Point of View June 16, 2026 – Hour 2 : Authentic Masculinity

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View. Now, Dr. Merrill Matthews.

[00:00:21] And welcome back to Point of View. I'm Merrill Matthews, sitting in for Kirby Anderson today. Joining me in studio is Charles Stoffless. He is the equipping pastor at Denton Bible Church. And Charles, I was looking at the Wall Street Journal yesterday and one of their columnists, Elisa Finley, had an article. And it's the title is Taylor Swift sings about Graham Plattner and Donald Trump with that. That caught my attention.

[00:00:45] And it starts out by saying, did Taylor Swift once date Graham Plattner? He is the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Maine. And she goes on to say, not that not has been not has been reported, but her songs about dissolute men do echo accounts of women who dated the the main Democrat Democratic nominee.

[00:01:08] And she goes on to say, one could easily fill a book with anecdotes from friends about men who don't measure up in any measure, any way to a man. And I looked at that and I thought, gee, that just sounds like just what we're talking about in this hour. Joining me by phone is Seth Trout. He is the pastor, a teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in Phoenix, in the Phoenix area, metro area.

[00:01:34] He's been pastoring full time since 2011. And he is a has a Ph.D., a doctorate in digital technology, generation Z and gender identity. Interesting thing to have a doctorate in. And he's joining us to talk about his new book, Authentic Masculinity, Leaving Behind the Counterfeits for God's Design. Seth, thank you for joining us. Good to be with you, Jen. Thanks for having me. Now, tell me, why did you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

[00:02:04] Yeah, so I grew up going to church, had a pretty good dad, pretty good mom. I got saved probably my junior year of high school at a winter camp. So I'm a church kid and started serving in the church, just playing in the band and helping with small groups and kids ministry and stuff. And then probably when I was about 19 in college, I recognized that I was supposed to go be a Bible teacher, went to Phoenix Seminary. My church hired me full time and supported my seminary efforts.

[00:02:33] And I've been at Ironwood Church about 10 years. My wife and I have been married since 2013. We have two kids, a six year old and a four year old. Now, you have written the new book, Authentic Masculinity. What gave you the idea for writing this book? Well, the big thing, you know, I got my, like you mentioned, my doctorate was in gender,

[00:02:54] which is mostly trying to explain why Gen Z was so vulnerable to the transgender ideology and how digital technology affected that. And so that was more about trying to help the church think broadly about problematic views of gender, you know, the ungodly views.

[00:03:11] And what I was naive about was presuming that young folks who were raised in the church and had godly parents would be somewhat inoculated to some of the cultural lies. But I remember talking to a group of middle schoolers at my church at one of the winter camps I was preaching at, and a group of them had been watching Andrew Tate videos. And I hadn't really heard of him at the time.

[00:03:38] The first time I saw his stuff, my brother sent it to me and said, get a load of this guy. And I thought it was a joke. You know, half of what he said was like really obvious and great. You know, quit smoking weed, get out of your mom's basement, work hard. And I was thinking, this is great. And then the next things he would say were like, you know, marriage is a trap designed to domesticate men. You should have children with as many women as possible. I could call it like a Genghis Khan vision of masculinity.

[00:04:06] You know, sex, money, power, go and get it. Anything else is bad. And recognizing that some of these middle school Gen Z guys were caught up in that. And then shortly after, a buddy of mine who's a pastor of a church that has, you know, about 500 college students asked me to come teach. Can you come do a talk on why Andrew Tate sucks? That was the title he gave me. That should get some attendance. Yeah, yeah.

[00:04:30] And, you know, a lot of guys came, but I had to create a model that was going to help these guys think through God's design for masculinity that they could evaluate other designs against. Because it's one thing to critique what is bad in culture. It's another thing to cast a positive vision and help people understand the real thing and do the compare and contrast. And so that talk became an article and that article became a book. And that's why we're here talking today. You know, we've heard a lot about toxic masculinity here recently.

[00:04:58] It's been a topic that's been discussed significantly. How do you contrast authentic masculinity with toxic masculinity? Yeah. So on the front end, I want to say that I really do not like the term toxic masculinity. I think it kind of misses the point of what people are trying to talk about because when I think about toxicity, you know, the dose makes the poison.

[00:05:23] You can get water poisoning from drinking two gallons of water in 90 minutes, or you can get fentanyl poisoning from a few tiny little micrograms. And so the dose makes the poison. And so when we're talking about toxic masculinity, a lot of people are, in a sense, implying that these people are excessively masculine. And the solution is there then to, you know, tamp down or limit the masculinity. You know, these womanizing chauvinist types, they're excessively masculine.

[00:05:53] And I want to say, you know, absolutely not. You know, the God's design for masculinity that has to do with humility, discipline, responsibility, chivalry. We are not suffering from an excess of that. And so I want to – I have empathy for why people want to talk about toxic masculinity. You know, males using their power for bad or self-serving reasons is a problem.

[00:06:17] But I also think that more than that, what we're lacking in the culture is healthy Christlike masculinity. And I want to call people towards that. Wow. Seth, this is Charles Salf. It's just a pleasure to be here, and I really enjoyed your book. One of the things I liked about it is how simply it is organized. It seems to be in, like, two major sections there. You're focusing on masculine virtues. I mean, what it means to be a man in terms of virtue, but then also about masculine roles.

[00:06:46] I guess the setting in which we see a true or authentic masculinity that lived out. Could you talk a little bit about these masculine virtues that you reference? Yeah, I appreciate that. Actually, what you mentioned, the structure of the book is the thing I'm the most proud of because that's what I found really scales when fathers are passing on to their sons. And it really helps people grab hold to it for conversation's sake.

[00:07:14] And so, yeah, that first part is the masculine virtues, which is really rooted in negation. And so there's a four-layer pyramid here. So man is not God, so he must be humble. And that humility is twofold. One, that we are creatures who are in submission to reality, that we are not the creators. God's the creator. We are creatures. But then also we're sinful creatures who are indebted to God's grace.

[00:07:38] And so that kind of thick vision of meekness, you know, the broken and bridled horse, Matthew 5, poor in spirit, that a godly man must be humble because he's not God. And then a layer up from that is that man's not just a creature, but he's fundamentally distinct from all the other creatures. Animals are ruled by instincts and desires, you know, ring, bell, drool type Pavlov thing, whereas man and God's design are supposed to have moral vision. You know, we let our greater desires supersede our lesser ones.

[00:08:08] You know, at a really base level, you know, I want to eat 12 donuts, but more than that, I want to function in my work all day long and not have a stomach ache so I don't do that. You know, greater desires supersede lesser desires. And as we discipline those desires, they come into conformity with God's heart over time. The layer up from that is that man is not a child. Man's not a boy. So he must be responsible, especially we're supposed to resist the blame shifting that we see from Adam in Genesis 3. Take responsibility.

[00:08:37] And the man's not a woman. So he must be chivalrous. Seth, hold on to that. We'll be back from our break in just a minute. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:06] The school year has ended and we will soon find out how many students were missing and how many school desks were empty. I was unaware of the problem until I read the op-ed warning the empty desks are telling us something. The latest data from 39 states and the District of Columbia found that 23% of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year. The percentages for the most recent school year will likely be similar. When state legislatures have addressed this problem, they threaten students and parents.

[00:09:34] They threaten students with the loss of a driver's license. They threaten parents or students with fines or even jail time. Apparently the carrot, graduate and get a meaningful job, has given way to a stick, threatened them. Let me suggest something else. Perhaps the public schools aren't providing an educational experience that students value. Students in the inner city unfortunately receive an inadequate education as illustrated by virtually every test administered over the last decade.

[00:10:01] Even students in better schools must wonder why they must sit in boring classrooms when just a few years ago during the pandemic, they were told to stay home and try to learn online. As the attached op-ed reminds us, boys don't do as well in reading as girls. They have more learning disabilities and they are more likely to be expelled. They may need more help, but often they are the least likely to receive it. Chronic absenteeism in this light is not merely a failure of discipline. It is a performance review.

[00:10:31] Perhaps that's why more than a million students left the public schools for private schools and homeschooling. These empty desks are telling us something. I don't think many educators are listening. I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net.

[00:11:00] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And we're back with Seth Trout. He is a teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in Phoenix. And we're talking about his new book, Authentic Masculinity, Leaving Behind the Counterfeits for God's Design. And Seth, you were talking about responsibility when we had to take our break. So go ahead and pick that thought up. Yeah, so man's not a child. He has to be responsible, not blame shift.

[00:11:30] And at the top of the pyramid is chivalry. Man's not a woman, so he must be chivalrous, which is showing strength and honors. 1 Peter 3, 7, live with your wife in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. And now that's rooted in biological difference. Peter is getting at the vessel and how the difference in vessel creates an additional layer of responsibility for the man. So those are the virtues, humility, discipline, responsibility, and chivalry. You know, Charles and I were talking during the break. You start off with humility.

[00:11:59] And we both really appreciate that because of the lack of humility. But you stay on page 28. There is no such thing as a self-made man. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean that if we believe what Ephesians 2, 10 says, that God prepared good works for us to do ahead of time, that we should walk in them, that God has designed us to do specific things in specific ways.

[00:12:24] And so my intellect, my body, my family history, my training, all of that is made possible by the God who placed me in households and in situations that helped me grow and develop. But on top of that, you know, I think one of the most disbelieved verses in the Bible is John 15. Apart from me, you can do nothing. You know, I'm the vine near the branches. And that if a man can't understand kind of the heart of the gospel of John, the heart of Jesus' teaching,

[00:12:50] we're totally going to miss the mark on what we're trying to be as men, that we can't say, I've made myself. No, we are saved. We are created. We are designed. And anything good in us is derivative and given to us by the Lord himself. Yeah, I just wanted to probe a little bit more how critical humility is when we see God saying through Isaiah, to this individual I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word.

[00:13:17] Or we look at the example of Moses, the great, great leader of two million people coming out of bondage and slavery. Moses was a humble man more than any man on the face of the earth. And you say, can you kind of give us some insight into why it is humility is so essential for a man to be successful the way God wants him to be successful? Well, I think at a basic level, this is just about dealing in reality, that if we want to be sober minded,

[00:13:47] we must live incongruent with what is true about the whole world. And God is the creator and we are creatures and we are specifically made creatures. And haughtiness is glory stealing and attention seeking behavior is worship stealing. And so the lack of humility isn't just like about being falling short on a virtue per se, but it's actually about committing the very sin that made the enemy of God the enemy of God,

[00:14:16] you know, trying to steal worship from the Lord. And it's highly offensive to him. And it's one of the ugliest things we can do because to take people's eyes off of God is to cause them to look at something less beautiful, which is us. And so it's harmful to other people. It's it's it's folly. It's it's actually absurd to walk around with a swagger that's not somehow explicitly derivative of creation and grace.

[00:14:41] So as you say, it's like to take people's eyes off of God, but then also in addition to place it on themselves. So in that sense, it's almost not to overstate the case here, but it's satanic. It's what Satan did when he said, I will be like the most high God. Absolutely. Absolutely. And one thing is wild. You mentioned Moses, you know, when Moses in Numbers 12, 13 is described as the most meek man on the face of the earth,

[00:15:08] is that Moses wrote numbers and you kind of go, how is that possible? How could some guy call himself the most humble in writing? But he took that text to the community and the community verified that claim. So it was a it was a well attested to reality that here's a man, Moses, who understood his weakness, understood his limitations, understood his sin and recognized that God nonetheless had great things to do through him. But it was God doing it through him.

[00:15:37] You know, Seth, in your segment on discipline, you say man is the moral animal. And then you make a statement I find really important. An animal is not at war with itself. Man is. And we often feel that sense of being at war with ourselves. Yes. I think a big part of Christian discipleship is maturing our desires. You know, when Jesus comes to the disciples in John chapter 2 and he says, what are you seeking? Like, what do you want?

[00:16:06] I think that's a tell to us that part of what Jesus is going to do is work on our wanter. He's going to heal and mature our desires. But we have this sinful flesh that's at war within us. And we have this controlled by the spirit that's doing battle. You know, a dog is not wrestling. Should I eat the food or not? But yet humans in moral and non-moral ways are at war. And I think recognizing the need to fight that fight. You know, John Owen's famous phrase, be killing sin or he'll be killing you.

[00:16:35] And I think that is true in a thousand ways in every man's life. Well, you know, I'm just thinking as you were speaking there, I said, even Plato said that really the primary goal of education is to train the desires. That people don't desire the good. And so he is wrong in many ways. But, I mean, he's right in that, that we need our desires trained to desire the good.

[00:17:00] Yeah, and I think that's probably what the psalmist is getting at when he says, delight yourself in the Lord and he'll give you desires of your heart. That is not God is a genie. You rub the lamp and he gives you what you want. But it's as we behold the Lord, he implants new, holier, healthier, more mature, more godly desires in our heart over time. And so for guys who have tons of internal battles, whether it's with lust or greed or things like that, part of what we have to recognize is that as we worship the Lord,

[00:17:26] he will heal us of those things bit by bit over time, even though they will never go fully away until Christ comes back or we die. You know, Seth, one of the troubles we see in our time is that so many men, young men especially, lack discipline. They want to spend their time playing video games. They don't want to work. They don't, there's no ambition. And you, you've mentioned two different types of discipline. Explain those two types. Yeah, there's physical discipline and spiritual discipline.

[00:17:56] And those are like the two broad categories. And I think physical discipline obviously has to do with diet and exercise, but also has to do with work ethic, the capacity to resist the vice of sloth and instead work hard. You know, I think one of the things the Book of Proverbs makes clear a bunch of times is that one of the ways you bring shame to yourself and your family is by being lazy or being slothful or a sluggard.

[00:18:23] And then spiritual disciplines are the more explicit habits we build that develop our life with God in a more obvious way, whether it's Bible reading or prayer, church attendance, service, fasting, silence and solitude, things like that, that help our souls grow, not just our bodies and our bank accounts. Hmm. And what do we do with kids who just simply don't want to, there is no discipline, there's no ambition, there's no desire. They just don't want to get out there and begin doing things.

[00:18:53] These, I don't say kids, but I'm talking about males. Yeah, I think there's two parts of this. Number one, I think is most important, which is vision, this belief that God can and will do meaningful, great things through your efforts. I think a lot of what guys lack is the capacity to think, what could God accomplish through me 10 years from now if I invest in myself, if I discipline myself, if I grow?

[00:19:18] So, you know, nobody who became a medical doctor, you know, took a two-month crash course. You know, that's a long path you have to walk to eventually be an agent of healing. And so I think guys need vision and they need mentors and their parents in particular to help them identify their strengths and skills and help them understand what it might look like to pour gas onto that little flicker of a flame that is in them and to run hard after things.

[00:19:43] But I think that lack of self-efficacy, that lack of belief that I could actually accomplish something meaningful, it's just disbelief in my view of how God designs every person with a substantial purpose. So that's like number one is vision. Number two is I think there is like a dopamine digital doom loop thing that I think we have to detox from. It's easier than ever to be a lazy bum in world history, you know, because you can be permanently entertained. And, you know, the nanny state will take care of if you don't work.

[00:20:12] You know, the American government is not going to let you starve. You know, a couple hundred years ago if you didn't work, you starve. And now the government will take care of you. So there is less of like a pressure to do that Genesis 3 by the sweat of your brow you'll bring forth things to eat from the ground. And so I do think there has to be a separation and a dominion we exercise over digital technology that young men face with great severity like never before in world history. When we come back, we're going from the break.

[00:20:42] We're going to look at this issue of responsibility that Seth highlights and the role that people have of being responsible. We have information about his new book, Authentic Masculinity, on our website at pointofview.net. And I encourage you to go there. And I'd encourage you to pick up a copy of the book because this hits some of the key issues that we are facing in society, especially now as we've turned away from a God vision and people are beginning to just trust in themselves.

[00:21:10] And in doing that, they're losing their ambition, losing discipline, and losing responsibility, always wanting to blame other people and never taking responsibility for themselves. Stay with us. We'll be back with Seth Trout in just a minute. Who can you trust?

[00:21:37] Years ago, many of us could probably have provided a fairly long list. But today, well, today it seems we almost can't trust anyone. Educators don't even know what a woman is anymore. Many so-called public servants have shown all they care about is themselves. The FBI has been accused of bias, law-breaking, betrayal, and journalism. It's largely corrupt with no Clark Kent standing up for truth, justice, and the American way.

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[00:23:05] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And welcome back to Point of View. My guest for this hour, Dr. Seth Trout. He is a teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in the Phoenix metro area. And we're talking about his new book, Authentic Masculinity, Leading Behind the Counterfeits for God's Design.

[00:23:34] Seth, as I hear you talk and read your book on what is authentic manliness and the call that is made to all men to be men, to act like men, and I can't help but note the stark contrast with childishness. And so can you speak a little bit more about that contrast? What is it that keeps guys childish and impulsive and all the other things that we, adjectives that we use to describe what a child does?

[00:24:05] Yeah, the childlike spirit, on the one hand, is praised, but childishness is obviously a huge problem. And that's, I think about meltdowns. I think about blame shifting. I think about short-term thinking. You're really trying to maximize pleasure in a moment. And I think part of the reason we see so much of it nowadays is because of things specifically like pornography and video games, which are fake sex and fake wins, fake war, fake victory,

[00:24:30] that they've been conditioned from a young age to seek out those kind of phony counterfeit versions of accomplishment and connection. And then that then is superseded onto things like, financially speaking, when you have the DoorDash problem, people blowing through money so fast having food delivered, they're too lazy to cook. They're also very interested in sports betting over and against burning a living.

[00:24:57] And so there's just this short-term thinking that I think marks childishness, you know, spending money you shouldn't, the lack of prudence, and it's really the markers of folly that you see throughout the book of Proverbs. It's this naivety and this capacity or this lack of capacity to think about the future you and think about the current you and to let the current you make bad decisions that harm future you. That'd be my summary of what I think a lot of this childishness, especially in guys who are still in their 20s, looks like.

[00:25:27] You know, Seth, you talk first about the virtues in the book, and then you talk about the roles that men play, and you break it down to son, brother, maker, husband, and father. Why is it important to address these roles? Well, I think you can probably tell I kind of got a little pyramid addicted in writing the book. That second pyramid. They were helpful, though. Oh, I hope so. I hope so. But I do think that order matters.

[00:25:55] And so many men, I think, end up having dysfunctional marriages or being dysfunctional in work. Because they haven't dealt with the son layer first, which has to do with taking inventory of the good and the bad that you got from your parents. You know, being mindful of generational patterns, recognizing that some of that baggage is good, some of it's bad. But trying to recognize that part of being a son is trying to be better than your father. And I mean that as honorably as possible.

[00:26:22] You know, my father set me up for success, and I want to improve on his legacy spiritually, financially, emotionally, relationally, friendship-wise. And so being a son is about becoming the type of man, a wise man to be proud of, stewarding family history. And you're a son before you're born. You know, you're in the womb. You're a son. And so that's got to come first. Otherwise, you just repeat and rehearse generational patterns of dysfunction.

[00:26:45] Then brother is about fraternal connection, friendship, loving and supporting one another, relating to women as sisters in all purity, like 1 Timothy 5 tells us to. Maker is really about what does it mean to absorb the weight of the curse in Genesis 3. By the sweat of your brow, you bring forth good things from the earth to eat, the pressure to provide, to subdune dominion, to honor the Lord with our creativity and our efforts.

[00:27:11] And husband, you know, how do I cherish and nourish a wife like Christ does the church? And then father, how do I pass myself on biologically, obviously, as we have kids made in our image and are also in God's image. But even more than that, spiritually, as I hope every young man aspires to be elder qualified, even if he never holds the office of elder in the way he passes on the faith to the next generation. Yes. Seth, you also seem to be concerned that too many men don't really make good male relationships.

[00:27:40] Can you speak a little bit more about that? Yeah, I remember reading an article in the Boston Globe a while ago that described male loneliness as an epidemic. You know, this is probably 2018, something like that. And I've heard people joke before that the biggest miracle Jesus ever pulled off was being in his 30s and having 12 close friends. You know, and I empathize with that to some degree. You know, a lot of my peers who are trying to be really good husbands, trying to be really good fathers, trying to really be really good employees,

[00:28:10] they feel like they have to become worse at one of those three things in order to maintain meaningful male friendship. And so I put together this acronym, R-A-I-L-S, Rhythm, Affinity, Intensity, Longevity, and Spirituality, to hopefully help men think creatively within the margins of their life on how they can invest in high-quality male friendships that last a lifetime. Do we need male friendships? Is that important?

[00:28:40] I think that Jesus calling his disciples friends is a big tell on part of what Jesus wants us to see. I think you look at David and Jonathan's friendship in the book of 1 Samuel and how David would not have made it were it not for Jonathan's friendship. I think about the call to have iron sharpening iron and how that requires proximity and trust to sharpen one another.

[00:29:03] And just this need to relate to each other as brothers, which I think, you know, functionally nowadays is more of a friendship dynamic. I think you have a very hard time obeying a lot of the one another's in the New Testament and growing as a disciple without allowing the teachings of Jesus to play out, be flushed out, and be worked out in the context of intimate male friendship. Seth, do male relationships look different than female relationships?

[00:29:31] I mean, man to man, woman to woman. I mean, I think sometimes guys feel the pressure from maybe a wife or a girlfriend or something to kind of almost have a kind of a relationship that they have with girlfriends as opposed to the way guys tend to relate. Is there something to that? Good question. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think there's so much variability within men and between men, and so I think all men will have slightly different flavors of relationship.

[00:30:00] I think generally speaking, women begin their relationships face-to-face. You know, they go to coffee, sit down, get to know you, whereas men tend to form friendships shoulder-to-shoulder, participating in activities together. A lot of my good friends, you know, I met at the gym or met doing a hobby or met in a class. And so shared activity is usually how men friendships begin.

[00:30:22] I do think eventually men need to be able to have what I call intensity in their friendships, which is being in touch with each other's hopes, dreams, fears, securities, insecurities, their shame, confessing sin to one another. But men, male friendships tend to start and develop shoulder-to-shoulder and eventually go face-to-face as there's more a need to sharpen one another and disciple one another.

[00:30:45] Seth, there are churches that, and various parachurch groups, that try to get men together in various kinds of large groups to share, to pray, to do various things. What do you think about those? Well, I think any time you're getting men together to pray, I'm not going to have a heart. You're not going to hear any criticism from me on that effort. I think that's a wonderful thing to do. I think as men grow spiritually together, that's also a great incubator for how friendship develops.

[00:31:14] I think a lot of men are hesitant to do that because their wife tends to be more biblically literate than they are because they've been doing women's Bible studies while the man was at work. That type of dynamic plays out. And so there needs to be more of an acknowledgment and a bit of an on-ramp. A lot of guys come in and feel dumb and feel like they don't know what's going on, especially newer converts. But I think getting men together to pray and read the Bible is kind of the bullseye from which everything else emanates on that really Christlike male connection.

[00:31:43] Seth, you speak about how important the role of work is and handling money. Can you speak to that maybe, how critical that is and how it is so easy for guys to get some of that wrong? Yeah, the credit card debt situation in the United States, just as a political side note, is a disaster. It is. It is. You know, we kind of speed the leader, speed the team, you know, 33 trillion in debt as a nation. And that bleeds down and is modeled for households.

[00:32:13] And I think that men living beneath their means is one of the main ways that we can resist the consumeristic spirit of the age and being content, as we're called to do throughout the New Testament, that contentedness. And I think that a lot of male depression is really kind of downstream from things related to work and money, this kind of feeling of powerlessness, impotence as a way of relating to the world.

[00:32:40] And, you know, when God put Adam in the garden in Genesis 2, you know, the first problem we see is that there is no man to work the ground. So God put the man in the garden to work it and to keep it. And so I know Christians are in favor of saying we should not find our identity in our work. And I think, yes, on the one hand, we need to find our identity in Christ, period. But a big part of our creation identity is that we are to be laborers, workers, people who apply creative force to the world around us and to make things better.

[00:33:09] And so trying to completely divorce a man from his work in terms of identity is, I think, contrary to the spirit of what we see in Genesis chapter 2. We have on the phone with us Dr. Seth Trout. We're talking about his new book, Authentic Masculinity. You can find a link to that on our website, pointofview.net. When we come back, we'll hit the last two areas of his book, Being a Husband and Being a Father, two extremely important biblical positions. So stay with us. We'll be right back.

[00:33:41] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. And welcome back to our final segment with Dr. Seth Trout and his new book, Authentic Masculinity.

[00:34:11] And, Dr. Trout, we've got two segments left in your roles, husband and father, that I want to make sure we touch on. And you had a statement in the husband section where you said, the question is not, will you be the head, but what type of head you will be. Very interesting. As a husband, talk about that. Yeah, well, understandably, people read Paul's statements about headship in the New Testament and our modern sensibilities go, what is that?

[00:34:39] And then sometimes what happens is guys go home and then they assert this. And Paul is saying, I got to be the head. But I see that Paul is more observing the reality. Paul is observing that reality, not even necessarily prescribing that reality. I think that observation is rooted in natural law and in a created order. But I do think what he's getting at here is, and let me define for you what headship looks like.

[00:35:02] And he points us to Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality of God, seemed to be grasped or leveraged, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant. And what a privilege it is to image Christ in the way we serve our bride like he did. And that husband piece, I think, is vital to God's design. And it's also just, it's rooted in creation, but it goes past creation to new creation and the picture of the gospel.

[00:35:26] And so I think men wooing and then serving their lives is such a wonderful opportunity. And I think that's one of the things that young men need to be given a picture of is, you know, people are delaying marriage later and later. The desire for marriage is lower and lower. But going, don't you see that this is not merely about conforming to God's design, but there's also a wonderful privilege to get to love a wife like Christ loved his bride, the church. And it's really an adventure and a joy.

[00:35:53] And I hope that young men get excited about it, not just like, oh, here's another Christian duty. Is the way the world going, creating challenges for that? I mean, in years past, it would be the male most likely who had been to college or who had a Ph.D. or a master's degree or an M.D. or a law degree. And increasingly, you have women who are taking those roles and maybe the husband doesn't.

[00:36:15] If you're, you know, if you're a truck driver and you're married to a Ph.D., is this a challenge in the society we live in now? Oh, for sure. It's a challenge. You know, my wife and I were just recently watching the Ed Sheeran documentary. You know, Ed Sheeran's wife, you know, has a great degree from Duke and a career in finance. And then she gets married to Ed Sheeran.

[00:36:39] And she has to make this choice to leave behind her career aspirations in order to become a wife who's a full-time mother. And I was mostly impressed that she made that choice. Obviously, when your husband's Ed Sheeran, maybe arguably one of the most famous people ever, it's kind of an easier sell. But we do see that there's like a sunk cost fallacy thing in young women who have more career aspirations than they have home aspirations. And I think that's difficult for men to work with.

[00:37:06] But I do think, you know, just jokingly speaking, when my younger sister met her person she's getting married to, it was she was similar, an attorney, a big career, but then she met a compelling man. And she made comments like it was almost like some of that feminism left my body when I met a man who was worthy of following. And I appreciate that malleability there. But I think men, rather than kind of lamenting that or complaining about it, go like, well, I want to be a man that women,

[00:37:36] that a woman, not a woman, that a woman would be honored and excited to follow after. And so the bar is raised on men a bit, which is hard. But all at the same time, we don't choose the cards we're dealt. We just play them. You know, Seth, as we think about the critical role of being a father, some of us benefited from a great influence from our fathers and father figures.

[00:38:00] And yet many, many people, and maybe increasing numbers, have never seen what a godly father is. Or, I mean, an individual that's caught up in the childish kind of slavery, how do they start? How do they even start to move outside of some of these blindnesses that they've grown up with?

[00:38:26] I think the main thing you have to do is find, acquire to yourself a tribe of mentors, of father figures, that you see things in them that you really want to be like. I see his marriage. I see his work. I see his parenting. And I think being a part of a local church is the most healing thing you can do if you've been unfathered or underfathered. And I think at a first point, I would say, if you recognize that, you are already in a good place. A lot of men never recognize that, and they just rinse and repeat what happened to them.

[00:38:55] And they bail on their wife or kids, or they completely lean out and stay passive. And so acquiring a tribe of mentors through a local church, asking a guy to coffee, asking a guy if you can talk on the phone, leaning into the pastors and elders where you go, So I think when you begin at a deficit because of what your father did or didn't do to you, there is more work there that has to happen for you to become a healthy Christlike follower. And I think that's not fair. It's not your fault.

[00:39:23] But it is your responsibility as a man to break that pattern and to be the type of father that your kids deserve, even if that's substantively different than what your father was. You know, Paul lists in one place a number of characteristics, and then he says, but the greatest of these is love. And I'm wondering of these five roles, son, brother, maker, husband, father, is there one that you think is the greatest of these is this role?

[00:39:51] I think that on the one hand, the most important is the son because it's the foundation. And I think this desire to bring honor to your family name energizes a lot of the other four roles and in the healthy sense, trying to go like, I want to steward the gift of life that my parents gave me as a son as best I can. That's foundation. But I'd argue that probably the most generationally significant one is father.

[00:40:17] When you're establishing these generational patterns, passing on the faith to the next generation, that you are discipling and investing in your kids and other people's kids, participating in the mission of God to make disciples of all the nations, that when we conceive of that as a fatherly activity, I think that father is the most significant game-changing role, and especially the week leading up to Father's Day. I'm so grateful for all the fathers out there who are fighting the good fight and showering their kids with affection and blessing and correction.

[00:40:47] And I hope the Lord, through his spirit, helps them in their task. Good point. We don't have much time left, but of those five roles, is there one that we as a society are failing at more than the others? I'd probably say the father one. I think it's hard to go on the Internet and not read something about an epidemic of fatherlessness and the crime rates of underfathered men and how fatherlessness is related to poverty

[00:41:14] and just every basically negative symptom you can think about, culturally speaking, is downstream from poor or absentee fathers. And so I think one of the ways that we can shine like stars and even help people come to faith is by being good fathers. We've seen people come to the church because they want to learn how to be dads and then meet Christ after the fact because the wisdom of God even came before their understanding of the good news in Jesus.

[00:41:40] And so I think the church has a wonderful opportunity to help call men to be great fathers. Well, Dr. Trout, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for your book. It is very, very instructive, and it's a great add to the books, and we would encourage people to go out and take a look at it. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Jen. This was a great conversation. Great. Our guest for this past hour, Dr. Seth Trout, he's a teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in the Phoenix metro area,

[00:42:06] and his book was Authentic Masculinity, Leaving Behind the Counterfeit for God's Design. And Charles, I thought he just did a great job. Oh, wow. He speaks with such clarity on this, and what a devastating problem it is. But like he says at the very end, what an incredible opportunity for someone who recognizes their need, and then now they begin the journey to really fulfilling what it means to be authentically manly, as God designed it. In an age where we talk so much about toxin masculinity,

[00:42:36] authentic masculinity is something we need. Yeah. Amen. Well, thank you, Charles, for joining us, and thank you for listening. If you want to find out more about Dr. Trout, you can find his book on a link to our book on our website, pointofview.net. I want to thank Megan for doing the engineering there, and for Steve for producing. I want to thank you for listening. And if you go to pointofview.net, there is a donate button there. I'd encourage you to click that and donate to the ministry. Thank you so much for joining us. Point of View will be back tomorrow.

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