Toxic Masculinity!

Wake up, everyone. It's time for the Steve Noble Show, where biblical Christianity meets the everyday issues of life, in your home, at work, and even in politics. Steve is an ordinary man who believes in an extraordinary God, and on his show there's plenty of grace and lots of truth, but no sacred cows. Call Steve now at 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH. Or check him out online at the SteveNobleShow.com. And now, here's your host, Steve Noble.

That's the man of the house. That's where I park. You don't park there.

You park out on the street. Okay, that's just the deal. And then, let's see if I'm leaving anything else out.

No, and if I've hurt your feelings with this opening today, I don't care. And so today we're going to be talking about toxic masculinity. I'm trying to do my best toxic masculinity impersonation, although some people might tell you that I don't have to impersonate it.

I live it out. What is toxic masculinity? Well, there's toughness. This is the notion that men should be physically strong, emotionally callous.

I like that one. Behaviorally aggressive. Check.

Got it. Anti-femininity. Yes, amen. This involves the idea that men should reject anything that is considered to be feminine, such as showing emotion.

Ugh, makes me sick to my stomach or accepting help. And number three, power. I like that. This is the assumption that men must work towards obtaining power and status, social and financial, so that they can gain the respect of others. And to all of that, I say, what's the problem? Is that toxic masculinity? Is that biblical masculinity? So today we'll be talking about this. We'll unpack this. What is masculinity anyway?

What does the Bible have to say about it? Of course, it's Theology Thursday with our friends at BJU Seminary and Bob Jones University. And we're going to be exceptionally toxic today because we have Captain Toxic himself, Dr. Renton Rathbun back in the house, who's the director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Bob Jones University. How are you doing, my friend? I'm doing great.

Feeling real toxic today. Yes, so I didn't clear that introduction with you because sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is permission. But this is a great topic.

Appropriately, you have your sleeves rolled up, which is quite masculine of you. Absolutely. And before we kind of get into the nuts and bolts of it, you did mention, and it's great to have you back on, you did mention that you guys at Bob Jones University did a little panel discussion of this just recently. So tell us about that.

And how did that go? Yeah, we had a panel. We had two men and two women on the panel, and then I moderated. One of the women on the panel was my wife. I think you need to restate that. You didn't moderate, you controlled the panel. Yes, I meant dominate. Yes, thank you.

There's a rhyme there. So we had a single woman who works in a very, in a place with lots of men, very men dominated media. Had my wife on there because I wanted the students to see what it's like for someone to talk about masculinity with their wife there and hear what she has to say. And then I had, we had two other faculty members that specialized in social media and the general media out there and how that affects the way we think about masculinity.

And it went really well. We had a little over 400 students that showed up and had a lot of questions. So we did our best to answer them. So what kind of questions were you encountering? Do you, do you remember or did you remember just the questions that the guys asked? Yeah, well, and so we had questions like, you know, does a, does a wife have to submit to a husband who's, who's not a Christian or who's a bully?

You know, what does that look like? There was questions about, you know, if you're a single woman, you know, what is, how are you supposed to respond to men as a Christian woman and things like that. It was, you know, is the, one of the things I prefaced the whole thing with was something I learned from Ben Shapiro.

So Ben Shapiro doesn't allow people to just jump to exceptions when they haven't even accepted the rule yet. So he, I, I, I heard him, you know, in a debate and someone says, well, you know, it was a debate about abortion. And someone said, you know, what about times of, of rape and incest?

You, what do you know? What about those times? And he said, well, wait a minute, we haven't even agreed that abortion is murder yet.

How are we going to jump to this other year? So I tried to preface the whole thing was let's not jump to the exceptions before we've even agreed on what Ephesians 5 says about husbands and wives. Once we agree on that, then maybe we can look at exceptions, but I don't think the Christian church really is even where Ephesians 5 is anyway.

So, yeah. So do you, what would you think? And then we'll, and then we'll dive into the theology of all this, but just generally, do you think the church in the 21st century, do you, do you think we have good definitions of biblical manhood and biblical womanhood? Or do you think we've blurred those lines as well?

Or perhaps it's just all fuzzy. Yeah, I think we blurred the lines. I think we blurred the lines because we have a new generation of pastors coming up who grew up maybe with dads who are a little more, who are rougher. Maybe they saw a lot of bullying going on. So the overcorrection has taught them that real leadership is what they call servant leadership, which is really just, I'm going to let my wife do most of this stuff and I'll nod and smile. And that's servant leadership. And so there's been this way, this huge overcorrection to the point where I think everything has become fuzzy.

Even the gospel coalition has allowed people onto their website through writing and videos that have tried to rebrand Ephesians 5 into saying anything than what it plainly says already. Yeah. And so again, once you, I call that the S word, because anytime you go to the word submission or submit. That of course, our culture, not just here in America, but around the world, we'll generally see that as toxic masculinity. That's domineering, that's domination, the man over the woman. So we have to work through that today on Theology Thursday is we're going to work with some of those terms and submission.

What does that mean? How did God create men and women different? And what about men that aren't quite as manly as I don't know, Renton and men that maybe are a little more artsy, a little less rough around the edges like, I don't know me. How do you deal with that biblically? And what does the biblical woman look like?

Is there any room in there for a tomboy? We'll go down all these roads together with Dr. Renton Rathbun. It's Steve Noble. We'll be right back.

Toxic or not? Manly or feminine? That was Adam Levine from Maroon 5, who is not a thick person, has a lot of, he's a beautiful person. He's got a beautiful face.

And but he sings like that. So can he possibly be masculine or is he a little more on the feminine side? What do you do with that? And this is a big conversation in the culture. Now, whether you're too much too manly, not manly enough, you're feminine or for girls, which this will all factor into like the transgender movement. If a girl is more like a tomboy and she doesn't like dolls and she doesn't like pink and she wants to wear jeans and not a skirt and she wants to go out and throw the ball around. Well, obviously you should be a man. You were born in the wrong body.

So we need to fix that. So the idea of masculinity, femininity is a big deal today, has been for a long time. So today on Theology Thursday with Dr. Renton Rathbun, we're working our way through, in this case, just our obvious toxic masculinity.

And what does the Bible have to say about this? And do you find, and Renton, it's always great to have you on. Thanks for your time. Do you find that on a college campus? Is this kind of a difficult subject for a lot of students and like guys are like, I don't know if I'm being too manly or too feminine. And then for girls, I think that can be an issue as well. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a, it's a huge issue because you have, you have guys that that really want to be manly. And so there are the stereotype ideas that they fall into. And like we were talking about in the break, it's very easy to do things that let people, you know, appear to other people that you are manly when really you're just faking because you're not doing anything truly manly. I mean, so, so if I can put it this way, you have what do you do with a guy who's trying to show he's manly, but then spends most of his time in front of a video game and has habits that are going to follow him into his marriage.

That's going to make him a child to his wife instead of a man. And, and then we have, you know, and then there's guys that, that have looked up to to the men that are out there in Hollywood today that are very effeminate and they look up to that. And so then they start mimicking it because as, as image bearers, we are mimickers. We mimic what we like. We mimic what we are attracted to and want to be like. And so, you know, that starts reflecting in the choices we make down to the way we walk, talk, and what we wear.

Yeah. And you reference in some of the notes that I got in advance referencing Rick Phillips, that this dominion and even he starts a dominion, people start to get a little nervous. Talking about work and keeping work includes nurturing, cultivating, tending, building, guiding, and ruling. And then keeping includes guarding, keeping, watching, caring, and maintaining. And so I think it's, let's just go right back to the garden when God created man and then created woman. We are different now. Now the feminist movement started to say, Hey, don't don't treat us like we're different. Treat us like we're equal.

So how do we deal with that one? Like equal? Are we equal or are we equal in one way but diverse in another?

Yeah. So God made us equal in value because we, in our value, we are image bearers and image bearers in different ways before God. And as such there's no difference in our value and in our standing before God. But God demands different roles.

He demands it all through scripture and these roles require different aspects, even down to our biology. There's a reason why muscle mass on a man is going to be different than muscle mass on a woman. Which is why the transgender issue in athletics is such a big deal and unjust. That's right. And so because man was meant to protect and provide, which requires a different muscle, you know, muscle work.

Sure. Because his role, even Adam himself, his role was to tend that garden and that was going to be hard. Now women have a different biology because their nurturing is to be with the children down to feeding them from their bodies. And so there's, there is this strong difference that the Lord demands and the Lord is not interested, if I can put it that way, in whether we think the roles that the Lord loves are fair roles or not, because that's what it has really come down to. I mean, we can be as ridiculous as we want to say, there's no biological difference. I mean, the world has gone that way. And I think there's enough reason in our minds to know that's stupid. But I think what people are getting at is that the role itself, whether it be a woman's role as compared to a man's role, has a fairness value that we think isn't equal in its fairness. And therefore there must be a way to get around that. We don't like that.

And that was kind of baked into the cake at the fall. Because, you know, you go back to the garden, we weren't going to procreate a different way. Dad does this. Mom does that. Mom has the baby.

Mom feeds the baby. So you got all those differences in the garden. The man's the head of the home and everybody gets triggered by that. But then you get the fall and then all of a sudden, and we see this everywhere, including in a Christian home, this causes strife, where all of a sudden the woman's going to desire the role that God had rightly given her husband. But in the world today, in the equity world, if you have different roles, then that means different value. And that's patently non-Christian. That's right. And you'll see that even on places like the Gospel Coalition, who have entertained speakers who have in their books said that man ruling over the woman in marriage didn't occur until after the fall, which is a blatant lie. It's terrible exegesis. And so what you find at the fall is not a change in system, but a change in the difficulty of maintaining the system already in place.

There you go. So it's not that women suddenly start having babies at the fall. It's that when they have babies, the pain will increase. So they must have had pain before the fall, but now the pain will increase and get worse. Work isn't new.

Work is something that was already there, but now it's going to be harder, more difficult, less successful. And headship wasn't new at the fall. Headship would be the same, but it'd be more difficult. Now the woman would want to be head.

The man will want to be a brute, be brutal to his wife instead of loving her in his leadership. And that is how the fall is described in Genesis. How do people like you reference the Gospel Coalition, how do they make the case that the deal in the garden between Adam and Eve was that they were basically co-regents?

How do they do that? Well, there's a lot of assumptions that are made. There's some tap dancing with language, especially with Hebrew. But what you find is that the arguments they come up with, because what they'll say is at the fall suddenly you hear about this man being head over women, and they kind of brutalize chapter three pretty bad. And it's brutalized because they're coming up with things that for 2,000 years we haven't had. But oh, thank goodness this new theologian has figured it out after all this time. Thank you for the correction, Joseph Smith.

Yes, that's right. And it's bad exegesis. Anyone, you know, that has done the work, you know, there's PhDs in theology everywhere who can look at that. You may not like what Scripture says, but it's almost impossible the way it has been written to come to any other conclusion.

Yeah, so we'll work our way through that. What does Scripture say about masculinity when we come to it? Okay, Motown, toxic or not? Is that toxic masculinity if you use Motown music or is it not today on Theology Thursday?

We are not talking about Motown. We are talking about masculinity, toxic masculinity, which I pulled this article. Dr. Renton Rathbun is back in the house with us today. As always, Renton, it's so great to have you on.

Thank you so much. And toxic masculinity from this article. What is toxic masculinity? This is from verywellmind.com.

I would suggest you go there. But the guy in the picture is big, beefy dude, short hair, chiseled face, chiseled body, right? Obviously, I mean, I'm just offended looking at the guy. Here's what it is based on researchers and definitions. Number one, toughness. This is the notion that men should be physically strong, emotionally callous and behaviorally aggressive. Anti-femininity, number two. This involves the idea that men should reject anything that is considered to be feminine, such as showing emotion or accepting help.

When I first shared this with Renton, he goes, is that like asking for directions? Yeah, I think so. And number three, power. This is the assumption that men must work towards obtaining power and status, both social and financial, so that they can gain the respect of others. So we take that. And I think that's a pretty good definition of the culture's view of toxic masculinity. Would you agree with that, Renton? Yeah, I think that's where they're coming from.

And then there's the biblical side. And we were talking on the break about equity and equality, which are like major triggering cultural words now. You say equity, you see equality.

You're going to get things going. And then you said something about anytime a man says no to a woman, that's wrong. But when a woman says no to a man, we're all like, yes, good job.

You go girl. But if a man says no to a woman, that's toxic. Yes. So talk about this whole notion of equality and equity with respect to men and women.

And in particular, for us Bible thumpers, with respect to marriage and the home. Okay. So with equity, it's usually talking about an ethical standing of some sort, where two people, sorry, two people are having some kind, you know, are two different positions. And are they, is there some kind of ethical equality between them if I mix these terms, but that's like power sharing, right? Yeah, that's right.

Okay. And so, so the question is, is it right for, for two people to have different roles? That's, that'd be equity.

Equality would be, do they, are they built in the same way for those roles? So when we talk about, you know, the stereotype of toxic masculinity, being a guy that works out all the time, he's tough and he's strong, he doesn't have any emotions. That part of that is, you know, obviously they are stereotyping to try and make a point because they can't, you know, they haven't done a lot of deep thinking on this, but some of that is, is kind of true in that men are built in a way to be able to handle leadership that might be helpful, like leading in a way, you know, if I'm going to protect my family, I want to make sure that I know how to protect them even in a physical way, which may not include weights, but it might include, you know, being smart about my house, being smart about locking it, all that sort of stuff. There are times if I'm wise, there are times where I'm, I'm going to not show every emotion I have to my wife so I can be strong for her while she is suffering. And I might want to fall apart too, but holding, you know, holding back some emotion for her sake might be a way of loving her better. And so there are a sense in which you can see how they've taken small things, made them huge as if they're absolutes, that we should never show emotion. And then that becomes, that becomes the stereotype. But men are in many ways physically and sometimes emotionally built in ways that might be helpful in leadership.

And sometimes because we're sinners, we can ruin our marriage because of those same things. Yeah, exactly. This was interesting earlier today. I don't know if I took this tact in class because I knew we were talking about this today, but one of my classes was really full, like 32, 33 students. And two girls came in who were delayed getting there. And the first girl comes in and there's an open spot at a table a couple seats in, but there's no seat. So she's just kind of standing there.

And I said, okay, here's what has to happen right here and right now. One of you dudes needs to stand up, get a chair and ask her where she would like it. Where would you like to sit? And then you pick up the chair and put it where she wants and then go sit back down. Now, ladies, if any of you are offended by the fact that I just suggested that's a man's job, then you need to get over it and just let him do, because it's easier for him to pick that chair up physically than it is for her.

So is he a good Christian if he acknowledges that without degrading her? And he says, let me get that for you. And then everybody's like, uh, my teacher's crazy. But one guy got up, he got the chair, he set it down. Then another girl comes in and I'm like, okay, guys, what's the deal? And one guy stands up, he goes, where would you like to sit?

And he gets the chair and he puts the chair down for her. And I'm like, the culture is going to tell you that what we just did, what I just did was told every woman in this room that you're weak. What I actually did was my best to try to get these guys to honor you. Yeah.

And then I'm like, okay, that's the biblical narrative, but the culture is going to walk in here and say, I'm toxic. Yes. Yes. We're, we're honoring, honoring the other sex becomes belittling the other sex. Yes, exactly.

And what they'll do is they'll take an example of someone. Um, and I can, um, I can now bring in Andrew Pate or Andrew, please do. Yeah. So Andrew Tate is an excellent example of this. Andrew Tate, if you don't know who he is, uh, he is one of those, uh, talking heads that has, uh, tried to, um, reinvigorate men to be manly former kickboxer or something. He's on YouTube. Oh yeah. Yeah.

He was all that cool stuff. The problem is, is he's an unbeliever that mixes truth with lies. And so then everyone says everything's alive. So, so he makes the point that we have downgraded the idea of motherhood in America and we have, I mean, he talks about how it's, it's, we have made it almost a shame for a woman to stay at home with their children and raise them and that, and that it would be better if they didn't have children and were able to get out there and have a career. We've, we've, we've established that in America. He's absolutely right. And within the same paragraph, he then States that if you have a girlfriend that sells her body, you should have a portion of the money that she gets because, um, you are both one.

Uh, and so you should get some of her money, even if you have multiple girlfriends that sell their body. And so they're like, yeah, see, that's it. That's where that kind of thinking leads.

Yeah. You go right from worrying about women at home to selling your girlfriend. And so it's, it's an excellent tool that Satan has used when someone mixes truth with lies, to be the testimony that the whole thing is evil.

And if they throw the whole baby out with the bathwater. So how are we, and I want to move in the positive direction for the rest of the show. How, how are we as a biblical men to act? So I want God to say, Steve Noble is a good man. He's a man after my own heart. We just threw Andrew Tate up on the screen behind me, by the way.

Thanks Josh. And so what does that look like? Cause I got to compare myself to somebody. I'm not going to compare myself to Andrew Tate over my right shoulder. Who do I compare myself to is Jesus himself, the ultimate biblical man. Yes.

And this is the, this is the thing that frustrates me the most. When I ask young men, who's the manliest man in scripture. Usually you hear things like David or you hear, Samson, you know, these guys that, that showed ruggedness and bravery. Peter.

What was that? Peter probably. Yeah, Peter. But when you look at it, they've, they did things that were, that were childish. So oftentimes when we're talking about young men acting, acting effeminate, oftentimes we're saying that they are taking on female characteristics, but I think one of the most, one of the things that, that hurt young men, the most that keep them from being a man is being a child. And so what we see in Christ is a man that has understood his role and has, and has done all in his, in his given power, both through the Holy Spirit and through his physical body to accomplish God's will through the role he was given. And so in Ephesians five, when we see that men are supposed to love their wives as they lead them in authority, we, we look at Christ.

We don't look at David. David was, was a terrible husband and a terrible dad, but he was a, he was a man after God's own heart. So there's a lot of complexities. But the one man that doesn't have the complexities is the one who is Christ, who is the ultimate man who always chose the will of God in the role he's been given.

Yeah. And there is a, there's a res, and I'm going to explore that and unpack that in the last segment, there is a resoluteness, a toughness, a self-sacrificing nature of Jesus, but there is most definitely this soft, gentle, kind, compassionate, let the children come on to me, and I'm going to talk to these women and I'm going to lift them up. There's a side to that. That's a counter-cultural as well as the tough side, but in this world, they don't want either. So, so that's the challenge we have, but we'll unpack that with Renton Rathbun in the fourth segment, if we're going to be a man.

Oh, Bob Seger. That's definitely toxic. Some toxic masculinity music here on the Steve Noble Show, Theology Thursday with our friend, Dr. Renton Rathbun from BJU, now Bob Jones University, as well as BJU Seminary and the head of the Center for Biblical Worldview, where they get to talk about this kind of stuff all the time. And we have to take every thought captive that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We have to renew our minds because the world is telling us one thing, especially a gentleman about us, what we should be, what we shouldn't be, what we should do, what we shouldn't do. And then you said this whole notion, you start to, if you start to swerve into the lane where you might think God would call you to be as a man, a lot of the world, an increasing percentage of the world is going to tell you you're toxic. That's the patriarchy.

You're part of the problem. But are you really? So in this last segment, Renton, I'd really like us to kind of focus on, you brought up Ephesians chapter five. And then when you, and that was fascinating when you said, when you ask young Christian men like who's the most manly guys in the Bible and, you know, Samson, David, what, you know, why isn't our answer Jesus? Like, why wouldn't that be just, do we just picture him like in the Protestant church with the blonde flowing hair and the soft blue eyes and the blue focus, the soft focus of his whole body. And he's just Jesus meek and mild. But isn't he the standard? Exactly.

Yeah. And I think, I think the Renaissance hasn't helped us very much in picturing who Jesus is. You know, he's almost a woman. And when, you know, when you, when you see those pictures you would expect him to be meek and mild and it would be no surprise and almost no effect.

If you ask me if someone that, that was that soft would be would be tender. When I think of, of the tenderness of Christ, sometimes I think of my, my own dad who had, you know, who has these big old sausage fingers. He's his red head. So he, you know, he has his red hair on his arms.

He's ruddy. He has those thicker arms. He's just always been, you know, kind of a quieter guy. And so he'll, you know, he'll say something when he needs to say something. But like when, when he comes and visits and then when he's about to leave, we usually pray together. And when he puts his arm around me, you know, the, the arm of your dad, who's, who's not this tender, you know, soft meat, you know, weak person, but he's a strong person. The fact that he's strong makes the, makes the hand and the touch mean more. And so when we talk about Christ being meek, what we see is a very strong hearted man who still, you know, is able to, to touch and to love and to be tender when he needs to be tender and like what you were talking about at the break. If you've ever been talked to by someone that you really revere, someone that you think this guy is amazing. And then he talks to you like you were talking about, like you're the only guy in the room.

Oh man. And touches you on the arm and is tender with you. You're like, it means so much more than someone that you would expect because they're very feminine and soft. And so I think, I think there is something to that in scripture that we have taken Renaissance paintings and put them in the, in the scriptures. And instead we ought to just read the scriptures and find out what Christ is really like.

Yeah. So what, what would you say if we're, if we want to be godly men in a masculine way, patterned after Jesus himself, and especially in a family setting and a husband and wife setting. And if we look at Ephesians five, what would you say are just some of the, some of the main things that we should be shooting for just in terms of attributes of a godly man, a masculine godly man.

Yeah. Well, one thing that I have found in, in second Corinthians when it talks about be strong, be watchful, act like a man. And then it immediately says, and do this in love. And then you see in Ephesians five, how do you be a great husband? You love your wife. And now love, American idea of love has been so wishy washy, but what love really does is it seeks the, the true good of the other person, not appeasing the other person. So you can have peace in the house, not trying just to please them so that they will like you, but rather seek out the good of that person. That's actually good, which might mean you have to say no, sometimes, which might mean the peace will not be had in the house, but you love them so much.

You're willing to, to, to move that direction. And when God says to love your wife, he's saying that because it's hard for husbands to love their wives. We might be able to easily respect our wives, but to love them is very hard because we are lazy and we want to be children and we want a mom, not a wife. And so to love them actually being able to lead them to the actual good is hard work that, that, that requires us to look to Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, and look to how we can be a help and wash our wife in the word.

The way Ephesians five tells us to. Yeah. And you mentioned this earlier and I want to go back to it because you just mentioned it again, that one of the biggest problems for, for men and Christian men is they act like boys.

Now, even the band got that right, boys to men, but that's not that kind of, that foolishness boys hanging on too long, expecting too much and really kind of taking a back seat, which by the way, when you don't step into your role as a godly man, how convenient is that? Because then you don't own the results. Yes. You're avoiding accountability.

Yes. And so imagine a poor, the poor woman that has to deal with a child as a husband, who she gets to lead the home. She gets to be in charge and every decision that goes a bad direction then lays on her and the guilt that she lives with from day to day, because she was forced to lead the home because this man wasn't man enough to do it. I mean, we, the feminists would love you to believe that leading is the greatest position in the world, but it's hard work that takes on the guilt of the bad decisions. It takes on the difficult work that comes with that, that you take away from your wife.

So she might enjoy life more is something they don't think about. Yeah. And let's speak the last few minutes about this whole notion of submission. And then you used the word brutish earlier.

Biblically, we could look at lording your authority over somebody, but, but speak to that kind of the whole notion of submission and lording it over because a biblical man is like, Hey woman, go get me a beer. Right. All right.

That's what they want us to think. But, but just speak to that. I just want to finish with that and kind of what that isn't lording your authority over people. Yeah. So in Ephesians five, when it tells men to love their wives, we are to love our wives the way Christ loves the church. And Christ is not a brute to us. In fact, it, in some ways, when you look at how he is so patient with us, you almost think too patient. Yeah. Lower the hammer. Yeah. Cause you know, if it was up to us, we'd be like, get him.

But he's patient. And then it says to the women, submit yourselves to your husband as you would Jesus Christ himself. Those are the words. And so you're, and so there's no way to get around, well, submission doesn't really mean, you know, obeying or something like that, because, you know, uh, we don't like those terms, but that's what we mean when we say submitting to the Lord.

So what we see is without Christ, you have men, uh, demanding out of their wives, like children, you see women that would, that would have to be submissive to what, you know, their oldest son, some petulant kid. Right. Yeah.

And so, so the key is, uh, studying and knowing how Christ loves the church, studying and knowing how the church submits itself to the Lord. And then using that picture as how my marriage should look. Yeah.

Wow. Well, I've asked that question of our daughters who are 24 and 18. I'm like, okay, imagine a husband that emulates almost perfectly the character of Jesus.

How hard of a time would you have submitting yourself to his leadership? Because they know, cause they know what I'm doing because my girls are smart. They know I'm playing a game with them. They know that on the one hand I'm going to, should you submit to Christ? Yes.

Okay. Now what if your husband's acting just like Jesus? What if he's loving you as well as Jesus loves you? Should that be difficult to submit to him? Cause you know, he's not going to Lord it over you. And you know, to your point, Renton, that he's seeking your, your what's truly in your best interest.

He is 100% for you and willing to die for you. Yes. And then just now you start to get a picture of, okay.

A biblical marriage sounds pretty good. Yeah. Right. Yes. And, and even thinking about how, you know, I hear young ladies sometimes say I could never be in a relationship where I have to submit to a man.

And if that's the case, first of all, well, don't get married. Yeah. But second of all, if you're dating a man and you just can't imagine submitting to this guy, then break up.

I mean, I mean, you know, find someone that acts like Christ so that you can imagine that. Yeah. And you're like, Hey, I hate this guy. Would you follow this guy into, uh, into a foreign land? Uh, yeah, I would.

Why? Cause I know he's got my best interest at heart. He's a hard worker.

He's going to do what needs to be done to add a yada yada. Okay. Welcome to Ephesians five. Yeah. Cause that's what's happening there at just, and I don't always die in the Hill. I said, okay, if I change it from submission to, uh, follow his lead, does that take a little of the edge off for you? And sometimes you'll say, yeah, it does. Cause I'm not going to die in that Hill every single time. Yeah.

But at least, you know, you're advancing the ball down the field, which I think is important. It's such a great topic. Uh, we'll have to figure out and we'll have to Brit. Now maybe let's do this.

Let's do a show with your wife and talk about biblical femininity and we'll see how quiet you and I can be. All right. So talk to her about that and then let's set that up. I would love to do that. Excellent. All right, cool. We'll do that. And then she can make us both look like the shmucks that we are. Okay. That'll be good.

Renton. Thank you so much as always such a great blessing to have you and tap into your wisdom and your knowledge. It's always great to have you here on the show, masculinity and the Bible. You might want to share this around and see what happens on social media. This is Steve noble on the Steve noble show. God willing. I'll talk to you again real soon. And like my dad always used to say, shut up and get me a beer.