➡ Dr. Steve discusses how Christianity’s demographic growth contrasts liberal decline due to fertility rates, emphasizing the importance of transmitting conservative, religious values to future generations. He interviews expert family coach John Michael Clark about the biblical vision of the family, maintaining distinctions between different roles in a family, and the blurring of these lines in modern secular vision. They stress the need to raise children who understand and follow their Christian teachings rather than get influenced by secular values, particularly feminism. They also discuss feminism’s waning popularity and how it’s still penetrating the Church, affecting marriage norms and roles.
➡ The text examines the role of Christian marriage ministries, critiquing their focus on vague concepts of harmony and kindness rather than defining specific roles for husbands and wives. It argues that avoiding these discussions, often out of fear of abuse or misunderstanding, leads to the neglect of God’s intended design for marital partnerships. The consequences are families mired in confusion, frustration and unhappiness, as both men and women are unable to fulfill or take comfort in their roles. The text encourages Christian leadership to promote biblical lessons about familial responsibility and authority, asserting this approach fosters unburdened and joyful relationships, rather than oppressive ones.
➡ The conversation revolves around the importance of self-leadership and understanding gender roles in a family setting from a Christian perspective. The speakers emphasize men’s role as leaders and providers, encouraging them to embrace family leadership as their high calling. The discussion also helps unpack the notion that women don’t need to adopt masculine roles to be valuable, urging them to rejoice in their femininity as God intended. They further promote a free training program for Christian husbands aiming to elevate their family life and bring about positive change.

Hey, gang, it’s me, Dr. Steve. And did you know liberals are going extinct? That’s right. It’s actually true. We’ve got the demographics to prove it. Liberals, by and large, has stopped having kids. And not just that. Conservatives, by contrast, are having more kids than ever. Particularly conservative Christians are demographically flourishing like never before, and demographers are taking notice. As the University of London scholar Eric Kaufman has noted in the title of his recent book, the religious are indeed taking over the world.

The latest stats show that for every one child born to a secular liberal, there will soon be three born to a Christian conservative. But that raises a very real question how do we faithfully pass on our values to the next generation? We may be having more children than the woke left, but how successful are we in inoculating our children from precisely those woke values? Today I’m joined by expert family coach John Michael Clark, who is foremost a loving father and husband and has made it his mission to restore the Christian vision of family and male leadership and bring down the feminist onslaught that has, frankly infiltrated much of the Christian world.

So, John, thanks so much for being with us. It’s an honor to have you here. Thank you, Dr. Steve. It’s a blessing to be with you. The blessing is all ours. And you’re going to bless so many people here. I’m just so excited getting to talk with you. So let’s just start with some of the basics. In your view, what is the traditional biblical vision of the family and how does it contrast with the modern secular vision? Well, we could probably spend a lot of time there.

I think in our simplest way, we could just say that it’s the glory of distinction. So God actually has a way, he actually has a purpose. He actually has a design. It’s something that is distinct and also good because it comes from our Father who is in heaven. As opposed to what? Really? You already know this. It’s not just flesh and blood that we’re wrestling with. Of course it’s an enemy.

But this blob of sameness, this blob of nothingness, this blob of everyone is equal in every single way imaginable. It leads to chaos. It doesn’t lead to human flourishing. It doesn’t lead to the glory of God. So the Christian household glorifies God in one way by bringing the order to the garden, subduing, blessing the terrain that the Lord has given us. And then it’s in that environment where a husband thrives, a wife thrives, and children truly thrive as well, right? Embracing their identity as given to them by God.

A sacred identity. I’ve heard it put you in the Christian vision, theological vision. God is Trinity, obviously. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. All three persons are equal in essence, but they are different in role. The Son does not send the Father, for example. The father sends the son. The Son sends the Holy Spirit. So we are sent to exemplify being created in the image of God, comparable distinctions in our own lives so that husband and a wife can be equal in essence, but have different roles at the same time.

They’re not mutually exclusive. To simply have different roles does not mean that one is subordinate to the other, essentially correct? Am I getting that right? Yeah. That’s the thing we often miss. We think to say that this is superior to me, that we’re always making a value judgment and that’s where the world and that’s where the enemy has brought much distortion and many lies. Every parent knows that they have authority over their child.

Everyone knows that. Most normal folks know that. And yet no one thinks that their life is worth more than their child. In fact, the contrary. We would lay down our lives for our children. So when we’re talking about hierarchy, we’re never talking about value and worth. We’re just talking about role and function. Right? I love that distinction. And boy, do we need distinctions today. By the way, gang, John is doing a free online training on Thursday, November 30.

I want to write that down. Thursday, November 30 at 03:00 p. m. I forget. Right down. Just click on the link below. You can actually register for his free training on precisely how you can faithfully pass down our values to the next generation. It’s absolutely free for our audience. Just click on the link below to register. John, this leads me really to the central question of our time.

It’s certainly a central question of our channel, but I think it’s clearly a central question of our time. How do we see the restoration of the family as foundational to the restoration of our republic? So if we really are outbreeding secular liberals at an impressive rate, how does this fertility advantage play into the rising of a conservative age? Yeah, well, I think there’s a way it should, and we have to make sure that it does.

So of course, they’re not making their own children to disciple, but unfortunately, they’ve been fairly successful at converting. And again, they not being the enemy, satan being the enemy of all mankind, but they’ve been fairly effective at converting in that way. So the thing we’ve got to do more than anything is multiplying, not just with our bodies, although that’s good and true and beautiful, as the Lord has commanded, but we’ve got to make sure that we’re multiplying.

Disciples. This was the command that King Jesus gave to the Church to actually make disciples among all the nations. But man, if you don’t start in your own household, I don’t want to gain the whole world and lose my children or lose my wife or lose the household legacy that the Lord wants for his name, for his glory, and for his honor and for our good. So that’s the starting point, of course, to actually be people who love and follow King Jesus, to be people who really welcome the presence of the Lord in their home, not just in word, but deed.

So that by the time that the enemy tries to attack my children, they look and say, too late. I’ve already walked with the Lord. I already know what he’s like. I’ve already tasted the fruit of his truth and the goodness of his garden. So the Lord loves family, as you know, and that’s why we love family as patriots, as people. If you love a country, then you’re automatically going to love families.

God started with a family in the garden. He’s going to finish with a family at the marriage supper of the lamb. And it’s family all in between. He is bringing his bride, he is rescued, and he is gathering us. And ultimately, households become an important part of that. We honor the civil magistrate as it should be honored. We honor the church of Jesus Christ as it should be honored.

And the household is another one of his governments. We could say that he has set up, and this is an embassy of the kingdom of heaven. We’ve got to make sure that it’s full of his presence and not just, we made more babies than you, but make sure we also led them into the King’s presence. I love it. Yeah. And just the marriage supper of the lambs, the marriage supper, the city of the New Jerusalem, and just it’s beautiful how the family transforms into an entire part of an entire society.

So what’s interesting is we’re getting a lot of studies coming out and just even legacy media articles, ironically, that feminism is more unpopular today than it’s ever been among the population. People just don’t particularly like feminism, and most women don’t ascribe themselves as feminists. And yet, ironically, the Church seems to be very interested in embracing feminism and the like. At least that’s the sense that I’m getting. What are some concerning or even damaging trends that you’ve noticed infiltrating marriage in our culture, more generally speaking, but more particularly inside the church? Yeah, well, I mean, you say infiltrating I really think that’s the right word, unfortunately.

And obviously, Christians, as we’ve said, Christians should have the best. We walk with the Lord. We should be the model for the world. We should have the best marriages. We should have the best marriage bed. We should have the best family culture because God’s ways are ideal. But it is frustrating on one hand to see how the world is walking away from this. Why? Because the fruit of it, you just judge the thing by the fruit.

It’s not leading to flourishing, it’s not leading to goodness. And it’s funny because in the Church, we might mock, we might laugh a little bit and say, oh, they can’t even answer what is a woman or what is a man? But I am concerned because the Church doesn’t do much better at answering those questions because really the church hasn’t rejoiced in the essence of saying what is a man? The church hasn’t boldly and joyfully with good news declared.

What is a woman to be bold enough to say? A man is a protector, a man is a provider, a man is a leader. Again, the distinctives that matter or a woman is a helper, she is a glorifier, she is a life giver and P. S, everybody, this is good news. And this shows up with I mean, you look at modern Christian marriage ministries, there’s a lot of good fruit that’s come from them.

But I still think this accusation holds true. Many modern marriage ministries are not in fact marriage ministries. They are fruit of the spirit ministries. They will emphasize, let’s communicate with peace towards one another, let’s be warm and kind. All good and true things, by the way, which we want. But many fall short. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s ignorance, maybe it’s cowardice. But many fall short of boldly saying, hey, this is what a husband is, this is what a wife is.

And we’re not sorry for it because it’s good news. And this shows up in the pulpit as well, because in the pulpit I’ve got this caricature that I sometimes talk about. I’ve named him Pastor Melvin and I’ve been Pastor Melvin before, but Pastor Melvin, this is the guy know your average Christian brother will go up to, hey, Pastor Melvin, you know, what does this mean in the word about husbands and wives? Or what does it mean when it says, I’m the head of my wife? And man, Pastor Melvin gets uncomfortable really quick.

He’s backpedaling, he’s saying, well, you know, that was written a long time ago or you got to understand this context and at this council this thing happened and we’re so worried about abuse, which of course we reject entirely, abuse, sinful, wickedness that we have zero tolerance for. So now that we’ve put that nonsense aside, what does the word really say is good, true and beautiful? But Pastor Melvin won’t answer that for us.

He just tells us to wash more dishes and to be a servant leader. So as long as the church is keeping things vague and Satan is pushing his androgyny I think it’s going to keep bringing that frustration, I think it’s going to keep bringing that confusion that we mean. I think your point is proven by the fact that the most public person who’s talking exactly in the categories that you’re talking about and celebrating them is a Canadian psychologist.

That doesn’t even go to mean jordan Peterson has no problem with these distinctions, as a matter of fact, argues that strong men are absolutely essential for flourishing women, particularly in the home. And you’re kind of going, what a horrible judgment on the current state of our Christian leadership. That’s a great point and yeah, it is sad. It’s frustrating. Because, like I said, this is ours. This is from our father, our story.

Yeah, this is the church’s message. And joy, there’s no bad news in this message. It’s our joy to say, hey, everybody, we got good news. Things are gross, things are confusing, things are chaotic because we’ve abandoned God’s good design. This is freedom. This is not bondage. In fact, we’ve been walking in bondage to the point now where men aren’t respected, they lack in confidence. And when that happens, everyone suffers for it.

And we’re an entire generation of men who are told on our wedding day by a well meaning dad or uncle or somebody, hey, if mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy. But ironically enough, that’s led to Mama being very unhappy. Women are stressed, women are anxious. Women are overwhelmed because they’re uncovered and they often function. They have to fill this vacuum of leadership because I’ve created a void there. So now if my wife feels uncovered, she feels the pressures, because Joe Michael’s really not leading.

He’s just kind of another life partner in the house. And now she’s crushed by a burden that the Lord didn’t intend for her. And I pat myself on the back because I’ve empowered my wife when really it’s a lack of love that has caused me to not rise up under the burden of command. Gang, this is just a tip of the iceberg of the nuggets you’re going to be getting from John.

He’s kindly offered to do a free virtual training for everyone watching right now who wants to establish the foundation of biblical leadership in their home. Just click on the link below to register. John on this channel, we talk a lot about we use fancy schmancy terms like neo tribalism and retraditionalization all this sort of stuff, really, in the end to capture this notion that we’re moving away from secular ideology to more traditional identity.

And it’s a fascinating process that’s happening around the world. Would you say that the sort of loss of identity experienced due to secularization and the attempt to totally equalize the genders and androgyny and all that, do you see that as leading to dysfunctional family dynamics? Yeah, absolutely. The fruit speaks for itself. I mean, the fact that, honestly, the average Christian marriage, the average happily married Christian couple, I think looks a lot like the average non Christian couple if they’re happy.

I know plenty of people who are happily married, and it’s fine. It’s okay. It’s good enough. So Satan has been very successful in minimizing God’s design for husband and God’s design for wife, and then that automatically brings chaos. But when we get this and it becomes, like we said, win win, husbands learn how to lead. Like Jesus. They have what we call in the family, Captain. We teach what we call the three legs of leadership.

We define that as compassion, responsibility, and the one everybody’s afraid of, but we define it appropriately, authority. So we say compassion is you love your family a lot and they know it. Responsibility is you take ownership for all of the outcomes, which, by the way, is different from every single thing that ever happens as your fault. That’s not the same thing. And then the third leg, authority, we define that as you actually have the power, because that’s what authority is.

But we say the power to what? The power to do what’s best for those that you love. And that’s the purpose of power. It’s not to just say, I have the remote, or the CEO who says, I have the preferred parking spot, but I have the power to actually provide for and care for the people that I love. And this is what Jesus does for us, for God.

So compassion, he loved the world that he what? He took responsibility. He took ownership for the outcomes, and he cleaned up our mess. And of course, all authority in heaven and earth belongs to Him. So, yeah, on one hand, the bad fruit is so obvious, and it makes sense to me why the world would go, hey, I know by name we’re all supposed to be feminists, but the results have become detrimental, and I think people are finally starting to have to wake up to that.

So we praise God for that. Yeah, it’s so interesting because as I’m listening to you talk, it just hit me that it seems to me we’ve eradicated, as far as we could, the authority of the man in the family precisely because we’re trying to eradicate the authority of the family itself. So you started off discussing sort of the sphere sovereignty idea. We’ve got the civil magistrate, we’ve got the authority of the church.

We’ve got the authority of the family. The state is not the family. The church is not the family. I mean, parents have been ordained by God to have a very particular role in a flourishing human society. And it just seems in the modern secular age, they don’t know what to do with that. There’s no real place for that. It’s not administrative enough. It’s not standardized and centralized enough.

Right. So it just seems to me if you’re going to eradicate the authority of the family, you have to eradicate the central authority figure in the family. Correct. And that’s exactly what most people want out of a husband. And that’s even, unfortunately, what Pastor Melvin will teach husbands to do. So instead of standing on that strong tripod, compassion, responsibility, and authority, we hey, hey, Christian husband, we want you to care a lot about your family, and we want them to know it.

We want you to take ownership of all the outcomes. Hey, PS, buddy. You got no power to actually accomplish anything, because, again, if Mama ain’t happy, as long as you learn to say yes, dear. So we have cut off his ability to actually accomplish anything that would bless that would thrive. Because if he doesn’t have a vote, also known as if he doesn’t submit to his wife in opposition scriptures, then we can’t have the good outcomes that the Lord intended for us.

And then a real authority comes in bound up by wokeness, and the rest is history. That’s authority, that’s what I need. Because we’re going to follow authority in some way, shape or form. Is that part of the hard truths that women need to hear, as it were? Jordan Peterson has been telling men to rise up, man up, clean up your own rooms, clean up your life, and so forth.

Are those some of the hard truths that women need to hear regarding the importance of participating in and supporting the restoration of male authority in the home? Sure. Well, I would say two things to that. To a woman who actually wants to thrive and wants to live under a rich blessing of her husband’s loving leadership. And I would say, yeah, to the one who says, hey, I want to be in charge, and all the pressures and anxieties and overwhelming, crushing life weight that comes with it, you’re allowed to pursue that to the degree that you want to.

But I would also say that the man up message and I bet you’ve seen this too, Dr. Steve, sometimes the man up message is used against men, even in a manipulative way, to try and extract something from them. I love the Peterson message. Hey, man, lead yourself well. And actually, in the family, Captain, the work we do, we focus much on self leadership and on building capital with those that we love and that we want to lead well.

But a lot of times men are talked to, they don’t want to do this. And it’s seemingly like we’re trying to get them to do it against their will. But I have often seen men want to give, men want to provide, men want to protect, they want to bless. They’re often looking for the how. As far as the women go, it’s not so much for me, a hard truth, as it is the good news to tell them, hey, it’s good to be a woman.

If you’re a woman, it’s good and you should rejoice in it. And I mean truly, in every sense, because Satan has lied to you women. He has convinced you that you need to be masculine to be valuable. And it’s false. You are valuable because God says you are. And then you will thrive best when you operate as the Lord has intended you to. So rather than bringing masculinity on and putting it on as a shield, it’s Saul’s armor.

It doesn’t fit you well. It doesn’t serve anyone well. It hardens your heart, hardens your soul. So like I said, this is why we work with men so much to actually show them how to be the greenhouse where their wife can be nourished, where their wife can be cherished appropriately, not competed with or avoided out of fear. I’m just kind of walking on eggshells because we really believe, we know that the feminine is designed by God to respond to the masculine, or rather, the feminine is already responding to the masculine.

What we do in the family, Captain, is we make sure that it’s for the good and not just for a greenhouse, as you’re saying. Exactly. Something that allows for human flourishing. Absolutely. And that really leads to the final question here. So what do we do? This is awesome. But this channel is all about action. What do we do? What can people watching who want to reclaim a more coherent vision for their family and help make sure their children learn to love the true, the good, and the beautiful into adulthood, what can we do? You specialize in helping with this very thing, of course.

And you’ve got the free training. Give us a bit of a taste of what we can do here. Sure. Well, the most important thing is the thing that Jesus told us was the most important thing. There is no substitute for raising your family in the presence of God, for really being a man who loves and follows King Jesus with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. You don’t pass go.

You don’t collect $200 until that happens, because everything else is just false. It’s just trying something. It’s a tip. It’s a trick. It’s a tactic. So with that heart, with that motive from there, what’s the big answer? Well, the big answer, I really believe is for men to see their high calling. And the high calling, I really believe, is family leadership. This is how we change the world.

I get the log out of my own eye, and then if I can see clearly, I can help my brother get the log out of his eye as well, because this is not a thing to do. It’s not like I’ve got to clock in at work. I’ve got to clock in with the church. I’ve got to clock in with this thing that my kids are a part of.

Oh, I’ve got to clock in as a husband. That’s the wrong perspective. And that’s why we take that different approach in the family, captain. We say, hey, man, this is the ship that the Lord has given you to be captain over. Or you could say this is the garden that the Lord has given you to tend and to keep deep. This is a mighty mission. This is glorious.

This is exciting. If you’re bored with family life and family culture, the Lord is not boring. The mission is not boring. Bro, you are boring. So there’s some vision that you need. There’s some clarity that you need. There’s some perspective, and, yes, oftentimes there’s some practicals that you need as well. But this is where you get to rule for the glory of God and for the good of those people that you love so much, as opposed to being a victim of my wife this or my kids that.

You really start to what we said. You stand firm on that leg of responsibility and you start to take ownership of the outcomes, and you say, okay, I can’t control everything and I can’t control people, but what can I do for the glory of God? How do I really start to grow us from being just happily married, as we would all say, as many say, to being ecstatically married? And it’s even with that heart that the Holy Spirit will meet you right there.

You will begin when you take that ownership and you go, I want to find the next level in the family, Captain. We call it Husband 2. 0 or Husband 3. 0 or man 2. 0 or man 3. 0 again, not just to make her happy, not just, hey, baby, does this please you? Am I doing right? Am I now acceptable, but truly? Because you’re a man on a mission like Christ, you want to thrive and you want to experience something that’s good and true and beautiful, as you said.

So the starting point, loving God. And then after that saying, I’m going to take ownership of this thing. I’m not going to take the whole 50 50 approach. I do my part, she does her part. The kids have to do their part. I’m going to say, Lord, help me to walk this out and move forward for your glory. Yeah. Embrace your role 100%, right? It’s not 50 50.

Absolutely. Who is this free training for? It’s Thursday, November eastern. Absolutely free for our audience. Who do you envision talking to in the webinar? This is for the Christian husband who really wants that next level. That’s who we target. I often say we’re talking to guys who you would say, hey, my marriage is maybe five, six and above. Things are fine. Everything’s fine. Nothing’s on fire. Things aren’t just totally broken and falling apart.

But I’m not okay with fine anymore. I actually want to flourish. I actually want to embrace the polarity that the Lord has intended for the masculine and the feminine, for our marriage bed, that there would be frequency, that there would be freedom, that our marriage would not just be a partnership, but it would be a rich expression of love for the kingdom of God. Again, because I want my household to be a picture of the glory of God and his kingdom.

So it’s for a man who’s going, man, this has stirred me. Or if you’ve heard something, who says, if you’ve even heard something with Dr. Steve and I talking and this is stirring me and this is encouraging me, then, yeah, it’s for the Christian husband who wants to find the next level and really build a family culture that he’s excited about. Awesome. All you have to do, gang, just click on the link below.

November 30, thursday 03:00 p. m Eastern. Absolutely free training with John. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg, of the amazing stuff that you’re going to get in that free training. John, thank you so much for being with us. I look forward to seeing you on the 30th. It’s going to be good. Thank you. You bet. God bless, brother. God bless you. .