[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everybody. My name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the Dispatchers podcast every single Friday from the end of December until the start of February. We're giving you the chance to sample just some of the awesome subscriber only podcast content that our five dollar monthly patrons have been exclusively enjoying over the past twelve months. If you like what you hear in this episode and you want more of it, then all you need to do is become a patron of the dispatchers with $5 or more per
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Welcome to Conservations, the podcast, which got its name by literally combining the words conservative and conversations, which is exactly what happens on this show every month. Each episode we host a conversation with at least one other guest where we go in depth on a topic or hear about their experiences on this journey we all share together called life. The aim of this show is to foster and promote dialogue which cultivates goodness, truth, and beauty, and in doing so, unpacks the richness of the authentic conservative tradition. My hope is that you'll find these conservative conversations intellectually engaging and enriching, and that they will draw you ever more deeply into an authentic, truly flourishing and more meaningfully lived human experience.
In this month's episode, we are going to be talking with Dr. Peter Holmes and Dean Muschewski about the topic of masculinity. Dean is a theologian and communicator from New Zealand. He is married to Julie and is the father of nine children. He works full time in management in the New Zealand electronics industry and he has a bachelor's degree in manufacturing engineering along with a master's degree in theology. He enjoys studying the intersection of christian apologetics, church history, scripture, science and philosophy, and has been active as a communicator in the space for more than 25 years now. Dean is also an athlete. His sporting interests include canoe polo, where he represented New Zealand at two world championships, functional fitness, where he has competed internationally as a masters athlete, powerlifting and historical european martial arts. Dr. Peter Holmes is a theologian and university lecturer from Australia. He is the married father of eight children and one grandchild. He has a Bachelor of Theology, a graduate diploma of ministry, a master's degree in theology, a graduate diploma in theology specializing in marriage and family, and a PhD in the theology of masculinity. He was trained and served as a lutheran minister before working in counseling, consulting and teaching roles within the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and Sydney. Since 2007, Peter has lectured in scripture, theology and biblical languages. So, without any further ado, let's have this month's profoundly important conservative conversation, which I have rather cheekily titled, what is a man you, I have with me today. Are you a doctor yet, Peter?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yep. Wow. Yeah, about a year now.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: Wow. So, can you check my foot for me later on?
[00:04:31] Speaker B: As somebody said in the comedy once, I'm a doctor, but not the kind that's any use.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: So you're Holmes now?
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Elementary, my dear Watson. Tell us about what you're a doctor in, then.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: In theology specifically, it's a mix of theological anthropology and moral theology. So is there a catholic theology of masculinity? And then what are the theological implications of that for daily life? Like, what does it look like in daily life? So I wanted to write something useful and I wrote a PhD, which is a contradiction in terms, but hopefully I've learned something that I can share.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Awesome. And sitting across from you in the other chair, three blokes in a room together. This could get quite.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: What could go wrong?
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Yeah, what could go wrong? Dean Muscheski, you're not a doctor yet.
Doctor of Crossfit, maybe, but you've literally just walked in the door from a six K row.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Is it two k?
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Two k. Sorry, two k. This is typical male story. It's getting exaggerated every five minutes.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Wait till the end of vodka, it'll get longer.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: Now, Dean, you are a. Try and avoid knocking the mic stand.
Dean is a master's in theology.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: An MA in theology.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: Ma in theology. Well known around New Zealand in apologetic circles.
Good man. Husband? Father. You were captain and coach of the canoe polo team at different times. And you won the world championship.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: No. I'd like that legend to hold. But no, we didn't win. But yeah.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Did you come second at least? No. Come on, mate.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: I've been telling people the right story. We can build that reputation. That's okay. But no. I competed at a couple of world championships as a player and coached masters as a player coach against Australia, actually.
I hope you beat. Yeah, we did.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:06:25] Speaker C: So, like the canopolo? Yeah.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: And Peter, you're a father, obviously. Husband as well.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: I am, yes. A husband of Susan and father of eight kids. Very special. Four of each. And one of them's here at hearts, actually.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome. What a gift. Well, chaps, let's just jump straight into it, shall we? And I think a topic that really shouldn't be, but has become so controversial, probably because of politicization, I think, primarily. But on the one side, I really have a great sense of trepidation, particularly for my son as he grows. And for a lot of young men trying to navigate the absolute, I don't know, the gauntlet of what is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man in the world? And it seems on one side you've got these sort of influences, like, I guess, the old school, promiscuous male. Get as many female trophies as you can and that's what makes you a man. Or the sort of perhaps thuggish type excesses, the barbarism of masculinity or the macho sort of excess, if you like, the new phenomenon of incels, involuntary celibates. And they're very hostile often the way they speak about females. It's kind of a real tragic nihilism and pessimism to it. And then on the flip side, you've got the men who feel like, almost like masculinity traitors. My masculinity is my original sin. And I'm sorry for every man in the world. And then on top of all of that, as if that wasn't enough, it feels like a lot of the men who have run the gauntlet our age and older. I feel lucky enough to have run the gauntlet already with a good dad, pretty simple kind of guy. And I'm married with kids of my own now. But a lot of those guys, for whatever reason, aren't they feel, like, silent? Maybe they're a bit embarrassed themselves. They don't know maybe they feel they should be sorry for their masculinity so they don't speak up as much. There's not much mentoring happening, and it just feels today that it's a heck of a challenge to be a bloke. Is that a fair assessment?
[00:08:16] Speaker B: I would say so.
We'd like to think we're balanced. And everyone thinks they're the middle of the road. Absolutely. Whenever you ask someone they were middle of the road, and everyone else, left or right of me is extreme. But I've been kicked out of theological conferences because I am oppressing people before I've opened my mouth because I'm a male.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: So that actually happened to you?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
That's not the only conference I've been kicking before I said anything.
But, yes, it happens, and there isn't a presumption that it has to be said often it comes from a place of deep hurt, where someone's been hurt by a very poor example of masculinity.
And it also has to be said that even good men have failed to stand up against that and call it out and say, no, you may not treat women this way. You may not treat children this way. You can't be that kind of parent because we've had such a private focus on family in the western world that we haven't really held each other accountable in the same way. Now, I can't speak to other cultures, but we have to admit that there's been a problem there. And when people are that hurt, of course they back off from men. And then we make this mistake. And I think it's a trick of the devil, actually, to pit two goods against each other and where one has, like, if I can take a step back and say that the solution for something being abused is not to get rid of it, but to do it right. So the solution to a bad father is train good fathers. The solution to infidelity is fidelity.
But it seems like everyone just wants to throw out everything that doesn't work. And it's true. The stereotypes you mentioned aren't stereotypes for a random reason. There's a lot of guys in my childhood when I grew up were living exactly that way, and we didn't call them out. And maybe it's time for us to make a stand on that and actually start holding ourselves to standards.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: I mean, one of the things I realized sort of early in my parenting career was, man, I need to get in touch with my parents and say thank you. Right.
I didn't realize just the sheer commitment that was involved until you have to start doing it yourself. But also just reflecting what you've been saying there. And the example that I had from my dad, without me realizing it, set me up on a less dangerous trajectory than a lot of people have sort of found themselves on, through no fault of their own. And it's only later that I've come to realize that. But I definitely agree. If you take all the elements of wrongness that Brendan was enumerating before, if you take them all away, there's nothing left. Right.
So it's like you're saying, Peter. Yes, very much so. The answer to the problems is just undo the problems.
I think most people have a vision of what good, I was going to say good manhood, but I think fatherhood is to drill down, is the key to it. Right. Most people have an ideal or some sort of mental picture of a great dad.
[00:11:25] Speaker A: Well, is that a factor then? If father is, and I think fatherhood is essential. It's a very civilizing agent, marriage and really having kids. Civilizing agent. The most effective, ordinary means of civilizing a man is to make him a father of children.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: And civilized the man. You civilize the culture.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Now the question is then, has the loss of fatherhood, the fact that a lot of men aren't getting married, there's a lot of promiscuity, there's a lot less children being born in the world. Is that a factor then when we think about. We've got more single men who just sort of don't know what to do with themselves if you keep being single?
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say that's definitely a problem. But I think that part of the problem began before that. There are a lot of men in the position of fatherhood who didn't actually father.
There's a lot of absent fathers, we call them now. Or even just emotionally absent fathers.
[00:12:09] Speaker C: Yeah, there's physically present, but not really. Exactly.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: And there was a culture of driven men who were taught even by churches, that the way you're a good father is that you work till you die and provide money for your family kind of thing, or a good home or something. And we didn't emphasize the other, the relational elements of it and the moral education and the good example. And so young kids grew up, and it wasn't such a big deal when they were surrounded by other men and the church teach them and everything. But now the social media and movies know you can't learn masculinity from John Wayne or Bruce Willis or.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: I'm trying to think of you're dating yourself.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I am.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: I was thinking the same people. We are dating ourselves. But no, you can't. Hollywood as a whole, I mean, their objective is not to help people get to heaven. Right. Their objective is to sell beer and shampoo or whatever.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: Right.
And with perhaps some other smuggling some other ideologies while they're at it.
Actually, maybe their ideal is not to sell beer and shampoo because they've been doing a lot of stuff lately that is not appealing to anyone. Go woke, go broke.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to push back on you a little bit there. So I think that our whole system, a capitalist system, means that everything's about the money because the people invest, they don't care about anything except getting more money back. Right. But someone has convinced them that woke things make money. And what I'm hoping that they're doing right now is realizing, actually, this stuff doesn't sell.
You watch some movies, like the fact that, for example, Maverick's just blowing box office records out of the way. And it's about as cliche as you can get from the old school movies. Thoroughly enjoyable by the great film. But yeah, I think they're slowly learning. They did the same, by the way, with the passion. They said to Mel Gibson he was never going to sell, that it's never going to get anywhere. And when it blitzed, a wave of kind of semireligious movies came out trying to get into the market. But unless you're there, unless you're real, it doesn't work.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Well, I think it's interesting. Even the latest avatar movie, Avatar two, a lot of reviewers have said it's actually quite refreshing because it's a strong father led family. He's trying to keep his family safe. These little blue aliens, of course, and there's lots of cheesiness, but a lot of people said that was actually quite a positive distinction. They of. Because you mentioned John Wayne and Bruce Willis, I don't know if I'd put those two on a par. But I wonder if there's a balance here in a sense.
I remember my life. My father was a big fan of the western, and I have developed that sort of love of westerns myself. And I know a lot of modern commentators have sort of critiqued the John Wayne image of masculinity, but toxic masculinity. Yeah, I feel like there's a bit of a balance there. You don't want to be a man who doesn't know how to understand his interior life and express that when it needs to be. But there is also a certain.
Well, as men, we just got to get on with protecting, nurturing, doing the hard business for our families. There's always, like a balance. And I feel like we're throwing it all out of kilter.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, we're getting a little bit into this is not anything to do with my studies. I think that some movies sell because deep down in all of the men, there's still that little boy who thinks when he's looking at know, if the super spy thing happened, I reckon I could handle myself. And you want to feel like you could be that hero. And I think in part, I mean, as you said, dylan, wayne's got some toxic stuff attached to him, especially the way he deals with women in his movies.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: But having said that, we've almost lost the good guys bad guys genre, and we're not even thinking of ourselves as potential good guys anymore. And that's actually a bit of a tragedy. So Bruce Wellis is this broken down, like, he plays this sort of stereotypical, broken down, completely wrecked person.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: He's normally divorced, too, most movies, or.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Wrecking his relationships, but just happens to be violent enough to stop the bad guy's plans. And it's almost like the bar for our aim to masculinity has come way down to that sort of level.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: It's almost Nietzsche in two, right? He's the strong man who doesn't really put virtue as a priority, and he also doesn't really care. It's not like virtuous. He's like, come to la, John, you have a good time. And here he is trying to stop terrorists, but he doesn't really want to be there. There's no sense of I have a virtuous, heroic quest.
It's very od in that way.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Right. I want to just stand up for John Wayne.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Just a second.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: Only in the sense that when I say is as toxic as they come kind of thing, I mean that with tongue in cheek, because that is the stereotype of toxic masculinity.
Like you say, the representation we get in the classic western is not perhaps your perfect ideal of manhood, but there's a lot of good stuff in there, and that's why it was such a genre, right. It definitely appealed. Lots of boys play cowboys and idiots, right? That's right.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: And nothing sells unless it's triggering into something that we deeply yearn for, which is a worry looking at the modern movie. But having said that, there's still something like the matrix. There's still something in being the one, the one who can actually save the day. There's still all that sort of stuff there which sells big money. So I think Hollywood still tries to tap in and they're still nodding in the direction of political correctness and all that sort of stuff. But I think that's a commercial reading.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: I agree.
Have either of you read Cormac McCarthy's the road or watched the film adaption of it?
[00:17:45] Speaker C: No, I started reading it. I found it really.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: If, you know, he does bleak like no one.
I mean, I love both the book. I couldn't put it down when I started reading it. And the film adaption is very faithful to the book. And I think it's interestingly, it's been one of the better sort of grapplings with masculinity that the protagonist is just called the father, his son is just called the boy. They never name them. And the whole thing is a journey in a post apocalyptic world where he's trying to teach his son virtue and bring him to safety before he dies. It's a beautiful metaphor with a lot of darkness in it, of course, but it's sort of interesting. We don't really get that deep grappling. I don't think much more with masculinity and what it means. I mean, even I think John Wayne, to a degree was sort of trying to present an idea about what men should be. It feels like we don't even do that anymore.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: There are some glimpses, Aaron, now because in one of my lectures I say, I ask the students name a sitcom or a drama series where there's a strong moral father figure. And most of them, they're the butt of the joke, right?
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: So they're the fool and the wife is a strong moral figure. But a couple of them have pointed out places in movies like, for example, in the debatably rated Superman movie Kevin Costner plays the father, like the human father of Superman. And there's a scene where he, spoiler alert, by the way, switch off if you haven't watched it. There's a scene where he's about to die and instead of. For some reason, Superman can't be revealed at this point or something but he actually deliberately stops him from saving him and therefore sacrifices his own life for the sake of what Superman will do for the rest of the world. It's a very strong, self sacrificing kind of fatherhood and it's difficult to find that. But it's there.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll throw another one there.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: A quiet place yeah. That's beautiful. And it's about family, isn't it? The world is saved by a family which emits its own frequency, basically.
[00:19:42] Speaker C: Yeah. And the father.
There's that sacrificial element to it. Can't say too much more, but it's very powerful.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: That is a great. Have you seen that?
[00:19:51] Speaker B: No, I haven't.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. It's good. It's a sort of thriller with some scary monsters. So not for young kids, but phenomenal. And the whole.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: Protect the family at all costs.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's communities of families. There's these aliens that have invaded earth and any sound they're attracted to, so you can't make sound because I hear you. And they're bringing a brand new baby into the world and they're planning for this. And they've got a daughter who's deaf and the father is constantly working on her little cochlear implants. And they start with tragedy. They lose a son.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Who has it. They've laid sandpaths all the way to the store. They're one of the only humans left. And the son finds batteries and puts them in a kid's toy and on the way back presses the button and that's where it starts. But there's this beautiful scene where they go up each night on top of these. I guess they're like corn solos and they light a fire and other fires light up around the district. These families are trying to live the same. It's quite a beautiful film. And John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, the husband and wife who actually, they both star in and made the movie. It's a very beautiful depiction of family. But, yeah, it's not normal.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: Right?
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Is it?
Even that imagery you talked about in Superman, they go back to it subsequently, where he has that vision of his father in future when he needs advice. What would my dad do?
[00:21:02] Speaker B: It's interesting. Mean that it sort of passes by and you can still see someone's still got it in their life. But I wonder if the brokenness that's expressed in movies is reflective of the fact that a fairly significant proportion of us now are growing up with broken families, or at least aware of brokenness out there. And so the appeal comes from identifying with the characters. The trouble is that I don't think that repeating the cycle of brokenness is actually helping us work through it.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: It seems a little counterproductive. I think it's entirely possible. I'm just speculating. But in the Hollywood scene, California, Los Angeles, whatever, then I think the proportion of non nuclear family kind of structures, probably higher. So if you're a screenwriter or a producer or a showrunner or whatever, then chances are you've had personal experience with that. So your own experience is going to get reflected, perhaps in what you produce or support.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: I watched one called a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
It's not a guy's night out sort of pizza thing, but I don't know if you ever knew about the american tv guy, Mr. Rogers.
And Tom Hanks plays this guy, and that's got a really powerful story of fatherhood in it. The reporter who comes to him is a broken man, broken relationship with his father. And Tom Hanks brings Mr. Rogers kind of gentleness to the situation. And in the end, no spoilers, but the relationship between the son and the father is brought into the circle of the movie. And it's heartwarming and heart rending in various ways.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll tell you, a really beautiful depiction of masculinity, because often they do relate to fatherhood, right? It's a father doing something or someone discovering fatherhood or being nurtured by it in some way, and then they find the redemption. But this one was a little bit different. It's called the way back, based on an account that may or may not be true of a guy who supposedly escaped from one of the soviet gulags. They don't mention Alexander Salz and Etson, but it's clear Peter Weir made it. It's clear he knows Salz and Ezen because they talk about the fact that once they've escaped, they must never go back to the lie. And Alexander Salz and Etsyn was live not by lies. So you must never live the lie again. And the whole redemption arc is them. They escape from the gulag and they really are selfish. Survival of the fittest type. Because it's a gulag.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: It's awful.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: And what happens, though, is on the journey, not long after they've escaped, they end up picking up the straggler who joins them, who wasn't in the gulag. And it's a female and it's this group of men and this young female. And sadly, look, I'm spoiler alert here, but she dies on their journey. They're running out of food and stuff like that. And these men in the attender care for this young girl and they bury her and they care for. They nurse her as she's dying. The redemption comes through. It's a profound depiction of the way the feminine genius can really transform masculinity.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: It calls it out of them.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: That's a nice segue, man, because that's what builds culture, right? Is the beautiful complementarity, man. And know. And like you say, Peter, the female calling the best of the man.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Demanding sometimes, actually a lot in marriage, really.
Can I perhaps tease that out a bit? Because we'll come back to the feminine masculine complementarity in a sec, but I'll just ask you, gents, do you think your approach to this question of masculinity changed?
Well, let me say it changed for me the moment I held my first child. Yeah, I had lots of theories and none of them changed. It's just that I had a whole different perspective. I had lots of arguments about abortion, et cetera, until I saw the first ultrasound of my own son.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: That makes it real. Holy moly. That makes it real.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? There's this visceral thing that happens.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: I've told my daughter that, in fact, I often speak publicly about that. I've got a presentation I often get asked to give in high schools about sexuality and the truth and love and human sexuality, what that all mean. And I tell the story of having my daughter and my eldest daughter, when I held her in my arms and she knows this, I often say this to her. You were the one who made me a father. The others, I love them, but you were the one who made me a father. And I held my daughter in my arms and I just knew in that instant everything had changed. It was hard to quantify.
It's deep, it's surreal. And I just knew that moment was, yeah, I'm with you there.
[00:25:20] Speaker C: It's an interesting question to think about, because certainly things change. I don't think my sort of general opinions kind of changed, but just the reality come crashing down and there's a responsibility here that was only theoretical before. And like I say very quickly, I was like, man, I need to say thanks to dad and mum, but in our context here, for everything that they.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Sacrifice and not just thanks, but help.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: One way I noticed a big change for me actually came a few years later.
I've always been a bit of an amateur cinephine. I've enjoyed movies and I was watching Danilville Nouve's film prisoners, and it's about two girls that are kidnapped Thanksgiving Day, I think it is, and Hugh Jackman's one father, and there's another dad. It's about how they respond to it and all of a sudden a film like that, because I've got four daughters. I really found that hard to watch it. All of a sudden, it was like my kids were in that context. It'd never been like that before.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: I had the same with the movie ransom with Mel Gibson. It was an intensely good movie. I will never watch it again. Never. Because it was so close to home. And the way he portrayed the emotions was exactly how I would be. I was all very rational, and I've got lots of theories about fatherly protection. But you mess with my kids and the beast starts to rise. And that's when the catholic moral teaching has to come in quite carefully so that I respond proportionally. I've just recently been very blessed to become a grandfather.
Congratulations. Thank you. And my partner was relatively small.
[00:26:51] Speaker C: It's all part of building the legacy.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: But it's funny, I still have an eight year old, so it's not so long ago that we were holding babies, but holding my grandson in my arms was a delight. But it didn't feel terribly strange watching my son be a dad.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Just choke. Like, everything I felt, the whole body kind of just respond to that in an emotional way and just. I didn't know how to, like, it was a really, really powerful moment just watching and watched him, his mannerism and thinking.
That's exactly how I do it. It's not always the best way to.
[00:27:26] Speaker C: Do it, but, yeah.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: It was just so powerful and real. How much.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: It's a beautiful thought.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Because you've got a son, Dean, who's.
[00:27:34] Speaker C: About to get married, just a few.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Weeks child to be married.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: Like I say, it's another dose of. Or a different flavor of reality kind of washing over us. Yeah. Another son getting married soon, a daughter who's also just recently got engaged. So, interesting times. I was also thinking, Brendan, we've got three guys in the room here who all have four daughters.
What are the chances?
Interesting scenario.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: So, gentlemen out there, be very careful.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: This raises an interesting. Well, we've got a show.
[00:28:05] Speaker C: Listen carefully.
That's almost a stereotype, though.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Well, it's not a stereotype. I'm actually a firearm licensed owner, and my girls know that. This is an interesting point in the same way that we don't really have.
You might have heard the old analogy. We have a digestive system. We have a nervous system. We don't have a reproductive system without the feminine. Do we have a masculinity without the feminine? In a sense. And has, like, that enlightenment liberalism, which has taught us all to be autonomous individuals, separated us to a degree that we don't see that complementary unity.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: I think if an alien came down and looked at a human person, they would probably notice all the things that are human long before they would see things that are specifically masculine because they've got nothing to compare it to.
However, I think the differences are there. And if a man's on a desert island, he's still a man.
But it only becomes evident and observable and also functional when there's someone to be in reaction to, if you like. But we're created to be in communion. And the movie castaway is a fairly interesting example of this. He's on an island by himself and he starts talking to a volleyball. This is not an unusual thing. When people are isolated, they either have to create someone to talk to or they go nuts in some other way. Because we're so geared to this interpersonal communion. And it's not limited to just hanging out with other people. We need that. And I think you could look at a human being and say, there's a bit missing. You might not know exactly what it.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Looks like, even for the sake of contrast. Right, dude?
[00:29:44] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
It's not like someone who is called to a celibate life or whatever is somehow incomplete because they are still in communion.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Their spousal love is given over to a much better.
[00:30:00] Speaker C: In a priestly context, for sure. Or religious.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: There's a dominican sister in Melbourne who says she goes to dances where all the kids are dancing. She says, I pity you all. I've got the best dress and the best date.
[00:30:16] Speaker C: But for most of us, I think what's going to bring out our full humanity, our full personality, is the complementarity. You never quite know how it's going to come out away. That's all part of the rich pattern of life, right?
What can be drawn out of us?
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's what we said right at the start, wasn't it, that the women called it out of.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: It's, I think, too, there's an interesting thing in society in the sense that for all the things that he got wrong, Freud did get something, I think, right when he talked about his sublimation of the sexual drive and basically said, not every sexual urge should end in a sexual act.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Right?
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And funnily enough, a lot of you don't realize this. He was opposed to contraception. Interesting.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker A: And so now what happens, though, after Freud? Is some of his students really those who follow on in his school, like, no, no. You should have what we called libidonous morality, the morality of lust. It's a good thing. And in fact, if you repress any urges, that leads to nazism. In fact, they claimed at one. So it feels to me like this is an area where a lot of men today, young men in particular, it's like the sexual doesn't have anything beyond. Well, it's sexual self gratification as outlet. The concept of taking my masculine, testosterosterone driven drive and putting it into other pursuits, whether it be lifting weights, building a house, hiking, hunting, fathering a family, fathering a family. It's all sort of. And you're on your own. And it's almost like we're pleasuring ourselves to death, in a sense, as men.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's not just the pleasure. I mean, it is clearly the pleasure that's part of the problem, because it's a drug like dopamine hit to the brain, and you get addicted to that and you need it like any other drug, and you need withdrawal from it. But there's two other elements to it which I think we need to think about, and one is the treatment of women. The fact that we objectify women and it becomes an impossible thing. No live woman can ever reproduce what pornography is pretending is available, and it's simply not.
And that means that, sorry, hundreds of boys are showing up to Sydney hospitals at 20 years old, presenting with impotence because they're physically incapable of entering into a sexual act, because they've already trained the pathways in their brain to go down that path.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: They've got a clinical name for it, youthful erectile dysfunction. They've actually got a clinical diagnosis for it.
[00:32:40] Speaker B: It's just unbelievable. So men are robbing themselves of their masculinity. But I would say almost equally as bad is the fact that you were alluding to this before, mate. That the passion and the drive and the seeking love that is typical of masculinity has been directed into this kind of semi commercialized pleasure machine.
And that robs them because they don't have the drive to do all the things that men have done. Because, frankly, we were bored or there was a problem and we got down to it, there's not the same drive in it. And you notice that younger people aren't that way. And part of it's not just the pornography, it's all the other pursuits which catch our attention and drag.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Well, here's something to think about, too, Dean. You're in the technology industry and there's a lot of automation now. And cars, I mean, they're not quite self driving yet. We're pretty close, but even the fundamentals of I've actually taught my kids how to change a tire, but pretty soon that'll probably be an obsolete thing. A lot of the things you could do, whether it be a health and safety regulation that says, no, you cannot touch that light socket in your own home and worry yourself, or whether it be a car that's just so self contained you have to be an electronics engineer to even open the bonnet. It's like a lot of these things that men would have got their hands dirty doing are now not open to them as well. It's like there's a whole lot of factors, right?
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:00] Speaker C: It's an interesting observation.
I'm not that great as a fixit guy, but I try, and I've got a lot of fix it books or do it yourself books or how to do that, but they're all kind of old, and there's some really great books from, like, the 1950s of how to fix just about anything, it's amazing. And that's not what you get these days. It's either call your service agent or throw it away and buy another one, because they're made in China and they're real cheap, so just chuck it away.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Interesting you raised that because I'm unfortunately, stereotypically as an academic, rather useless at these things, but I think only by comparison. My wife's father was a builder and an amazing man in this area. He used to come to our house and fix everything and tut at me because I'd tried something and it had failed. And I can do it, but it's not my thing. But in a sense, rather than looking at the specific activities like the tire and stuff, I've actually taught my kids about the tire because it was actually more important for the father son time and actually my father daughter time, and at the same time talking about how do you deal with being on the side of the road? How do you deal with a stranger dropping by? What are the normal precautions to take? What do you look for? How would you go about seeking help? These kinds of things, they're transportable skills, but even if they weren't, it's still the action of learning something from dad has its own value. I think.
[00:35:31] Speaker A: You do CrossFit, too, Dean, and I know your kids are Crossfit mad. Do you get that little. Well, let's test ourselves against dad thing?
[00:35:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I sort of backed off a little bit with my second son, Stephen. He just a few weeks ago won the national title for CrossFit. So if the fittest man in New Zealand is working out in your garage next year. It's like, no thanks, but it's just reflecting on fatherhood, though. It's very, very interesting to be. Yeah, I'm better than him at everything, right. And then slowly he's getting older and better and I'm teaching him some stuff and then, oh, he can beat me at that. Well, let's do workouts that don't have that in it. But yeah, he gradually becomes. He overtakes me and that's all part of the growth and maturity and everything. But it's a very interesting experience to go through as a father when your kids get.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Was that hard for you as a man?
[00:36:16] Speaker C: Yeah, no one would have noticed, but I'd sort of joke about it a little bit. But yeah, it was hard.
I've got other kids that I can.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: It's not just the mortality thing there, is it? It's about realizing that the next generation is already peaking.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: That's right. That's exactly right. It is the mortality things away. It's a reminder that there's a finitude to you, there is a finitude to your life, and there is a little bit of. I'm becoming less relevant, but there's also a real pride.
And when you step back and go, well, actually, the best possible father would be one who helped all of his kids be better than he was.
Not just at lifting weights or whatever, but at everything, morally, physically, spiritually and how he interacts with people, all that sort of stuff.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: That's a really good point. If you don't mind, I'll share an anecdote of a time. I usually use this anecdote to talk about the difference between honoring your father and mother and obeying them.
I was a cricket coach for some time of my son's team, and he was all right. He was the best on the team, but he was very good at the rules and I was really a stickler for them because I thought cricket's a very dignified game, all that sort of thing. So at one stage we had a young boy.
We put him in specially because his father had died three weeks before and the mother was just desperate for him to get male company and do something. And so we brought him into the team. It was late in the season and we put him out to bat at about number nine or something, and he got bowled first ball.
[00:37:53] Speaker C: That's rough.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: And I was sitting there going, no, please.
My son ran onto the ground. Now you're not allowed to do that and you can get told off and tribunal and suspended and all these sort of things. And it's also just bad form. He ran onto the ground, put his arm around the kid, and I yelled at him, get off the ground. And he ignored me completely. Ran onto the ground, put his arm around the kid and walked him off.
And at that moment, I thought I was in the wrong. He made the right moral decision and a disobeying dad. He just totally. He just helps me. He didn't hear me.
I realized that was what I treasured about it because it wasn't that he did what he was told, but that he acted with character. And he actually showed me up for having missed the boat on that one.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Because, funny enough, we talked about the road earlier. That's the big theme in the road. The father keeps telling the son that we have to keep the fire alive inside of us. It's virtue he's talking about. And there's a moment in the story where the father treats a stranger who could be a potential threat in this post apocalypse, apocalyptic world. Excuse me. On the road, he treats him a bit gruffly, and the son questions him in his innocence. And he says, well, dad, how do we know that we're still the good guys? And it's a very powerful moment. The father realizes, convicted by. But there's a beauty in that. The son is receiving this character formation from his father and how important that actually is. Yes, because it's interesting, you mentioned the difference between obey and give weight. I think the jewish word is Covid, isn't it? Or Kavid, isn't it, that you give in the fifth commandment, give Kavid, which is honor. To give the weight of glory to something.
It's a very different thing. And is that, how do we do that? I'm sure, Peter, you must have had those moments like Dean, where all of a sudden your kids are outpacing you a little bit. And I think a part of it is, do they need me anymore? And in a culture of utilitarianism, and it's very throwaway and very functional. Well, what's your function for me, dad?
[00:39:51] Speaker B: If we play soccer later, mate, you'll see how far behind my son.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: And it's like, well, what's the role of dad now? And is it that sense of the weight of fatherhood should still be present in some way?
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe I've got an advantage because I reckon I'm already embracing the grumpy old man.
[00:40:07] Speaker C: Really?
[00:40:07] Speaker B: Well, the grandpa figure, you can either fight. I was very grumpy for a while when I had an injury and it slowed me down a couple of years ago and I felt like, I'm getting old. This is the end.
It's all over. And then I thought, looking at people's ages, thinking there's many, many more years, it's just I have to humbly accept this next stage of life. And I wish I had my father around as much as I hope to be. I wish I had my grandfather. I never met him. So that kind of life, as much as God gives me, I can now enjoy a whole new stage. I don't have to be that one that was running around with them when they were two. I don't have to be that guy. I can be a new guy in a new stage and just give what I've got to them.
And perhaps that's different, but if I can embrace that, there's a real joy in that.
Not grumpy old man. But I'm really enjoying being a grandfather and I hope to be.
Yeah, I don't know. I'm excited to find out who this new guy is.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Cool if I can take a step backwards. You talked about the fact that you're an academic, Peter.
I run my own ministry as well, a lot of education speaking work. So there's some similarities there. And whereas Dean's a bit of a man of the world and he's in the workforce, and Dean, you are a fitness fanatic.
You really committed yourself to your sport and you're very good at it. There is a bit of a distinction, I think, that often happens, unless you're going to become a renaissance man.
Apparently Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock, he was known for, and he was, he was good at fencing and academics, unless you're going to do that, because not every man like the importance of an academic, a theologian, a philosopher. We need those people, but they have a masculinity.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: They do.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: How does that outwork itself?
[00:42:04] Speaker B: I think we need to be careful in our modern world because there is a tendency for us to specialize so much that we neglect areas. And as we said at the start, one of the lies of the devil is to put one good thing against another. And it's great that I can devote. I'm employed to be a theologian. That's great. And to teach people, but I still need to exercise, I still need to be. If I'm going to be a gift to anyone, I've got to look after the gift and I've got to do it now. I might not be guarantee I'm never going to beat you in a road race.
But I owe it to my wife, I owe it to my family to be able to present that. But even more than that, I'd go further than that and say, if there is a situation, we sometimes lulled by a western society into thinking we're all safe, if there is a situation where there's a danger, I need to be ready to at least respond proportionally to that and in a way that doesn't overdo it. Because if I'm really just really strong and I'm not trained, I might just damage lots of people in my responses.
[00:43:05] Speaker C: You need to have discipline, discipline and balance and everything. Yeah, I've done sport over a lot of years.
To your point just there, the thing that made me interested in crossfit as a sort of exercise discipline was I actually discovered it on kind of a how to survive the end of the world sort of forum.
What's the list of useful tools or things that you need? And someone said, well, the most useful thing is if you can move your body around.
Here's a generalized kind of fitness approach, any sort of fitness. I kind of think it would be good for every man to at least look into a little bit of lifting, a little bit of running or cardio stuff, and a little bit of just general movement kind of thing. Just like you say, look after the machine a bit. But that's only one aspect of your personality.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah, there's other spots to be developed too, for sure.
[00:43:57] Speaker C: Develop the intellect, for sure.
From a christian perspective, love the Lord with all your. And there's a whole list of things, but includes love the Lord with all your mind, and that is a gift that you can pass on.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: But see, even I spend all my working life reading theology, and that sounds great, but I need, in order to be a good man for my wife and my kids and for frankly, to be an interesting person in conversation. I need to read some politics, I need to read some literature, I need to actually get to be a broad thing. And the old idea of the card was it Newman who said, the idea of the university is a complete man. And he railed, sorry in that, against this specialization of education. So that we're narrowed down to one thing, become really skillful in one area, but we don't actually understand where it fits everywhere else. So I think it was a US president that said, we have guided missiles fired by misguided men just to be interesting in a room.
[00:44:58] Speaker C: I was talking to a young man yesterday about how can we be the best versions of ourselves? And we've all got our own strengths, which we should hone in on. We should also be aware of our weaknesses so we can shore them up a bit.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:45:09] Speaker C: We're not all trying to be the same.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: That's a really good point, that having a strength doesn't give you excuse for you to have the weaknesses untouched.
[00:45:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Because then you can be quite a. I actually think what you said was really cool. Just be an interesting person. That's a good goal. Right? You can converse, but you can also do physical stuff. You can also offer people advice or whatever.
Being interesting, that's like a two word advice for guys, right? Be interesting, but interesting. Think about it in terms of just hanging out with other guys, maybe, but thinking about being attractive as well, being masculine, being attractive is interesting.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: Why condemn your wife to a life with a boring and unkempt person?
[00:45:47] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:45:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:48] Speaker A: Well, it's funny too. I think that's almost the incel problem, right. Is to blame the woman.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Oh, look, the woman don't want me. And I've done this. And it's a very interesting, I often hear them speaking. You're thinking, gosh, fellas, just get out of yourselves for a second. And you know what? If you weren't so self obsessed and maybe you had something interesting to offer.
I was probably a little bit arrogant in a way when I was younger. And I remember I wasn't the best looking guy, but I acted like I was. And I think it's something healthy about men who have that for sure. Confidence, foolish self confidence. But a lot of blokes today don't seem to have that. A lot of younger guys, they really grapple with, well, who am I? I guess that's part of being caught in the minutiae of this absolute storm of ideas and condemnations, even to say, look, there's a problem for young blokes trying to figure out what masculinity is. Often even saying that is laughed at. Oh, you men have got everything and we're the victims. And how dare you say that you're having a heart.
[00:46:47] Speaker B: Can I throw another one at you guys just to respond to that? One of the problems that I've seen is that it's the old GK chestnut thing. Lots of people know what the problem is, but their solution isn't going to solve it. So he puts it in. The reformer is almost always right about what's wrong, but wrong about what's right. So I've seen so many books about masculinity where they list off all of the struggles and the problems and the identifiable symptoms of it. And you. Yeah, sounds great. And then they present like a list of. If you are like this, if you dance around and. What is it? Steve Bitoff. Dance around a campfire and do masculine rituals.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: Call out the masculine.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Or the evangelical know, you've got to really pray down the father's fatherhood or something. And you. Oh, goodness me, there's so much self help out there, which is selling because we're not giving them the good oil and it sells because they're hungry.
So what is the good oil?
[00:47:45] Speaker A: Well, it's funny, I wonder if there's a bit of either. You seen fight club?
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:50] Speaker A: There's actually a great. For whatever people think of. We're not rendorsing it, but it's a.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Really important moment with your kids.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: And the book was a satire, too, about this, but there's that great moment. He says, we're the middle children of history, man. We've got no great war, no great depression. Our lives are our great depression. And you know what it reminded me of? It's that passage where King David commits adultery with Bathsheba, kills her husband Uriah to try and cover it up. So it goes from adultery to murder. That passage starts with a very important verse. It's the time of year when kings.
[00:48:20] Speaker C: Go out to war.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: David stayed home. He had no war. Is this the thing? I mean, in a sense, they have no great scheme for their lives.
[00:48:29] Speaker C: Mission. Yeah.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: No mission, no calling, no adventure.
[00:48:32] Speaker C: I think that's the thing. Right? A sense of mission.
This is just my own sort of speculation, right. But I think that's, to a large extent, that's what men are built for, a mission of some sort.
And I've also observed that when men have a mission, whatever it might be, they've got some sort of focus or goal that they're working towards. And actually, ideally, it's something like a mission of service in some way.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: So that's an important point, that the mission itself is part of the characteristic of masculinity, because if you just say, occupy yourself.
[00:49:05] Speaker C: Yeah. No, it's not that. It's on a mission. And then that gives you some focus, but that's also attractive. I think with it comes some confidence and with it comes a desire for other people to sort of see that. And, like, man, I could join in on that.
[00:49:17] Speaker B: I can contribute, or at least I can respect that. Yeah.
[00:49:20] Speaker C: Yes. If the mission is not the same, I don't have the same call, but I can respect that. There's somebody with who knows where they're going. Even if you don't know where you're ultimately kind of going, it doesn't mean like, you have to, I'm 18 and I got to figure out my mission that's going to see me through till I'm 90.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: It's not that when it changes too, right? I don't know if you have. I've discovered it changes the mission shift.
[00:49:40] Speaker C: Absolutely. Having a mission is crucial, I think.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Well, I think it comes back to your point about, or I can't remember whose point it was, but about the need calling us into masculinity because the mission is really responding to the need. I'll come back to your thing about the war. It's true that that generation did know what they were doing, but it has to be said that the people who came back from that were like, we're still counting the cost of that masculinity. So they came back broken people. They were unable to process that, and their kids are broken because of that. And it's come down to us. So the nature of the mission is extremely important.
[00:50:15] Speaker A: Well, that's funny you should say that because I've considered and contemplated this a lot, and other scholars far smarter than my half brained contribution is, have talked about the fact that this is why actually liberalism actually took hold, because there was a sense a lot of men came back and didn't want another war, even a political fight of any kind. And liberalism seemed to be the sort know, you do your thing, I'll do my thing. It's very interesting how these men were shaped and then how that shaped society, let alone the missing men as well.
[00:50:42] Speaker B: Ironically, liberalism is now the most militant and intolerant thing in the entire world.
[00:50:48] Speaker A: Well, is this where Peterson's right, where he talks about, in a sense, he doesn't use the word mission, but Christianity. He talks a lot about the hero's journey and that calling of men. And he talks about Christianity having everything you'd want as a man in a sort of adventure caller.
[00:51:01] Speaker B: He's not the only academic out there who's pointing to certain aspects of Christianity and observing that, look, this is a really good thing. There's an atheist called elended Batong from Oxford who is a philosopher of religion, completely atheist. And in fact, he says at the start of his talks, of course it's ridiculous. God exists. It's absolutely ridiculous. And you think, right.
[00:51:22] Speaker C: Oh, mate.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: And then he lists all of the sociological and philosophical impact of everything christians do. And he observes, it's absolutely on par, on target with what human beings are like. So catechesis is absolutely necessary. Repeated ideals in liturgies and things, and it goes through every aspect of Christianity, says these guys know what they're doing. It's the way we should be as a society. He tried to set up atheism 2.0, by the way, and it didn't work because nobody shows.
[00:51:55] Speaker C: Strange.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yeah, because I think once you take out the sacred order and the supernatural.
[00:52:00] Speaker C: What do you got? Of course you do.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: But we can look at these guys like, I think Peterson, although Peterson might be on a slightly more friendly journey than the other guy, you can look at these guys and they're observing something. Once we're past the initial hostility that everyone's popularly hating Christianity, but they can see the goodness in it from different angles, everyone starts there.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: So the mission then is what? Get yourself to heaven. Here's your mission. And then you've got to work through the love for neighbor, love for God, love for truth.
[00:52:32] Speaker B: I don't know if Peterson's public stuff is talking about heaven.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: No, no, not yet.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: But I mean, certainly he's got some practical advice. Know, your grandmother would have told you many years ago, but for us as.
[00:52:44] Speaker A: Men, then, is that our big mission and then something like make your bed is part of that, fulfilling the mission each day, making your mission ready? I guess. Yeah.
[00:52:52] Speaker C: I think about it in terms of make disciples the great commission. And so how does that look in my life? That's the question that I ask myself.
And one answer as a father is, well, I got it easy. Not easy, but simpler, focused.
[00:53:09] Speaker B: You've got to focus.
[00:53:10] Speaker C: I got to focus.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:11] Speaker C: The disciples are right there, and that also includes making a disciple of myself. And then it flows out into what are all the other things that we're called to by the Lord.
And we can't do everything, but we can find something that plays to our strength that we do feel some sort of call for, and that perhaps is our niche in the kingdom for at least a season.
That can be a mission.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: I sort of wonder, too, whether we do live in an age where I think a lot of men are obsessed with everyone else's house, what's going on, even the whole, the tendency to say, well, all men are bad and masculinities. It's like perhaps if we had more men who are actually focused on their own house and getting that in order rather than what's wrong. In a sense, maybe there's something in that. But then you've got to know what that mission is right to be able.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: To do that again.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: It goes back to, I think, your point, Peter. Oh, just do something with your life. Yeah, but what? And why?
[00:54:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I've found that when you challenge young men, it tends to work. They do respond. There's some that are lazy and some that are hurt, and they need some more healing than just a kick up the butt or something like that, but it does actually work. Probably get myself in trouble here, but the young male students who are in my class often respond to a little bit of tough love. When I say, dude, you can do better than this. I've seen you do better than this. What's going on? And if there's something going on that they need help with, we get to that. But they just have almost no one's pushing anymore. And when they do push, they push to impossible things about standards which don't really matter, like to do with companies and KPIs or whatever they are.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: How do you grapple with that then in fatherhood? I mean, it has been one of my challenges. I've got one son and I really feel it with him a lot more. But one of my big fears for a long time was I want my kids to come out of this healthy, well adjusted, and really, I'd love if they all came out with the faith out the other side of this, out of my sort of incursion into their life as a dad. But it's a heck of a challenge, right.
[00:55:13] Speaker C: You won't have a net positive benefit influence, that's for sure.
The way I sometimes just visualize it for myself is I'd like to be someone that the kids, my boys especially. Well, no, all the kids but are proud of. Right. Or someone that they think is worthy of respect. Someone who their friends are happy for them, that they've got a good dad or something like that.
It's something they can lean on, someone they know that is trustworthy, worthy of.
[00:55:40] Speaker B: Respect, that they seek to emulate.
[00:55:42] Speaker C: Yeah, they seek to emulate in some way. Right. So that's quite a hard bar to try and achieve, but it's a good bar to try and achieve. And you can set that bar as high as you want, and you're probably not quite going to make it. And of course you're not going to make it in every respect.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: The thing is, that's a good challenge.
I don't like this, but I probably have done more good for my kids when I failed in how I respond to that failure than I have when I've looked like I can do because often they'll say, that's dad, and he's just good at that stuff. So we're not even going to try to go there.
But when they see me stuff up and have to apologize or have to go back and fix something or something, it gives them hope that, okay, this is normal part of life, and this is how you respond. Like resilience in the situation.
[00:56:30] Speaker C: Yeah. That becomes more important as they're older, too, because almost you can't perceptively stuff up when they're three years old, but, yeah, when they're 13. Yes.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: Well, everything you do is wrong when they're 13.
[00:56:41] Speaker A: I think there's that principle, what they call rupture and repair. So if you have a relationship like, well, you have to apologize, something you've done, the repair makes the relationship stronger than it was before the rupture. And I learned this with my dad because my dad was a very simple, straightforward guy. He was kicked out of school very young, did not do well academically at all. In fact, meeting my mother was really the making of him in so many ways. And he began to learn to read properly and stuff like that. He'd been a farmer. He's very practical, good with his hands, strong guy, a boxer, that sort of stuff.
Very simple and straightforward, who also, for most of his adult life, was plagued with schizophrenia. So very serious mental illness. But my father, so much of my life and my brothers, there's such a debt we owe to him. But he wasn't an academic. He wasn't highly skilled. He did the basics. He did them well. He's a man of character, and that really mattered for him. I remember him coming to me and saying, look, son, I have to apologize to you for this thing I did when I was raising it.
[00:57:39] Speaker C: And that was.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: These are profound moments.
[00:57:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd have to say. I mean, my dad's definitely not an academic. In fact, I grew up in the brethren, who were anti intellectual. So the two things that I did that disappointed him most in life was becoming a Catholic and becoming an academic.
But what I admired in him and what I still look to as an example is integrity. That even if I disagreed with a particular thing, you knew what you got. Because he was always true to his word, and he was always true to the principles that he held at his own cost and great in situations I can't describe here because they're too personal. But when it cost him to not to obey his principles, he still stuck with them.
I'd like to push this if you wouldn't mind, I have some kids who are adults now, up to four who are adults technically, according to law, and a couple of them are not practicing. So presently the pain of that as a father is immense.
And working that through has been a new learning experience and humiliating and humbling, if those two are distinct, and I think it's worth reflecting on that, that I'm not the one who makes decisions for my children.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: No.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: And I shouldn't try to, like, I can't force them to be anything.
What I have to be able to face God and say is, have I given them everything I could have in terms of the tools, in terms of the desire, the example?
And when I've been reflecting back on other people's families as well, and what's worked and what hasn't is that strictness doesn't always work, but joy does. So when there's joy in a faith that's lived, now, of course, you got to live the faith first, but when there's joy in that, that it's attractive and it draws people back. So insofar as they're still with the family and they are still with the family, it's through the joyful celebration of family, through the values that we hold as family in that sense. And there's still a lot of hope there because they're drawn back to those goodness.
[01:00:06] Speaker A: Did you ever have a conversation with them? Was there a moment where they said, dad, no, this is not for us. I remember my eldest daughter came to me two years ago, and she said, dad, I'm not sure if I believe like you believe. And it was so, even that was hard enough. Now, her journey has been quite profound since then, but there's still a lot of water to go under that bridge, of course. But was there a moment where that happened?
[01:00:25] Speaker B: Yeah, several. I mean, along the way there's been several. And I have to say, reflecting on it, I regret trusting some educationalists and some other people, catechists, who I hadn't checked out. Interesting, because there were some not fully trained people who weren't fit to deal with questions. And I trained my kids. See, this is trouble. I trained them to ask questions. I say, never ever take. You just got to accept it as an answer. You must ask your probe and keep going. And this is why I still have much hope for them. But when they came up to their re coordinators and tried these questions and they were shut down. We don't ask these questions. You just don't.
And I only found this out years later, and this has set them on the pathway to, well, religion doesn't have an answer kind of thing.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: Almost like it's anti intellectualism.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, very much so.
I think as a dad, we are the first educators of our children. So I'd say as a dad I pay more attention to what my kids are learning, who's teaching them, because I didn't do that. But I'm to blame for it in their eyes because I sent them there and I approved and I reinforced them as the mentor kind of thing. How do you grapple with that? There's a lot of hurt, but you deal with everything with goodwill.
[01:01:50] Speaker C: It's not like you deliberately set out to wreck them.
[01:01:52] Speaker A: No.
[01:01:54] Speaker B: And also I need to work on forgiveness of the poor people involved who are inadequately trained.
But the lessons learned are still. I mean, I still have young kids, so I can still apply these things. I can still love with the father's love. I mean, imagine being the father of the prodigal son. Yeah, I was just going to mean Jesus gives us this image of the father for a good reason and we're always trying to image that love of God, which is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, falling over ourselves to welcome them back whatever half chance they give us. So there's plenty of opportunities to do that. And I think we should never say all we can do is pray because prayer is the most powerful and potent thing we can do. And especially the prayer of a father and a mother for their children is powerful. Yeah.
[01:02:47] Speaker A: Have we overcomplicated it? Maybe a little bit, in a sense. Dean, I don't know. You were talking before, Peter, about different books and there was all this advice and how to be a man.
It's almost like in many ways I feel a bit like masculinity in some ways is a very. You do the basics, do them well. It's a simple project and we are men. We have single focus time.
[01:03:08] Speaker C: Complicated.
[01:03:08] Speaker A: Yeah. We're not. And it's like I said this to my wife recently, in fact, my wife Katie, beautiful woman. And the making of me as a man. Absolutely. But her view and her expectations, I think, have shifted as well. Not because I'm allowed, but because she sort of realized, oh, you know what she said to me recently? She. So the kids and I are so grateful to have you in our lives because some of our friends have experienced marriage decline or implosion. And she said on the outside, the blokes looked, they've got ticked all the boxes and they're really sensitive to the needs. But the simple things weren't being done. And she said, you're just there. You're not always Mr. Sensitive, but you're there for us. You love us. We know that you're trying to be a good man. I've got no doubt about infidelity with you, all that sort of stuff.
[01:03:54] Speaker B: If your kids know that you have loved them with everything you have at your disposal, because I'm a flawed man, and they'll see those flaws. But if they see that I've given them what I've got.
[01:04:06] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, give what you've got. You can't give what you don't have. Right. I'm thinking, yeah, you're transparent about it.
[01:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you are transparent about, I'm not really good at this, help me out, then. That also has integrity in itself. I think they will respect that.
Even if they spot your flaws and say, I want to do better than that. Great.
[01:04:25] Speaker C: If they see you working on your flaws, like recognize. That's what you said earlier about humility.
If you go, yeah, actually, I'm not that good at this. Or this is a weakness of mine, and they see you hammering away at it. That can be quite inspirational, too, I think. And it's good for me to identify deficiencies in my own commitments to things or my own character. But, yes, working on your weaknesses, I think, is not just useful for me, it's useful for people to see that I will confront them, try and do something about them, especially character weaknesses. I was thinking before about you talked about, of when you talked about Peter, talked about integrity. I think character, that's that one thing we take with us when we die is our character. So it's a project that's worth building all the way through.
[01:05:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:05:08] Speaker A: It's funny, I heard Jerry Seinfeld was in an interview recently talking about this and he wasn't moralizing, wasn't philosophizing, wasn't theologizing.
[01:05:19] Speaker C: I don't know if there's a word.
[01:05:21] Speaker A: Theologicalizing, but he made an interesting comment about his wife and his kids and he said, I guess the topic of infidelity because a lot of stars get caught up in it. And he said, well, why would I throw away this beautiful, permanent relationship for, like, I don't know, ten minutes or an hour of pleasure with some strange woman? I was like, it's very practical. It's very simple. It's like if we had more blokes, probably, who just got to the practicals, I don't know, things feel like. But then no one teaches you that.
[01:05:48] Speaker B: But also, if you had a clearer idea what you were entering marriage, what marriage was for.
Because a lot of guys that I was speaking to after marriages failed, one or both of them had a completely different idea of what marriage was for. And a lot of it was what I get out of it. And when it didn't deliver, because, frankly, it doesn't.
The kids we've been talking about a lot, but I have to give my kids credit for making me anything like a Christian. They dragged me kicking and screaming into holiness because I'd like to be lazy.
I'd like to just slack off. But they keep calling at me, they keep pulling at me because they need me to be their dad.
[01:06:32] Speaker A: That's the school of love.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And their demands are actually an invitation to me and a demand that I make myself a better man. So, yeah, it's the making of us, I think, for sure.
[01:06:42] Speaker A: I often tell the story, actually, about my son, who I was in a park one day, and I had to wipe his bottom in a public toilet. And I remember, I don't know why, but I started to reflect on this moment, and I thought, this is insane. 20 years ago, I would have thought, no way would I be interested in this now. I wasn't excited about being in this public tour in this situation, but I was like, I'm actually okay with this moment. And this is crazy. That's the school of love at work.
[01:07:08] Speaker C: Right?
[01:07:08] Speaker A: As a bloke, you're transformed.
[01:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:10] Speaker C: I got a memory of changing a little kid's nappy at the side of a stream on a road trip with sandflies everywhere.
I'm too important to be doing this sort of thing.
[01:07:19] Speaker A: No, two things I want to finish with chaps, then.
One is you often hear this from christians, particularly blokes. The problem is the feminization of the church.
What do you think when you hear that?
[01:07:33] Speaker C: It's not the problem, it's a problem. Right. And we could be kind of noble about it and say, well, feminism has taken over because we've let them.
So I think, to me, a lot of these sorts of issues all come back to fatherhood one way or another. Spiritual fatherhood, physical fatherhood. If the fathers step up and want. That's a horrible cliche. Step up.
[01:07:56] Speaker A: Well, don't just be the chauffeur on Sunday morning.
[01:07:58] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Lead your family. And if there's a way to serve in the church that suits your abilities and your character, take it.
[01:08:07] Speaker B: Right?
[01:08:07] Speaker C: Offer it to the Lord, and then it won't be people who perhaps are less prepared to. Less prepared but more willing, they'll fill it because they see the need. Let's look for the need and build ourselves so that we can fill those gaps when we can. And that is a masculine approach to.
[01:08:23] Speaker A: Things, I think, Peter, how do we do that, though? In a sense, you hear a lot about, oh, the role of women in the church.
[01:08:28] Speaker C: That's the Christ.
[01:08:29] Speaker A: And I think, no, well, certainly not in my parish and in our country. There's all women who are running the parishes who have filled the gaps because men are not there.
[01:08:37] Speaker B: Well, I mean, from the earliest records we have in the early church, the roman governors complained that Christianity was a religion of women and slaves, as in, there's lots and lots of women who've been faithful through the centuries. So I don't think we've got an increase in women in the place. What we've had is a decrease in the respect for the male role. But I have to say that if you're a gentleman listening to this and you're thinking, I'd really like to be involved, but the women keep telling me off, listen, if you need a woman to give you permission to be a man, we've got a problem. So stop waiting for everyone to stand back and give you accolades and stuff. Just practice that quiet, strong love of God the father, love of God the son. And that is welcome in its own way. Because if you're not grandstanding and if you're not trying to be the boss and boss everyone around, they always welcome someone who's strong and affirming and help it, wants to lift everyone else up to flourishing. There's no problem with that.
[01:09:35] Speaker A: Okay, well, on that note then, to wrap it all up, what advice would you give? What are the fundamentals you think you got a bloke of any age who's sort of coming into this journey and saying, gosh, I really need to rediscover an authentic masculinity, or, I'm a young guy, I don't know what that means. I'm just starting out on the journey, or maybe I've made a mess of it. What are some of the fundamentals you think men need to do to actually develop that authentic masculinity in a meaningful kind of way?
[01:09:58] Speaker C: One is have a look at Jesus.
How did he live?
[01:10:02] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:03] Speaker C: What would Jesus do? Right.
[01:10:04] Speaker A: Thanks for that cliche.
[01:10:06] Speaker C: What's the real answer?
And then find some aspect of his character that connects with your character.
[01:10:11] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:12] Speaker C: So find a strength that you have and build on that. This is twofold. And it's kind of obvious in a way. Find a strength that you have and make that strength stronger, and then find a weakness that you have and try and eliminate it. And this could be in the moral realm, or it could. Could be physically, it could be how frequently I read scripture. Right. But it could also be like we were talking earlier. Am I an interesting person? Do I work out these sorts of things? There's a whole range of human experience that we can look at and try and build in ourselves, but to boil it down, be interesting.
[01:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:44] Speaker C: Right.
And the other thing that men are good at is making a plan.
[01:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:49] Speaker C: So don't just have vague intentions, but find something. I could be better at this, whatever this is, to make a plan. How would somebody wanted to get better at that?
[01:10:58] Speaker B: Get better at it and make it a realistic plan? Because you don't want to say, I'm going to become the russian heavyweight. No, but you make it something that's within the boundaries of your specific, measurable.
[01:11:08] Speaker C: Achievable, realistic time frame. Just your classic smart goals.
[01:11:12] Speaker B: So I agree with all of that. I just add to it that a lot of young blokes are fooled into the idea that fulfillment and happiness are outside of themselves. If I just get this girl, or if I can just get this job, or if I can just achieve this particular body shape or something.
Be an interesting person is a kind of a slightly lighter way of saying build your own character. Like allow Christ to transform you. Be a person who someone wants to be, a friend of, a spouse of a son or a daughter of, because you have an integrity and a growth in yourself.
[01:11:49] Speaker C: Way to put it.
[01:11:50] Speaker B: Peter, look, if you work on that project, the other stuff's going to fall into place. But if you go chasing the girl to fulfill your dreams, you're not going to find yourself worthy of the girl when you find her.
[01:12:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I like to say, I think, have a story to tell. Have a story. And there's lots of ways that story can be. Often, community is one way. Experiences with others build stories. Be that guy who could sit at a party and even captivate one or two people for a few moments, reading literature, being an academic, you've got a story to tell. Teach yourself a skill. I remember the first time I had a crack at plastering. Wasn't the greatest looking job. It was inside a wardrobe. Thankfully, it looked like the surface of the moon. But I remember that night going to a party with my wife, and I was like, yeah, I did some plastering.
[01:12:34] Speaker B: Today, didn't tell them results.
[01:12:36] Speaker A: But there was a sense of, I have something to contribute to the world and I have a story to tell. And whether you're an academic or it's practical or learn a skill like hunting or a hobby or whatever it is.
[01:12:45] Speaker B: You get into music, you don't even have to be good at it. You just appreciate it.
[01:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. You sit in a room with someone who just says, oh, here's some trivia about some movies or some book or here's some academic thing or here's some story I had or experience I had in the bush. There's a story to tell.
[01:13:01] Speaker C: Wrong.
[01:13:02] Speaker B: We're drawn into that and we can be drawn into other people's stories if.
[01:13:05] Speaker C: We are interesting, if we listen. That's attractive to.
[01:13:08] Speaker A: And I'd say, too, look out for each other blokes as well. It's hard enough for a lot of blokes and we don't talk. There's a crisis of male friendlessness. Look out for other men.
[01:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah, actually, that's a really good one, the listening to men.
We're not good at doing that comfortably because we tend to joke about it or even mock the other person. So being an ear that actually listens hard. Yeah.
[01:13:31] Speaker C: Good stuff.
[01:13:32] Speaker A: On that note, chaps, thank you to both of you for, I was going to say, join him in the studio. It's not a studio, the room.
I've really enjoyed this. Really enjoyed this.
[01:13:41] Speaker C: Thanks for the invitation.
[01:13:41] Speaker B: Thanks for the invitation.
[01:14:38] Speaker C: Our channel.
