FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

There's a sociologist who did a study, and he would ask young men, what does it mean to be a good man? And they had no trouble answering that. Integrity, honesty, sacrifice, be a protector, be a provider, be generous, and so on.

And then when he'd say, but what does it mean to be a real man? Then they would say, no, no, no, no. A real man. That's.

Speaker 2

Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Speaker 3

And I'm Ann Wilson. And you can find us@familylifetoday.com this is family life today.

Speaker 4

So I've spent 33 seasons in an NFL locker room. I've never mentioned that on family life before, have I?

Speaker 3

I don't think you.

Speaker 4

As the Detroit Lions chaplain, I was around a lot of men, young men, and then I coached high school football for 13, I think, seasons. So I'm a lot around a lot of high school men.

Speaker 3

And you've coached a lot of teams over the years of guys. We had three boys. So you coached a lot of their teams as well?

Speaker 4

Yeah. And then pastoring, you know, a church with thousands of men. One of the questions I would often ask either a high school boy or an NFL player or just a guy in our church, tell me what a real man is. Tell me what a godly man is. What is a man? I am not kidding. I don't think I ever got a clear answer. It was confusion. It was, well, maybe it's. There was never really any clarity. It was just, well, maybe it's.

And then I look at especially high school boys and say, when do you become a man? Had no idea. Like, when you get your driver's license, when you. Nobody knew. And so do you feel like you.

Speaker 3

Had a good answer for that?

Speaker 4

I didn't. When I was growing up, as I became a husband, you know, I went on a journey, basically to scripture to say, what does God say a man is and a woman?

And, yeah, I think I had a clear answer. But I don't think our culture, and even in the church, I don't think we know.

Speaker 3

I think we're living in different days even than when you were coaching. And what's that mean? I think that there's just a lot of different views now of what people would say a real man, and especially a man of God is.

And it's not always looked at in a positive way.

And so today is going to be really fun and interesting.

Speaker 4

Yeah, we have a woman in the studio that's gonna talk to us about masculinity. We have Nancy Pearcey back on family life today. I don't know how many years it's been since you've been in here, but we are glad to have you back.

Speaker 1

I think it was for my earlier book, Love Thy Body.

Speaker 4

Yeah. In this book, the Toxic War on How Christianity Reconciles the Sexist.

I would love to be a student in your class.

And you have young men and women, college kids in there every day.

And I'm just sitting there thinking, I would love to sit under your teaching.

Speaker 3

Our listeners. This is a treat. She's really wise, really thoughtful, and you've talked to a lot of people. You've read a lot, you've studied the Scriptures a lot.

And so I'm kind of excited that we get to talk about this topic because I think there is a lot of confusion.

Nancy, do you think there is?

Speaker 1

Oh, yes.

Speaker 4

Now let me ask you this, because I don't know a lot of this backstory. What's the former agnostic?

Speaker 1

Oh, my personal story, which I do love to tell, by the way, I started using it now in all of my speaking because I realize the older I get, the more thankful I am that God got hold of me. And so I've been using my story a lot more.

I was raised in a Christian home, but if you've ever been in an ethnic home, mine was Scandinavian. All Scandinavians are Lutheran because it was a state church. In other words, they rely a lot on the ethnicity to hold you. There's not a lot of strong personal commitment.

And so when I was in high school, I started asking questions because you're a thinker and I'm going to a public school. Right? All my textbooks are secular, all my teachers are secular. And I just started asking, how do we know it's true? That was it. How do we know Christianity is true? And nobody in my life could answer that. None of the adults in my life could answer that.

I talked to a Christian college professor and I asked him point blank, why are you Christian? And he said, "Works for me." That's it. And I had a chance to talk to a seminary dean, and I thought I would get a more substantial answer from him.

Speaker 3

So you're really looking for answers.

Speaker 1

I was asking a lot of questions. Yeah. I didn't just slide; a lot of people sort of slide away from the Christian background. And no, when I gave up my Christian faith, I immediately realized that if there was no God, there's no meaning to life, there's no foundation for ethics. There's just true for me, true for you. There's no purpose for life. We're just on a rock flying through empty space.

I realized there's not even a foundation for knowledge in the sense that if all I've had is my puny brain and the vast scope of time and space, what makes me think I could have some kind of universal, absolute truth? Ridiculous. At 16, it struck me that that was ridiculous. So I became a relativist and a skeptic and a determinist. I absorbed all of these ideas.

By the time I was in college, I went back to Europe. We had lived in Europe when I was a child, and I'd really loved it. So I saved my money all through high school from playing in the local symphony, by the way. That was my job.

Speaker 4

Playing the violin.

Speaker 1

Playing the violin so that I could go back to Europe. And when I was in Europe the second time, that's when I sort of stumbled across Labri, the ministry of Francis Schaeffer, which is an apologetics ministry. That's what he was known for.

The term cultural apologetics was coined to describe what he did because he didn't just deal with abstract arguments in the logical ether. He looked at ideas as they percolate down through a culture, through art, literature, and music and so on.

Speaker 3

That's right up your alley.

Speaker 1

That spoke to me. Yeah. I would not have been drawn in by any other form of apologetics. At first, I left. Did you? I was at Libri twice, because the first time it was so attractive.

I'd never seen such an attractive form of Christianity. Not only was it intellectually engaging, but culturally, you know, the arts on top of all that. This was 1971, and everyone there was hippies.

But that was a serious consideration in the sense that at that time, nobody was reaching across that cultural divide and reaching out to these disaffected young people. So I thought, who are these Christians? They can even talk to hippies.

Speaker 3

Wow.

Speaker 1

But because it was so appealing, I was afraid I might be drawn in emotionally. And I didn't.

Speaker 3

And you didn't want that.

Speaker 1

I didn't want to do that because Christianity let me down once already, you know? So I wasn't gonna go back lightly. I stayed a month and studied, left Labrie, and went home. But because of Labrie, I discovered there was such a thing as apologetics. I discovered C.S. Lewis, not only Schaeffer, but also Chesterton and so on.

Through my own reading, I eventually decided, okay, I am intellectually convinced it's true. Now, where do I find Christians? Because I wasn't in a church or anything. I thought, well, I knew some back at Labrie. So a year and a half later, I went back to Labrie, and that's where I really got grounded in understanding the Christian worldview and apologetics.

It has shaped all my writing since then. Everything I do is like, I want to help young people who are having the same questions that I had when I was that age.

Speaker 4

Wow.

Speaker 3

What a great story. Thanks for sharing that.

Speaker 4

Well, let's talk about the toxic war on masculinity, and you begin it with a story of your dad.

So I'm guessing this has a foundation of why you want to study this, because it's full. I can't wait to get into the content.

But tell us about your dad, I guess.

Speaker 1

Yeah, my father was physically abusive.

Speaker 3

Did you have any siblings?

Speaker 1

Yes, there's six kids in the family.

Speaker 3

And where did you fall in line?

Speaker 1

So I was third.

Speaker 3

And this was going on with all your siblings?

Speaker 1

All except the last one. I used to work for Prison Fellowship. Wow.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 1

And one thing we knew was even violent people mellow over time. You know, even violent criminals mellow over time.

So my dad did mellow by the sixth kid. The sixth kid is the only one who doesn't have a memory of being beaten, but the rest of us do. Yeah.

Speaker 3

What about your mom?

Speaker 1

No, not that he was. He was pretty verbally abusive to her. He didn't respect her at all. And we didn't either. I mean, we took our cues from him. Right? You do. He treats her like a dishrag, so we did as well.

And then she never stood up for us. This is our complaint with our mom. Right. She never stood up for us. But looking back as an adult, I don't blame her. I wouldn't stand up to that guy either.

Speaker 3

He was probably scary. He was probably a scary dad.

Speaker 1

It was very scary.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Fear. I mean, when I became a Christian and started going through all the emotional healing of this. Let me give you the emotional healing side, since in my book, *Toxic Gore on Masculinity*, I do talk about when the healing started. I had one person say, I opened your book and I read your story, and I thought, oh, no, this is going to be some angry feminist. And then I got to the end, and I realized, oh, no, it's a story of healing.

At Labrie was a psychiatric social worker who agreed to be on staff because she realized that a lot of people's problems with Christianity were not just intellectual. So the apologetics wasn't the only thing. But it also is often emotional, especially conflict with your parents and so on. Her name was Sheila Bird; we called her Birdie. The interesting thing is she saw my dad.

So the reason I ended up at Labrie was because my father was trying to keep this short. My father was teaching in Turkey at the Middle East Technical University, and it was right before the military coup. There was a lot of violence happening, especially against Westerners, with car bombings and package bombings. They told my dad, you need to get out. It's too dangerous.

So he's driving across Europe to catch the cheap Luxembourg flights. A Christian friend told him, if you're driving through Switzerland, you've got to stop at this place called Labrie. He writes to me in German; I was in Germany, and he writes to me and says, come on down and see us.

People sometimes ask me, why would you go to a Christian ministry if you were not a Christian? I said, well, I didn't go to a Christian ministry. I went to see my parents because I wasn't going to see them again. They were going back to the States. So I went to Labrie to see my parents, not to go to a Christian ministry.

Speaker 3

Interesting. Let me ask you, at that time, what were your thoughts about your dad? Your father?

Speaker 1

Oh, I had totally suppressed it. This was interesting. I had so suppressed it because I thought my childhood was so unhappy that I'm going to start my life over.

Speaker 3

So you just buried it?

Speaker 1

I totally buried it. I thought, I'm going to recreate myself from scratch. I thought you could do that. This is why it was so important that God let me be at a place where there was a psychiatric social worker.

And not only that, but at Labrie, Frances Schaeffer used to have Saturday night discussions. So my family, my parents and a couple siblings were there.

And Bertie saw my father. And she told me when I went to see her, she said, I looked at your father and I thought, here is the man who suppresses everyone around him.

Speaker 3

Wow.

Speaker 1

She could see it. And in hindsight, I might not have even talked about it. I had suppressed it so carefully that she knew to ask.

Speaker 3

She knew to ask.

Speaker 1

She knew to ask about my family, about my father. She also noticed, by the way, that our family is totally disconnected. There was no coherence. There were no emotional bonds, you know, among anyone in our family.

Speaker 3

Were you surprised when she said that to you?

Speaker 1

Well, not entirely, because if you looked at my Dad, I would agree with her.

Speaker 3

So it was obvious.

Speaker 1

Yes, yes. I think it was these steely blue eyes that look like I'm a concentration camp guard.

Speaker 4

Well, what did the healing look like?

Speaker 1

So Birdie, she had to persuade me, you cannot just walk away from your past. You do have to work through this stuff with your father.

And my sister, by the way, who was also not a Christian, also stayed with me at Labri at that time. My older sister, she had not suppressed it. She was a little older.

We sat on the side of the Alps because Labrie is in the Swiss Alps. And she would say, do you remember when dad used to do this? Do you remember when dad used to do that? And I'm like, well, of course I do. But I had so suppressed it that I wasn't consciously thinking of it anymore. But of course I do.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So that was helpful, too. Between my sister and Birdie, you know, we went back through my past, and, well, basically, it's. The healing power is love. You know, experiencing love from Birdie that I'd never experienced before.

Being able to talk openly about these things where I expected to be rejected. Right. You don't talk to people about your deepest pain. You know, you don't expect people to keep loving and accepting you on that level. But she did. So that was it.

When I left Labrie, my model of God was Birdie. And she would ask her gentle, probing questions. And so I would hear God asking these gentle, probing questions, getting deeper and deeper.

And so the emotional healing really started at Labrie and learning to experience God's love. Cause God's love is the ultimate healing power, you know, to have such a transformative relationship with God that God's love actually changes you.

Speaker 3

Ah, that's so beautiful. And I'm wondering, so often they'll say your view of God is many times tainted by your view of your father, good or bad. Right. And did you have that experience?

Speaker 1

Oh, yeah, But Bertie solved that in a lot of ways. Having one person step in and be different.

Speaker 3

That's how encouraging.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it made a big difference.

Speaker 4

Now, as you think back on that and in regards to what you're writing now about masculinity, was your view of masculinity defined by your dad?

Speaker 1

Well, so as you can imagine, I came a raving feminist.

Speaker 3

Because of your dad. You think?

Speaker 1

Oh, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3

Do you think he was toxic? I put quotations around that word.

Speaker 1

Well, his behavior in the home was definitely toxic. So I did become very much of a feminist. I was always reading some feminist book. I read all the major groundbreaking feminists, from Betty Friedan, you know, to Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Millett. I read them all because whenever they talked about how horrible men were, I thought, yeah, you agreed. Yeah, definitely.

So it affected my view of men, even though the healing in my relationship with God was very real. Make sure you got that part. Yeah, but my view of men was very tainted. Definitely. And I thought every feminist book I read was better than the last one.

Speaker 3

Really?

Speaker 1

I always had a feminist book on my bedside. Always.

Speaker 3

Let me ask you, you've been married for. Have you been married 50 years?

Speaker 1

Almost.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And so how did that affect your marriage? Did you view your husband in a negative kind of way?

Speaker 1

You would think it would, but I don't think so because I'm very relational, so I have very deep personal relationships.

Speaker 3

Which was helpful for your marriage?

Speaker 4

Well, it's interesting, you know, as you talk about your background, as I read through the toxic war of masculinity, and again, I mean, there's so much in there, I don't even know where to start.

There's so many things that you walk through, even the history of masculinity and our culture. I put the book down thinking you are very pro man. Very pro masculinity.

Speaker 3

Yes.

Speaker 4

And hearing that background, like, wow, this has been quite a journey, a transformation. You end up at the end of the book going, men are good. You know what I mean?

It's not a book ripping on men. It's, here's the journey men have gone through, and here's what really masculinity looks like in a beautiful way.

As a man, I'm like, yeah, I want to hand this to everybody. Say, this is a godly perspective on manhood. But the journey that you went on is very interesting.

Speaker 1

Oh, thank you so much. I'm glad that's what comes through, because I certainly did try to make it positive toward men, even when I dealt with some of the difficulties that men have in our culture, and even when I dealt at the end with abusive marriages and so on. And I tried to always keep that positive. So I'm glad that that's what's coming through, because, you know, men don't respond well to being accused of being toxic, and who would? Right, right.

So here's what I found really effective. There's a sociologist who did a study, and he ends up saying, you know, there's. In our culture, there's two competing scripts for manhood. He's a very well-known sociologist, so he speaks around the world, in countries around the world.

And so he began to use that as his testing ground. He would ask young men, what does it mean to be a good man? You know, if you're at a funeral, in the eulogy, somebody says, he was a good man. What does that mean? And they had no trouble answering that. Everyone around the world said, well, integrity, honesty, sacrifice. How about the little guy? I kind of like that one. How about the little guy? Be a protector, be a provider, be generous, and so on.

Speaker 3

This is worldwide.

Speaker 1

Worldwide. And by the way, he would say, where did you learn that? You know, integrity, sacrifice. And they would say, well, it's just in the air we breathe. And if in the Western countries, they would say, it's our Judeo Christian heritage.

Speaker 3

Oh.

Speaker 1

And then when he'd say, but what does it mean to be a real man? Then they would say, no, no, no, no. A real man, that's completely different. Be tough. Be strong. Never show weakness. Win at all costs. Suck it up. Be competitive. Get rich.

The real tension, I think, today is not between men and women so much as within men's own head between these two competing scripts. As our culture has become more secular, the good man ideal is fading. You know, it's losing its hold in men's hearts.

And what's left is more the real man, which is what people mean when they say toxic. Yes, they mean those. The real man. You know, entitlement, power over dominance and so on.

Speaker 4

Is that why you wanted to write about it and study it?

Speaker 1

No, no. That was one of the sociologists who I read when I was involved in it. That's not what I first got started. No. You know, when I first got started, I will tell you.

Well, there's two reasons. One is, I did have to ask, where is this coming from? Because the hostility against men is so extreme today, even in mainstream publications. I read a Washington Post article titled, "Why Can't We Hate Men?" What? This is not some fringe feminist publication. It's the Washington Post.

"Why Can't We Hate Men?" Or you can buy T-shirts that say, "So many men, so little ammunition."

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean, you just set something up. And I'll end with this.

Speaker 3

That's a cliffhanger right there.

Speaker 4

At the church I helped lead for 30 years, we had a men's retreat, and guess what we called it? We called it Man Up. It's really interesting because we probably did that for seven, eight, or even ten years. A couple thousand men would come away to this camp, and my youngest son came on our staff. One of his first years there, he said, "Dad, that's a really bad name for a men's retreat."

It's interesting because he just sort of articulated what he tried to say to me. I looked at him like, "What are you talking about?" Nike uses that phrase, "man up." It's like, "Let's go away and let's man up and be men." He responded, "That is what is killing us as men. We're being told to man up, and we think that means be toxic and macho and don't cry."

He continued, "That is not going to reach my generation. We are repelling against that. A man shouldn't man up. In fact, a man can't man up."

Speaker 3

A man should lay down his life.

Speaker 4

Yeah. And he was trying to get at, we are nothing without Christ. And you're like saying, man up and you can do this without Jesus. We should be saying, no, I need Jesus. It should be something more tender and sensitive.

At first they looked at him like, what are you talking about? Then as I thought about it, like, he is exactly right. And it's what you just read. That's the wrong phrase. And that's something my generation, and you know this generation a little bit, we've grown up with that. That's the vision. And it's the wrong vision.

You get into that in the book. In fact, tomorrow we gotta talk about, okay, if that's not the right vision, what is? And I can't wait for our listeners to hear the section of your book about men that go to church. That was inspiring to me. And that's tomorrow.

Speaker 2

This is Family Life Today. We're David Ann Wilson. And man, that was a great conversation with Nancy about a topic that I'm a little passionate about.

Speaker 3

I love that you're passionate about it.

Speaker 4

Everybody is.

Speaker 3

I don't know if everybody is.

Speaker 2

They should be.

Speaker 3

They could be passionate one way or the other. But Nancy is pretty brilliant in how she writes this book and she communicates about this topic. And I think it's really necessary to talk about it.

Speaker 2

What I mean is everybody's passionate about it. I think everybody is talking about the role of men.

Speaker 3

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2

In our culture. Not just in the church. Everywhere. And the role of women. But I think there's so much confusion. There's not clarity.

And so when she talks about the toxic war on masculinity, which is, you know, the title of her book, it's a conversation everybody's having.

I mean, think about us as parents.

Speaker 4

We raised three boys.

Speaker 2

That's a conversation every single day in our life.

Speaker 3

And we have four grandsons. And so I feel the pressures of the culture, basically. It feels sometimes like our culture is silencing these great men.

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

And also it feels at times like our grandsons aren't given these great role models to follow. And that's concerning.

Speaker 2

Well, our grandsons have a great role model.

Speaker 3

Yeah, they do. Jesus and their dads.

Speaker 4

Oh, you got Jesus in there too.

Speaker 3

Jesus is the best one.

Speaker 2

But I mean, it is obviously true. We just, you know, spend spent the last 20, 30 minutes talking about it. Our boys and our men need a vision of godly manhood.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And Nancy's sort of getting in there like there's this masculinity that can be toxic. We need a clear vision and she gave us one. And I would tell you, go get the book. It's really worth a read. It's really a study.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 2

We've got Nancy's book in our family life shop. You can get the link in our show notes. Just go to familylifetoday.com, click on the link, go to the shop, buy her book.

Speaker 3

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Speaker 1

Foreign.

Speaker 4

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