Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sheep Get Sheared Podcast. I'm your host, Austin Creed, and today
my friends, we're going to be talking about a simple question. Are Christian men required
to be married? Now, I don't want to just pigeonhole this into just people who are Christians,
but there seems to be this notion, especially within the church, and I don't understand
the life of me, maybe somebody can help me out. I don't understand the life of me, where
this idea came from. I missed all the feminism, I missed all the changes in society, I missed
all the revolutionary, socially, we've gone all the social, revelational stuff we've gone
through. How have we gotten to the point where you're not a real man if you don't take care
of a woman? You're not a real man, whether it's religious or not religious, but we'll
focus on the religious men for right now. Why in the world have we gotten to this point
where you are a weak man, or you are a coward, you're a craven? If you don't want to try
to roll for a yacht, see, go and get married. How does that make you a weak man? I'll start
off by talking to a dear friend of mine, I do love him, he's a great guy, but we have
a very strong difference of opinion on this. And I'm curious, you, a listener of the Sheep
Get Sheered podcast, my friends, where do you line up? Do you think that you're not
a real man if you don't get married? Do you think that if you don't roll the dice, if
you don't just take the L, if you don't take the raw deal, if you don't invest in a woman
and just go for it, that you're a weak man? I don't think so. Now, can you do that for
the wrong reasons as in you're scared and fearful? Absolutely. But it doesn't have to
be that way. And, you know, my friends, I look at the world today, especially amongst
the people in church, the reason I harp on the church is not because I hate Christians
or anybody else. It's because I don't hear enough accountability coming from this side
of the argument. You know, there are a lot of great content creators who talk about trying
to hold women accountable, trying to hold men's ideas in this space and to preserve
it, which is great. But what I don't hear about is people talking about it from the
religious perspective. And I don't want to just purely do it from that perspective.
But today, I think we need to have that conversation. Today, I think we need to really ask ourselves,
what is the difference between a religion incorporated and the more spiritual, you
can even say, meaghtow portion? What is the main difference? I don't like the idea that
you need to be always in a community all the time. I think being part of a community is
a beautiful thing. However, I also think that anything good can be taken too far. I think
it can create a herd mentality that discourages the individual mind and discourages difference
of thoughts and ideas. You know, I have a really hard time talking with people who are idealists
because if you haven't picked up by now, I'm a very cynical person. And if you listen to
the show regularly, chances are yours at least have a somewhat cynical bent to you. I don't
know how you could listen to me if you were an idealist. But if you do God bless you.
What I don't understand is why there is this expectation of whether if you're if you're
religious in any capacity, you need to need to be a monk or you need to be married. And
my opinion, that is just ridiculous. Why? Because let's be honest here. I don't care
if it's Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism. A lot of religions stem back
a long period of time. And so when we take into effect that ancient cultures are very
different in modern day America, modern day Western ideals, we cannot in good faith, mind
you, we cannot make a comparison between the ancient world and the modern one. For one,
a legal system wasn't involved. For one, if you as a man put forward all this time,
effort, money, resources, everything into your family, your wife didn't have a rip
cord to just pull at any point she wanted to take your kids, take off the stuff, leave
you living in your car, or leave you to deal with the lawyers and cover the lawyering,
the lawyer fees and everything else. I don't understand what Saint Society sees all this
and just says, Yeah, what the heck? So what? So why you could lose your stuff? So what?
So why you could lose your kids and maybe see them once in a fortnight if you're lucky?
So why? So why? The laws mean well, they know they want to protect women, so why?
Look, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, what you do with your life is
your business. If you want to take the chance, I applaud you, that's great. But what I don't
think is fair is especially in the Christian church, there's this, oh, we don't want to
talk about that because then that could lead to making the quote wrong choice. My friends
giving people options and education and options is not bad. If anything, it encourages people
to think for themselves, which in my opinion can never be a bad thing. Anybody I don't
care whether you claim to be the best influence ever, or the worst, if you want to sit there
and tell me that teaching people to not think for themselves and to just listen to you or
listen to people and authority and never ask questions, then I have a problem with you.
And I hope other people have a problem with you because that is a very terrible thing
to do. It is the beauty of deciding for yourself, hey, I see that there's something to be gained
from here. I see that, hey, you know what, over here, I like this. I could see, I could
pick and not pick and choose per se, but I'd have the ability to look through everything
and then make a conscious choice and not just be indoctrinated or brainwashed. I find that
to be despicable. And so when we get down to the question of are Christian men especially
required to be married? Well, my question is, why would you expect anybody to be married
in this climate? I think the answer should be no. In fact, when we look at society today,
when we look at the marriage laws today, it's very easy to say, oh, well, the church is
different. Well, in some ways, sure, it is different. In other ways, the appearance is
just the only difference. Look, I get it. This is not a fun thing to talk about. I understand
that hopefully you haven't had to deal with divorce and hopefully you haven't had to see
the side of women that they very much try to never actively show you. You know, there's
a book that I like to highlight called The Manipulated Man by Esther Velar, a woman who
wrote about how men are used regularly, manipulated, lied to by women every day all the time and
how it is men who are the victims of society and not women. Mind you, a woman with a run
who wrote this. And now I'm not sitting here to tell you that you should just believe everything
because I don't like the idea of being labeled as a victim. But let's circle back to this
idea of thinking for yourself. When you look at that and you say that a woman is kind of
giving away all the secrets, giving away the handbook, the incomplete handbook we're given
as men is now coming full circle and we're getting a complete picture. We're supposed
to overlook that. She talks about in her book how masculinity is often defined by women
for their own benefit. And when I look at the church today, I can confidently say that
a lot of ways that's 100% true because women now get to play that housewife, they get to
do basically whatever they want to do, cherry pick, and then at any point in time if they
want to, they could pull a rip cord and leave you out in the vacuum of space with half your
stuff if you're lucky. Fighting for the next God knows how long until all your kids turn
18, fighting in the family core over child support, visiting hours, parental rights,
and all this stuff when you don't have to do that. If you want to go the circusy route,
you can. If you want to get married, still, that's totally fine. But I don't think it
should be a requirement considering the element we live in. If you can't create an environment
in which a man can gain from marriage, then why the hell should we be pushing and doing
it? That's where I stand on the issue. I hope that you, my friends, can understand what
we're talking about today. At the end of the day, it's all about fulfillment. That is
what marriage is. It's not supposed to be exciting. A lot of people focus on the exciting
part of relationships when nobody wants to talk about the fulfilling part of it. And
that's what marriage is. It's supposed to be fulfilling, not exciting. But then when
we look at society today, there's not really a breeding ground for fulfillment because
the ripcord can be pulled at any time and you could have everything you worked for just
taken from you in the blink of an eye because someone felt like it or because they didn't
think that what you were doing was enough or you could put any reason or even no reason
under the sun and you have no say in the matter. Your pastor can't come in there bail you out.
The congregation can't come in there and advocate for you. Nobody. You are stuck and you're
alone and you get to suffer in silence with nothing but maybe your testimony. And even
then, if it doesn't go the way people want, they'll call you bitter, they'll call you
hurt, they'll label you and they'll throw you aside. I know you don't want to accept
what I'm telling you. And if you don't want to go right ahead, I'm just telling you,
I've seen it with my own eyes. So what comes down to do you want to be viewed as a utility
or do you want to have the courage to decide for yourself what you want to do? I'm a huge
believer in developing your own personal philosophy, using your own mind to decide what you want
to do with your life. If you want to follow everything your pastor tells you if you were
to go to church, that's great. If you want to take none of it, that's your business.
But I'm sick and tired of people telling men what to do, what we should be attracted
to, what we should value. I'm sick of it. And I hope you are too. My friends, if you
have any comments, questions, concerns with what we talked about today, you can leave
it on my X page as sheep get sheared. Leave in the comment section. It's entirely up to
you. My friends, I hope you learned something and I hope that you will play with this idea
and decide for yourself what best works for your life. Until next time, I look forward
to talking to you all. We're out. Have a great weekend. Peace.