{"id":159632,"date":"2025-03-13T13:56:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T21:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=159632"},"modified":"2025-03-13T13:56:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T21:56:39","slug":"what-jordan-peterson-can-teach-church-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=159632","title":{"rendered":"What Jordan Peterson Can Teach Church Leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aaron Renn writes in the WSJ<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nMainstream institutions and authorities\u2014churches, schools, academia, the media\u2014could learn a few things from the online gurus about how to speak to young men effectively.<\/p>\n

Young men today often feel as if their needs are secondary to those of their female peers…<\/p>\n

Online influencers treat men\u2019s hopes and dreams as important in their own right.<\/p>\n

Many offer teenage boys an aspirational vision of manhood. Some, like Mr. Peterson, say men are important for the sake of others, but present it as part of a heroic vision of masculinity in which men flourish as well. \u201cYou have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world,\u201d he writes in \u201c12 Rules for Life,\u201d his 2018 bestseller. \u201cYou are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself.\u201d Traditional authorities, especially in Protestant churches, talk about men being \u201cservant leaders\u201d but reduce that primarily to self-sacrifice and serving others. Pastors preach sermons wondering why men have so much energy left at the end of the day, or saying men shouldn\u2019t have time for hobbies. No wonder young men tune them out.<\/p>\n

Online influencers challenge men to work harder and get better. Former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink encourages his followers to get up at 4:30 a.m. to work out. But they also give practical advice and true if sometimes politically incorrect facts, such as those about the opposite sex. Men\u2019s relationships with women are primal. Nothing enhances these influencers\u2019 credibility like helping young men succeed with women. Teenage boys are hungry for information on what women find attractive. The gurus tell them it\u2019s status, confidence, charisma, appearance and style. That\u2019s the opposite of what they\u2019re used to hearing, which is that women want men who emotionally affirm them and are ready to commit for the long term. Guys who go the sensitive nice-guy route only to be rejected can end up frustrated and bitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cGodliness is sexy to godly people,\u201d says Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Matt Chandler. Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, says, \u201cGirls are attracted to boys who win status contests with other boys.\u201d Which rings truer to you?<\/p>\n

…In an era of growing loneliness and social isolation, teenage boys can bond over furtively watching Andrew Tate videos that their parents and teachers deem dangerous. Because the traditional authorities typically don\u2019t have much of an organic following among young men, they don\u2019t generate the same kind of community. Where they do have a male audience, such as in churches, attempts at creating community are often hokey and weird. Most young men aren\u2019t drawn to groups that ask them to \u201chold each other accountable\u201d for watching porn.<\/p>\n

An obvious if overlooked component of these influencers\u2019 success is that they\u2019re all men. It\u2019s common, especially in mainstream media, for women to be the ones sounding off about men\u2019s issues and shortcomings. In July, Politico published a \u201cMasculinity Issue,\u201d featuring four articles on the theme\u2014every one of them written by a woman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aaron Renn writes in the WSJ: Mainstream institutions and authorities\u2014churches, schools, academia, the media\u2014could learn a few things from the online gurus about how to speak to young men effectively. Young men today often feel as if their needs are … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42989,42750],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aaron-renn","category-masculinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159634,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159632\/revisions\/159634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}