Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 315 | You Can Be a Real Man and Still Follow Christ, and Was Jesus a Manly Man?

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Phil believes we need to reframe the way Jesus is portrayed. Kyle Thompson, host of the Undaunted.Life podcast, joins Phil and Al to discuss masculinity and the way we view men who follow Christ. Al and Kyle talk about why a masculine man is something we should celebrate. Phil shares the suggestions he gave former President Donald Trump about how to live a more faithful life. And Kyle tells us how Undaunted.Life is equipping men to push back against the darkness. Visit https://undaunted.life to learn more  - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? So we talk a lot on this podcast about the internet because that's how people find us. And so, Dad, last time I showed you a read Jace a description of him from his Wikipedia page, which was interesting. It was just some fan looked like it put all this information because half of us from the show. And then there's a picture, but it's not. of Jace, it's of Jep, my youngest brother.

So it was really funny. So, Dad, somebody sent me, since they heard that on the podcast, they sent me, here's another one from the Internet, says Phil Robertson. Before Phil Robertson was the star of Duck Dynasty, he had an impressive career as a college football star. In his native Louisiana, Robertson attended Louisiana Tech University, served as the team's quarterback in the 60s. True, right? True.

Exactly. And so here's the picture of you. Yeah, that's embarrassing. It's close. It's size picture. It's Uncle Sy, which I wish I had thought to bring this up. He was on the last podcast, but I didn't think about it until last year. They wonder why I don't ever look at a computer, don't on a cell phone.

So we have another fellow internet guest on today. So Jace is out on assignment, Kyle. and when jays says we just send him out and so he was he was gone the last podcast and he's gone today he'll be back on the next one with with tails we just send him out he just he just you know every nothing and i can't imagine what hasn't happened to jace or what potentially will happen to jace because he's just a walk-in story receptacle i mean and it's always confrontations and it's always stuff that has never happened to me. And it'll happen to him on one trip. He'll do five things. It's never happened to me in my life. I mean, it's, it's. So he should have been the pastor, right? Because then he can use all those

every single Sunday for sure. I have to tell his stories. That's right. So we got Kyle Thompson with us today, Dad. And Kyle, uh, is, has a, uh, he has a ministry that he does that's called undaunted life. And, uh, and he's got a podcast. And you're, you're up there in our neighborhood. I noticed you had 200 something podcast. We're about 300 now. I think this is what is this? 315. Yeah, y'all, you're a little bit more. Undaunted and unashamed have met. That's right.

That's right. We're unshamed and undaunted come together. I like it. I love the title, too. Yeah, it's just something that we're not as prolific as y'all on a weekly basis because we're more about a once-a-week podcast. But we've been doing it since 2017. And so, you know, it was kind of like a side deal for a while,

but now it's kind of being pushed a little bit more in the mainstream. Yeah, and I love it because you and your wife came over. And, of course, you got to meet the arm wrestling champion and his wife were there. So we had a really interesting conversation and dinner last night, just kind of getting to know each other a little bit. And, you know, you and I talk quite a bit about, because you're 34. 34, yeah. 34. So you're quite a bit younger than us.

And we were talking about last night about how generationally things are so different now. And I mean, your ministry centers basically on men. And we'll talk a lot about that and how good it is. But just tell us a little bit about what you think is different about just even how we're raised, what, you know, culturally, because you don't see a lot of 30s, you know, I mean, our audience is working on getting it. But, I mean, they just seem to get it. Kyle fits into the millennial bracket.

So I said, I don't know about that dude. I mean, they have a way of, what's the word, affecting how you think. You're like, what, what's these 30-year-olds? What are they doing? That's exactly that. Kyle, you're one of them. Have at it, man. Yeah, so I'm on the older millennial scale, which doesn't actually help.

But, you know, we do get a bad rap and we've earned it. But I was kind of telling you a little bit off air. I feel like I've gotten a tremendous education and upbringing from my parents, but I think it was more accidental in terms of, you know, I don't think they set out. Which proves family structure a healthy one is essential. Imagine when you have mom and dad in the same home. And like, because that's the thing when you have this fatherless epidemic in basically every racial group of the United States, all the statistics for dad being there and all

the improvements that are there. They don't even talk about what type of dad dad is. Dad could be a deadbeat. Dad could be a drunk. Just dad being present is the thing that's important. But I would say for me, you know, I remember being frustrated that I wasn't getting enough playing time in baseball, right? And a lot of the other dads, you know, they would go and, you know, lobby the coach to get their son more playing time. And my dad told me, again, kind of this accidental wisdom, he said, son, when and if you earn more playing time, you will have earned it. So go earn it. So go grind. work harder, but work harder in practice. You go ask your coach, like what you could do. And you know, you're, you know, 14, 15, 16 years old. You don't realize that that's going to be, you know,

kind of cornerstone advice that you could use for the rest of your life. But a lot of lessons were like that. And for me, you know, I internalized a lot of those things because I never got in trouble growing up for the outcome of something, right? Like a grade or a game or something like that. I always got in trouble for effort. So I could go oh for four with three strikeouts and two errors in the field would not get in trouble. But if I hit a ground ball of a shortstop and I just kind of jogged to first base, I would get reamed on the way home because my parents didn't care if I played sports, right? And also, if I got a B on my report card and it was in a subject I was capable of getting an A in, I got grounded for that. And you're thinking, oh, this is authoritarian garbage and I can't

believe my parents are this terrible. But that was just, there were expectations in our household about how we were going to act, how we were going to comport ourselves. And, you know, basically don't be a knucklehead, right? Which I did that sometimes and not. so great other times. I had a little advice for my boys. I said, the boys, you're going to go to school. And I was talking from the first grade on. I said, some teachers are great. Some teachers not so great. Some teachers are poor, not real good. I said, but always remember this. You obey all of them. Sure. Then I would talk about law enforcement, and I told them, you run a file with your teachers, you have run a file with me.

I said, so you're going to answer to me. So don't forget that. Remember how the speech I gave y'all? Oh, yeah. And I can say, that's what Kyle's referring to, which it needs to be there. Yeah. And you laid out a structure that authority, you know, we needed to fit in and work out our situation. And then you were pretty much, I mean, you weren't grinding on us at all.

You just expected us to do the right thing. And pretty much we all did. We were all decent students. So, Kyle, you came up, did you go to college and get your indoctrination like I did? Yeah, so the funny thing is, I, you know, I was amazed out there, man. Well, it is in, it's getting worse because, you know, my alma mater, I went to the University of Central Oklahoma. That's where I got basically a full-right scholarship. And I met my wife.

She got the same scholarship the year after I did. Went to leadership route. Didn't go the sports route, which, you know, ended up working out great for us. But even just recently, my university is going to change the fight song because it says the word boys in it. And so, again, it's not as, you know, it's not as. is inclusive. You know, our female athletic teams are amazing. But there was an alumni that actually went to school with that claim that the word boys was inherently racist because of how that word has been used towards people, you know, throughout history, even though that song was not written

with that intent. And so I didn't see as much of it as an undergrad, right? But now I even see my own university that I've given a lot of money to and a lot of time and attention to making these changes when basically nobody was knocking on the door saying these changes need to happen. but it's kind of like what we're talking about yesterday. We live in a cowardly world where everybody's worried about, you know, a couple of dozen of bad tweets with their name included. And it's like, how are you going to live for the gospel? How are you going to live for the hard stuff when somebody's not even,

like there's not even smoke outside your door, much less fire? And you're sitting here worried about tweets. And so that's just kind of another thing where I feel like a lot of the friends that I grew up with are kind of similar to me guys and kind of how we were brought up. But there are a lot of other people. They're just fragile. They're just fragile in their personhood. And the worst thing that's ever happened to them is someone left them a mean comment on Facebook.

You end up with their train of thought without them realizing it with the black spray paint can. You carry with you. I guess you have spares. And all you do is just walk by walls, especially if you're being filmed. And it's F everybody. F everybody. And that's what you leave behind. And you look at all the marches, the rioting, the looting, and the burning, and then the insignia, F everybody.

I'm like, what kind of mind, what kind of upbringing, what kind of advice? Right. Because they're younger. They seem in their 30s. They're 20s. 20s. And they're leaving this trail behind them. And you're like, what in the world is happening to us?

We're imploding. Well, they've grown up without actual. struggle. I think that's part of it. So their parents were out there in front of them, knocking all the potential problems out of the way, as opposed to saying, nope, you made this bed, you're going to lay in it. Because this activist class,

basically, most of those are affluent, right? Most of these you see that are part of these organizations. They come from affluent families and usually, you know, West Coast and stuff. They don't seem to be poor and down. They're not. No, because they're not working. It's one thing, you know, so you've got all this time to go protest every day.

I mean, you think about it, does anybody work in Portland, Oregon? I mean, they don't have, they don't have anything in common with these Cuban refugees that are not, well, they're essentially refugees, but these Cuban people that are in the streets, you know, hooting and hollering right now. These, these are fluent, mostly white folks that are out there doing these things and painting, this on everybody and doing all those different things. These are people that have never built anything. They've never had to sacrifice. And so it's super easy to tear things down and to destroy things.

It's incredibly hard to build them. And when you, when you have an upbringing, that doesn't put, you, you know, you know, an emphasis on building things that are sustainable, things that are sustainable for other people, not just yourself. You know, quiet life, make it your ambition. The Apostle Paul told the Thessalonian, make it your ambition to live a quiet life. You say, to mind your own business, to work hard, as we told you. So your day, day, day will win the respect of outsiders so that you won't have to be dependent

on anybody. What a text, I live by it, and you try to get that in the people's heads. But Kyle, it's like pulling teeth, man. You know, quiet life, mind your own business, work hard. You say life would be much better and far less chaotic. When I think you also have people that are, I mean, when I was reading through Romans 12 last night, you basically have these situations where it's like, okay, you know, be of sober judgment about kind of how you are, but also that the body,

you know, basically do what you're called to do with that's within your gifting. And you have a lot of people that are doing things that are like they were not gifted to be an activist because if they were gifted by God to be an activist, they wouldn't be an activist for the thing that they're being an activist for. They would be an activist for, you know, being pro life or anti-abortion. They would be an activist for, you know, helping the poor in a way that doesn't, you know, keep that cycle going. But that's just not something that people really operate with. They're like, oh, I can scream too. I can hold a sign too. That doesn't take any effort. I just have to show up. up and someone hands me a brick and I just move on.

Yep. And you're right. In fact, I just saw today, I was, I think it was a tweet about this group of people, women that were getting together to have a march to be able to vote. And I thought, you know, basically we fixed that one about 100 years ago. We're good there. But they're still marching about it. I was like, oh, you can't vote.

I mean, so you're like, really? I mean, now it's just like, you know, like you said, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, an activist for things that are already there. That's how silly some of it has gotten, but it's just that mindset. Here's what the Apostle Paul, 2,000 years ago, under, I guess you could call it a monarchy, the Roman Empire. We've made a, we've been made a spectacle. These are apostles of Jesus, people who go out and preach the gospel to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men, we're fools for Christ, but you're so wise in Christ. These people had gone awry, the Corinthians, some of them.

We're weak, but you're strong. You are honored. We're dishonored. To this very hour, we go hungry and thirsty. We are in rags. We are brutally treated. We are homeless. We work hard with our own hands.

When we're cursed, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure it. Just think about the kind of heart these people had before us. When we're persecuted, we endure it. When we're slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment, we have become, this is the Apostle Paul, who was a murderer, a blasphemer, and a persecutor before Jesus met him personally and changed his mind.

He said, up to this moment, we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse, probably if you research, refuse. Dung. The dung of the world. Well, for our guy to explain what they're going through, just telling people, look, God loves you. He sent you a Savior, Jesus. He's died on a cross for you. moved your sin. Every mistake you ever made, he's taking it away. He's not holding your future sins against you. Just confess them to him and move on. It's called grace. It just looks like

and he'll raise you from the dead. So he's destroyed your sin problem, your death problem, and you're cursing me and you're, just think about it. The way these people rolled, I feel a lot better being in this camp with him. Hang on, let's take a break. Yeah, so, I mean, in Romans 12, in verse 16, never be wise in your own sight. And that is exactly what these people are. Because, and, you know, you talked about the K-12 system

or the college system, they are being patted on the head whenever they do things like this. These things that would be considered extreme at any other time in history, right? These things that, a lot of them go to kind of of an atheistic worldview or literally comes from the pits of hell some of these ideas. But if that's what you're constantly being applauded for, that's where you're going to go.

And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for these people. And it's self-fulfilling virtue. They don't have to worship God or believe the gospel to be virtuous. All they have to do is to change their profile picture to be a black square during the summer. Or they have to, you know, stand with this organization or with that organization. And then you see this creeping into the church as well to where it's like, oh, we're just, we're going to take. pieces of this, right? We're going to do gospel and like it's an all-a-cartes menu or something like that. It's just like, what are we doing? Yeah, because a lot of churches have gotten swept up in

social justice, ultimately even opening the door for Marxism and some of these other things that are happening, which is, it's always been amazing to me because America, I mean, churches and pastors in particular, and vickers and all the different people, I mean, they were the ones that rallied us to even have a country. I mean, you know, It came through those. I mean, that's where they were having the militias. You sure did. I mean, church houses were the thing.

All the Ivy League universities were preaching schools. I mean, that's how they were training people to go preach. So when you look at that change in less than 250 years, it's stark to me that that was fast. Because you look at Europe and, you know, sometimes it would take, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years for things to change. But here it just seemed to go so quickly from God is really. doing this and we're people of God to, we don't, to like you said, F everything. That'd be so much of our, we're in a sad state. We are. When you mentioned, I think in a previous podcast, you talked about, you know, the meaning in the word university, it's unity and diversity.

Well, when that was chosen as the name for this institution that was going to be educating people, it was unity and diversity of thought, right? Like, that was it. Now there is no such thing. And I'm all for diversity. So if, but if you're defining what you need to be diverse based on immutable characteristics, characteristics that you cannot change that, you had no vote in, right? So that's one thing I feel weird when people say, you talk about this community or that community and they just fill in the blank with, you know, some immutable characteristics. It's like I didn't choose the level of melanin that that I got when I was born, right? But I can opt into the gospel. I can opt into the neighborhood I live. And I can opt into the, to the church I go to or to the university I

attend, but to define somebody. Like, what could be more racist than defining somebody and who they are as a person based on something that they didn't get a vote in? Yeah. I just don't understand how that's a way to operate moving forward. And when you have churches borrowing from those worldviews, it's so dangerous. Well, and they, the same people that would would log civil rights, including me, that now go back and say, well, we didn't mean all that because you had a, you had a, personal experience about we're not trying to be equal. We're not trying to be all one. We're not trying to be, you know, I mean,

in the same people that would laud Martin Luther King just a decade ago or going completely against what any of those civil rights movement was about. I mean, the idea now with this equity and all the words that they used to change that, it's really amazing. Another thing I wanted to talk to you about, because you talk a lot about, uh, uh,

in your podcast, uh, about masculinity and how that's now sort of a targeted thing in our culture. And especially with thou, this gender, we don't know who anybody is. He's not a he and you're they and you're this and you're that. So talk a little bit about that about kind of what you try to speak to men about what a manly man is and a godly man, because I really like that. And I love what you talked about was Jesus a manly man. Because he's kind of been feminized. Not kind. Yeah, I mean, I'm being kind. But yeah, you're right. He's been feminized by people.

I mean, they're just making basically a wuss. Right. It is the mindset. So I guess the short version of the stories, I became a Christian. I accepted Christ as a teenager, right? So I was, you know, 15 years old. And so around the time I'm learning what it means to be a man. I'm learning what it means to be a Christian man at the same time.

But when I looked around the church, because I went to church by myself, no one else in my family went to church, it's still that way. But whenever I went to church, it looked like the godly men, as far as I knew, they were inside the church. But the manly men were somewhere else. else, right? They were doing other things, right? The men in church were, they were a little doughy. They're pretty soft, but their shirts were pressed and their shoes were immaculate. And, you know, they pray for your brother, you know, that kind of thing. But the manly men were somewhere else. And so I grew up with this dichotomy that manliness and godliness are not in the same person. And so again, I'm kind of going

over a lot of philosophizing that I did over about a decade. But it became clear to me that the church has become a place for effeminate men to prosper. And that, that's, you know, that that if you're a testosterone-filled, virile, like, godly man, the church doesn't know what to do with you. And I think part of the thing is because there is a tremendous emphasis, an over-emphasis, in my opinion, on the Lamb of God and almost a complete neglect of the Lion of Judah. And so when Jesus is depicted as this dirty, blonde hair, blue-eyed white guy,

it's like, okay, he's a Middle Eastern Jew, first of all. But, you know, he kind of looks like me just with a longer beard and longer really hair. He didn't look near as pretty as I have. Isaiah said, and Isaiah 53, said there was, he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. So, you know, the blonde, I'm like Middle East over there. I don't think so. Yeah. He was a pretty, pretty dark-skinned, rough dude. Thank God he was. And the one that introduced him and paid way for him was rougher than he was. Right. He makes me look like a school child.

But that's the thing that you see in the church is this over-emphasis on this, this lamb character and the lamb is way easier to understand and internalize especially if you're a woman or if you're effeminate but if you're a man for whatever reason the line of judah which is almost never discussed is is never really that just seems like it fits with you a little bit better and it's it's exacerbated i read those texts kowl and i thought you know what uh i don't know of any reason i would ever need a suit i said so i think i'll just forego the suit with this suit up because it

what you're describing that's overflowed to where you've got these long robes and flowering robes and people are

it's just not Romans 12 in view of God's mercy offer your bodies as living sacrifices wherever you go don't conform to the pattern of the world

you to be that way if you get it down to going to church for a couple of hours and not showing up until the next Sunday where you show up for a couple hours suffer through it you're bored they're saying the same thing the gospel who knows but you sit there long enough and to this day we still have white churches predominantly and black churches in the south i told the group we're meeting with the brothers half black and half white which is a good thing i told them i said we're breaking new ground here where all brothers and

and we're meeting here together. I said, and when we go out, we need to let people know that. So for you who are homeless, you go out there and you point them to Jesus on the street. You point them to Jesus. So it's a pretty good one of the bodyguards told me, he said, he's one of the SWAT members. He said, Robinson, I don't want to hurt your feelings. He said, but we've arrested about a third of your congregation at one time or another. I said, we're trying to, we're trying to help you on that, on that.

Well, I was, I was telling Kyle, I went up to, and I think I've said this on the podcast, but I went up to Oklahoma City, which is where you are. And I went into Dell City. They had this little church plant they were doing there. And their aim in it is a, there's an Air Force base there. And so they're aiming mostly at military. And it's called the Branch's Church, which is kind of a playoff, Jesus as the Branch, which is pretty good idea.

But it's also branches of the military. So when you walk in, it's a store like a, it used to be a store. you walk in, they got a couple of rooms there, and there's the four military deals, you know, flags. And so they're aiming at military and first responders. I love it. It was great, which is why I volunteered to go speak. But when I got up, at least not I got out, we're doing a marriage deal because obviously

a lot of military and, you know, police officers, first responders have a lot of marriage issues because of the nature of the job. You know, you're always gone. You're deployed. It's a hard thing to build a good marriage and everybody to stay faithful. And so they wanted us do some marriage stuff. And I got up in the first thing I told them, I said, well, I got to tell you guys, I'm excited to be here. I've never spoken in a setting, you know, of believers where on one end of the strip mall, there was a liquor store.

And the other end, there was a cannabis store selling pot. And you guys are right in the middle. And of course, I've said this before. I said, Jesus would call this prime real estate, right? That's right. Because everybody comes here is going to need to hear what you have to say. But to your point, Dad, you know, Romans, well, I was taking a break. In Romans 12, you know, we've had a lot of great worship in a dump line.

Sure. Sitting around this table, you know, in a pickup truck, having the conversation. I mean, that's the idea and the mindset that he's with us always. I mean, the Holy Spirit lives in us. And the American church, now the model, kind of tried to, they've been trying to revert back to the temple model since Jesus said, we're not doing that anymore. That's over. You can be a real man and follow Jesus Christ. That's exactly right.

Well, and that's kind of the thing that I talked about. And, you know, I did a devotional here recently called How to Build a Godly and Manly Foxhole. And that's kind of how to build, you know, guys that are cultivating spiritual, mental, and physical resilience on a daily basis, like around you. But the first four lessons are, what is a godly man? What is a manly man? Can you be both?

And was Jesus a Manly Man? And was Jesus a Manly Man? Like, that is worth the price of admission of going through this devotional. And it's on our website and it's on you version. The thing about it that's important is that if you don't believe that Jesus was a manly man, then it's going to affect how you worship him, right? And it's going to affect how you think of worship because I did an episode called Contemporary Worship Music is for Women and Affeminate Men.

Because when you look at a lot of these lyrics of modern worship songs, if you were to take out the name of Christ and put the name Bob in there, it seems like you're singing a song, a homoerotic song to your boyfriend. That's what it seems like. Yeah. And it's like, wait a minute. No, no, no. We're talking about the God of everything.

thing. We're talking about Christ who gave up his body to cover all sins, right? And we're talking about him like he's this cute guy that we can just roll up and put in our shirt pocket. And it's like that we're not we're not thinking of him in a proper light. And again, you can swing over way to the other side. You can only focus on the lion of Judah and have no lamb. So I've never advocated for that. I'm advocating for swinging the pendulum back a little bit to be like, let's talk about who he is. Because think about how silly it would be to talk about Jesus coming full of grace and then stopping. or Jesus coming full of truth and then stopping. Both are true, right?

But you don't get the totality of who Jesus is until you think about him as coming fully of grace and truth. Not 50% grace, 50% truth. That's 100% of both. Yeah, beginning with Jesus and his followers, which were not a great number, but these were a tough group of people. Oh, no doubt. I mean, I mean tough. We talk a lot about it on this podcast, Kyle, because we were commercial fishermen.

You know, that's how we started our. So we understand the nature of four of those guys being in that business. And what that does, I mean, it's hard work, it's physical work. It's understanding nature and how it works, understanding how fish swim, it's patterns, and all those things. And yet, again, I can remember, I've told the story before of we would go down and we would need a certain amount of fish to pay a bill for our company. You know, these are the early days. and mom would tell dad she'd say well we need we need you know 300 pounds of cat today and we would get down on our knees and worship our father for daylight in front of a boat and say father we need

300 pounds today you know would you send them into those nets and then we would go out and run our run the nets and when you get them all in you could dad's pretty good at guessing he said I think we got it so he mom would go in she'd come back and she and dad would say how we do miss kay well yeah 327 pounds, just enough to go pay that bill. And it was amazing because it was never an overabundance, but it was always coming through for what you needed. I tell people that I felt like we were raised on mana, you know, but our mana was fish. Well, and it's, that was an act of worship and most people would not categorize it as such. But, I mean, you look to the model, so that's why I kind of talk about the concept of a foxhole, you look at the model when the apostles were called.

So when you go into into Mark 3 and you look at when the apostles were called, there are mandates right there, the scripture that God gave in order for them to be an apostle, and that's to be with Jesus, to be ready to preach, and to be ready for spiritual warfare. Those are pretty good calling cards and pretty good manners of preparation because, again, if you read the scriptures, if you read the gospels, especially deadpan, you don't get the personality of Jesus. You don't get the ferocity of Jesus. I mean, my favorite biblical story is John too. It's five verses long, but it's whenever he overturns all, you know, when he clears the temple. Well, if you just buzz right through that story, you missed the fact that he didn't show up with a whip. There's no, there's no description that

he showed up with a whip. He went and made one and came back. So it was premeditated aggression, which doesn't sound very Christ-like, right? Premeditated aggression. It was sustained aggression to clear out the temple and all the animals and people that had to take a while. And also, here's the other thing. So just think about this room. There's not that many people in this room. And the key was they couldn't stop him. That's it. No, that's exactly it. They didn't even try, Phil. They didn't even try to stop. They were like, whoa. What kind of look did he have to have in his eye? Again, when you think about modern Christ-likeness, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's way too aggressive, right? And we're certainly not advocating that you walk into the boardroom at work on Monday and go turn over tables if you don't like what they're doing.

But at the same time, we don't frame Jesus properly. And we don't frame how we operated properly. He called out a demon with his voice, right? That's pretty godly and that's pretty manly. Also, when he reclaimed, I can't stand when they say, you know, he rose or Lazarus from the dead. He snatched him back from the day. It speaks loudly without saying a word. He was basically saying, don't mess with me. Right. Right.

And in that scripture, the Greek word that's used to describe how loud he spoke when he said Lazarus come out is the same word used to describe the storm that the Apostleship almost sank in. Right. So the voice of God, he didn't say, Lazarus, if it's okay and if it's not going to offend you, would you mind coming out here so these people will believe in me? I'd really appreciate that. But that's how he's presented in modern art, in modern artwork, in modern music, is that he's this ultimate nice guy. And it's like, I don't think if you actually walked with Jesus that that would be in the first hundred words you would use to describe him. Nice. Yeah.

Right. It'd be a bunch of other really, really awesome. In fact, we were talking, we were answering some listener questions a couple of podcasts ago. And I hadn't think about it until we were having this discussion. You know, and someone asked us about when Jesus said the guy comes up and says, you know, I want to. I want to follow you. And he says, well, let's go. And he says, well, I got to go back and bury my dad.

You know, he said, let the dead bear their own dead. And so, again, that sounds so harsh. And so we were talking about it, like, you know, trying to soften it. And we shouldn't. I mean, he was just stressful. I don't usually start my Bible study with, you bunch of snakes. Right. You brewed a vipers, right?

I mean, because think about this way. Like, you're going to say that. You're like, he's no pansy, that's for sure. A bunch of snakes. Have you ever said something to a group of people that made them so mad they wanted to kill you? Right? I mean, we see that in scripture that there was a mob that was ready to kill Jesus. I've had them stand up and come my way and say, well, what would you do if I put my fist right between your eyes?

Because you said you would have to forgive me. I turned the other cheek. I said, I will try to respond like I should. I'll just say that. But I do have a weapon. So just in case we go there, let's take another break. But yeah, so I think it's that, you know, there's a lot more in the text than people realize about just what you're talking about. And people have tried to kind of explain it away and, well, you know, the language of this.

But really, instead of just taking it at face value, that he didn't, when he was serious, he was serious. I mean, he meant it. He was a man's man. My plea for America and the rest of the world. And I keep saying this, and so far it's falling on death of ears, because everybody comes up, I don't know how many thousands of different types of denominations that there are, but it's splintered and it's divisive, just the makeup of it. And my plea is that surely we could all come together as brothers of Christ, sons of God. And first and foremost, we live by the fact that God sent Jesus to the earth,

2,000, 21 years, give and take a few ago. He died on the cross to remove our sin. Three days later, he was resurrected from the dead. He said this through Matthew, Mark, Luke, I'm going to do this. I'm going up to Jerusalem. I'm going to die for you. I'm going to be buried and raised from the dead. Peter's over there.

That's never going to happen. He said, get behind me, Satan. This is what I'm fixing to do, guys. Why we can't rally around the gospel message and just tell people who Jesus is, what he's done for us, what he's now doing, mediating for us, keeping us cleansed, and then the return. If we could just stand on that, I would just feel better about the whole thing. I don't care what they call each other.

I would just say, we ought to be able to come together and share Jesus and who he is and what he's done, what he's now doing, what he will do. I just don't know why we can't get that accomplished. Well, I don't feel like it's, I can see where you would think it's falling on deaf ears. It's certainly not for someone like me. You know, when I listen to the podcast, that's something I'm reminded of. It's like, okay, can we focus on the gospel and, you know, John 13, 34, 35? Can we be defined how we love one another?

Is that something that we could focus on? But, you know, I was listening to a podcast the other day. And it was, it's normally a Christian and atheist doing a debate on this podcast. It's called Just Thinking, or not just thinking. It's called the Unbelievable podcast out of the UK. And this particular podcast, it was two Christians. Well, they were debating, you know, post-millennialism and omelennialism and all that. And so I'm like, okay, I'm supposed to know about these things.

So let me just listen to this. And so I got about halfway through. And I'm like, I super don't care about this conversation. Because the thing about it is, is like, that's going to be one of those things. That's my point. Right. When we're in heaven someday, we're going to clink our glasses together and go, ha, you were right. Or, ha, you were right.

Like, that's not a salvific issue. You know, you think about it. Jesus dying for us being buried and raised from the dead, it's not rocket science. No. And it's not theological. I think there's a reason the word theological and theologian is not in the Bible. It's just, it's not rocket science. It's one person who ever live, think about it.

your calendar is going to be dated on Jesus Christ showing up. Out of all the people who ever lived on planet Earth, if you can fix it so the world counts time by you, I would say you investigate him. It's a pretty simple. It's like Ben Carson told me and Zach, we met him and he said, he was talking about people saying he was going to have a hard time running HUD,

you know, for Trump. And he said, well, it's not brain surgery. Right, which is way harder. But the thing about it this way, too, guys, whenever you're looking at a situation and seeing how complicated it could be, it's hard to apply it, right? So if you're trying to apply post-millennialist mindset to who I vote for, right? That's almost impossible to do, right? Unless you're just like, okay, binary, they are post-millennial or not post-millionial. But when you talk about in Jesus politics and in the theft of America's soul, apply the gospel to how you think about political candidates.

So, you know, with Trump, which I know you've talked a lot about Trump and those types of things, I chose not to vote for him. the primary in 2016 and for the general in 2016. I left the top of my ballot blank because I didn't think he met my basic standards of human decency, so I'm going to take my stand and not vote. But then I saw how he acted and legislated for four years. And I also saw the mean tweets and I saw the course commentary and all those different things. But I was like, I don't even know if Donald Trump is pro-life in his heart, but he sure is legislating like he is. Because I can't know the man's heart, but I can read the legislation as it comes across my table. The fruit. Right. The fruit's there. The first thing when I met with him, I had three sessions with him, but all three were spiritual from one end to the other.

And he at no time, I'm aware of his caustic personality, I call it. But at the time, he listened carefully when I went through who Jesus is, what he has done for you. Trump, you have sinned, right? I didn't say Mr. Trump, he's running for office when I talked to him before he won. I said, Trump, you have sin, haven't you? He said, oh, yeah. I said, probably a lot, right? He said, yeah, I said, I have too.

I said, here's Jesus's death on a cross. He solved that problem for you. I said, are you going into a six-foot hole? Am I dream in one of these days? Gunshot, heart attack, whether you win the presidency or not. You're going down, in the ground, right? He said, no doubt about it. I said, the resurrection of the dead is the only thing I've run up on with Jesus Christ,

that will get us out of here. I said, now look, I'm open to suggestions. You're running for president. I said, if this doesn't get us off earth, do you have a better story? He said, I do not. I said, don't forget Jesus while you're doing your job. Don't forget him.

He said, I understand. But there was no belligerents coming out of him. I get that Bible out of my face. What are you trying to do? Convert me? I'm like, yeah. I've been watching, you know, and that caustic personality sometimes kind of gets in the way there, Mr. President. You see what I'm saying?

So he listened and I said, I'm going to vote for him because of his policies, not because of his caustic personality. We all have thoughts in many ways. Well, and I like the way you put that. That's viewing it through a gospel lens. We'll do that because you mentioned the books, especially in theft. Dad talks about the big lies that, and that's Satan's. He's a liar from the beginning. So some of the stuff we talked about today, the big lie is that there's such a thing as toxic masculinity, meaning that if you're male, you're toxic and you mistreat women.

Now, I met your wife last night, a lovely person, and I saw you guys as you got a little baby boy. And I saw how you were treating her and how she was responding to you. And here you are talking about all this masculinity. And yet you seem like you're a, if she were here, I'd ask her, I'm sure what she'd say, that you're a good husband, a good father. So that's a lie that says if you're a manly man, that you're going to mistreat your wife. Right. Because that's what we've been. That's what we've been taught.

That's why, I made it, even with Trump or anybody else, the ones that curse come back and yeah, I love them. I don't hate them. The ones that come to Jesus, you say, they're brothers. You love them. The ones who go out cursing out the door, you know, you're no good as a. I love them. It doesn't affect my love for them at all.

Right. I tell them about Jesus, the way to get all planet Earth or life. take it or leave it. But my job is to at least inform you. If you're a seed-seller, you know, that's your job. It's not about the soul. Let's take our last break. Well, there's an easy proof whenever, because you would think that, oh,

a guy's talking about manhood all the time and all these different things. His wife's probably under his thumb. And, you know, it's a terrible place. Manhood is flown away. I'm glad you're talking about it. Well, when you talk about somebody that has a God-centered masculinity, and you walk into that household, the woman is, you know, the family's not only provided for they're uplifted. You're providing for their flourishing at that point. But what we're told is that

masculinity in and of itself is toxic. And so I love one of my mentors is John Eldridge. So you wrote the book Wild at Heart, which is kind of the seminal men's ministry book. And he talked about the last time I had them on my podcast about how when things are dangerous, that doesn't mean you get rid of them. It means you put them in the hands of people that know how to use them. Right. So a gun is a dangerous thing in the hands of somebody that's going to use it for evil. But it's a useful tool in another hand. Plus, I have a Bible in one hand and an AR, within arms reach, 99% of the time, I want a Bible study with you. But if you come in, the dog's bark and the glass is breaking and you're coming in with

weapons in your hands, the Bible studies off. Now it's a gunfight. That's a gunfight. And so the important thing about talking about this masculinity stuff is not to, you know, over-emphasize, hey, men, you need to, you need to, you know, ride four-wheel drive and you need to eat jerky and you need to do all this. It's not the, that's the caricature masculinity stuff. I don't care what you're into. I don't care what your hobbies are.

I care about whether or not you cultivate spiritual, mental, and physical resilience on a daily basis. And if you are living a God-centered life, those are things that are a little bit easier for me to see. And part of the thing that helps is my wife, Kelsey, she's a lioness. Like, she's down. She's down for the call. She's not fighting me in this because she's not listened to the whispers or the tickles over here.

What did you say, Kyle? She's a lioness. Lioness. I like it. But she's not, she's not listening to what culture is telling her about what her husband is, right? So have I done some toxicly masculine things in my life? You bet your tail I have, right? And those are things that Jesus paid for those sins. I'm guilty as charged. Absolutely. And so, but she is, she's down enough for the cause of what we're trying to do and what we're trying to build

because she sees the changes that are being made in a life. She's known me since I was 18 years old. And so whenever people listen to our show and they make some of these changes, the women will send us emails and say like, hey, you know, he's making these changes. What are you saying? What are you doing? And it's like we're just readjusting where they're focusing their masculinity. And we're putting, you know, we're putting more oomph behind it, I guess you could say. I get a ton of same emails of unashamed listeners. And a lot of it is their wives. And they say, you've helped change my husband's life.

And therefore my life is better. And it's really interesting because you would think, again, if this lie of Satan was true, that once people listen to us for a few hours, that they would just be terrible. They'd be this patriarchy. And their wives are saying, thank you so much because my husband is becoming a godly man. And now I know he can lead me and lead our family. And so, but again, it's just that's what Satan does. He puts the lie out there.

That's the whole thing we've been talking about, all these evil ideologies that are being, you know, kicked around in our current era. They're all lies. The other day I got a letter and the wife of a guy said, Miss Robbins, I know this sounds crazy. She said, but my husband has been hollering about the last couple of years. He said, the only person I'd let baptize me is John the Baptist himself. He said, because I'm looking around. We've run out of men here. So she goes and gets a picture of me off the Internet.

Those in front of them, she said, what about him? It seems pretty close. He looks down there. He lines it up. I said, I got Dan on it. We lined up a time. He drove down with his wife and his 15-year-old son, 14-old. I think 15.

I said, son, you're coming with your daddy here. They showed up. We had a slot for them. A lot of people hauling around here. And there's some other woman with them, but I go through the gospel with him. And he said, it's the greatest move I've ever pulled my life, props. And he said, I was just, I was trying to think, are there any men left? I said, oh, there's men left out here.

And there's more than me. I said, you just got to have faith, my man. That's right. There's the father and the son, his wife was a daughter, the guy almighty already, but there's a father and his son. And we went out there and we prayed on the side of the riverbank after a baptize him in the river. He wanted it old school, basically. So I've lived up to what he wanted.

So it's a great thing when you see it, man. Well, and Phil, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to create this groundswell with Undaunted Life and with the podcast, Undaunted Life, a Man's podcast, because it's, we want to give these men the tools to be able to push back darkness. up. I really appreciate that because, again, if we're going to be able to push back darkness as men, we have to have the right arrows in our quiver. And so whether they're fighting back against CRT and their local school board or something else. And Kyle, we're somewhat better off than these cows were homeless. I mean, they're finding

a meal, you know, and they all were killed. All of them were slaughtered. I don't mind going out for the cause. You should what I'm saying? So maybe it happened. We talked about that last night. Kyle and I were talking about what people call persecution in the 21st century. because somebody mean mouths them on Twitter. These guys before us. It's not persecution. No. I mean, in fact, to me, it's immoral to even try to make that comparison about somebody not liking me or saying something nasty about me versus what these guys went through.

Yeah, you want to read a book that'll change your life. Read Tried by Fire. That's a book that details the first thousand years of church history. And, you know, we're sitting here worried about mean tweets and bad comments on Instagram. These were people that were being bare. buried alive, boiled alive, you know, drowned alive, being pulled apart by horses. And it was all because they refused. And the interesting thing about these stories, it can be way worse. But the most sustaining thing from these stories is I didn't find a single story of someone recanting their belief

in Jesus Christ. Because at this time, especially in the first century, these weren't people that heard about Jesus. These were maybe one of the 500 that saw him, right? And they know what they saw. There was no doubting anymore at that moment. So it's like, you do whatever you want to this body because I know where the rest of me goes. And even, we've talked about quite a bit, even the 12, you know, I mean, they, when you see the resurrection, when you get it then, and once he left about what he was saying, I mean, they would have done anything. Oh, yeah.

There was no turning back for those guys. Why did they change so quickly and why did they finally all come together and say, I'll die before I'll shut up? That's exactly right. And they built the foundation for us. So, undone- We love all of y'all listening. We love every last one of you, you know.

trying to get you to say that there's some few good men left. So Undaunted Life's mission statement, I love it. It says, Undaunted. Life equips men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical, resilient. So in our last couple of minutes, why is that your mission statement? You know, why does God put this on you and then now using you to do this? I feel like there needs to be a revolution of manhood inside the church, and I'm not the one

to do that. I'm going to, but I'm going to play a part of it. And that's part of the reason why we're doing this. And men don't have a target to shoot at. And so we're giving them the target of cultivating spiritual, mental and physical resilience on a daily basis. And we go more into what that is. But equipping men to push back darkness, again, there are men that want to push back

darkness. But if they get asked one question, so the pro-life issue is an easy one. So it's like, yeah, I'm pro-life. Well, what if she's raped? Oh, I mean, I guess in that case, we could kill the baby. It's like they fell apart immediately because they didn't have the arguments to say. And so that's why, like, the scripture is sufficient. for us to explain everything in the gospel is sufficient. But guess what? You can't argue against

critical race theory if you don't know where it comes from. You don't know that it comes from critical theory, which comes from the Frankfurt School, which comes from Marx and Ingalls. And, you know, those are the types of things. It's like, we want to give you the tools so that you can push back, whether you're pushing back at work in your own household, at your church, whatever the thing is. We want to make sure that you're equipped and you're ready to go. Well, I just want to recommend to our audience to check Kyle out. You got some stuff on YouTube as well as that I checked out and loved and then in your podcast as well because you have some really interesting people on there talking about these very things and so I could tell I said because she had she was over there

cooking so she had met you guys and she said did you meet Kyle and his wife I said oh we're already friends yeah that's right it took about five minutes for you realize I like this guy and you actually met Zach first which is cool which is how you wind up on our podcast so we really appreciate you making the trek down here and just keep doing what you're doing absolutely thanks guys Unashamed podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes. And don't miss an episode by subscribing on YouTube and be sure to click that little bell to get notified about new episodes. And for even more content that you won't get anywhere else, subscribe to BlazTV at blazestiv.com slash unashamed.