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98: Pressures Young Men Face In Today's World with Dr. David McDonald
78 Plays4 months ago
In our previous episode with Dr. David McDonald, we talked about unicorns and mythical creatures in the Bible. In this week’s episode, our content contains frank discussion about sexual pressures young men face in today's world.
David is a pastor, teacher, and lecturer in colleges and seminaries all over the world. His work with Westwinds Community Church has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. David was appointed to the first-ever post-doctoral fellowship at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, and continues to integrate spiritual truth with sharp social analysis in his private work as a speculative theologian. In 2019, David founded the Fossores Chapter House, the world’s first headquarters for Christian ministerial innovation, where preachers, leaders, and entrepreneurs gather from all over the world to do their best work.
The previous episodes David was on:
16: Dr. David McDonald Addresses Why Jesus Had To Die
BONUS (16b): Going Deeper With Dr. David McDonald
17: Two Pastors Discuss The Resurrection Of Jesus
Normal Goes A Long Way Website: https://www.normalgoesalongway.com/
Normal Goes A Long Way Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/normalgoesalongway/
Normal Goes A Long Way Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Normal-Goes-A-Long-Way-110089491250735
Normal Goes A Long Way is brought to you by Messiah St. Charles: https://messiahstcharles.org/
Two Kids and A Career: https://www.jilldevine.com/podcast
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Transcript
Introduction: Jill Devine's Unique Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible. Yet here I am hosting a podcast about
Podcast Purpose: Real Conversations on Faith
00:00:27
Speaker
faith. The normal goes a long way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Male Perspective: Resilience and Stress Challenges
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome back to our part two conversation with Dr. David McDonald. We are switching gears a little bit. I mean, we'll talk a little bit about your time here in St. Charles, but this is a conversation that we wanted to have with you. We needed a perspective from a male. And we had this conference not too long ago that did just that. And Laura and I, and especially Laura, we can speak on resilience and stress and things that women should do to cope and to work through. But I got nothing when it comes to the men. I mean, we have our husbands, and we want to support them. and
00:01:20
Speaker
other gentlemen in our life. So why don't we start with you, Laura, some of the questions that maybe you weren't able to answer for me when it came to those questions, when it came to, you know, men versus women and all that kind of stuff.
Laura's Doctoral Insights: Stress in Adolescents
00:01:36
Speaker
Right. So this all came about because my doctoral project that I've been working on for the past three years is is fostering stress resilience in early adolescent girls ok alongside their moms. They're what I call their primary female influencers. it's awesome So I've been immersed in neuroscience and psychology and somatic theory and all of these amazing ways that God gives us to return to balance and homeostasis after our systems have been spiked by stress. And good things can be stress and bad things can be stress, right? yeah And so we covered like some common things that young girls are dealing with and that their moms are dealing with. And then we got some questions from some men saying, hey, what about us guys over here? You know, what it what advice do you have for us? And so I thought,
00:02:27
Speaker
that you would be a great person to just say, hey, what do you see men struggling with?
Impact of Explicit Content on Male Expectations
00:02:34
Speaker
And what advice do you have for the guys? but I think maybe um maybe I can say some things that that nobody else could say because because they'd get in trouble. um But you have to talk about sex if you can talk about male stress. And you have to talk about sex openly and honestly. And you have to talk about sex in a way that's not it's it's really not safe to do. and yeah And you have to talk about work. um And I think those are probably the two biggest ones. And when you talk about work, you have to talk about work, not only the the work that you have, but the work that you wish you had, and then the work that you're not willing to do, and the work that other people place upon you without your consent. and These are big guy things.
00:03:12
Speaker
But for men, for the great majority of men, sex is a primal, almost animalistic impulse. I mean, men are hitting maturity, 12, 13, 14 years old, and where once upon a time things were different. Now, by the time kids are 12, they're being exposed to the most violent and explicit sexual content in the history of the human world. And they can metabolize that very quickly, meaning where for somebody else, women, whomever, somebody of an earlier generation, that that's a big part of it. you know They might see this sexual content on day one and be ah abhorred by it and remain
00:03:56
Speaker
Disgusted by this content for the rest of their lives Nowadays kids are gonna acclimatize to that really quick and what's abhorrent on day one is Compulsive on day two and is normal on day three and is mandatory on day five I'm gonna just um of course I'm making up that timeline. I just mean it's really really fast So it's not just that men have grown up in a hyper sexualized environment It's not just that sex has been commodified and depersonalized. It's that Sex is not even real. The sex that they're promised, the sex isn that's normal, it doesn't exist. I mean, youre when they're when they're exposed to that kind of sexual content, it's it's you know highly edited, it's actors, it's camera angles. I mean, you know John Wick is more real than porn, but less appealing.
00:04:46
Speaker
And so so men men have this tremendous disconnect between what they think they're supposed to want as men and what is available to them. I mean, if this 13, 14, 15 year old kid, let's say 15 year old boy has now got years of sexual content in his brain like that, and then he ends up with his, let's say 20 year old babysitter, she's still not capable of providing the thing he thinks is all there is. And so so now he's he doesn't know how to act with her. Usually, guys are are ah shy and they're they' everything is everything is so easy when they're pornography, but in real life, you actually still have to talk to girls and they don't know how. And so they feel immediate shame that they can't get the results that what they're saying. They feel immediately like they're stupid and they're unskilled and they don't know know who to blame. So they only they blame the only person they can. They blame the girl.
00:05:40
Speaker
which is completely unfair for the girl and completely misogynistic on the part of the guy, but this this is the guy's whole entire worldview. And as a dad, when you're when you're raising sons or as a pastor, when you're raising young men, it's really tricky because if you talk to them about it, you tend to intensify and deepen their shame. And even by trying to open the conversation, it's so private, it's so personal. I mean, the only people that can talk about it are their peers. And the peers, the only way they have to deal with it is to joke about it. So consequently, by the time you get an actual adult man in in and our time, they're they're bent way out of shape.
Identity and Integrity: Coping with Sexual Pressures
00:06:15
Speaker
And so you go, well, how do you deal with that kind of stress? Well, I know what we'll teach them about um biblical manhood and morality. You're just compounding shame upon shame, upon shame, upon shame. Not that they never need to know that, but just if you think that's the fix, it's a little bit like having a bent screwdriver laying it down on the table and whacking it with a heavy mallet. I mean, you might get it somewhere closer to straight, but not, no you're more likely to just break the screwdriver. And that's the kind of stress and pressure that men are under sexually. And in church, you know, we tell them the only appropriate sexual expression is to marry somebody. And so guys get married at 20, 21 years old. They have these these psychotic sexual fantasies and expectations. They inflict them upon somebody's poor daughter. the The marriage is a disaster. Nobody's satisfied because the guy doesn't know what they're doing in bed because they think sex is like a car crash. um and And the poor girl doesn't know which way is up. And and and the guy knows they're screwing it up.
00:07:13
Speaker
every guy knows they're doing it wrong. they're not They're not satisfying in bed. They don't satisfy God. They don't satisfy themselves. So the first and perhaps most fundamental pressure upon men is sexual failure, which compromises their integrity as a man and as an image bearer of God Most High. And fixing and resolving that pressure is the but the work of the rest of their life. If you have sons and you catch them viewing pornography, the worst thing you can do is yell at them about it or say, oh my God, or post about it on Facebook. You have no idea what's going on with those boys. You have no idea what's going on with those boys. or those young men because once they get married, they think the only way for them to not be sinful is for their wives to help them with this horrible problem they have and their wives do not have the skills. So here's my best advice because it's a messy, ugly, horrible situation. and First, if you're a guy, hey man, it's okay.
00:08:13
Speaker
like We live in a bad time. It's okay. God loves you. There is nothing, nothing that you can do that will keep God from loving you and keep God from looking at you as his son. And you're my brother and I love you. And if I can help you, I will. And they have my contact info. And if you wanna talk to somebody safe, because I don't know what you look like, I don't know who you are, but you can email me, you can phone me. If there's any way I can help you, I absolutely will. Here's my advice for what you can do right now. um Pray and ask God for help. And then I want you to think about every woman you know in your life. Your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mom, friend, coworker, whatever. And I want you to imagine what it's like to be them. Imagine what their dreams are. Imagine what their hopes are for the future.
00:09:09
Speaker
Think about their favorite kind of music. Think about what makes them happy. Like ah the stuff that maybe you wouldn't think about, you know, with sunlight and going through a window, warming up a blanket on the couch, a chance to watch Anne of Green Gables, which seems to be the universal female love language. It's disgusting, abhorrent for men, but whatever. I would say Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls, yeah. you think You think about what they love, what they enjoy, and then you deepen your appreciation for who they are. as people. Because what has been stolen from you is an understanding that women are human. And the only way you're going to conquer this devil of your libido is to understand that you've been lied to, and you've been deceived, and the cure for your deception is the truth.
00:10:07
Speaker
And the truth is, is not a gender truth. You know, it's not a guilty truth. Hey, don't you know that somebody's mom, don't you know that somebody's daughter, don't you? No, no, no, no, no. That's not going to help you. What's going to help you is to go this person, you know, Susan. Melinda, Karen, whoever these people are, these people with by name, they have dreams and they have hopes. And so you think in the providence of God, what would the best possible life look like for Kelly? And what is God calling this person forward to?
00:10:40
Speaker
And God has put me in this person's life to be a support, to be a protector and a defender, not just of who they are, not of their virtue or their virginity or or God's being of their dreams, of their destiny. You are the knight errant, making sure this person gets to their goal at the end of the film. And you you you put all your emphasis and your understanding on seeing them as as people, as people. And if you can If you can open yourself up to the spirit of God and understand um You're not the only human being involved in your life That's gonna make a lot of these sexual temptations a lot of this sexual frustration and sense of failure um recede into Its appropriate place as something to be managed rather than something that was just gonna rip your guts out every day for the rest of your life so here's where where my mind goes first of all, I'm just like in tears because
00:11:40
Speaker
Umm... that is so much pressure. And thank you for helping two women kind of get a glimpse into the soul of of the men in our lives and the men you know that we surround ourselves with. I think it's, gosh, it's just a good reminder that we only experience the world through our own lens and that you never know what somebody else is is
Teaching Resilience: Lessons from Failure
00:12:08
Speaker
facing. But then I go to, okay,
00:12:10
Speaker
So all of my research was poured into um early adolescent girls because that is like the point where it's like if we can equip them before all of the adolescent transition happens and in that developmental stage where their brains are more neuroplastic, then that that's like a win because then we can hopefully be preventative about a lot of these things. And I'm like, what can we do for these boys? Like what what advice would you give to a mom and especially a dad who are raising pre-adolescent boys to possibly make their journey smoother? Yeah. Thank you. What a great question.
00:12:54
Speaker
OK, well, for starters, I think you've got to understand it's not perversion that's driving them. It's failure and shame. And as a mom, you you don't have all the necessary tools. I mean, I don't want to paint with broad strokes because, of course, women are as buried as men are, you know, but in general, my observation is that women, when they realize their their sons are suffering with shame and with guilt, that women want a comfort. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. That's not gonna help. o What they need is a man who has failed.
00:13:34
Speaker
And now all men are failures. That's the good news. Easy to find a failure of a man. We're 12 for 10 cents. You have to let your boys get around men and men that really aren't all that great. I mean, you know, find the best men you can, but you know that the the best man you know is still not going to be perfect. And he's going to say different things about all these issues than you would. He's going to teach the boy over time to deal with failure. and you deal with failure by continuing to fail and realizing that our failures are not catastrophes. yeah You know, you you youve got to learn how to fail and get up and keep going. And that's going to take a hot minute. and the
00:14:18
Speaker
Boys are going to pout and the boys are going to have relapses and the boys are going to, you know, lash out or whatever. And they're going to go back and look at porn again or they're going to sleep with their girlfriend again. are They're going to make mistakes. And a guy who's been through all that is going to go, hey, stupid, knock it off. You're better than this. Come on, let's go. And that's going to be the end of it. and And I think that's the kind, I mean, that that sounds so juvenile and so brutish, but it's true. And if you're a guy out there listening and you're not kidding yourself, you know you know the truth of what I'm saying. We learn to fail by failing. We learn to keep going by being surrounded by other failures who nevertheless succeed.
00:15:03
Speaker
And, and that's the, the glory of the church. So we're surrounded by crappy men who somehow have been redeemed by the grace of God and have kept going. And, um, the best thing you can do as a mom is get your, your boys around great men, the best men you can find. And that doesn't mean you excuse the failures of those men, but those men will help your boys with their own failure and shortcomings. Alright, I got a few things that popped into my head. um The first is that what you're saying exactly parallels what I've been researching with women and girls in terms of resilience cannot be taught, it must be learned. yeah In order to be resilient, you have to fail and bounce back.
00:15:49
Speaker
It's the only way it's like working out your muscles. yeah You can't strengthen your muscles until you use them. yep And so in some ways we're setting our kids up for failure when we're expecting them to be perfect and not allowing them to fail and use that as a lesson to get stronger right or making them feel shame for failure because they have to fail in order to bounce back, to be resilient, to learn how to do that in a healthy way. So I thought that was key. And then the second thing I'm thinking is, okay, how does this relate to cancel culture?
Cancel Culture vs. Grace: Societal and Church Perspectives
00:16:25
Speaker
Which, which when you were saying, allow your, your boys to be around men who have failed, I immediately think of so often nowadays when you have a moral failure or you have
00:16:37
Speaker
any kind of failure, um especially if you're any kind of public person, the the cancellation of you and like you're written off as being no good to society. and And while I understand like the tendency to want to do that, that's not what Jesus taught. sure And so how do we wrap our heads around the difference between holding people responsible for their mistakes and grace and also um allowing room for redemption stories. Yeah, great question. Well, here again, I think maybe our Catholic brothers and sisters have a leg up on us, you know, and they're in their discussion of mortal and venial sins. You know, there's there's some things that are just pretty tricky to bounce back from. Murder, you know, that that's that's a tough one. Adultery, that's a tough one.
00:17:28
Speaker
there's There's some things that are just bigger that, in in at least in the case of the church, is going to disqualify you from public ministry, at least for a time, if not for all time. you know So there there is some sort of dividing line. Now, in cancel culture, we cancel everybody fairly. Cancel somebody for a mean tweet. yeah yeah you know Cancel somebody for using a word that they didn't even understand or know. And the truth is that that's just going to be the world that we live in for a hot minute and guys are going to have to buck up and and deal with that. And and for for those of us who are concerned about our sons, we just have to pastor our sons at home and say, yeah, this guy screwed up. He, ah you know, he, whatever, he slept with his girlfriend or this guy screwed up. You know what? He um cheated on his income tax and went to jail for a year, whatever whatever the things are. you go
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah, they screwed up. I was a pastor for 30 years and I can tell you it was the weirdest thing to get up on a Sunday morning and preach and go, I know the sins of every person in this room. And I know that 90% of them are pretending they don't have any s sin at all. And you just kind of want us to drop the act. Now, we're not gonna, but it sure helped me as a dad to be able to say to my kids, hey, nobody's got the authority to judge you. You're worried about so and so grumpy church guy because he got mad at you for your haircut. Let me tell you, if you knew about that guy, what I know about that guy, you'd tell him to pound sand. Now I'm not going to tell on that guy, but neither am I going to give that guy authority over my daughter.
00:18:58
Speaker
And I think in general, when we experience the shame and the toxicity, so common among church culture, we just grab the people that are ours and we say, that's baloney. Don't listen to it. Don't listen to it. If you, if you can only listen to people more perfect than you, you're not going to ever to be able to listen to anybody right and you're going to be all by yourself in your perfect little world with no friends and no life worth living because you're so perfect. Jesus can't stand you. If this conversation resonates with you, reach out to Dave because he's got a heart obviously and a passion um and at least can give you resources and be a safe place for males to turn
Resources for Creative Pastors: Fossores.com
00:19:42
Speaker
to.
00:19:42
Speaker
um Yeah, so all of the contact info, all the things that you have going on, let's talk about it and then we'll get it at normalgoesalongway.com. Sure, yeah, thank you. ah My website is facaris.com, F-O-S-S-O-R-E-S dot.com and there you can find all of my books, you can find info on coaching and counseling sessions, you can find info on booking me as a speaker, consultant. You can find knowledge-based articles about creativity, innovation, and change, about about technology in the Bible. You can you can find information on the Phisaris Chapter House, which is the retreat center I run for creative pastors and all the retreats that we do there. We have ah a subscription a monthly subscription that you can join for like $9 a month where you get email resources every week that will help you with this stuff. and we We do a lot, including somatics, coaching, instruction, and certification to help you understand the biblical wisdom of the body. and
00:20:38
Speaker
I mean, you can find it all in one unpronounceable spot. Sorry. Sorry. How many books have you written? I don't know. um That's a lot, then. Yeah. Yeah. Several dozen. Maybe. Dang. Maybe more than 50. What? If you ask me how many how many great books have I written, the numbers are a lot smaller. I've written a few real clams, you know. So I try and bury those. That's why I don't know the number is because I go, there's a bunch out there that I don't want anybody to find. All right. Okay. Fair. Again, all of this will be at normal goes a long way dot.com. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you and how God made you and the vision that he's given you and also the fortitude to try something new and, um,
00:21:28
Speaker
just be a light in a world that can often feel dark. So thank you for all that you you do and that you've done for Messiah and will continue to do in the future. Well, thanks you guys. Love you very much. Thank you. Good luck, everybody.