

You'll see why Pastor Jeff Durbin recommends it so highly and why Pastor Jared Longshore wrote the introduction and even named his son Ryle.

If this is your first time enjoying the Will Spencer Podcast, welcome.

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And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, the Associate Pastor at Christchurch in Moscow, Idaho, and the Dean of New St.

Andrews College, Dr.

Jared Longshore.

Pastor Jared Longshore, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Very glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Before we dive into today's subject, I just want to thank you for your book, the Case for the Christian Family that was incredibly formative for me as I found my way to a more covenantal way of thinking.

So just thank you for that book.

We're not going to talk about it today, but I just wanted to thank you for that book up front.

Yeah, you bet.

It was my delight to write it and glad that it.

It's done.

Done something productive.

I think it's probably affected more than me as well.

Yeah, yeah, it's been, I've been pleased with the feedback on that.

Oh, praise God.

So today we're going to talk about a couple books by J.C.

ryle.

First, we have Holiness and we have Thoughts for Thoughts for Young Men.

And just to set the stage for the audience, I'll say more about.

I will have said more about this in the introduction.

There seems to be a discussion right now about how young men are supposed to be conducting themselves, particularly online and in the reform sphere.

And they seem to have adopted a code of conduct that I don't think represents the best practices of the Christian faith.

And so I would like to turn to some of our forefathers in the faith, particularly J.C.

ryle, who had some strong words for men.

So I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you about this.

Yeah, me too.

It's certainly pertinent.

So before we dive into jcrel, I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about your background.

As I mentioned earlier, I've listened to a bunch of podcasts with you, but I don't think I've ever heard you talk about how you ended up in Moscow, your background and all of that.

Yeah, so I am a born and raised Floridian, which is about as far away from Idaho as you can get.

It's the same shape of the states, just turned upside down, which is kind of funny and entirely different climate.

But I was down there in Florida, Central Florida, about an hour south of Orlando, is where I spent, say the first, near nearly 20 years of my life.

Was born and raised in a Christian home.

Christian parents went to church every Sunday.

We, you know, we would be at church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, all that kind of thing.

It was a Southern Baptist church and my father was a general contractor, so grew up with working with him every summer from third grade through 10th grade when I went to work for a lumber yard in my 11th and 12th grade years.

But just with dad in Florida sweating it out on, on some construction site somewhere, that did great for my, you know, for my youth and showing me just how weak of a man I was.

Lessons I needed to learn.

Big sports player growing up, so played football, baseball, soccer, those are my three sports.

Played baseball in college for a couple years before I decided that I would.

I was not going to make it to the major leagues and decided to hang up the cleats and move down to southwest Florida.

So got southwest Florida, finished up college, got married to my wife Heather right out of college.

And then I took one term off.

I started working at a church right away.

So I was like 22 years old and working at a church, which is pretty wild and loved those guys down there.

It was a great time.

I was there for about four or five years before planting a church down in southwest Florida.

But I took a term off of school right out of college and then started seminary right away.

So I did a Master's of Divinity degree, started at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and then I went to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary up in Louisville, Kentucky.

But I traveled back and forth from Florida, so I never did that seminary life and, and still, still pretty grateful for that.

I was grateful to be in ministry and be trained while I was kind of in the first five years of my ministry and Heather and I had a bunch of kids during that time.

And then I, then I went and did a PhD.

So I basically just continued, finished the master's and then went right into the PhD also at Southern Seminary.

Kept flying back and forth for classes and whatnot.

I think that's around the time I finished with the PhD and had been in ministry then in southwest Florida at three different churches for I don't know how long that was 15 years or something like that.

And, and we have seven kids.

So then we moved to Moscow.

So we moved to Moscow just over three years ago.

And that's a big deal for a born and raised Floridian.

My wife Heather is also born and raised Floridian.

We have lots of family in central Florida, great folks and all that.

We were living in southwest Florida about an hour and a half away, but.

And we'd been there for like 17, 20 years or something.

But to move all the way across the country is wild now.

A lot of things were fitting, obviously I, so I had a PhD.

So I am the Dean at New St.

Andrews College and I'm a Fellow of Theology here.

So I teach a freshman theology class and then dean is basically kind of running the faculty, all that kind of stuff, doing administration, dealing with students that when things come up they need to be handled, that kind of stuff.

And so I was quite pretty well suited to that job.

It's fairly pastoral to be a dean.

And so that's, that's kind of like half of my job.

The other half is being a minister at Christchurch here in Moscow.

So I Get to shoot back and forth across the street between NSA and Christchurch offices here.

We've been doing that for three years.

And our kids are in Logos School out here, which is K through 12 classical Christian school.

So we have seven kids in that school.

And at least at this time, this is my second year actually teaching seniors there.

So I just decided to do that too, to try to invest in that institution, which is pretty wild.

So having a lot of fun with it.

Moving to family all across the nation was a lot of fun and a big story.

Just kind of a big part of manhood.

Knowing the right thing to do and being able to do it, obviously, that was hard.

It was risky.

There was kind of this sense of like, okay, the Lord's leading you here.

But it was also a reminder that, like, when Abraham.

When God came to Abraham and told him to leave the land that he knew and go to this other land, Abraham hadn't seen it yet.

You know, it's like, you didn't know.

You don't know what it's going to be like.

And it's not all peaches and cream.

Like, there's going to be people that don't like it.

You know, you're going to have some difficulties.

It's going to be hard to start over, all of those kinds of things.

Uh, so I found those to be, like, really interesting on the manhood front and, like, what it really means to be a man, to lead a family, to provide for a family, to protect a family, to actually do good in the world.

And I would say that that kind of probably my upbringing with the construction and then a lot of football and, you know, a pretty ministry, you see, I kind of see everybody's failures.

And raising seven kids is a lot of work and wonderful and lovely and just sacrificing all that kind of stuff.

And then they move across the country.

All that has put me in a weird position with, like, the manosphere young man, Andrew Tate, the little tiny child boy.

Like, I don't really.

I don't.

Yeah, I really don't have much time.

I want to, like, help.

I want to help the dudes.

You didn't ask me to go here, but I'll kind of go here.

Like, I want to help.

I want to help dudes.

I remember I wrote a piece maybe two years ago on my blog called Something about.

I was joking.

I made a joke about workout dudes calling each other kings.

I noticed some of these guys were doing this.

They were working out.

They were calling each other kings and stuff.

And Posting pictures of themselves.

And I was like, man.

I mean, when I was in high school, when I was in high school, I played football and our football.

We're so country down there in Florida that they found a way.

We were.

We had four periods in high school.

They went to, like a four period schedule.

So you imagine they're long, they cover like the whole day.

They found a way to get every guy on the football team in fourth period gym.

So we left.

We would.

We would finish lunch and go to the gym to work out for like two hours and then go to practice.

So I.

We spent a lot of time in the gym.

And I know gym culture's great.

Like, you're 18 years old, you're lifting weights, and you're strong, and you're being stupid and funny.

But the king thing was so weird to me.

Like, the king was like, to call each other kings, like on the Internet while posting pictures.

It just seemed effeminate to me.

And I was joking.

I mean, I'm joking.

I'm like, dude, I mean, I get it.

I would joke if I were in there, I'm sure whatever the king culture would be.

But I remember the interest I got was like, very.

The response I got was equally effeminate.

It was, like, actually upset.

It wasn't like, joking like, like, hey, stop being gay.

It was.

It was like, you know, really upset that we can't call each other kings and put flaming emoticons on our workout pictures.

I just thought it was really funny.

And I thought that was my first introduction into, like, realizing I'm older now.

It's like, oh, shoot, you know, I just turned 40.

And like, the guys, there's a.

There's a difference there that I'm actually trying to understand.

And I do want to help guys that are humble and hard working.

I don't want to help.

I don't really have a lot of time for the silly boys.

So that's a 2 cents on me getting introduced to this.

I really don't get, and I'm sure this is a problem with me, I don't get why anyone would be interested in Andrew Tate.

I don't.

I don't actually even understand it.

So I get like, yeah, well, we don't have.

We didn't have.

But I'm like, whatever.

And like, and if you are, I'm kind of like, I'm not like, all right, like, I want to shepherd and help, but I also think, like, if you're interested in Andrew Tate, man, it's like you like, along like you need what you need to do like John 3:16.

So.

Yeah, well, having come up through the manosphere, we.

Which is sort of how I came into content creation.

I think there's a lot of different dimensions to the Andrew Tate phenomenon.

One of them is definitely that he's an avatar for young men's frustration.

So the thing of your upbringing that stands out to me is that you were in a community of like minded boys and men as you came up playing sports with your father.

That was just part of your upbringing.

Boys don't really have that so much anymore.

And so they express, they express their, the, the sort of masculine teasing.

They do it online where they live most of their lives nowadays.

And so everything gets projected through this online kind of channel.

And so when you're frustrated with the world and you can't actually do anything about it or you believe you can't do anything about it, here's a figure who's paraded in front of you like the shadow on the cave wall and Plato's the cave.

And pe.

Boys get fixated on that.

And by boys, I mean adult men as well get fixated on this as the avatar for their frustration as opposed to channeling that anger into some righteous work in their, in their everyday lives.

That's, that's what we, I think we don't see.

Yeah, that is like.

I mean, so ryle, you know, J.C.

r.

I actually named one of my kids Ry.

So I got a, I got my fourth.

My fourth son is named Ryle.

He was an athlete.

And if you read his work.

What's.

What I, what I like about holiness is just like, it's just direct.

And so it's just everything is just, it's more.

There's a problem like with military.

You can have like a too strict of a, of a way about you.

But very much sports, sport culture coaches like do this.

And so I'm thinking all these guys.

Yeah, I mean Raya would be a great antidote to what they're dealing with because it actually you would be far less frustrated if you went and did something hard like just go.

I actually, I've got a book that's coming out probably in a couple weeks that is called man for the Job.

And it's just like I just wrote like fictional letters to a nephew letters and I made up some nephew named Leo who is.

Was a neighbor of mine and in Fort Myers, Florida.

And I'm just trying to address what kind of men.

How do you actually become the kind of men you need?

And right at the outset of this book, the first chapter is, you actually won't be able to do this apart from enrolling into organizations that will require you to act like a man.

So you can't do it on your own.

You definitely can't do it.

So if you're not in any of those entities.

Everything that I have become, I've become by working with my father, by being on football teams and wanting to quit.

Like every year.

I mean, football was so hard, I wanted to quit every year.

I remember my father said, like, I was probably like 11th grade.

I'm like, I'm just thinking, like, think I might take a break, dad.

And he's like, yeah, it's great.

I mean, you could do that, you know, I mean, you'll be going to do construction.

Like, if you, you know, you're like, you're not going to come home at 3:00 every day.

Like, that's not going to happen.

And I was like, oh, construct.

You know what?

I think football, football's kind of nice.

I said, I was thinking about.

Football's great, actually.

I love football.

And like, I know that this is that weird thing.

Like, this is why, like, people don't discipline small children and then they want to get mad at like older children.

It's like, but dude, like you're like a, even a, even a 13 year old boy.

It's not a bastion of virtue and fortitude and discipline.

Like, he's just not.

So you have to have other, you have to have a structure that's requiring you to do it.

So until you enroll in those structures, you know, you're, you're just dead meat.

And when you mentioned the online part of this, I imagine goodness, that's going to be tenfold.

Like, I can see that.

Yeah.

If you're actually still not enrolling in the structures and you're spending a lot of time on the Internet, you're doomed.

Well, the online actually provides a lot of pseudo structures.

So that's the part of Andrew Tate's success.

And there's lots of aspects to it.

Was his group the war room.

And so the war room was a heavily disciplined and structured instructional training program and sort of men's club.

And so young men could buy into the war room at various levels and make millions of dollars for Andrew Tate.

But that provided them a sort of pseudo family, a pseudo sports team, a pseudo set of coaches who could them.

The structure that they didn't, the structure they didn't have in their household growing up or in their childhood anywhere like what you had.

And so that's a lot of what Andrew Tate provided.

That's a lot of what the manosphere provided.

You know, lost and aimless boys who could not find a place to belong and be part of a team anywhere.

And unfortunately, these structures become cults of personality, and they exploit the young men far more than they actually disciple them.

I didn't know that there was that kind of like a membership club you could get into.

Oh, yeah, which man.

I mean, that brings in this whole.

I still have, obviously, tons of questions about technology, and you're not going to get any of that in Ryle.

Ryle's just going to tell you how to live a righteous life in holiness, practical holiness.

But the whole question of online stuff, I mean.

I mean, we're doing a podcast right now, right?

People are going to listen to this podcast, and they're.

We want them to be helped.

But online communities, you know, this kind of disembodied deal when you.

So if you're like a young guy, here's.

Here's what I'd want to tell them.

Like, you have two problems with online communities.

Even if they're war rooms or they're.

You know, if you had a healthy version of Andrew Tate, even you would still have this problem.

And Andrew Tate's not a healthy version.

But if you had a healthy version, when you log into these kind of things or whatever, number one, it's disembodied.

Now, you might be like, well, but I'm working out.

Yeah, okay.

But you're not doing it, like, with anyone.

So you're not coming into contact with others physically.

So there's an individual problem.

You are isolated, and there's a lack of the body problem.

And particularly for males, I mean, the same for females.

But, you know, like, you actually have to be around humans, like, around people in order to.

In order to actually be a man, to mature, to grow in godliness, holiness.

So, yeah, the online tech stuff, living there is going to create all kinds of problems.

Yeah, I mean, the.

The disembodied community, another part of it is you can't actually look in a man's eyes.

You can't see him every week.

You have no idea who this person really is because your interactions with him are through text or maybe through a zoom call.

You know, you can put anything outside the frame, but to be in the physical room with a man or a group of men, you get a much better sense of who.

Who these men are and who you're associated with.

And online Communities are.

I mean, someone can be anyone online.

And so you have a bunch of fakers, you have a bunch of liars, you have a bunch of people that are good at projecting an image.

And this is just online, period.

This is not real male community.

And I think a number of people have said recently, maybe might have even been you, that online community is a supplement, not a substitute.

But a lot of men are using it exclusively as a supplement for any real world community.

Yeah, that's weird.

It's.

I don't really know what to do with it.

I sign, I guess, obviously, I mean I'm.

I'm doing a podcast right now.

I write a blog, I read stuff on.

So I'm not against content production at all.

But in Lordship, that's our freshman theology course out here.

One of the books that I have students read is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

So it's kind of an old classic about.

There is something, it's weirdly limiting of what you can communicate.

I mean, the apostle Paul talks about this in his letters.

I would rather be there in person.

So at least if you're aware of its limitations.

I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't use it at all.

You're gonna, it's done great work for finding certain doctrines.

So yes to content production.

But you as a man, like you'll need to enroll in actual organizations.

I'm not against like membership stuff.

You know, pay, Spotify every month to listen to their music.

And that's like you kind of have this membership idea, but those do have to be minimal.

Get content from the Internet, great.

But like live in the world, go get a job.

There is in the reason it's so important.

There's no other way to do it.

Like, I really don't think you can.

I don't, I don't think it can.

You can actually mature and become a man apart from being in those kinds of physical associations.

So it's sports, sports club, you know, boxing club, an actual job, enrolling college, those kinds of things.

And I think the important part about that is a lot of these communities that men self select into have a tendency to excuse their own personal pet sins or weaknesses.

Like, I'm going to go find a group of guys that fits perfectly, that doesn't challenge me and make me uncomfortable in this particular way, which might be the exact way that he needs to grow.

And so men, through their, through their choices of associations as opposed to joining something like a church, they're going to find a situation where it's like, great, I'm good here and I can become this kind of guy and I can ignore this other part of myself that maybe I need to work on, but all the other guys, we collaborate to ignore those parts of ourselves.

Yeah, that's a.

Oh, man.

You use the word self select, which is like a.

It's like a.

You've.

You've raised an issue in my mind.

One, one.

A bugbear.

Like, so what I would.

What I want to tell the young fella is you.

The idea.

Another thing that your modern world gives you the ability to do is to self select is to claim that the only, the only associations that mean anything to me are those which I voluntarily entered.

Right.

So.

So you're.

What's.

What's happening is like your whole world is being conditioned in a certain way.

You think voluntary association is where it's at.

And we.

So in, in the three main spheres of life, church, state, and family, we now have like, policies that make you think this is the way that it works.

You know, like, you, you think you voluntarily have joined a church.

You think you have voluntarily entered into citizenship in a nation.

You could say things like, not my president, or you think you have voluntarily entered into, like, marriage and voluntarily entered into having children.

So this kind of goes weirdly deep.

You mentioned going more covenantal, so I wrote the book on covenant family.

But you have like, if you grow up in any kind of infant baptism tradition, the kid didn't voluntarily enter.

The kid just, voila.

He is raised within a context that was pressed upon him, that was given to him, and therefore he's actually conditioned to just think that way.

It would be radical to think that the significance of my, my church community is somehow conditioned upon my voluntary agreement to enter into this community.

And so guys are walking around with that all the time, and so they're like, well, you know, if the, if the guy doesn't, if I don't like what he's saying, then I'm just going to leave.

Right, okay, well, if you can do that in your church, which is far more important than whatever little club you joined, you know, your club's not.

Your club sucks is what it does.

Like, it's just not.

It's not worth anything.

It's like.

And same thing with family.

Well, don't you take vows in marriage?

Well, yeah, you take vows, but it's actually not just a matter of vows.

God is the one who actually binds you together.

And you could have two dudes go make those vows and nothing happens.

It's not a marriage.

So what does that signal to you?

But they said the same thing they were both committed to.

They both voluntarily agreed to be in this association.

Well, it doesn't matter.

There's no association that exists.

There is no entity that exists because you live in a world that's like that and you actually need to.

So the young guy needs to realize, like, that's the world he lives in.

Now.

Some of them are voluntary.

You voluntarily choose to join the boxing club or whatever.

But, like, even as a man, like, as a human being, you live in a world where you have certain relationships that are incumbent upon you and you didn't choose them.

And you're actually supposed to learn to, like, be a man in those.

What does it mean to be a man in those?

Because now you're like, well, I don't like what's going on in my family.

Well, you're like, great, fix it.

Like, because it's there.

Like, it's.

God gave it to you and it's there and you need to fix it.

So, yeah, there you go.

Do you think that this is a byproduct of our unique American individualism that we've experienced over the past, say, half century or so, this idea that me and my sovereign choice and my sovereign will and my voluntary association is the most important thing, my individuality versus identifying ourselves by the covenants we make and belong to?

Yes, I do.

I.

You know, you.

You're pitching me in my sweet spots because I.

I don't.

I'm afraid.

Yes, yes, I'm afraid.

If I'm afraid of people, I just tuned in and didn't and just caught something short of what I would say that I like.

They think I hate individual rights and liberties, and I don't.

I don't hate individual rights and liberties.

I love them.

But it's in covenant that you find their fullest manifestation.

And apart from covenant, you know, you have like radical autonomy in statism.

Like, those are your two options.

And people have made.

There have been problems on both sides.

You know, I mean, like the Protestant political theory was having to rail against this tyranny.

But now, of course, we have this.

If you've read like Aaron McIntyre's Total State, you have like this kind a direct democracy or a democracy gone mad where you can just manufacture consent from a bunch of individuals and manipulate them through the media.

And that's certainly.

I want to.

I think that's where our major problems are at the moment.

This kind of a radical autonomy where you're not understanding that covenant means that God himself has created the world in a way where he's established certain covenants.

So your associations are not merely horizontal, they are also vertical.

So there's a vertical dimension to the church, that one's easy.

But there's also a vertical dimension to your family, and there's a vertical dimension to your state, and there's a vertical dimension to you.

So you should be thinking what it's going to look like to actually become a man is going to say, okay, I've been yoked to these people.

And then there's God assigned.

God assigned duties and responsibilities within those entities and I'm supposed to fulfill them.

And so, yeah, I think we have a hyper atomized way of thinking that kind of has to be pulled out at every point.

It's just, it's everywhere.

And it's like we're just conditioned over and over and over again to think in those terms.

And it makes no sense of manhood because manhood, like, what are you supposed to do?

You're supposed to produce other humans like you.

Like, the very activity of maleness is like you're carrying around seed.

So you're supposed to, like you're supposed to marry a woman, love her, sacrifice for her, bless her and produce seed with her, produce children, like the whole, the whole.

If you strip that away from, if you.

Solitary man, well, it's not good for man to be alone, just like the Bible says.

And I often point out, like, I don't know if a big movie growing up for me was Free will, you know, or not Free will.

Iron Will.

Iron Will.

Free Will was the fish movie.

That's the way it looks like.

Iron Will is the young boy that goes out into the winter tundra and beats all of the old men in a race in like a snow race.

But it's so funny because it's so American and so inspiring.

It's like man against the world, you know, solitary men against the world.

But it's just so untrue.

It's just, it's very, it's very Andrew Tate, I'm sure.

Like, it's very like, you know, this is.

But no, that's not like how it actually works.

The whole definition of manhood in that regard isn't fitting.

So there you go.

Well, I think part of this, since you mentioned movies, part of this has to do with the heroes in movies over the past 40 or so years.

The, the story is the lone hero sets out on an adventure to conquer this overwhelming force.

And it's always the Lone guy.

But we never really focus on, like, no, this guy is doing it as part of a team.

It's always.

It helps for storytelling, it helps for movies.

It's hard to communicate a bunch of different sort of actors working together in that way or characters working together, but it, it puts the focus unhealthily on the individual as sort of the main character of their own life.

And there's a.

There's a way in which that's true, but there's a way in which it distorts what our lives actually look like and what we can and can't do based on these righteous commitments that we make, these covenants where we have to keep.

Yep, yep.

You definitely have the corporate.

Corporate stories at work.

I also thought when you mentioned the stories, I think it's Chesterton that said something about the old stories had normal, ordinary heroes, you know, and, and they went on great adventures.

So there was always something remarkable that was thrown upon them.

This, this is what Samwise Gamgee says to Frodo and the Two Towers.

You know, it's like we often think that the heroes, like, went out looking for adventure, but very often the adventure just came to them.

Like, it's a far more humble story.

So, like, what the young guy wants to be, I mean, I'm all for go forth and conquer.

Go forth, exercise dominion.

Like that is both biblical and it sells.

So but there is another note, and the other note that's also true in biblical might not sell as much as, like, just keep doing your job in these covenant communities you've been talking about, and adventure's coming.

Like, it's coming to you.

Like, you're just going to be like, oh, how did I end up here?

How did I end up fighting the dragon?

Like, sometimes it just.

You just stumbled in upon it.

But then that second theme of Chesterton's quote was the ordinary hero, like that, that doesn't sell so much right now, right?

Definitely not in the trump Elon musk moment.

And I don't know why this.

I think I have a knack for finding truths that don't sell.

So I'm like, you know, like, right now, let's just lean into, like, being a great man and doing awesome things.

Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.

All those things are true and they would sell right now because, I mean, Elon's like, just sent spaceships up and rescued the.

The astronauts or whatever.

It's like extraordinary things that are happening.

But this line from Chesterton, like, no, be an ordinary Hero, like, which is essentially don't be.

Stop being infatuated with yourself.

Which is what the.

What the manosphere kind of the problem of the manosphere, like actually just do good to others, bless other people, and you'll find yourself being like an actual meek Moses like figure.

Like just Lewis talks about this in mere Christianity.

Like if you found a man who really wasn't prideful, what would strike you about him is that he would just be genuinely interested in what you're saying and, and, and helpful.

Like he's just thinking less and less of himself and more and more of other people.

Like that would be.

That's the way to go if you're 18 or 19 right now.

Well, this is perfect because I want to take this opportunity to transition to talking about J.C.

ryle because particularly Holiness, because one of the things that struck me the most about the book was that he took exactly what you're saying, which is the idea of being an everyday hero.

He doesn't use this language, but in covenants.

And the real battle that every man has to fight wherever he finds himself is the battle for righteousness.

And he frames the pursuit of holiness in combat, war, you know, adventure kind of terms.

And he does that straight up front with the book and sets the stage of a version of Christian masculinity that is very inward focused in the battle against sin, whereas I think we get very outward focused in the battle against the world.

And so maybe we can talk a bit about how Ryle puts the focus more squarely back on ourselves as men.

And of course he has thoughts for young men.

Michael Foster wrote the introduction to Thoughts for Young Men and then you wrote the introduction to Holiness.

So I thought these two could fit together quite well.

Yeah, man.

The internal and external is a great, some great terrain to work on there because you have to do both.

You just have to do both.

And of course pietism, we've railed against that for a good while.

Kind of gets.

Doesn't consider the goodness of the objective world.

The created world hides away and would like equate godliness with the spiritual disciplines.

So you know, if I read my Bible today and if I prayed that I've checked my boxes and I'm godly, where it's actually in the works you're supposed to do.

So no, like that's not it.

That's kind of like that's the fuel.

But then you're supposed to actually go do something.

You're actually supposed to love somebody in tangible ways.

You're supposed to reform institutions Reform culture and establish Christian towns and you know, exercise dominion throughout the earth.

That's obviously if anybody knows anything about Moscow or what's going on out here.

Things I've written and talked about, that's where all the emphasis is.

What's so weird is that in this moment, so you then the Trump effect has me at the kind of the most fascinated moment of cultural like Sons of Issachar stuff is okay.

My.

Lots of strong, lots of strong vibes.

You know, I mean I, I can, I can even as I hear like say something like an ordinary hero.

Like, I can already see the memes from the dudes.

Like, I want to be an ex.

Yeah, they'll be ordinary.

I'll be extraordinary.

Like, yeah, like I could just.

And I can I get tickled about it.

I think it's kind of funny.

Like, so I'm glad that I think it's funny because that's me.

I think everybody's going to be okay.

I just think we're going through a thing and we need to constantly be teaching.

So yes.

I'm so glad now that you are focused on externals, like, I'm actually very happy.

And so now, because we're getting that it would be a great time to consider Rahel's holiness.

Like what does it actually mean to be a virtuous person?

I remember I actually said this.

So this was like me miscalling it.

I remember talking to a guy that was actually in, in Trump's White House before and we're during, during Biden Harris time and I was like, I really think that the, I think that the next, you know, conservative, like people are going to be looking for some virtue.

They're going to be looking for a great hearted deal.

And everyone I said that to was like, yeah, yeah, you're right.

But then Trump almost gets assassinated and then the whole vibe, like, everything changed, right?

It actually, then Trump was like the dude and in part fulfilled that what I was thinking like now, I mean you get shot at and you get up pumping your fist.

It's like, okay, like, and so now everything's pushing that now.

Like everything's pushing that direction.

And you know, like so, so elon has like four babies, mamas and like 15 kids.

Like, okay, like be fruitful, fill your earth, have dominion.

You're like, okay, no, okay, not exactly that.

That's not really it.

You know, that's not really it.

So, so holiness, what does it really mean to be a man that like when sin, when your passions are at work in you do you know how to identify that?

Do you know how to identify the difference between virtue and passion within your own chest?

Okay, so do you know what it's like to actually.

It actually takes a man to be faithful to his wife and to get away from that woman who you say, but she's hot.

Yeah.

So actually, like, can you bench press that much in your own soul and go, no, like, because I'm.

Because I remember hearing one say, you used to be able to talk to this guy that's having too much to drink at the bar.

You know, come on, be a man.

Come away from it.

Be a man.

There was an association with.

In a.

In a.

In the manly culture that to get drunk is.

Is weak.

Right?

So be a man.

Don't get drunk.

Same thing with your lust and your passions, right?

Be a man.

Be a man.

You be faithful.

This is what it actually means.

So that's moving the conversation internal to this place where Raoul is going to be getting after it.

It actually takes a man to exercise these disciplines of confession of sin, to identify it, to be able to speak the truth about your sin, to look back at the week before and know where you missed the mark.

Like, oh, I know that moment when I was coveting.

I know that moment when I was greedy.

I know that moment when I was seeking the honor that comes from man rather than the honor that comes from God.

And actually, you identified it in the heart even before it manifested itself out externally.

Basically, being able to do that is essential to the external work.

Right?

There's an interplay.

And as you do the external work and you find yourself in these covenant communities where actually have institutions that are healthy and growing, that's going to help you internally.

So there's an interplay there.

But there is a distinction to be made between the two, and we have to.

You have to know what's going on inside of you, that kind of thing.

So I want to play the.

Play the devil's advocate, play the young man who's maybe listening to this conversation.

He's like, okay, I hear.

I hear what you're saying, and I'll just throw a bunch of objections at you.

I'll pitch him down the middle, and we'll see.

So he says, okay, sell me righteousness over sin, because all I see when I look around is Elon Musk sending rockets into space, and he's a billionaire.

And you see Donald Trump had his 50 years of licentious living, and he's doing.

He's doing pretty good.

And Andrew Tate's doing His Andrew Tate thing, I see the success of sin all around me.

Like sell me on this righteousness thing because I don't know, my dad, he talked about how he was a, he was a pretty good Christian and I know who he really is.

So you have this young man who's sort of raised in this environment.

What'd you say to him?

Yeah, I'd say, man, the Tower of Babel was really big before it wasn't, right?

So I'm like, hey, you know, I mean, Ahab and Jezebel, they had like a thing going, you know what I mean?

Like, this was no small feat.

This was a pretty big deal.

But you know, there was this guy named Jehu.

So the sin is always selling you on winning.

It's.

So this is what the devil did with.

This is what devil did with Eve, right?

Look, this fruit, good for food, that kind of thing.

And you know, look, you'll be like God, you'll have, you'll have this great knowledge and the story of humanity would not be very interesting if there wasn't some kind of legitimacy to the offer, okay?

Like, you know, you're probably going to enjoy sex with that girl.

You're probably going to enjoy it, okay?

Like you're probably going to build a pretty good kingdom.

You know what I mean?

Like, idolatry can take you a long way in life.

It can do some things.

Now let's bring all of my post millennialism to this.

But the problem with this guy is not dealing with some kind of like dispy fella who's just telling him, oh, you can have all the things of the world, but we'll will have Jesus.

No, it's Jesus and it's Jesus and all of this, all of this and Jesus too.

So I'm telling you that it's not foolishness.

Sin is not a good long term strategy.

Babylon came falling down, Jericho came falling down.

Jezebel was eaten by the dogs.

You know, like this is the way it always works.

Haman had a really great seat at the table in Xerxes Kingdom, but then he hung from the gallows.

Judas was living high on the money bag.

And then he was hung and his bowels fell out.

So, dude, I would tell the guy, read the story, man.

You have to understand that they will not win.

But just because Goliath is out there beating his chest and he looks really strong.

Yeah, but this is the way it always works.

So that's what I tell them.

Okay, Got another one for you.

Okay, I'm with you.

I'M with you on that.

But when I go to church and I see the men who are at my church and I see the pastor at my church, wherever I am in the country, I don't see any of that.

I see a bunch of weakness.

I see a bunch of laziness.

I see a bunch of chuckling.

I don't see the guys around me doing any of that.

So why should I?

Well, I'd say, first of all, like, get out of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, okay?

Like, leave the elca.

That could be your first fix.

I mean, obviously I want to take this guy if I want to ask some questions to find out what's really going on, because there could at least be two things going on.

Number one, he's just an arrogant little twerp, and he's wrong.

So, I mean, sometimes this gets overplayed.

I think that there was, like, some of the young, restless and reform movement that.

That overplayed it.

Like, you know, the church is so weak.

And then, like, go down to the south and you got a bunch of deacons that are just like car mechanics and stuff.

And, you know, and you get that one good, faithful deacon that's outside, like, dragging on a cig before he comes into worship.

I mean, that happened at my church growing up.

I was like, that was a cool guy.

So that could be.

That could be the case.

Or it.

Actually, then I want to fully grant the problem.

Yes, Effeminacy in the church is still absolutely a problem.

There's no doubt about it.

There's effeminate sermons and there's tight pant worship leaders.

Ever since my move to Moscow three years ago, sometimes I forget, like, I really do need to be.

I don't.

I don't tap into that world at all.

And so it's just like a foreign country.

And I remember, like, every now and then I'm like, oh, yeah, they're huge.

Like, they're actually.

It's good for me to remember, because I ignore them, that this is a big problem in the world.

And if that really is the case, like, if you are in that very effeminate culture, then you.

You just have to leave it.

I don't think you're going to fix it, buddy.

Like, I want you to.

I mean, give it a good college try.

But here's the problem.

Here's.

You're probably in a situation where the effeminacy is so enculturated and instantiated in the songs and the preaching in the families of the people there that if you are A young man.

And you're really looking to say, I want to win in life.

You have to find a masculine ministry.

It's going to start with masculine ministry.

Like, you have to find the Elijah's of the world and the John the Baptists of the world and really get there.

And that's crazy.

I'm not trying to diminish.

I'm a big fan.

I'm a small C Catholic.

I'm very grateful for the visible church and all of it, but if I'm talking to a young man that's becoming disgruntled to our earlier conversation, you can't just.

I don't want to be somebody's Andrew Tate.

I don't want to be, you know, like.

Or, you know, the whole Moscow thing.

Like, benefit from the content.

But, like, the content's got to drive you.

This is the content driving you to actually get somewhere where you can live.

Like, you can't.

You can't just grab sermons and content and podcasts and navigate it.

Like, you will need a church that has a backbone.

And that.

That's hard because that might mean, like, it might not be in reach.

So you might.

It might.

You kind of will be at a crossroads there.

And I'm telling you, if you can't find it, it actually is worth it to go find it.

Don't put all your hope.

And when you make that move, don't put your hope in, man.

Don't think, oh, this new community will fix everything or things like that.

But it is actually a means of grace to have a ministry that has a backbone, and you're gonna have to find it.

Okay, so I got.

I got more for you.

So.

So then.

So this young man's like, okay, cool, you're telling me to join a masculine church with a sort of a prophetic posture, I guess you might say.

Prophetic posture towards the culture.

But these guys over here, you know, they've got.

They've got this church, and they're saying some really bold stuff about women, and they're saying some really bold stuff about the Jews, and they're saying some really bold stuff about race.

Like, why?

Why?

Okay, so how do I choose between that one and the kind of masculine church that you're talking about?

How do I make that discernment?

Yeah, well, I tell them, look, if they're saying bold stuff about women, the Jews and race, then they might.

They're probably great.

Now let's talk about what those bold things are.

And it's like the bold thing they said was, like, Women.

Women are horrible.

And I was like, okay, well, you know, now we have to get down to what's actually going on with the dude.

And some of that is going to be just dealing with his honest questions, like, what are they actually teaching about women?

You know, well, if they're teaching that women should, you know, be silent in all the churches, okay, that's good.

That's what the apostle Paul said.

Right.

And if they're saying wives should submit to their husbands and everything, everything lawful, that kind of thing, great.

And then you have to deal with all the other.

You have to constantly check it.

So where are you at on abuse?

Like, what does constitute abuse?

Abuse happens.

So I would want to actually deal with that guy and then find out whether he's.

They usually come with two stripes, and there's probably a middle position, but the two stripes would be, one, a guy, like, humble, wants it.

Has questions.

Has questions about the Jews, that kind of thing, whatever.

Great, let's talk.

And the other one is arrogant and has.

Has a nasty spirit about him.

Like, and if, if he's.

That, then you have to approach it in a different way.

If he's humble, you know, he has.

You can approach it in a different way.

It's just going to be at that point, what's going on with this guy?

Where does he really stand on these issues?

Yeah, where is.

I'm glad that you said that because I think that that's.

It's one of those things that in the conversations that you can feel but perhaps can't point to anything specific.

Like, there's a spirit, there's an aroma around this, and I can't put my finger on it, but it's not right.

And I can't say what it is, but maybe.

No, yeah, yeah.

I've dealt with this in ministry, this particular thing, and it was.

It is interesting because I haven't.

We've been in big fights over.

Over recently, and it's.

I think there's a.

There's a strong allergy against saying that this has anything to do with fatherlessness, which is really interesting.

So, from, from.

From the, from the.

From that group.

I mean, and I think it's.

Well, it's.

It's like, it hurts there.

Please stop doing that.

That's really what's going on.

It's like, you know.

No, I just have questions, but it's like, dude, why are you so angry?

Like, you are.

You're.

You're angry.

And for those guys, I mean, again, the best thing I know to do for wise Men is you give them a shot, and if they don't take it or they don't want it, you have to move on.

When a guy gets like that, any kind of effeminacy toward him, any kind of, yeah, yeah, sure, we can meet again.

It's like, no, it's just like, I want to be patient, but I'm talking about the guy that's a punk.

Like, he's a real punk.

He's arrogant.

It's just like, dude, I have stuff to do.

Like, no, but I want to talk about again.

I want to talk about the Jews being behind the slave ships.

You know, it's like, dude, I have, like, I got seven kids.

I got a job.

I got.

I have to sow.

The harvest is plentiful.

I have to go where the fields are white, dude.

Like, yeah.

And you might not like it, but it's like, that's it.

So I think that's.

That's about what I have for those types.

That's.

And I.

And I.

I just think I wanted to point out, like, they're just so tiny.

They're not like, they're a very tiny group of people.

They're very unimpressive group of people.

So I.

Frankly, I agree.

I mean, having come up through the manosphere and seen.

And seen a lot of that, there's a lot of energy that gets channeled into outrageous topics of discussion and very little energy that gets channeled into kid number seven, Right.

Or being the.

Being the dean and, you know, a minister.

Right?

And I've seen you with your family.

I remember at.

At Grace Agenda, it was like, there's just a train of long shores, just like, just waiting for it to pass so I can.

So I can cross the tracks.

Okay, so, okay, so I have one.

One more question.

I'm going to give you a fastball.

Right?

This is.

Right.

Okay, so, okay, so you got this young man.

And the young man's like, okay, I hear everything.

I hear everything that you're saying.

And you're talking to me about this guy JC Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men.

And you got this book, holiness, and it's 500 pages, and he's admonishing for warfare and all this stuff.

Sounds great.

Who's going to write the book Thoughts for Young Women?

Because I look around and I wonder if anyone has the courage or strength to.

To write that book.

What do you say to that, young man?

Oh, yeah, I think it'd be great.

I mean, I would just tell them just a heads up, like Rachel Jenkovic out here in Moscow just wrote that book.

It's called no Time.

No Time to Be Called no Time to Be Dumb.

I think it's just going live.

It's hot off the press and canon.

You know what I mean?

I'm always good.

I'm always down for book recommendations.

I mean, but I think you're actually just asking a question where it sounds like one of the gals out here.

Just, Just knock that one.

Knock that one out.

So I don't know.

I don't know if that was his question, but that.

That's actually perfect.

Well, I actually saw that announced on X yesterday.

Like, product placement, Shout out Jake.

So, okay, okay, so.

So, like, regardless of the book.

Yes.

Okay, so.

But I think there's a deeper question under him that, that there's a lot of willingness.

And first, I, I agree with it.

Like, in the sense that there needs to be a lot of willingness to disciple young men, particularly because of the book by J.C.

ryle, Thoughts for Young Men, where he lays out the unique problems.

I think that there's a bit in the beginning here where he talks about how Satan particularly focuses on young men, because if you mar the bud, you mar the flower or something like that.

So I, I think it is a really important topic, but I think young men are like, okay, you're focusing very much on me, but I look around at a fallen and degenerate culture and yes, I would love to have seven kids, but the, you know, find.

Find me a woman under a certain age who wants to have seven kids and isn't focused on her life and on her career.

So I think they point should be real.

Yeah, I got it.

I got it.

So I look at that guy.

I'd say, you do it.

You do it.

Because what's going on, what's likely going on with that is he's just complaining again.

It's like, oh, God, this woman you gave me.

Oh, God, this, you know, this field you gave me.

Ah, but there's no.

Well, there's no resources here.

Okay?

I don't have any resources.

Like, just shut up and fix it, dude.

Shut up and fix it.

Like, make her make.

But she's not the woman that she's supposed to be.

Yeah, because you're supposed to marry her first and you're supposed to make her that.

You're supposed to sanctify the woman.

That's what the feeds like, you and I do.

I mean, I poke fun with him and I want to, you know, I hope he gets it, but I'm like, The deck like that.

But what about.

But what about that?

It's just like.

It's just complaining.

It's like, dude, yes, like, the world's not what it's supposed to be, but this is what it means to be a man is to be like, you're the tip of the spear, dude.

Like, you will always be the tip of the spear.

So any problem you point to in the world, I'm just gonna be like, yeah, fix that one, too.

And see what he said.

I think that will.

That helps those guys to realize, like, dude, you actually are far more potent than you understand.

Like, you are the agent for fixing this in the world under the second Adam.

I mean, by faith, in the second Adam, you go and you fix.

You don't.

You just never complain.

You don't complain about anything.

Don't complain about not having the money.

You don't complain about not having the time.

Don't complain about anything.

Just get after it.

They're in.

And usually that separates the wheat from the chaff.

Like, some.

One guy's going to be like, dude, that's good.

And another dude's going to be like, I'm going to go find somebody else to get advice from.

So, yeah, no facts.

I mean, that's.

That's what happens is at a certain point, you as a man can observe the circumstances around you as being subpar or less than ideal, which would be true for all of history.

And you can say, well, what are you going to do?

Are you going to talk about it?

Are you going to complain online to your community of bros or whatever?

Or are you actually going to delete the app off your phone and are you going to get to work and are you going to put your shoulder to the plow for weeks, months, or years to accomplish the goal that you want?

And when you look to, you know, to bring it back to Elon Musk or Donald Trump, like, these are men that have worked.

Whatever else may be true about them, these are men that have devoted decades of their lives to building.

They saw that, well, we're not going to Mars.

I would like to go to Mars.

So I'm going to give 20 years of my life to going to Mars, or Donald Trump being a successful real estate developer.

These were men that didn't just talk, they acted.

And I think there's so much impetus now to just express online to.

To expel all the energy into online communities and online complaints, less so into, well, what are you going to do tomorrow morning when you get up to advance your mission?

Towards the thing that you want.

Are you going to do anything at all, or are you just going to talk?

Yeah.

Amen to that.

So maybe we can.

Maybe we can just close with some admonitions to.

To read Ryle.

Maybe some of the impact that J.C.

ryle, as you can see, I read.

I read the book to get ready for the.

Ready for the interview.

Maybe some of the impact that J.C.

ryle's had on you.

I know he's referred to as a man of granite with a heart of a child, which I think is a beautiful phrase.

His biographer called him that.

I mean, you named your son Ryle, so maybe you can talk a little bit about what his work has meant to you.

Yeah.

The best thing you're going to get from Ryle is like, this is a tough dude that did strike the heart.

So, I mean, it's great that while we haven't tried to exegete it, nor would we try to, because it's such a big book, but it's a timely book to bring up because we.

Because it's hitting right at that moment.

You have the Trump and the Elon and the externals, and that's.

We actually need that, and we need a lot of that.

It's great, but we know it's not what it's supposed to be.

Okay, so what are you going to do?

Are you going to go back to, like, the prayer of Jabez, or are you going to go back to, like, weird, weird, flowery stuff from Crossway?

It's like, no, okay, let's not do that.

But we do need to learn what it means to be virtuous people in a manly way.

And we do need to realize that the spirit of man is as much male as his physicality, as his body.

And so how do you actually apply in a healthy, not weird, evangelical way?

And Raoul's perfect for that because his instruction is remarkably direct.

It's just your whole time reading is going to be like, I'm just giving you doctrine, and I'm giving you instruction and direction.

Not a lot of flowery stuff, just kind of.

This is what it means to actually become this virtuous person.

So I think he's a great read.

And so if you could maybe direct men to some other books as well that have blessed you as you've grown up as a man, as a Christian man, as a husband and a father, because I agree with you that content, digital content, is great, including my podcast.

Awesome.

Everyone's your podcast.

The Right stuff, which we could talk about For a moment if you'd like.

But printed material forces a degree of thought and discipline and clarity that online content just doesn't.

Just doesn't create.

So maybe you could recommend some other books as well.

Yeah.

Oh man.

I mean, I would.

I have all kinds of places I would go.

I, I'll just like what's on my desk with what's on my desk.

I've got.

I don't have.

Do I have orthodoxy?

I do have orthodoxy.

This is just.

You just need to read orthodoxy.

Okay.

Like it's really.

I really think, I officially think it's my favorite book.

That's the other.

The Bible.

I think I just reading it again.

I'm just like.

Particularly now because the online stuff will suffocate you eventually.

So like you, you'll probably like really like it for a long time, but eventually you're gonna like it.

It will make you a.

Make you a sad person.

So Chesterton's.

Chesterton's so great because, dude, he's so whimsical.

I just love.

I just like basically need to constantly be reading something from him.

I was just reading, you know, he's like, angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

And you're just like, yes.

Like, he's like, you know, like pride bogs down and levity goes up.

So Chesterton would be great.

A weird one that I'm kind of like, I've really enjoyed.

Was this the Crisis of Our Age by Pietram Sorokin?

Just read this one and this was fun with like the post war consensus stuff because I think he's after the first.

First World War and before the second and he's lamenting a lot of the same things that we would lament about.

He's basically.

It's like a, like a mid war consensus or a pre war cons.

This maybe without the.

But it was very interesting to start to think through.

Like, okay, he's seeing all of these things in their seed form before they metastasize, that kind of thing.

I got City of God here.

But you probably shouldn't read that.

It's very big and you should read it, but it's not going to be as refreshing as orthodoxy and Lewis's hideous strength.

If you haven't read that, that would be another great resource.

I mean that would be probably good for now.

Okay, great.

Just one last question.

I noticed that you've started doing more podcasts with the right stuff.

You've had Orin McIntyre, Ramon Ibrahim.

I saw you had Forest Dickerson.

Maybe you can Talk a little bit about that.

It's not a new show.

It's just maybe some time opened up in your schedule to.

To do more interviews.

Yes, yes.

So the Right Stuff, it's like, so you can get it anywhere.

Podcasts are doing their thing, and there's like, a YouTube deal.

I had a YouTube page for a while that was Jared Longstrom.

We just kind of morphed it into the Right Stuff.

Basically, the thought was Jake and I.

Jake and I have talked about the need to kind of sink your teeth into something that's good, true, and beautiful, and.

And so we'll see.

You know, it's a new little.

It's a new little baby thing.

We'll see what happens with it, if it will grow or die.

I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with it, but I enjoy talking to Jake and having guests on to say, hey, we actually think this is interesting.

So.

And I'm doing a lot of things.

So Jake is basically organizing all of this stuff, and we're showing up.

I don't know what we're getting into.

So we had Forrest on, and I hadn't read his book, but it was actually really good.

Crispin's Day Off, I think, is what it's called.

That's great.

And immediately he's taking me into poetic color.

So I'm kind of like a.

I mean, I'm doctrinal and stuff, so that's.

I'm enjoying the breadth of the podcast.

Jake and Forester, I think there's a perfect example.

They're far more astute than I am, and they have a breadth that I don't.

So I'm like, what is poetic color?

And I get to enjoy hearing from forest about brush strokes and things of that nature.

So the Right Stuff is a podcast.

You can check it out.

Excellent.

Well, Pastor Jared, thank you so much for your time today.

This has been a great conversation.

I.

I pray it blesses many men and the women who love them.

And, you know, we've talked about the Right stuff.

Is there any place else you'd like to send men to find out more about you and what you do?

So I write@jaredr longshore.com so that's kind of like, if you wanted to connect with me, that's the main place.

There's a way to shoot me a note.

I have steady stuff going up on that blog, and from there you can get, like, interviews, sermons, things of that nature, and.

And, yeah, keep an eye out.

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be publishing most recent book man for the Job.

Excellent.

Well, congratulations.

I look forward to to reading that as well.

All right.

Thanks for having me on.

Will sa.