Episode 330: Men of Virtue with Zachary Wagner

What does it actually mean to be a “good man” in today’s world—and does Christianity offer something deeper than dominance, leadership clichés, or internet manosphere culture? In this thoughtful and surprisingly hopeful conversation, Zachary Wagner joins us to unpack masculinity through the lens of the fruits of the Spirit, exploring everything from loneliness and power to marriage, self-control, parenting boys, and the modern crisis of meaning for men. Together, we challenge shallow cultural narratives and argue that true strength looks a lot more like love, service, courage, and emotional maturity than performance or control. Listen in as we propose a healthier vision of manhood for both men and the people who love them.

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LINKS MENTIONED: 

• Zachary Wagner’s Website
• Zachary’s Book: “Men of Virtue”
• Our conversation with Zachary about his book Non-Toxic Masculinity

Transcript

Sheila
What does it mean to be a man and what does it mean to be a Christian man? Is leadership all caught up in it, or is there something else going on? That's what we're going to be talking about today on the Bare Marriage podcast, I'm Sheila Wray Gregoire from BareMarriage.com, where we like to talk about a healthy, evidence based biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage.
 
And we are coming up on the second last podcast of the season. We're going to be taking a break after next week. We have an awesome podcast next week. My husband and I are going to be doing some fun stuff and going through some fun clips with you, but after that, we're going to take a bit of a break for a month and then we'll be back around.
 
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Just talking about different things that come up. And you can find us at Patreon.com/baremarriage. And now, without further ado, I want to bring on a friend of ours, Zachary Wagner, for our interview about manhood.
 
Well, I am so pleased to bring back on the podcast someone who has. He's been here three times. Every time he's here, you guys always really appreciate it. So here is Zachary Wagner. Hi, Zach.
 
Zachary
Yeah, thanks so much for having me back. Great to be here. Back. No doubt by popular demand, it sounds.
 
Sheila
Oh, yes.
 
Zachary
Yes.
 
Sheila
Actually, you know, in all seriousness, I think that it is so healing for a lot of our listeners to hear men who get it because it's easy to hear it from women. But sure, we have we have a couple of men that we have that we've had on repeatedly. And yeah, people always say it's just so healing to hear that there are guys who get it, like there is hope for the church.
 
Sheila
And I think that's what you bring and I really appreciate that. Thank you. So Zachary wrote Nontoxic Masculinity. And we talked about that a couple of years ago when that launched. And now you have another book which launched two days ago, I believe, Men of Virtue. And I don't know what your subtitle is. I don't know what any of my own subtitles are.
 
Zachary
Are you ready? Are you ready for it?
 
Sheila
Yes. Give it to me.
 
Zachary
Men of virtue: How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World. And that's with Brazos Press. So, yeah. Released on May 26th, as.
 
Sheila
I love it.
 
Zachary
So, yeah. Released on May 26th, as you said,
 
Sheila
Which is two days ago for everyone who's listening. Yeah, which is awesome. I think that one of the most common questions that I get and common pushbacks I get from men in the work that we do is. But you just don't think that being a man means anything then, right? Like, if if a man can't lead, if a man can't, you know, do like if a man doesn't have to be the main provider, if he doesn't have to do any of those things, then you don't think being a man is important.
 
And I love it because that's what your book is doing. Are you saying, no, wait, wait, wait, what what is actually what being a man in the Christian context look like?
 
Zachary
Sure. Well, I would say someone who said that, I would say, well, a man can lead and a man can provide, but I think we can get into trouble when we boil down the performance of being a man or the essence of being a man to only these roles or specific relational dynamics in a marriage or in the church or society.
 
And we say, if you're not doing X, you're not a quote unquote real man, or if you're not doing Y, you have failed to measure up or you're living on biblically or something like that. I think all humans, you know, men and women in the book of Genesis are together, given the commission to rule the earth and subdue it.
 
That's given to in the Hebrew ha Adam, which is not specifically in. It's not specifically reference to the male, it's a reference to the human. And then the human is created male and female, where you get the male and female language that comes in there. And ruling and subduing the earth is something that's given to both men and women.
 
And what part of what I'm trying to do with this project in this book is say, well, yes, there are differences between men and women. Our bodies are different, our embodied patterns are different, our brain chemistry is different. All of those things are real and they matter. But we also have a shared calling not only to create cultures, subdue the world and and rule over it, but we also have a shared calling to follow Christ and to grow in these virtues.
 
And it's not as if men are called to follow Christ and women are called to follow men. It's men, and women are called to follow Christ, and men and women are alike called to grow in the virtues of godliness, in Christ likeness. And that's kind of the focus of this book is, hold on, let's take a step back from all these really contentious debates and, you know, narrow focus on these couple texts where people have disagreements about how they're interpreted related to role.
 
And let's just say hold on. Step one men need to be virtuous. Step one men need to be Christlike. And let's focus instead there and then whatever God calls you into in your life, you'll engage it in a Christlike and virtuous way. So that's part of what I'm trying to do here.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Start with Jesus. Makes a lot of sense. Right. Exactly. Why do you think that there is such an emphasis or maybe a quest, perhaps, to define manhood today because we don't see it on the other side? Like, I don't see a lot of women saying, I just don't know what it means to be a woman. There's debate on, you know, do you need to get married?
 
Do you need to be a housewife and all the trad wife stuff? But I don't have a lot of women saying, I just don't know what it means to be a woman. But I know a lot of men who are saying, I just don't know what it means to be a man.
 
Zachary
Sure, Yeah, part of what I talk about, and I think part of the challenge here is the unique contributions of men in society. You know, for good or ill, used to be more obvious.
 
Sheila
Yes.
 
Zachary
And before technology, before the sexual revolution kind of upended a lot of traditional assumptions about men and women and sexual roles and things like that, including a lot of unjust treatment of women, we should say.
 
But I think there's, you know, there's a mixed bag when it comes to the sexual revolution, for sure, but it certainly created challenges for male identity, as did the technology and the industrial revolution of decades previous to that and the technological revolution. You know, we used to have a really clear like, well, what are men good at?
 
Or what are men, quote unquote, better at than women? And it would have been things like chopping trees down or like building houses, because being 15% bigger and stronger and faster actually provides an advantage for that sort of thing. And but when a lot of us are doing kind of the creative work that you and I do with a lot of our lives and thought leadership and sending emails and things like that, you know, there's nothing about male embodiment that makes men advantage towards those things, it seems to me.
 
And there's no kind of unique on the surface role in so much of the way the world works today. So I don't say that as a value judgment. I don't say that as like, we got to go back and get to a world, you know, this is you already alluded to kind of the trad wife movement and the homesteading movement and all of this.
 
This is kind of a. Well, wouldn't it be great if we rewound the clocks a couple centuries and then men would be doing X and women would be doing Y, and that would just be better? Well, that I think I worry about that because one, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Two I get really worried about traditionalism, for traditionalism sake. I think there can be a lot of nostalgia there, and not a clear eyed view of the real difficulty and suffering that people in those times and places went through in women and men in different ways. And so I think the challenge facing men is, how do I make sense of my existence in the world, in my male body, as a male human being, in the aftermath of all of this massive societal and cultural change?
 
And that's that's real. That's real, that's a real challenge. And we can see in the data that men and boys are struggling in terms of education, in terms of life outcomes, substance addiction, depths of despair, quote unquote, unemployment. All of these challenges are very real and very male coded. That's not to say that women don't have struggles, and there's no issues associated with movements of justice and ways that we need to care for the unique needs of women in the world.
 
But I think, yeah, I want to I want to give it a positive spin where I can. I think there is a, there is a, a movement where people are turning their attention towards the real ways that men are kind of floundering and looking for purpose and meaning in the world. The trouble is, a lot of the answers that we're getting are not all that helpful, and certainly contrary to the spirit of of Christ and the gospel.
 
So manosphere is a big buzzword, and there's a lot of male influencers from your, you know, Nick Fuentes, to your Andrew Tate, to your Jordan Peterson's, to your Joe Rogans, and that even those four names, I just are very from neo-Nazis all the way down to, you know, conservative pundit, thoughtful folks. But there's a lot of ideas out there about what it means to be a man.
 
And I think what is missing from that conversation is a authentic retrieval of a Christian vision of virtue refracted through maleness and masculinity, focused on the ways and teachings of Jesus.
 
Sheila
Yeah, I think because we all have a stake in healthy men, all of us do. A lot of us are raising boys. Or if we're raising girls, we hope that one day they might find, you know, a good partner, a healthy partner. We just want society to be good, right? Like. And society is better for everyone when everyone is healthy and emotionally healthy and thriving and finds a purpose and life isn't empty. So we all want that. But, you know, I think I think a lot of men are struggling in a world where they once automatically had power and status because they were men.
 
Zachary
Yes.
 
Sheila
And now they don't. But not just that. The way the world is changing, it's often the skills that women have in collaboration in, you know, in, in teamwork and being able to be emotionally available that are, that are working in the workplace. And so.
 
Zachary
100 percent.
 
Sheila
When men don't have that kind of emotional connection, which they they are we specifically as a society breed that out of boys. You know, John Gottman did some great work on that too. It is it is hard. It's really hard. And men. And so we have this male loneliness epidemic and yeah, male suicide, male addictions, etc.. So yeah. So what are we going to do about it?
 
All right. Let's, let's, let's let's jump into your book. So you say that there's kind of, you know, when we're trying to find what's healthy, there's always the two extremes on either side that you want to avoid. Right. And the one extreme is suppression where all of your passions are bad. Everything that you want is bad. Wanting anything is bad. You need to get rid of all that. And the other is indulgence where anything you want is great, right? Which side do you think I mean as a. It's funny because I can see ways where the church has has gone into both ditches.
 
Zachary
Totally. Yeah. So so what's the question? Which side do I think the church was like, yeah.
 
Sheila
Like can you, can you see them going in both ways?
 
Zachary
I can absolutely see it going in both ways. And in the chapter that you're alluding to, I think part of the challenge is we, you know, our brains in general like to think in kind of black and white categories, and we like to sort people and movements and ideas into buckets of good or bad or liberal or progressive or whatever the case may be.
 
You know, we like these binaries. Our brains really gravitate towards them and our kind of cultural, political moments in North America as well are also very oriented towards polarization. So we want so I feel this impulse for sure. I want to think like, well, is it that the progressives are suppressing masculinity and the conservatives are indulging in masculinity or something like that?
 
And I think that's probably like 80% true? Or is it that the evangelical church is doing X and the mainline church is doing Y, you know, like I, so all those provisos in place, I want to leave space for nuance and not just go full black and white here. But I think there is a tendency for kind of more moderate to like left leaning, maybe mainline Christians who view their faith as having a justice orientation, and they care about just treatment of the the oppressed and women and minorities and all of these sorts of things.
 
They can have a real skepticism if they're not careful, not just towards male power or male dominance, but towards men in general. If they're not fair and if they're not careful, rather, and the orientation can become a well, whatever is distinctive about your maleness, just keep that tamp down.
 
Sheila
Right.
 
Zachary
It's it's the kind of toxic masculinity narrative, not where where the, the narrative becomes, not just there's a way that we have taught men to live out their masculinity that is toxic. But masculinity, full stop, is toxic masculinity in general. Maleness in general is this toxic thing that needs to be trained, tamed, rather than a good thing created by God that has been bent towards sin and destruction and dehumanization.
 
I talk about this in my in my previous book, so I think there can be a tendency for us to, as men too, to even direct a suppressive instinct towards ourselves, to kind of hate the things about ourselves that make us male. Another thing I talked about in my in my previous book, and then I think there's been kind of an overreaction to that as well.
 
You know, it's not just suppressing masculinity is bad, but overindulgence of masculinity is also bad, like the the path to virtue. The straight and narrow, if you will, is a path that stands between two ditches. You can fall off on one side, but you can certainly fall off on the other as well. So here I see kind of Christians of a more traditionalist, you know, by temperament or by politics or whatever the case may be, lean towards a, well, every quote unquote masculine behavior or urge is something we need to lean into, kind of to reclaim this masculine energy and virility. And I talk about this in the book. This goes all the way to kind of like a hyper conservatism that says, yeah, that whole Jesus thing, this like way of love, that's kind of old school and everything that's wrong with the West. We need to go to an older school to like the pagan, pre-Christian, Bronze Age vision of masculinity where everything was about power through strength, the strong take what they will and the weak suffer what they must. That's what it means to be a man. It means to accrue as much power to yourself as you possibly can, and enjoy the fact. Indulge in the fact that you have more power than the women around you. Lean into that and kind of use that strength to your own advantage to make of the world what you will. These are extremes where you have this kind of hyper indulgence of masculinity, and then all the way on the other extreme, kind of flattening out to there is absolutely no difference between men and women. There's nothing distinctive about them. Everything is just culturally conditioned. And there's no difference in brain chemistry or body or anything like that. Just kind of a gender is a pure social construct. And I want to say there is a social component to gender, a very strong social component to gender, but it is also based in a biological reality that it flows out of.
 
And the Christian view that I think stands between these extremes does two things. It affirms the goodness of male embodiment and female embodiment, of course, but this is a thing good and beautiful and created by God, but a thing that has been bent and perverted by sin. And men will always have a temptation. Temptation, I think a unique temptation to leverage the power advantages, quote unquote.
 
And those are those are certainly physical, but they're also societal and financial and all the rest of it. Men have so many advantages at their disposal, and there will always be a temptation to use that advantage for selfish ends rather than for serving others. And the Christian vision for masculinity, I think, is whatever, you know, whether you want to frame it as an advantage or just the gifts and power and strength that the Lord has given to you, That is to be used in service of others and in creating of a flourishing world, not power over others, but power on behalf of others.
 
Sheila
Yeah, I think that's. You got to say that again, you got to say that again. So yeah. Yeah, it's not supposed to be power over.
 
Zachary
So here I'm a little yeah, hat tip to Caitlin Beatty here who wrote celebrities for Jesus. She has a really succinct way of summarizing this. So I think I may pretty much have just quoted her, but Christian worldly power is power used over others. Christian power is power used on behalf of others. So Jesus is the model of this. Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant. Philippians chapter two. And Jesus tells his disciples when they're like, well, who's going to be in charge? Who's going to be the greatest among us? Jesus, can you weigh in on this? And he says, you guys are acting like pagans. You're acting like the Gentiles. You're acting like the Romans. The Roman leaders lord it over each other, and they dominate the people who are in submission, quote unquote, under them. But Jesus tells the disciples explicitly, it's not going to be that way with you. Not so with you. Whoever would be first among you must be your servant, just as the Son of Man referencing himself. I didn't come here to be served, but to serve. And that's the model of Christian power, it seems to me. And there is a kind of incontrovertible biology. I think people get a little uncomfortable with this, but it's just true. Men are bigger. Men are stronger. There's a
 
Sheila
Yes, they are, men are aren’t as vulnerable, women women go through child birth
 
Zachary
100 per cent
 
Sheila
You know, men don’t. Women are totally vulnerable at times.
 
Zachary
This is it. Yeah. So this is it. There is. And I think this can get lost on that kind of one side of the ditch where there is a unique vulnerability associated with womanhood that women and men need to grapple with. And when we're talking together about what it means to be a woman, that vulnerability needs to be taken into account, and we need to create just structures in society to account for things like pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding and just relative safety. Walking home in different spaces and how what it feels like to be the only woman in a room feels very different than the way it feels to be the only man in a room. And then on the flip side, we need to account for this relative strength of men and I think the reason the Jesus centered vision of this is so essential for cultivating virtuous masculinity is because of the way he models the use of power. Power not for selfish ends, but for service of others.
 
Sheila
Yeah, I love that. I actually love that. When you when you start talking and breaking this down, you start with the fruits of the spirit and you say, let's just go to the fruits of the spirit. That's a wonderful list of virtues that we're all supposed to be cultivating. And it starts with love, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Did I get that in the right order? I don't know.
 
Zachary
I think so.
 
Sheila
Okay.
 
Zachary
Sounds good to me.
 
Sheila
Yeah, but, you know, it starts with love and that's the number one thing. And that kind of encompasses everything you've already been talking about. But one of the problems that we often have in, in today's evangelical culture when we define manhood is that we define love as marriage, and we make marriage a big part of manhood. And you're saying, no, no, no, it's got it's not about marriage.
 
Zachary
Yes, it certainly includes it, but it expands so far beyond it. And I think this is a this is something we've been, it's subtle but really profoundly it can become profoundly unhelpful when we reduce marriage to the the kind of maximum ideal, really only expression of Christian love. You kind of we we get. I mean, I remember I grew up in the 90s, you know, and this was downstream from all sorts of things having to do with American Disney culture and things like that.
 
But the Christians adopted it, and we subtly made the entire expression of Christian love about finding that one person, you're quote unquote soulmate, and the person that makes you feel better, quote unquote, than any other person in the world. And to be a Christian means to find that person and love that person well. Well, it's a it's a and I don't want to denigrate marriage.
 
It's a beautiful picture. In Ephesians five, we even see a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. And it's a it's a model of what it means for us to live in love and service of others, and particularly one other, a beloved. But even that is downstream from this greater eternal love of God in the Trinity First and foremost, the love of God between father, son and spirit that then overflowed into the creation of everything that exists. And then we are invited into through Christ and through the indwelling of the spirit. So Christian love is not it doesn't terminate at marriage. It goes beyond it. It goes into this mysterious, mystical, all encompassing, overflowing into the existence of everything good and beautiful in the world, Love of God. So I talk in my chapter. This is an allusion to C.S. Lewis. The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Marriage is a is a sacred institution. It's a holy institution instituted by God in the Garden of Eden. So it's the it's the deep magic from the dawn of time, is what I say. But there's also a deeper magic from before the dawn of time. And the deeper magic of love is the Trinitarian love of God. And that's the end game. Jesus. When the when the Sadducees ask him, you know, they kind of have this gotcha question like, hey, this woman was married to this guy, and then he died, and then she was married to this guy. And so if in the resurrection, who she's going to be married to and Jesus is like, you guys don't get it, there actually isn't marriage in the new creation.
 
And one of the kind of theological reasons that people have provided for that is because in we're at the turning of the ages, where marriage, even this beautiful, kind of life long institution, is dissolving and being absorbed into this new world where all of us are living in an expression of this ultimate love of God, which extends far beyond marriage.
 
And I think one of the errors that we've made in the way we define love again in the North American church is we have focused it too much on that kind of soulmate relationship, and we want good marriages. I mean, this is this is your whole thing. We want good marriages. We want marriages to be healthy. We want marriages to flourish, and we want kids to thrive and and wives to thrive and husbands to thrive. All of it. And love is a central component to it. But last thing I'll say on this: what's the most common passage of Scripture to be read at weddings? First Corinthians 13.
 
Sheila
Yes, which is not about marriage.
 
Zachary
It is not about marriage. And I kind of like, yeah, I have a hard time whenever I'm at weddings and this is getting read because I'm like, yeah. This is wonderful.
 
Like it's like I did my PhD thesis on First Corinthians 13 largely, and it's my favorite letter that Paul wrote. And it's, I think first Corinthians 13. It's one of the most beautiful things that the apostle Paul ever wrote. And I love it. And it certainly applies to marriage. It's just not about marriage. And, man, I want us to be able to expand our vision of what Christian love is.
 
Sheila
That's that's such a good way. A great way of putting it is like it applies to marriage, but it isn't about marriage. So and that's and that's so much of what. Yeah. Our lives are supposed to be. I find it so interesting that a religion which was largely started by, well, it was started by a single man, a man who wasn't married, and many of his followers weren't married, has been been transformed or warped, whatever word you want to use in the modern day, where it's you are now denigrated, you aren't a man or you aren't as much of a man if you aren't married.
 
Zachary
Yes, this. Yeah. And you'll see evangelical teaching pastors kind of giving these guys what it means to be a godly man is to, like, find a wife and have a bunch of kids and, like, take back the culture for Jesus or something like that.
 
Sheila
Yes,
 
Zachary
and like I. Marriage is, for the record, marriage is associated with a lot of really good cultural life outcomes for men in particular. Men benefit from marriage massively. So I don't want to like encourage young men like, hey, marriage is a great thing to pursue and to spend your life on, but I think there's a really subtle switch that we can make when we make the essence of the Christian teaching. To be a Christian man is to get married and, you know, lead a wife and family.
 
No,  the essence of the Christian life is to follow Jesus, who, by the way, was unmarried, never had kids. So was the apostle Paul. So like number one and number two in the kind of founding of Christianity, both single men and most of them by all evidence, most of the apostles, Jesus disciples also lived as single men. And we kind of poo, poo men who want to grow in these virtues and cultivate a life of service for others that is not merely oriented towards the kind of nuclear family.
 
Sheila
Focus On The Family had a post a couple of days ago now, I put it up on the Facebook page where they said, basically, I don't remember exactly. So I'm paraphrasing, but the message was that the most radical thing that you can do in today's culture is to get married, stay married, love your spouse, and have a lot of kids.
 
Zachary
Yeah,
 
Sheila
And it's like that. Okay, first of all, it isn't the most radical thing because huge portions of the population still do get married, and people do love their kids and love their spouses. Like, I find it so strange when Christian say stuff like that, because I do not know any non-Christians who love their kids,
 
Zachary
like, sure.
 
Sheila
You know, like and yes, the marriage rates are going down, but we're still looking at, you know, almost half the population, right? So like like it's not, it's not radical to get married, but also biblically it isn't the most radical thing to do. Like Jesus talked about lots of things that are way more radical, like, you know, like selling all you have and giving to the poor or something. And I just find it really strange.
 
Zachary
Yeah.
 
Sheila
When that kind of thing, that kind of statement is made, it's like, it's not that we're against marriage. I'm very much I'm like you, I'm very much for marriage. But marriage isn't the essence of the Christian faith.
 
Zachary
Totally. And I think this is something where we can look across the Tiber over at our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. Like, you want to talk about radicals, you know, do respect as much as much as there is respect due to Focus on The Family, there. I feel like taking a vow of celibacy is much more radical
 
Sheila
Is more radical.
 
Zachary
Much more radical than getting married and having kids. And I'm not saying that people who don't feel called to that should feel like they are forced into that. This is exactly what Jesus teaches about singleness and celibacy. Celibacy, like, hey, this is a hard life. Not everybody can do it, but if you feel called to it, that's a gift. And that's a beautiful thing in service to the church. So yeah, I think in, in our, in our cultural obsession truly with kind of like sexual fulfillment and a very partner focused, let me find the person that I most like having sex with, orientation. Yes. And we can Christianize that too. We definitely do. That is not all that radical of an idea, frankly.
Getting married, I think rejecting those kinds of self-serving, over romanticized notions that take marriage from something sacred to something we worship are something we can really watch out for. So I want to, I want to have a more expansive definition for masculinity that doesn't require us to get married and have kids, even if I at the same time want to commend that to. I think the strong majority of men like that's going to be a path for your flourishing, and your faithfulness is to is to get married and and have a family. But, you know, yeah, it just comes back to Jesus wasn't married guys and who we’re following. Yeah.
 
Sheila
We got to stop. We got to stop with this. It also says great, great point you made is that nowhere in the Bible does our men commanded to lead their wives.
 
Zachary
Yeah, yeah.
 
Sheila
And yet so often that is the expression of masculinity that we hear.
 
Zachary
Totally. Yes. So here, you know, here you're kind of treading into something. And I was intentional in the book. I didn't want to kind of, write another book. We got I feel like we have a new book every couple of weeks, like legislating these passages and interpreting. Yes. Like exactly what these verses in Ephesians five or in first Timothy or whatever mean, and people have their views on it.
 
I have my views on it. You have your views on it, you know, and I think a lot of people are just kind of in their in their camp and they're going to think about those passages, what they think about it, what I'm trying to do, and those are very important. I don't want to say that doesn't matter. Those are very important conversations to be had. And I think they have a real impact on people's lives and on women's lives especially. So all of those provisos in place. I'm just making an observation that in the New Testament, the explicit commands that are given to men are never explicit commands to lead. And I think that's important for us to bear in mind. And when you, Jesus and the apostles address people that by default have, are in positions of power, we were talking earlier about how men kind of for all of human history in the vast majority of context and cultures are just in charge by default. So the instructions that Paul and Jesus give to men are about the use of their power in service of others, or in ways that are gentle and kind and forbearing and suffering and sacrificing on behalf of others. That's again, just to go back to our earlier conversation, the use of power. Nowhere importantly, I think very importantly, nowhere do you see an explicit command telling men, hey, you got a man up and lead? Yeah. Like, hey, your job as the husband is to lead your wife. And I think we've so absorbed this teaching as the essence of what it means, because again, we're looking for what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a Christian man? These are really good questions to be asking. And the answer that we receive from an entire generation of evangelical resources, well, it means leading. I just want to be like, where is that?
 
Sheila
Where is it? Yeah. Give me a verse which is clear.
 
Zachary
So I think if I were to and I notice in the book if I were to say, well, as Paul says in Ephesians five, husbands, lead your wives as Christ leads the church.
 
Sheila
A lot of people would not.
 
Zachary
A lot of people wouldn't bat an eye. You just assume that's what the Bible says.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Zachary
But it doesn't say that. It says, husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church. The essence of this kind of masculine call is not leadership, it's love. Yes, men are described as the head of the wife, and there's a lot of kind of complicated debates and issues related there. But the exhortations to men are love, not lead.
 
Sheila
No, I just think that's so crucial because so much of, especially in the Theo bro manosphere type places, men are really denigrated for not leading. Like if you're not, if you're not stepping up to the plate, then you aren't a man. And there's a lot of shame based messaging, I think around that and it just isn't in Scripture. And yet, whenever I say that on social media, especially like give me a verse that tells men to lead people always, you know, of course, no one gives me a verse because there isn't a verse, but they they accuse me of just you just don't believe the Bible and you haven't given me a verse and it's assumed it's there when it's not.
 
And I think that really distorts how we see masculinity. But yeah, like the truth is and as you take us through, like the things that we are asked to do are not lead and exercise power, it's lay down power in order to lift others up, others up and in order to serve them. So we're not going to have time to go through every single one of the first loves.
 
Zachary
Really the last thing. Just real quick if I can interject on it. I did remember what I was going to say. There's this quote that NT Wright has said that I think is so good, and it relates to this, is that people tend to get mad when you tell them what is actually in the Bible, instead of what they assume is actually what they assume is in the Bible. Yeah. And I think that's a that's a dynamic here is man, I've gotten when I, when I kind of point this out on socials, I've, I've gotten some some heat for it. And I'm just like I'm making an observation. I'm just just pointing pointing out what's there and what in fact is not there. Yeah.
 
Sheila
Yeah, Okay. So we've got love. You talk a lot about joy. You talk about peace and how peace isn't passivity.
 
Zachary
And to this other thing you were just saying about how men are denigrated for quote unquote, not leading. And I think there's this like, just because you're not dominating someone else doesn't mean you're passive. It doesn't mean you're not active or engaging. So yeah.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Exactly. And and I think and you go on in a couple of the different ones, you talk about the, the, the real problem that we face culturally and that a lot of a lot of men especially, but all of us, it's not only men, but it's I think men especially are getting sucked in to this life of laziness and this life that that is very much focused on video games or doom scrolling or whatever it might be. Where there is no actual there's no eternal value to it, there's no whatever. And I'm not trying to say all video games are terrible. We all need an outlet. Okay? If that's your outlet, like whatever. You know, I have my outlets too, right? But it can become very unbalanced.
 
Zachary
Yes.
 
Sheila
Where our lives are, are really spent on things that don't have eternal significance, that aren't serving others and that are just numbing. They're really numbing ourselves, and they're not even helping us overcome loneliness, find meaning, etc. they're actually stealing that from us.
 
Zachary
100%.
 
Sheila
And that is a unique struggle. I think that's also that's also creating the male or perpetuating the male loneliness epidemic.
 
Zachary
Absolutely. It's a function of it as well as a, it reinforces it.
 
Sheila
Yeah, yeah. And I like the way that you, you tied that with faithfulness, which is another one of the fruits of the spirit, that faithfulness means that we are being faithful in, in, in what we were given to work with in our gifts, like we are using them and we are being faithful in in how God's, you know, in stewarding what God gave us. And the opposite of that is laziness. Like, we don't often think about that. When you think about being faithful, you think about not cheating on your wife. But it's not.
 
Zachary
Just included, which it includes, by the way.
 
Sheila
It does. Yes, yes, you don't cheat on your wife. But we also need to be faithful to to God, like to to the things that he has given us to the to the blessings that he's provided to, you know, just the fact that we live in a wealthy country, we live in a wealthy area of the world. We have, you know, resources like, how are we going to be faithful with those things?
 
Zachary
Yeah, yeah. Something I don't think I talk about this in the book. Maybe I should have. But as you were talking, it reminded me of the Parable of the Talents.
 
Sheila
Yeah.
 
Zachary
Where God entrusts us with a certain measure of gifting or resources or power or talent or whatever the case may be. And our job is to use that, to do the good works that he has prepared beforehand for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 and in that parable in Matthew chapter 25, I really should have talked about this. Maybe I should write a Substack post or something about the the one who is faithful with a little bit, receives. Surely I quote this, I don't know. Now I'm like second guessing myself. The one who is faithful with the little is entrusted with more when the master returns and inspects the work, and the one who sat around and buried the talents. It's kind of funny that we have this punny use of talent in English where it's like talent, but it's a reference to money. I just think that's so funny, that that's the guy who who played video games nonstop. It's the guy who didn't strive to cultivate relationships, cultivate skills, cultivate talents, and increased capacity to take on responsibility. And then what does Jesus well, God, then what does Jesus say? God says, or the master says to the workers who have been have invested their talent.
 
He says, well done, good and faithful servant. And to the other one he says, you're you're wicked and slothful like you didn't do anything. What the heck have you been doing this whole time? And I think that's a real, I hope challenge, but also a motivation to men, to young men, to not waste the life pursuing kind of static or frivolous or fleeting joys. Like, yeah, playing video games is fun. Following sports is fun. Even. You know, there's a there's a measure of quote unquote joy to even the the lust of the flesh in food and alcohol and sex. Like, you can pursue those things, but it's going to turn to dust in your hands. And the call into faithfulness is a call to increase responsibility and a pursuit of enduring and eternal joy.
 
Sheila
So what role do you think parents have in this? Because as I think about these two things, you know, I think about passivity, where, you know, men often just feel like, well, I there's nothing for me to do. I'm not going to step up. I'm waiting for someone to tell me what to do. ET cetera. And then you have the laziness, because passivity and laziness aren't exactly the same thing, right? Like they are. They're they're different. And I just think about the different ways that we often raise boys and girls, and that a lot more is expected of girls. You know, mothers will pull girls into the kitchen, make them wash dishes, make them help make the meal. And boys, it's often assumed that they're not going to do much. Or if they do do it, it's only because mom has called you and told you exactly what to do. Yeah, so you're not expected to see it first, you're just expecting to follow orders. And I think
 
Zachary
Totally.
 
Sheila
And that has real impacts on how men function in the workplace, how we know whether men go on and become entrepreneurs. Like if you're waiting for someone to tell you what to do right, and you're not going to succeed very much in a lot of different areas of life. And if you're spending your life on not very important things, and I think that this does come into how we handle our teens especially.
 
Zachary
Sure.
 
Sheila
You know, so what do you think? How old are your kids? I don't even know.
 
Zachary
Well, I don’t have teenagers yet.  My oldest is nine. But I am kind of anticipating this dynamic. And I think this relates to what we were talking about earlier with the cultural shifts, because I think you're you're absolutely spot, spot on, that there are certain ways that we expect more of girls, including educationally, like we we kind of assume and expect that girls can be more successful at school because in a lot of ways, and this is like where the research and the conversation and Jonathan Haidt and others have talked about this, like Richard Reeves, have talked about how educational environments are very feminine in the sense that they're kind of structured for behaviors that we associate with females and girls like, like agreeableness, for example. And then and I think society is pushing us in this direction where there are more natural paths for girls to thrive and there can be some resistance and struggle for boys, then the reason this is related to what we were talking about earlier is I can kind of think, you know, you want to go to, you know, pioneer frontier America, European settlers kind of spreading out.
 
There were plenty of things for boys to do and plenty of things for boys to be invited into. You know, if dad is outside doing manual labor and plowing a field and mom is inside tending to kind of food preparation and the kind of traditional quote unquote, female roles of domesticity, there was a really clear invitation into responsibility for men and women that would have served them both, whatever they went on to do later in life.
 
And some of that kind of domestic labor still exists, but the manual labor is far more infrequent, and the kind of invitation for boys into that is not as natural. So boys go do manual labor in virtual worlds. They go play Mindcraft. And because I think there is that itch for them to to build something to, to be excellent at something. And I think video games scratch that itch to be excellent.
 
Sheila
Yeah. It's like they allow boys to experience mastery of something when often they don't have a good way of doing that, especially if you have a kid who isn't as sporty. So they don't, you know, they're not going to make it on a football team. If you have a kid who just doesn't necessarily have a huge group of friends, video games allow them to do really well at something.
 
Zachary
Totally. And it's such a balance because I, you know, I played a lot of video games as a kid and a lot of it was wasted time. But there were some really cool things that I learned playing video games, like I was playing SimCity when I was like seven. I was like balancing a civic budget, you know? I was like, do I.
 
Sheila
I remember that when SimCity was early, like early on, the early versions of SimCity.
Were. Super cool that way.
 
Zachary
Super cool. Yeah. And I was like, oh, do I do?
 
Sheila
Oh shoot I forgot to build a fire department.
 
Zachary
Do I raise the commercial tax rate to 10.5%? People might be mad about that. Like, I'm making these decisions at ten. I'm like, that's super cool that I was doing that. Like, that's a that's a that's a neat thing. But I think we can allow for I think some measure of that in our boys. But they need to be invited into real world cultivations of excellence. And for some that can be sports. At the same time, there's a lot that's like really toxic about youth sports and travel sports in particular. And you know, that's something else we got to watch out for. But certainly playing and outdoor play, this is good for girls and boys, but especially for boys all the way through that. I mean, Jonathan Height again has talked so much about this in one of his early books, The Coddling of the American Mind. Is that Jonathan Height? (actually Greg Lukianoff) I don't remember, but there's a whole chapter on outdoor play and the importance of this. And, you know, this anxious generation is because kids are staring at screens their entire childhoods and they're never interacting with people. They're never outside. And I think girls suffer in certain ways. We associate, we associate anxiety and depression and eating disorders and things like that with female suffering associated with that. But, but, boys have their own cluster of, of loneliness and kind of push towards radical ideas and ideologies and anti-social and the kind of nightmare example of that. The end of that is like the incel or the, the, the someone who, who has this kind of public act of violence and suicide and like a school shooting or something like that.
 
And I think these are all part of the same phenomenon. We really need to turn our attention to this. And I think cultivating real world excellence, finding the type of thing that your boy, your teenager, can be good at and enjoy and find joy in is going to be really important, I think, to their development as people, but also the cultivation of their virtue.
 
Sheila
Yeah. Even just like entrepreneur stuff, like, you know, get your kids like shoveling people's driveways.
 
Zachary
Or totally.
 
Sheila
When they're 12.
 
Zachary
We used to do this a lot more. We used to do this all the time. And now, yeah, we just are afraid of our kids taking two steps away from our house. Yeah.
 
Sheila
There's lots of things, but we need to think about these issues. Okay. Last, last one I want to talk about self-control obviously because hey yes, the big thing we talked about here and I want to read I want to read something you said about this in the self-control section, because obviously self-control comes at the end, like in the list of fruits of the spirit. Let's see if I can do it again. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think that's in the right order.
 
Zachary
Nine out of nine. But yes. Yeah.
 
Sheila
It says this right in this book. I kept coming back in my mind to the order in which Paul lists virtues. Love is first, self-control is last. That does not mean self-control is unimportant. Peter also highlights it in one of his virtue lists. A Christian vision of virtue is not complete without the internal mastery and discipline required for godly living. But self-control is not the keystone virtue for Christians, that it is for the Stoics and other Graeco-Roman traditions. Love. Divine love is what powers and animates all of our virtue formation. There is another orientedness to Christian virtue that is unique relative to its ancient competitors on the worldview stage. That got me thinking a lot. I hadn't even clicked on that. But yeah, self-control is about mastery of yourself.
 
Zachary
Yes.
 
Sheila
But the other ones, especially. Love is like it starts with yes, but our orientation is towards other people because there can be, there can be an overemphasis on having control over yourself. I was talking to Jay Stringer about his new book about Desire a couple of months ago.
 
Zachary
Oh, Wonderful.
 
Sheila
And he was saying that often people who have. They’re majorly in control of themselves, right? Like they work out two hours a day, they never eat anything that's not organic, right? They journal, they meditate. They do yoga. Like people who are, who are so extremely self-controlled, are often very cut off from their desires, from who they really are because they're using. That control, you know, to.
 
Zachary
Lock all down.
 
Sheila
Yeah, to keep their lives very small so that there is no margin for anyone hurting them, right, or no margin for feeling like a failure. And by starting with love, it's like the reason that we have self-control is not so that we can have this extremely isolated life, or we can be proud of ourselves for doing all these right things. It's it's it's like our orientation is to help others. And self-control is part of how we manage ourselves. And we we handle our talents properly. We're faithful to the talents that God has given us so that we can be motivated and outward motivated. I really thought that was really interesting.
 
Zachary
Yeah, I mean, I love what you just said too. I think there is exactly to your point, a movement among young men towards an increased emphasis on self-mastery. And you see this in the in the people that Jay was alluding to. And really, it seems to me it's a desire. It's a quest for invulnerability. It's a quest for trying to find a way to live in a world where no one can hurt you. And the only way to do that is to just not need anybody else or not be in relationship with anybody else. And that is simply just not a Christian vision. A Christian vision is a relational one. We, the God we worship, is a relational God.
 
And the keystone virtue of love gives a different feel not only to the kind of Greco-Roman, hyper virtuous kind of hero ideal, but also, I think to the American individualistic one. Both are self-actualization projects. We're both trying to become the best version of ourselves, kind of just so we can be the best version of ourselves so we can feel like we follow the rules so we can feel like we're as excellent as we can be.
 
But in Christianity, excellence and self-mastery is excellence in self-mastery in service of others and for the good of the world and of the people that you're in relationship with. Yeah, and I think that's a key difference.
 
Sheila
Now, of course, your book, Nontoxic Masculinity, spent a lot more time talking about porn than this one does. So you didn't want it. You didn't want to repeat it. I always have a hard time with that, too. When I write a book that, like, mentioned, something that I've written an entire book on, like how do you condense something into four pages? But but I like the things that you chose to highlight, but how you can't mind over matter your way to virtue. And that's often our approach when it comes to to porn use, especially among men, is you just have to try harder, get an accountability partner, get the software controls, get the all the stuff and just just decide you're not going to do it. And it's not that easy.
 
Zachary
No.
 
Sheila
Like you can't because you can't just just try harder. It needs to be a transformation.
 
Zachary
Yeah, right. I mean, some percentage of people can try harder and yes, good for them. And yeah, I've talked to you know, I talk about this in my own journey so much in the first book. And I talked to so many men as well as women over the years about the dynamics of this. And I think about this conversation that I talked about with a Christian psychologist, brain scientist, where he says, well, you know, a lot of people will use the language of addiction. And as it relates to their porn habit. And I think that's oftentimes relevant and appropriate. And, you know, Jay Stringer talks about sexual addiction and he's gotten some heat for that. But I think it's really helpful the way he narrates that. But the point being, I think for a lot of us, we think of it as like, I have a lust problem or I'm trying to get my lust under control. And we're where it's all behavior modification without spiritual formation, without virtue formation. And yes, lust is a vice, but there is a corresponding virtue that we should be trying to grow in. It's not just trying to stop lusting, it's trying to grow in virtues of self-control. So that conversation I had with that psychologist where he was like, I sometimes tell students, it doesn't sound like you're addicted. It sounds like you have a self-control problem, which is to say there's a character deficit that is bigger than just, I'm lusting and I can't stop watching porn. There's a discipline associated with all of your life that can, that needs to be cultivated, not just regulated, if that makes sense. And I talk, of course, at length about this in the first book.
 
Zachary
What does it mean to not just change your behavior, but change our attitudes towards our own bodies, towards our own maleness? If you're a man, towards other people's bodies, towards women's bodies, these are the kind of root out of which a compulsive indulgence in pornography and masturbation grow, as well as the deep, almost harder, not almost definitely harder emotional spiritual work of like, What's going on underneath all this?
 
What is this doing for me? What is the childhood wound that this is soothing or tapering over? What is this need that I am looking for in my relationships or from God that this is to give me a quick fix on? Those are the deeper questions. And it's yeah, it's just so strongly felt that a cultivation of virtue must be part of the long path towards freedom for this.
 
And don't, don't, don't fixate on your struggle with porn or your porn habit even, and think that's the only thing that's spiritually going on in your life. There's a lot of other things connected to it. And growth in the virtue of self-control, I think, is a piece.
 
Sheila
Yeah. That's lovely. Well, thank you for writing this. I think this is for guys, if you belong to a men's group, if you have guys you meet for breakfast with once a month or something like that, this would be a great book to go through and just start having those important conversations. Or if you're just a guy and you want to, you want to figure out what it means to be a man, or if you are raising a man, you know.
 
Zachary
Or if you are married to one.
 
Sheila
Or if you're married to one. Men of virtue. Zach Wagner, Zachary Wagner it was out two days ago. You can get it anywhere. We'll put a link in the podcast notes. I really appreciate it. What are you hoping for? What are you hoping the conversations come from this book?
 
Zachary
Yeah, I hope I yeah, I really am hoping that we can shift the conversation a little bit. I don't know, I'm not, like a huge deal, but, you know, maybe people will read the book and find it helpful. I hope they do. Just shift the conversation about what it means to be a godly man. Oh, just a little bit away from what it means to be manly and towards what it means to be godly.
 
Masculinity has potential to be a really good and beautiful thing if we if we cultivate our maleness right? But to do it, I just want us to be talking more about the the character traits and virtues of godliness more than, you know, kind of the chest bumping, bravado, performative stuff that we see out there in the way. So out there today. So man, I would, I would love if Christian manhood, biblical manhood, godly manhood conversations were just a little bit more about character traits and Christlike virtues than they were about roles.
 
Sheila
Yeah. I would love that too. I think we all would. Thank you. Zachary. Let's get this conversation going.
 
Thank you to Zachary for joining us. You know, I really appreciate some of these male guests that I have that come back year after year. They're always contributing to the conversation in some super amazing way. And I think you're really going to love Men of Virtue. Check out the link in the podcast notes.
 
Let other men around you know about it. Look, we got to do something to counteract the Doug Wilsons of the world and the Mark Driscoll's of the world. Right. And if we don't elevate voices like Zachary, then the other guy, because they're so loud, are going to win. So there's more of us than them. So let's, let's keep this conversation going.
 
Remember to hit the like and subscribe button. Sign up for our email list. The link is in the podcast notes for that too, and join us next week for the last podcast of this season. It's going to be an awesome one and we'll see you then. Okay. Bye bye.