 Welcome to the Red Man Group Live. It's been 15 years of this. It's wonderful. It's a 2021, 21 summit. And this is a panel on the Manisphere in religion because a lot of people don't know that Anthony Johnson has a controversial side to him. And every once in a while, he wants to stir people up. So he thought, why not talk about religion, right? So that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about religion. It's not only am I not ashamed to be on this stage with these men. I'm actually honored. This is my second year being at this convention. And the conversations I have with the speakers outside of the sessions are incredible. They're well-read, stimulating men. We have lots of differences. And we can talk about them in an intelligent way. Part of being a man is managing tension, managing disagreements, and thinking about things. And so I want to open up with this. Tanner, Jack, you've been in this space for a long time. Are you surprised or how have things changed with the topic of religion coming into this? Is that surprised you? Has it always been like this behind the scenes? What? How do you think about it? OK, so Jack and I have been in this for a long time, like 10 years for me. How long for you? At least 10. At least 10. Yeah, more so. I mean, you've been published for 10 years, right? Yeah. No, I don't think I'm not surprised by this. Because what started off, or at least kind of in the internet iteration, started off as pick-up artistry, that was really just a manifestation of one version of masculinity. Because we all recognize that there is a problem with men and our relationship with masculinity in a post-modern world. It's only inevitable that that turns into, and it goes through the path that it has, which is, you know, it went from pick-up artistry to red pill, to self-development, to family, and then it's going to eventually get to God and religion. Because there's no way to be able to fully manifest in your physical, spiritual, or social, emotional ways without eventually getting to the spiritual element of it, too. And so not surprised at all that this is where we are. Super stoked that this is where we are. Because you cannot have masculinity to its full extent without having the spiritual component of it, too. That's great. Let me flip to that side for a moment. Jeff, you're a first-time speaker. Were you surprised at the nature of some of the conversations we've been having here? I was very surprised. I had expected for it to be mostly pick-up artist type stuff. And we've had discussions on the Holy Fathers, Ecclesiast. We're talking the filial clause. No one knows. I'm like, I walk in, and you're out there with soccer tees. And right away, we're like in a deep disagreement between the Western and Eastern churches and us. Yeah. And it was informative. It was inlining even in some ways. And I've been really surprised by the intellectual depth. I think this is something that can really go somewhere. Yeah, awesome. Ken, what do you think about this? What do you think about this becoming a topic that we're talking about more and more? Oh, I'm telling you, the whole thing about, for me, and the work that I do with men, integration is a really powerful part of this. So integrating every aspect of us as men. So our physical, our emotional, our relational, our personal, our identity, and our spiritual. I think that's been a powerful part of this whole conversation. We're bringing it all together, every aspect of manhood. And I love it. That's great. Jack, I read your way of men a while back. It was a very helpful book on brotherhood. You've just written a book that dives into religion. There's an idea that religion's feminine usually, that men aren't attracted to that. As you wrote this book, how did your ideas kind of develop about masculinity and religion? How did they change, or what came into clarity that you didn't expect? Well, religion traditionally isn't feminine. I mean, of course, priests have always been men. Men create the ideals that everybody aligns underneath. And my book specifically was really about how men do create what is our highest ideal? Why does that solve the problem of what we need? And how is that good for our society? And so we're setting an example. And this is the highest thing that we're reaching for. And really, the 21 convention talking about this is kind of a natural progression. Now, of course, in my system, the way I'm talking about things, first you have to figure out if you can survive. And then you don't have time for the higher ideals necessarily, when you're just trying to figure out when you survive. But when you're building a higher society, well, where are we going? I mean, that's what the higher ideal really is. Where are we headed to? So that's a higher level discussion that you can have once you have all the bases covered. So it's a natural evolution, I think, for men generally, even as they mature. Yeah, that's really good. Tanner, these conversations are kind of risky, actually. They're risky conversations to have. You have a brand. Your brand is strong. How does this affect you to talk openly about being a Latter-day Saint? So I know for me, there was a long time when, especially on Twitter and Instagram, where I have kind of my strongest presence, I played this game of almost surreptitiously trying to introduce principles of the gospel or doctrines that I believe in and do it but kind of detach God from it. Because I believe that truth is universally appealing, irrespective of where it is that you try and find it. But then what I discovered for myself was that I was being kind of a hypocrite or I was putting on a persona online that wasn't congruent with who I was in real life. And I remember very distinctly feeling like if I was going to actually, like Ken said, integrate, and I was going to become a person that was not different on Sunday or different on the internet but I was actually who I was all the time, that I needed to be willing to openly talk about my beliefs, my doctrines, the theology, and the things that we believe in. And I understand that they're unique, that a lot of people don't consider us to be Christians, that a lot of people consider it to be very odd or weird or anything else, but I kind of leaned into it. And what's the coolest thing about it is not only has it not harmed my brand, it's helped it grow because there's integrity there that people now see, but it's also on that personal level helped me accomplish what Ken talked about. I do feel more integrated. It used to be uncomfortable for me to talk to people about my religion. And I mean, you guys know the missionaries that do like the name tags? I did that for two years and there were, even after two years of doing that, it was still somewhat uncomfortable for me to talk about my beliefs with people that weren't like rabidly interested in it. And now I could treat it the same way that I talk about style, the same way that I talk about masculinity, the same way that I talk about family, because it's a fully integrated part of who I am. And it's made me love and worship God better than it ever would have been had I not taken that risk. Right now there's someone somewhere that just realized that super stylish, well-dressed missionary was Tanner Gunn. That's who that was. You're welcome. Well, I was talking to someone and they're like, how can you spend time with these people? These are terrible people with people that we disagree. And I was thinking about me, you, Arthur Lee Kwan and AJ Cortez talking. And one, I didn't, I learned, I didn't know anything about Mormon eschatology. I never even thought about it. And it just hadn't come up. And we're talking about that. And then AJ sometimes pretends to be a meathead, but he's genius, right? He's so smart. He's so bad at being a meathead. It's incredible, you know, it just starts coming out. But I was thinking, you know, these are really good and we're talking about our differences. It was actually really helpful. It creates compare and contrast. We start to figure out where is their correlation? Where is their not correlation? Right. And what I was telling some people, and I wanna hear what you think about this, is that evangelical culture is not just feministic, but it is nice guy culture. It is producing despicably weak men. And men look at that and say, I don't wanna be evangelical if I have to give up my masculinity. If I have to choose between Christianity and masculinity, they're gonna choose their nature, their body, who they are. Is that happening in the latter day Saints? Is it part of a broader religious movement in America? What do you think? So one of the things that's difficult without being immersed in the church and the culture itself is to understand that there's a difference between cultural movements that happen amongst members and doctrinal consistencies or any sort of changes or anything else. I think one of the things that's kind of unique about our beliefs is that this idea of patriarchy, of the gender dimorphism, the difference between men and women is absolutely at the core of what our theology is. One of the main things that we believe is that marriage is eternal, that if you were married by the proper authority, you will be married into eternity. You will keep your bodies after the resurrection and you will be man and wife forever and that is part of exaltation is to be that way. It's not that we become this kind of amorphous couple or that we go into anything else like we will be marriages for eternity. And you can't do that without understanding that there's the distinction between the roles of men and women that also have their eternal nature. I think one of the things that we're seeing sadly in some of the more like upper middle class, kind of comfortably passive components of some church culture is there's this discomfort of the very deep patriarchy that's baked into our doctrine. And so they try to offset it by, well, I'm the nice guy. You know, I'm the servant leader type of patriarch or yeah, I mean, I'm supposed to preside over the home but that really means that I just, you know, call on which of our kids is supposed to say the family prayer in the morning or at dinner. And it's not godly. And it's also not doctrinally being upheld. It's not being taught by the prophet or by the apostles. It's not taught in our scriptures but there's a cultural component to it and I'm very grateful to see more and more men who are recognizing the problems with that and are starting to push back against it. And again, not push back the doctrine, maintain and declare the doctrine but push back against the cultural change that sadly some of our members are trying to promote. Jack, a lot of men reach out to you. I know they do because of your book. And how do you, how do you enter, do you introduce the spiritual side of the conversation as you're trying to direct people, trying to help them figure out how to be a man? Some guys come to me for that and then some guys don't. And so it just depends on, I don't have any, I don't have a horse in that particular race. I don't have a, I'm not selling them anything. I'm not trying to get them to join a church. I'm not trying to do anything like that. So I don't have to introduce that in a particular way. I mean, obviously you can talk about, because I talk about big concepts more than anything. It's not specific to one group. I care about masculinity and freedom and whatever we can agree on to get there. You know, they're my most important things. That's what I really care about. But as far as introducing, I think in the way that probably Ken does, a little bit more when you talk about higher ideals and who do you actually want to be and what's the most important thing and integrating all that into your personal development. And because obviously guys need to think about that stuff. Like, well, where are you going? What are you trying to do? You know, and that's what, I think religion really represents to me or you know, he's spiritually such a stupid word. It doesn't mean anything. I'm trying to figure out. Try to navigate all this terminology here. It's just a higher idealism is kind of what I call it. Okay, well, Ken. So Ken, how does you work with men? You're a Christian. You don't hide that you're a Christian. I'm a Christian man. I like Jesus. Yeah. How does that, how does religion, how does Christianity, how does it impact how you counsel and help men as a therapist and as a brother and father? I think even, gosh, as the guys were talking over here, one of the big things that came to mind was the whole idea of platonic dualism. And Michael, you'll talk about Gnosticism and all that. So the dualism is that there's a higher plane, lower plane and it's really kind of a thought that is in Western thought is the whole thing of that the higher plane is spiritual and intellectual and the lower is physical, sexual. And I totally believe that that is bullshit and that the integration, back to the integration of our sexuality and our physicality with everything. And I think that's what really came with the incarnation of Christ where he came and became a man. He became physical and he became a man who had, he was a sexual being. It feels like you can't say that, that Jesus had mourning wood. Soundbite. How could you say that? Well, thanks for being on the red band group. It's been a good show. Right. Made friends. How do you say this, that he took a shit? That he pissed, right? It feels sacrilegious to say that. It's because they think he's an androgynous spirit. Exactly. He's a desex Jesus. Exactly. If you believe in an orthodox in the resurrection, Jesus is still a man today, right? And he has to be 100% God, 100% humanity, hypostatic unions, what they call it, theological terms. So he really was a man. We don't believe that. What you realize there is all of America's a religion. It's androgynous, narcissism is really where we've kind of got to. And you kept pushing that hard in your talk over in 21. I did. How has your experience with your son and speaking at events like this and getting active, how has that brought that even further in view? So yeah, I mean, I'm an orthodox Christian. So our view of the incarnation informs almost all of the theology. Irenaeus said that like all errors of theology really come from errors in the Trinity, understanding of the Trinity. And we believe that the incarnation built a bridge. Humanity is in the Trinity. And it was in the Trinity from the very beginning of time when the world was created, which means that this bodily form pre-existed creation as a form. And Jesus is in the Trinity and he is a man. And there's a bridge there for us. So I interpret this sort of attempt to disfigure the body of men, boys, turn them into girls and likewise girls into boys is an attempt to sever this relationship of human beings to the Trinity. It's a heresy of the lowest and most disturbing kind, the kind that we saw in the high places in the Exodus with the sacrifice of children and the mutilation of children. It's very serious and it is theological. It is spiritual. It is not just some empty post-modern ideology. Yeah, on the money, very, very good. Well, I think that that even kind of correlates with what Ken was saying, because as we have to desex Christ, that also means that we have to not only make him so that we don't think about bodily functions or sexual drive. I think we tend to think about sexuality as something that's separate from masculinity or femininity and there are different manifestations of it. By desexing Christ in that way, they've also done it on the other side of making him more androgynous. And so it's desexing in both directions and then somehow it becomes this new morality of androgyny and if we hadn't let the reins go on that as far as a broader Christian culture, if we had, honestly, even if we had maintained this like Aslan from C.S. Lewis' version of Christ, that he's the embodiment of both or if we were able to better understand that Jesus Christ was not a repentance of Jehovah, but that it's like Jack talks about, it's kind of the integration of this tripartite God and that they're two different sides. I mean to pull from another religious thing, it's a yin and a yang. You've got the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Jesus Christ of the New Testament and the second coming is going to be him in both of these forms. If we could look at Christ that way, we would see androgyny for the abomination that it is. But because we pervert him and we turn him into this one-dimensional cartoon character of a God that we've created in our own image, then of course we're gonna worship him by androgynizing ourselves and it is, it's heresy. I claim that we've actually made a transgender Jesus. Yeah. Well, it's the gentle Jesus meek and mild. Right, that he actually came to bring peace and not a sword, which is the opposite of what he told us. Yeah, totally. If you look at the sort of words that are often used and at least in Texas evangelical churches to describe Jesus and just line them up on one side and then line up what you'd say about a manly man. Jesus is described essentially as a woman you might, the best you could get is a romance novel hero, right? And they've really remade Jesus into a woman. And the kinds of songs they sing to Jesus are essentially love songs that you'd sing. It's really, they've really, it's essentially transgender Christianity that's going on. It's very disturbing. Yeah, I was so Michael. Since Ken's gone for it, what? You opened the floodgates, Ken. Dude, why not? Well, I was listening to a worship song and over and over they wanted me to sing I Want You Inside Me. And I was like, look, dude, I can't do it. I can't, like I'm trying to play along but I can't sing this, okay? Like I can't sing this way, I'm sorry, you know? And there, and people think that that's innocent but it is a feature of our culture that's bleeding into everything. And I've thought about this, thought about sitting on stages with men you disagree with. And part of the problem is people don't understand the enemy, right? We have a common enemy, a lot of us right now. And so I think the concept of allies and cobalt insurance is helpful. It's like, look, we don't agree on everything but you are firing at that dude and that guy wants to destroy us. And there is a secular religion that's, its secularness is disappearing. And we see that with governors that are like calling COVID like a sacrament, you're my apostles, you're gonna go out there and do this stuff. Like the whole, everything's disappearing, the lie is becoming a threat. Yeah, the trappings of secularism. That's right, it's disappearing. Someone asked me what I thought was happening and I said, I think materialism is dying. I think it's dying out. Like when I see materialism, I'm talking literally about a naturalistic materialism, all right, where people are seeing the need for the spiritual. So women want everyone to get along. And that's why when you ordain women in churches, they go heretical, like within just a couple decades. You're here. Because they won't push out the heretics, right? That's right. But the flip of arguing over every single detail is not good either. And it's not that details don't matter but there's a hierarchy of importance and thoughts and doctrine and whatever. What's some advice that you can give men to talk about a difficult subject like religion in a masculine way? Anyone, I open it to the whole panel for that. So this is one of my favorite things about being friends with Jack because we're about as religiously different as it gets. I know that we didn't do like a full on introduction but Jack, I mean, how would you even describe what your relationship with, because you're not a Christian. You're not, I mean, not by any stretch. We joke about you having invented your own religion with writing this book but that's obviously putting kind of a comical tone to it. But yeah, how do you even describe what your relationship with the divine is? And then I can kind of answer that from there. I don't really have a way to describe that. I mean, obviously in my book I call it Solar Idealism. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, it's just the way that I personally think that the world works. Because there's not a form for me to be like, well, I belong to this church and this is what I believe in, this is my doctrine and whatever. So I have made sense of things in the best way that I can. Yeah, yeah, and it's, okay. So I'll tell you guys, and you know, this is part of the review that I wrote for Jack's book because his new one, Fire in the Dark is about man's relationship with this idealism and some will argue that God is created by man as a manifestation of what that idealism is, others of us believe that God is real and that idealism exists as his manifestation to us so that we can become more like him. But as I read about Jack's breakdown of these different world religions, of what it's like, you know, the relationship between Ode and Thor and Frey or between Zeus and Mars and Dionysus, Zeus and Aries and Dionysus, it made me understand my own religion better. And I think that this is one of the big benefits of the secular trappings of this satanic, nihilistic, empire of nothing religion coming off is that we get to do things like this. And rather than focusing on and having deep and frustrating conversations about what the differences are, is we get to collaborate and expand upon what is it that the enemy is doing and how is it that you're attacking it and you're attacking it and you're attacking it? How is it that men in different points in history have attacked that chaos and that nihilism? How is it that Buddhism does it? How is it that Islam does it? How is it that the Aztecs did it? And what are these commonalities? Because a lot of times as we understand the differences, then it gives us a fresher perspective on our own religious beliefs and it helps us see God in a more fully fleshed out way as opposed to this one dimensional way that we can get if we get too myopic on focusing on our own cultural connection with him. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. And I love the idea that you're talking about Jack with the whole thing of the empire of nothing being that there's something out there that is the dragon, that is the enemy. And I think we all can concur with that. Well, do you remember the movie, The Neverending Story? Oh, of course. That's such a good quote. A trade. The nothing in that movie is conceptually exactly what I'm talking about. It's perfect in the way they describe it. It's literally just everything disappears because the things that humans care about, like the dreams die and all their higher ideals and everything are disappearing. And so there's nothing aspirational left and so everything just disappears into nothing and it's exactly what's happening. And, but yeah, going back to what Tanner is saying, I mean, that's why we get along is because, and I think this has been really important. I've seen it in just generally the larger, you know, men's field or, you know, men's movement or whatever you want to call it is that there's a realization that there is a superordinate enemy. There's a higher goal to achieve and that we could all, you know, backbite each other and have this, you know, like little spats about our things, but there's, we don't even get to have those. If the empire of nothing wins, we don't even get to have that anymore. And there's a much bigger fight right now than tend to be like, well, you believe this and this is like, you know, hairline different from what I believe and whatever that is, we're not there right now. And I'm like, you guys need to fight about whether or not you're allowed to walk out of your house rather than worry about whether, you know, like this guy won or not. He won't win. Get out of here. He won't win. Yeah, it's good. So, someone, it's so funny. People are more upset about me associated with you than almost anyone, right? Watch out for the Mormon. You know, and, right. He's gonna get you. And you don't downplay your stuff. I don't downplay our differences, but I was telling someone, I was like, look, we acknowledge our differences and that they actually are significant, right? But I said, as men go, tanner would be a good neighbor and we can argue over the fence in the neighborhood be safer for it, right? So it's like, I'm not gonna give up who I am and what I believe. I don't think all religions, I'm not gonna do that. But look, I just had these conversations, we've hung out, I've met your wife, or Kayleigh, a lovely woman and see what you're trying to do with your kids in my neighborhood right now, that's way better than some of the other things I've seen. So we can have these conversations, but people have to learn how to be in tension, right? And draw a line somewhere because we go too far in either direction. I don't want my daughters to marry your sons, but I want them to, exactly, right? But I want them to play with your kids and I would have my son die for your kids because of the mutual shared things that we agree upon. And those are distinctions that absolutely matter, but we go too much too, well, they go to this weird church and so we can't play with them at all. Or be whatever you want, associate with whatever you want, it doesn't matter. There's no real, it's all just, all roads lead to God anyway, it doesn't matter. And we create this stupid dichotomy when there are very real, very moral ways to draw those lines. Well, I've had lots of good Mormon friends, right? When I became a Christianized disciple of Mormonist for a year and a half, doctrines of covenant, Pearl of Great Price, Book of Mormon, I read all that stuff. And one of my friends was, I gave this joke, it's an offensive one kind of, but... We'll find out. I said, well, I asked him if he'd drink coffee, he said no, and I said, man, that's too bad. There's some really good health benefits drink of coffee. He said, what are those? Well, it keeps you from being a Mormon. Okay, that's a good one. And he ridden me too. And so the thing is like, what is, men can be civil. Men can be, they can control their emotions and talk. And what I love about, what I love about this, okay? Well, is the maturity here. Like, we're not, we're not just, we're not gonna be women, like all, everything's the same, let's all get along, we can do it, but we're also not gonna like, the immaturity you see online on Twitter, with just the mob, I mean, and those guys think they're being manly. And I'm like, you're outraged mob, it's the same thing, man. And I'm actually having real conversation. Right, because they associate that because it's not effeminate, it's manly, but they don't recognize that there's also a distinction between being manly and being childish. Yeah, that's true. And so it doesn't, it doesn't go over here, but it does go down here, and our responsibility is to stay here instead. Yeah. Yeah, that's so snipey. Yeah, the whole thing, right. And there's nothing masculine about like, sitting over here and be like. Yeah. Saying something bad about it. It's my drop culture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, oh, I said something mean to you, and I'll never have to deal with the consequences of that action. I can just say something really crass and disgusting. And then like, I'd never have to like, look you in the eye. Yeah. And I think if we all had to look each other in the eye, yeah, yeah, we would have to, yeah. It'd be a little different. Ken, how can we continue to move this good direction, these conversations, stuff like this? How can we keep moving this conversation forward? Yeah. That's what you're asking. It's just a simple question, man. Dude, it's a great question. Dang, man. The whole, what I love about this is the camaraderie. Yeah. What I love about it is having a goal that's out there, not here. Like for instance, Michael, we were talking about, oh, that person's a heretic, or this person's a heretic. You can sit there and you can totally lock into that. Yeah. Who the hell cares about that? What are we fighting for? We are fighting for the souls of men. Yeah. We are fighting for the souls of our country. We're fighting for something really, really significant. And I think the fight is not who's a heretic, or do we disagree? The fight is way beyond us. And I think that's what's really powerful about this. And that's what I love about my Mormon friend and my pagan friend and my Christian friend and how we're all together on the same journey fighting the same fight. Yeah, there is without a doubt, a common enemy that we're all pointed towards. And that, I think that's what facilitates the forum. Right? And so we can actually have the conversation because we're like, whoa, okay, wait a second. Well, it's before we just move into our little tribe. But the thing that I, when I started to get into the masculinity space a little more, wherever you want to call it, I did it because the men in the church were very weak and having trouble getting women. And I just wanted to help them. That's all I was. I was happily married, and I started to say, well, here's what I did. And then I slowly realized what I did doesn't really work right now because that world, sadly, is broken down. And so then I read, I tried to listen to Christian podcasts and they're all the same thing, man up, do all this, you know? And I was like, this is not helpful at all. So then I end up reading all these non-Christian sources. And what I discovered in them is that what I think was happening is that they were observing God's creational design, right? And guys like Peterson, whatever, they're good at looking how things work. They're observing nature and they're able to make deductions to a certain level from that. And then, but the church was like, not even looking at nature. Like the church of the last 100 years is gone far, far away, right? And so much so that women can, so in scripture, there's only two grounds for divorce and some would say there's only one, but that's a porneia, sexual immorality, usually adultery, and then abandonment. Well, now it's gone to the place where they'll let a woman divorce her husband because he looks at pornography. Are we literally saying looking at pornography is the same thing as sleeping with a different person? Well, Jesus doesn't say that, right? We know that because Jesus says to hate your brother's murder, but he's saying it's of the same thing, not of the same intensity. But now you can divorce your husband if he emotionally abandons you. Well, who decides what that is? Right, like how does that even work? So a woman doesn't feel properly affirmed, right? So the church is losing its men and they're going to other sources because they're not shaming them. And so I'm like, I want to go to 21 because I don't want to keep Christianity masculine or make it masculine again, yet another hat, so. Yet another hat. You look like you're getting ready to say something. No, no, no, I'm just thinking about that idea because that was my same relationship with it as well where you uncover this kind of corner of the internet and for me, to be honest, a lot of the applications that I was reading in 2009 and 2010 were despicable, they were evil, they were totally misaligned with what God would want. At the same time, it was the application of those principles that was the problem. It wasn't the recognition of those principles that was the problem. One of the things that Satan is so good at doing is he never presents evil as the opposite of good because that's too easy to be able to recognize. He takes evil as something that's two or three degrees away from good and gets us to focus on that instead because what most guys will say when they come to something like this is I just want social skills or I really just want to be validated by women and then that turns into fornication or that turns into something else and the desire is not the problem but it's the manifestation of it that becomes the problem and so it takes a lot of spiritual maturity to be able to come here and do what you've done which is recognize that it's off by a few degrees of calibration and that doesn't mean you throw everything out. It means you take the principles that these men have founded and you help your flock apply them in the fully aligned way that God wants them to be applied. I think we're wired at some level to deeply desire the good, the true, and the beautiful. Right? Sir Roger Scrutin. Then I was funny. I started to find a book on brotherhood to recommend to someone and I found Jack's book and I'm reading it and I was like, is Jack a Christian? I was like, try to figure it out. Try to figure it out as I read the book and I Googled Jack and I'm like, oh, I don't think so. Wow. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Little to stretch. I'd like to say one thing about what you mentioned about the churches. So the Greek Orthodox, well, if you don't know Orthodox, the Greek Orthodox just means the language that's spoken in the church and the cultural customs. They use flowers at Christmas instead of Christmas trees and they usually say their prayers in Greek. It's just, it's all it means. Same theology, everything. But the Greek Orthodox Church commissioned a thing in all the parishes to quote unquote teach masculinity. All right, so a good idea, right? So I get this packet and I'm asked by my deacon to go and I show up and I open the packet for the first time and I'm actually in the church. Thank goodness, because I probably would have said some bad things. And I opened this thing up and it's written by a psychologist. No offense, probably not a good sign. And they start talking about how, well, you can define masculinity however you want to define it and all this other stuff. So I just grudgingly sat through this thing, all the video presentations and all this stuff. And I went through five sessions over five weeks, one a week. And when we were done, I said, I'm gonna test this, right? So we were building a footbridge and we had three widows that needed their long cut. So I stood up and said, wow, this has been great. We've done this masculinity course. I need help building this footbridge and who's gonna mow the lawns for the three widows? And everybody went home. Everybody went home. Because that's how they define masculinity. Total fail, total fail in the churches, right? And yet the Greek Orthodox Church has all the trappings of masculinity. Women can't be priests, women can't be deacons. We grow beards just to make this sexual dimorphism obvious. That's right. Our conestazis was made larger simply to prevent men and women from looking each other during the liturgy. Women can't go into the sanctuary. They can't even take communion on their periods according to the Old Testament laws. So we have these trappings of patriarchy and nobody mowed the lawns for the widows. That's not masculinity, right? That's an effeminate church. That was a bunch of men who went through this program and I think we honestly would have just been better reading the lives of the saints and looking to them for examples of what masculinity was and the service that they did. And not all the saints did amazing things. Some of them were just family men who raised families and miracles happened from their families, you know? But I thought that was just so illustrative of the problems in modern church. Yeah, I 100% agree. I think I always tell people that church evangelical Protestant men's ministries are women's ministry with bacon, right? That's all it is, okay? So you, sorry, man, you can have the bacon, just don't put me in a circle to talk about my feelings. Not that men don't want to talk about their feelings. They do, very much so. But it happens to your point in the context of doing things, right? Or even the way we're talking now. If you haven't heard all of our feelings in this conversation, it's not that we're expressing them, it's that you're idiots and can't pick up on it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I hate the word safe space, but we do need to create a masculine space for conversations like this so people can make distinctions. Part of manhood is making distinctions. That's wisdom, right? Wisdom is making distinctions. The right application and the conversations like this are difficult. You're like, when do I push? When do I pull? When do I just let that slide? We're not, you know, but that's life, man. That's life in any organization with any friendship and you need men to do that. That's why I'm so glad you're here. We asked Jack to be on this panel kind of last moment. And he was like, all right, I'll do it. And I was like, so what's your religion? What do you call it? That's exactly right. But let me ask you, how are you being built up? How does your religion build you up as a man right now? Oh man. It's everything because, well, we've all gone all in so I'll go all in on two. Nice. One of the more unique things about our theological beliefs is that we believe in theosis. We believe that just like what a chicken or a baby chick becomes a chicken, just like a baby alligator becomes a full grown alligator. We believe that we are the literal offspring of God and we can become like God, which means I have the potential to become a God myself, still worshiping and serving under God our Father. But I have the potential to become like him, just like my son has the potential to become like me today on earth. And if you don't realize what that potential does to your perception of yourself and how it takes this idealism and this drive for this arite, this excellence and also simultaneously humbles and even humiliates you because you're nowhere near what that potential is, it's everything to me. I wouldn't be a dad. I wouldn't be an entrepreneur. I wouldn't be taking the social risks that I do. I would be making 28K a year, working some retail job, watching porn, playing video games, living by myself, if I didn't realize that I had the potential to become like my Father in Heaven is. So everything that is good about my life comes from that religious rooting right there. And that's actually one of the reasons why we're friends is that I like that idea a lot. The idea of becoming your own God in a sense, not in a way that I think that I have superpowers and I can do all these kind of things. But yeah, yeah, exactly. But you have a, you never know. I mean, to become God-like is obviously the ideal to become more like a higher ideal. And the idea, yes, you can progress, you aren't stuck in being this, everybody, when we talk to all these men in these conferences, they have some kind of narrative in which they've already chosen the way in which they're gonna fail. And the higher narrative is this opportunity is like, yes, you can become better all the time. And I actually, it was kind of a fitness professional who basically said to almost exactly what you're saying in a very secular way that they're like, imagine, I just try to convince people that they are gods. Because if you were a god, everything you did means something. Yes. And so that your actions, everything you do actually has an effect on all the people around you. And so he obviously didn't mean in a literal way, but he's also like, well, who's to say? In your world, you're infecting all these different people around you. And so therefore you have a responsibility to make all these different choices. And there are just consequences to your actions. And also that you can become better or you can just not. And so it was just an interesting way to think of something, but it's very much along the lines of like moving towards some kind of perfected ideal. Ken. Oh my gosh, this is good, right? So I'm just thinking about this whole thing about, so when I first came to this weekend, this weekend started Thursday morning. So it's been a good week, guys, it's been great. So Thursday morning I taught on power. I taught on to the Patriarch Convention, the Patriarchs, about how we do power. And as far as my faith and everything, actually I believe that Jesus is an amazing, powerful being, actually the most powerful being in the universe. And so there's one concept in there. So when I spoke, I point over there because there's a couple of doors over, the whole thing of a man needs to be the most powerful being he can so that he can love others well. And so it's power for, I'm a powerful man so I can love others well, so I can empower others. It's abundance power. And so hopefully you can listen to my speech with that. But as far as how our faith actually makes this and how Jesus actually played it out, and you think about it in the Garden of Gethsemane where he was betrayed and there was a point in time when he said, put down your knife, I mean something pretty dramatic happened that year was cut off and everything, put down your knife. If I needed to, I would call 12 legions of angels. Do you know how many 12 legions of angels is? It's like 80,000 angels to come to my rescue. That's freaking powerful. But he chose, it is my time to lay my life down. It's my power for you, all of you. It's my power I'm giving to you. I'm laying my life down for you so that we could have eternal life. And so the whole point is, as men today, we actually can carry that kind of power where we have power for the people that we love. And this is the kind, and this is what I love about this whole thing, everything about this is our spiritual power, empowering men, becoming strong is our power is for the people that we love. And I just love this stuff. Yeah. Well, Orthodox also believe in theosis. It's a central concept in theology. High five. Air high five. It's normally described by the saints as going in three stages. The first is fear, fear of the Lord and fear of the law. And you relate to God as a slave. And eventually you advance further and your desires have been reformed. And you begin to desire to do the commandments and desire to actually become holy. And you begin in this stage we say you're relating to God like an employee. You give God your obedience and he gives you grace. You get something for it. And then finally you reach a stage of illumination in which you relate to God as an adopted son in which you simply do good and do God's will because you love him and no other reason. And it's a central part of the path for all Orthodox Christians. And if you think about it, it's a catechetical path. It's a teaching path that you go through and notice that none of those are intellectual. That's not knowing things to your point about neo-nosticism. It's about knowing things. It's about doing things and practicing things. And becoming things. Becoming things. And it changes you. You become a different person. And one of the unique things about Christianity I think is its emphasis on personhood. We relate to Christ through his person. It's not just through his words. We have a personal relationship with the Trinity. It's a personal thing and we relate through our persons. In terms of what that means like for me as a father, in Orthodoxy every house has to be a church. And I have to lead the church in my house. We have a place called an iconostasis which has to face west which is because Satan's in the west and we always have Jesus facing Satan. And that's where we pray. That's where we go. And this is true of my ex-wife who divorced me. If I don't save her, I'm gonna be responsible for her sins. I'm responsible for her sins. So I go to the iconostasis with my whole family, my children, everyone. And I'm responsible for the people I'm responsible for and it's serious business when I go there. And this itself, recognizing that you are responsible for that and it's something women aren't responsible for. The husband is responsible for the family and the life of the family and the way we believe the priest is responsible for the parish. This also changes you and is the really is the first step I think to manliness is taking the responsibility for the physical and spiritual life of the people that you love. And it's one of the hardest things I've ever done and I'm really suck at it. And I don't pray enough and I'm having a hard time forgiving my ex and I'm not sure I won't even want her saved. But I know that if I can't fix that, my sons themselves will be condemned to hell. And I know I can't let that happen either. And you can imagine it's a terrific cosmic struggle that's going on. And this I think is what the essence of manhood is, is contending with these cosmic forces and through the grace of God, accommodating them or even overcoming them. That's the heavy weight of patriarchy right there. It's not this wonderful thing if I get to do whatever I want and you have to obey because I say so arbitrarily, it is a massive weight of responsibility. Again, we love to talk about what our rights are. We forget what our duties and responsibilities are and Christianity lays on the patriarch, the heaviest of all responsibilities. For me, I'm a reformed presbyterian pulling from a lot of Dutch theologians systematician named Baving that influenced me. So in Protestant understanding of reality, creation has been marred by the fall and it's through God's unmerited grace. You do nothing to earn it at all, it's totally free, it's given to you. Through God's grace, nature isn't elevated. So I disagree on how you- Let's go. Yeah, I disagree. But neither is it obliterated. And that's really what feminists teach, is that, and they'll misquote Galatians 328, there's neither male nor female in Christ. But that's talking about our status and rank, that's talking about the change in nature. We believe that grace is restored. And so men, I'm an aggressive person and I'm a man of appetites, of sexual appetites. And I don't wanna be ashamed of that. Well, God's grace is restoring me to nature. I'm not gonna stop being aggressive, but it's gonna be wholly violence pointed in the right direction, right? I'm not gonna stop having sexual desire, but instead of an uncontrollable lust, it's gonna be a desire for my household or my life, it's being. So it's a consecration of that? Yeah, it's restoring it back to what it should be. And so Christianity, or Protestant Christianity is restoring masculinity and femininity to its right order. That's what conversations like this allow us to talk about. What is the right order? And I wanna thank you guys. I wanna thank you guys for coming up here, being bold, being open, going places. So you went places, we all did. It was really good. And I wanna thank you guys for being part of this. It's a great red man group. We would say the best red man group of all time. Ever. Of all time. I agree. I agree. All right, let's not just make religion masculine again, but let's keep it that way. Thank you guys. Thank you. Welcome back to the 21 convention, second patriarch edition, live in Orlando, Florida. Welcome to the 22 convention. Welcome back to the 21 convention, 2020 of Orlando, Florida, being held for the first time ever at our very first and inaugural 21 summit event. 21 summit in Orlando, Florida. Well, here we go. We've risked again with the 22 convention, the patriarch and 21 convention, all three stages together in one event. Not only did we sit down and say we're gonna come together in meat, in mask, but we're gonna take it a step further. We are gonna dare have a conversation about the sexes openly, honestly, and engage the woman in that event. Like I am amazed that I'll win this one. We did a brand new event, we did the second patriarch, and we did the main event for the 19th time. It's so much more than sitting in an audience, watching a man on a stage, the conversations in the hallways, the connections that people make, the challenging, the collaborations. And that's what we needed. It all starts with men, and it's not just men. That's what I like about this. You know, we don't wanna overreact. It's a feminism, and then hate women. That's not it. This is about men getting their act together, doing what they're made to do. You had meals, you had to run security, you had to run travel plans, you had to ensure people were where they needed to be. Three stages, cameras everywhere, and it was pulled off with flawless execution. It's evolved so much. I really appreciate how Anthony has allowed you speakers to evolve and to grow and to share that and to encourage that with all the other men here, to hear so much talk on family and fatherhood. There's more depth, there's more room for who they could be. Is the word patriarchy or patriarch offensive to you in any way? Not to me personally. Not at all, it's something that I cherish it. I love it, I grew up wanting it. You cherish the patriarch. I do. In mansplaining news, a three day conference for women led by men hopes to make women great again. Women need to be taught how to be great again, not my words. We do. It's like how to land a husband. How to lose weight, how to pump out a bunch of kids. Why do men think they need to fix the problems of women? Well, it says the world's ultimate event for women. In Orlando, Florida, that's gonna be the scene of the crime. It's mansplaining Palooza. Say no to the toxic bullying feminist dogma. Patriarchy is the future. It's good to see it in person. I'm just, until I got here and saw it and you can see the people in the audience, you see the men that are here committed to listening. I mean, it's just changed my idea of what the conference is, the professionalism, the staff, the way everything is organized. It's given me a different perspective about this particular idea and I'm ready to put some more fire into it. Welcome to Dream World, ladies and gentlemen.