Speaker 0 00:00 Hey folks, it's good to be back on the unfeigned Christianity podcast. Again. The intro music is done by my friend Cory Steiner, who has recently produced his first professionally recorded music album. The good winds at the last, which you can
[email protected]. Wow. It has been a crazy month. We moved actually since the last episode that I've done on here. I did not expect that after starting the podcast, just two episodes then I would do a big move. Um, our family has been living in a two bedroom apartment in northeast La for two years now actually. And about a year into it we felt like, boy with three boys, we need more space. There is no not really any yard space. There are place for them to play. And so we started looking last summer, summer of 2018 sort of looking for a house and just could not find anything. Um, a lot of the big issue here in La is the price.
Speaker 0 01:08 Obviously it's very expensive. And then, uh, very strict for what they require as far as your income to be provable on paper and everything. And I am self-employed in all my work and so it's harder to prove that, especially since we had just moved from being overseas where we were supported and then we didn't need as much. We had very low income anyways. All of that people would deny us up and down. And finally this summer we would show up at a place to look at and they'd say, all of you are gonna live here, like a two or three bedroom house. And, and we were getting just kinda sick and tired of it. Like, what, why won't you let us apply? You haven't even seen, you haven't even given us a chance yet. Anyways, we had decided that, well, it just is clear. Obviously God does not want us to live or to move to a new place.
Speaker 0 02:02 And um, so we started doing some painting and remodeling of our apartment just to make it a little more homey and so forth. And then the next week, a house in our price range came up with both front and back yard space. And it was just crazy. We went and looked at it that the owner showed up, which is very rare. Usually it's a management company. And he really liked us, found out on a handyman and he liked that cause the house was actually kinda crappy. It needs some things fixed up and, but it just, it fit our needs. We liked it. We look forward to it. We applied, we got it. And yeah, literally it was in like two to three days we had a house. And so we, uh, repainted the whole house, did some other things, um, to get it ready and then moved.
Speaker 0 02:51 And then we had a camping trip and you'll semeny national park, which we had planned for several months ago and it's just been a crazy month. And that's why all of this, I had planned to publish episodes biweekly. I might have to say bimonthly. No, it won't be that long in between. But that's why everything just got kind of delayed and it's good to be back with you all again. Today's guest is a long time family friend and a casual mentor of mine, Merle Burkholder Morell works as staff pastor for believers fellowship in northern Ontario and he's also the administrator of open hands ministries, which is a ministry that helps people in majority world nations develop saving groups so they can become more financially independent and stable. It's a really neat ministry. I haven't seen it firsthand, but I have heard testimonies of people who are working in those countries who have saving groups like this and it's, it's I think perhaps one of the most effective ways we from nations, from economies that are a little more wealthy, a little more, have a little more resources available that we can actually use our resources to help.
Speaker 0 04:09 Now I, as I understand it, I don't think open hands uses money from other people. They just trained the local group how to save their own money and to keep each other accountable and so they just kind of provide the teaching, the training, the oversight. I believe that's how it works. Um, some like microfinancing groups would, would take a little bit of money from the West or wherever people are donating from and use that to start the savings groups, which is okay, but there's a lot of damage that can be done when you just ship money from a wealthy nation to a a not as wealthy nation. That's not actually what people necessarily need, especially because in sometimes in those countries they don't need lots of money. They just need to learn how to channel the resources they have, um, so that they can, uh, save up for things they need.
Speaker 0 05:02 Um, so that they're, it's not hand to mouth. They don't work all day for the food that day or, um, even just to be able to provide better water development and so forth in those nations. Um, so I, I love this type of ministry. Um, that mural is administrator of and works with. We don't talk about that on today's podcast today we discuss men taking personal responsibility for their sexuality. In my last episode, I interviewed Treaty Metzger and we discussed sexual abuse. That happens within the church even. And how we as a church can become safer place for those who have been abused. Maybe even for those who are abusing because this stuff happens right in our midst. And part of that, I believe is us as men beginning to take personal responsibility, our sexuality. I had a call with Marel, um, and some other brothers earlier and we were discussing this thing, the, the issue of sexual abuse in church.
Speaker 0 06:10 And he just shared how he has a burden for us as men taking responsibility for our own sexuality. That's where it all starts. And I just said, hey, would you mind coming on the podcast and talking about that? I actually have him, I had interviewed him for a course that I have online, which you can go to my website and discover more about that. But then when we had set the date for that, I said, hey, can we just keep it on longer and, and do this podcast? So I'm grateful that he obliged me in that
Speaker 0 06:42 it can be easy for us as men to shift blame for our sexual failures, our sexual tendencies. We can shift that blame outside of ourselves to other forces. Um, maybe, maybe it's women, maybe it's culture. Whatever we use kind of put the blame on, but that only leads to more issues solving sexual sin, whether it's addictions, abuse, whatever it is that starts when you and I begin to take personal responsibility for our sexuality. Obviously women need to take personal responsibility for their sexuality as well, but the issue is we as men, right? Right now there's the buck stops here or it starts here like something a new legacy begins right now. If you're listening to this podcast, the new legacy can begin with you and I today when we take ownership of our sexuality. Many of you may know that I've written a book on this topic, live free, making sense of male sexuality.
Speaker 0 07:50 It's a conversation with the reader about my journey into sexual sin and finding freedom from it, as well as what it means to live out healthy male sexuality. Just exploring that further. You can find the
[email protected] book.com and if you're curious if this would be a good book for you, even if you're a lady, I've had ladies read it and say it's really good for them to, although it is totally aimed and from a male perspective, but if you're curious about it, you're just not sure you want to pay for the book or whatever. You can go to my website and get four free chapters on my website absolutely free. You just put your email in and then I automatically send you four free chapters. Just go to Asher witmer.com and you'll see right away the option to receive the four free chapters of live free making sense of Neil's sexuality. There are 28 chapters in the book.
Speaker 2 08:46 Gives a good perspective of whether this book is for you. And now I am excited to share with you my conversation moral burclover
Speaker 3 08:56 on men taking personal responsibility where their sexuality <inaudible>.
Speaker 2 09:17 Yeah. Well thanks Mario for being here with us. I, uh, have recently started a podcast unfeigned Christianity and basically just we talk, excuse me, we talk about the issues that test the genuineness or sincerity of our faith and kind of in planning and thinking about the podcast. While I was doing that, the whole situation with Cam, um, and the, the sexual abuse that was happening in Haiti came to a surface kind of erupted. And so Kinda the first issue that I've been discussing is sexual abuse and sexual sin. I had a conversation with Trudy Metzker, um, in the first episode, or actually there's the second episode that I did on the podcast and now you're here for the third episode. You're my second guest. Glad to have you on. I, we have had dialogue about, we had some dialog about the, the Cam situation. I know you work in Haiti with open hands ministries, but then we've also had some dialogue about just sexual abuse in Church and, and sexual sin and how to deal with that.
Speaker 2 10:34 And so I, I just love to talk with you about how the church can deal with sexual abuse inside itself. It's kind of a, an ugly topic to discuss in a sense because here we are as a church trying to live holy lives, trying to exemplify Christ in our lives and in our relationships with each other. But then there are, there are times where we don't, and not only times where we fail, but where we completely violate one another. And so it's really tough conversation to have, but I think it's important that we, we do have that. We do talk about it. You in one of our conversations about this, you mentioned your burden for men to take responsibility for their sexuality. Would you want to just kind of share a little bit what, what you mean by that and how that would look in a individual setting in an individual life?
Speaker 4 11:40 Yeah. I think that um, sexuality is so powerful because it connects with
Speaker 4 11:48 a US physically and there's the emotional intimacy component to it and there's a spiritual component to it because marriage is the representation of the relationship between Christ and the church. And so, and sexuality and sex, the sexual experience is part of the expression of that intimacy in marriage. And so I think that it's a very, very powerful thing. And we, we haven't done a very good job historically of, uh, dealing with it openly and, and just talking about sexuality in our families and in our churches. And so I think that as we move into adolescence all of a sudden and into puberty, all of a sudden we start to experience this powerful drive in this powerful desire that we haven't been coached or mentored on what to do with and how to handle. And so we may have had some general talks about mechanics of sexuality and sort of how it works and, and what happens and, and how our bodies changed, but, but real honest, into intergenerational conversations about how do you, how do you handle your sexuality successfully?
Speaker 4 13:20 And then how do we as men view women? And, um, and so that, and I think that what makes it even more challenging today is that when I was a teenager, probably we would say, well, 99% of young men have masturbated. The other 1% are liars. And, and, um, but today it's more, 99% of men have dabbled, at least dabbled in pornography and the other 1% are liars. And so then the way pornography distorts sexuality and distorts our view of women is just damaging, um, to, to us as, as men. And so I don't think we have given many tools or many much coaching in what to do and how to, how to handle. And I think we've
Speaker 4 14:28 in some ways caved into our society's obsession with sex and sexuality into where we've kind of accepted, well, this is what men do and, and, um, you know, they can't help themselves. And, and, and I think even for my parents and my grandparents, there was probably some thinking that it's the girlfriend, it's the wife who has to make sure, set the boundaries and, and have physical, uh, physical relationship and dating. And then there's kind of a, uh, understanding a feeling that the wife is there to meet the husband's sexual desires. And, and I think we bought into that.
Speaker 6 15:22 Okay.
Speaker 4 15:22 So thinking some, and so we can tend to excuse men. And I think that's why the economy of what you're talking about when women are involved in pornography kind of comes up because really, well women shouldn't, like, they know that they're the controllers. So if they get messed up, man, we're all in trouble. And, and, but then for men it's sort of like, well, yeah, we're, you know, we were sort of allowed or it's, it's not that abnormal. Um, and I just think that, uh, for us functioning society, there has to be a focus on the protection of the most vulnerable. And that's first of all, the children
Speaker 6 16:08 and <inaudible>
Speaker 4 16:11 a society that doesn't, does it protect its children is, uh, is not gonna. It's not going to survive. It's not gonna function well. And, uh, and I think that, um, as, um, infants, there's a physiological design where the mother, nurses, the child and the mother, um, gives primary care to that infant child. The father is not absent. He's not uninvolved, but there are just things that the father cannot do for that child.
Speaker 6 16:53 Hmm.
Speaker 4 16:55 Laura, as a child moves into toward adulthood, the role of the father becomes, uh, changes and becomes different. And, um, um, and so there we as men, our focus, the focus of our life ought to be not how do I get what I want from those who are weaker than I or those who are more vulnerable than I help? How can I somehow utilize them or subject them to where they serve my desires? But how can I give of myself to meet their needs and to care for them and to protect
Speaker 6 17:42 them?
Speaker 4 17:44 And so I think that the protection of children and then the protection of women, it is a, is so important and it's so, uh, reflective of the protection of a father, God over us as human beings. And, um, so I as a man, I can't pawn off the responsibility for my sexuality and dealing with my sexuality, my struggles with sexuality or not my wife's problem. Uh, that is the last thing I should be doing is putting a burden on her because I'm struggling with my sexual desires. I need men who can be around me, who can coach me, who can, uh, talk to me about the things that I'm experiencing and help me to know how to deal with those things and how to be so that I can come into my relationship with my wife from a position of security and a position of strength.
Speaker 4 18:58 Because if sexuality in our marriage simply becomes her serving me and, and it's all about what I want and then where's, where's, where's the mutual intimacy in that and where it's just a distortion. And I think when we kind of say, well, and, and I'm not, I, I don't want this to be misunderstood. I'm not against modesty, but, but when we say that women need to be modest so that we as men can control our desires, I think it's, I think it's a contortion of what ought to be. I mean, we can be in a faith community and although women dress modestly in, but we're going as we're going to meet women who don't, and we live in a highly sexualized society. And so we can't make recluses of ourself. And, and the problem is that even in, even within very tight knit communities where there's a lot of modesty, there's stills sexual sinners, it doesn't, the modesty wallets, it's, uh, it's important and it's what God wants.
Speaker 4 20:19 It's, it's not the solution to sexual sin. And so as a man, I need to become a safe male that women and children can know that they're going to be secure around me. I'm not going to take advantage of them. I'm not going to be doing things that are inappropriate and I am going to manage my, my sexuality and take responsibility for it. It's my problem. It's my issue. Yeah. And I need to deal with it. And if I'm not doing it well, I need to find help and take responsibility for, for finding that help.
Speaker 2 21:01 Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's a couple things that I think about in light of that. Um, I think of instances of sexual abuse or, um, you know, I don't know Jeremiah dry amass story, so I'm not going to try to project into that. But in light of that, I had to think about a guy, if I was in that position or if I was someone that most abusers, I don't have any hard statistics on this, but most abusers have often been abused before themselves or struggling with a huge sense of confusion, sexual confusion in their own identity and so forth. And so what you said earlier about intergenerational teaching, or I forget how you worded it, but, um, about sexuality seems so huge. Like what, what if there was places that these men, any one of us who struggle with a sans or struggle with temptation that we could go and talk to and, or, or even before we have to go and talk, but if there was just training and engagement, what, let's take a church setting or a, um, you, you work as a, a mission staff pastor for believers fellowship mission, um, as a pastor, how can, as men in the church, just as leaders, how can we begin creating an environment or an atmosphere where that
Speaker 6 22:48 <inaudible>
Speaker 2 22:49 teaching or training is happening at an, at an regular, ongoing level? Does that make sense? What I'm asking. Sure.
Speaker 4 22:58 Yeah. I think part of it is, um,
Speaker 4 23:03 having open conversations and taking the secrecy away from it because secrets are powerful. And so if something is hush hush and we naturally want to know, well, what's that about? And, and if we feel like something's being covered over or something is, you know, somebody didn't tell me the whole truth. And, and so when we kind of have these surface conversations about sexuality, but everybody knows their consents, that there's more to the story than theirs, it becomes almost become an obsession or a fascination with, well, what's this about? And then there's all the perversions of sexuality and I think you're right in that, uh, often people who are abusers have been abused. It, it gets, um, it gets passed on. But there comes a point where as growing in adulthood, none of us had a perfect home. None of us had a perfect experience. So there comes a point where we have to look at our lives and say, I didn't choose these things.
Speaker 4 24:12 Um, God allowed them for some reason. I don't know why. And, but here they are. This has been my life story up to this point, what am I going to do with it? And, and honesty and dealing with those things rather than saying, well, I'm a damaged person and, you know, I was abused. And so I, you know, that's what caused, and I think for myself, there are things about my story that I don't, didn't understand. And, and you know, I looked at myself as a 14 year old and wonder why was I that 14 year old? What, what? And, and I think as I pursued some of that and thought about some of my childhood experiences, there was a point, and just in conversation with other men and telling my life story to other men, there came a point where I said, you know, I think I understand that 14 year old that I was in and I'm sad about that, but, but look at what, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 25:19 God, God can help me in spite of those things that I didn't choose to be a man of character and a man of integrity. And, and, uh, so I think in the church, but back to your question about what we can do in the church community, I think there's something about having conversations about our life stories and about how we struggled and I know you wrote your story and I think that's incredibly helpful. And just the transparency, bringing it out in the open and saying, this is what I experienced and this is what happened to me and this is how I dealt with it. Then that's very informative and it takes the secrecy away and then it becomes, there's less of a tendency for it to become an obsession.
Speaker 7 26:12 <inaudible>
Speaker 2 26:13 yeah. And I think obviously it could be most powerful if that type of conversation happened father to son, but even some fathers are maybe never had that. And so that's why I was asking edit at a church wide level. Like how do we create, um, and even even some fathers who want to have that conversation with his son, their son might be struggling with something that's kind of unique to their store. Like it's not the same or it's not. And as you said, sharing each other's stories kind of help. I know for myself it was hearing, it's not like one person's story. Mine matched up perfectly with that. And what helps them perfectly helped me, but hearing multiple different stories, um,
Speaker 4 27:06 but just hearing somebody 20 years older than me saying I struggled or I'm still struggling and yeah, I re I remember some men that y I had a man when I was in my late teens. I had a man that worked in the same business that I did and he would take me out for lunch and he was a salesman. He was on the road and he would talk to me about encounters he had with women and how he felt and, and what he did. And, and I was 19 and he was 40 and I just, it was so helpful to me. Uh, and in some ways it was more powerful than if my dad had sat me down and said, okay, like, let's have this talk. And, and so I think, I think, I think even within the church, there are things that we can hear from other people's parents.
Speaker 4 28:10 And so as a community of men, we help each other's children and, and if we're honest about what I'm facing and what's happening with me, that's tremendously informative for young men, young, younger men to know. And I think one of the things, one of the reasons why people don't talk about it more is because we're all, we all kind of think we're abnormal and, and we all are afraid, nobody else is experiencing this. And if I start talking about what I'm experiencing, I'm going to get rejected. And, and, and so that openness, and I know there were times when I talked to my wife about struggles I was having and saying, you know, I think there's something wrong with me and, and you know, everything will be, we'll go talk to other men. Like is what you experienced it very different from what other men are experiencing. And you need to find out. Like I can't tell you whether you're normal. Like you're not going to find that out for women. Like you need to be talking to men. And, and then when I talked to men and I find out now we're all pretty much in the same boat. So, um, so then we can engage in the struggle together and encourage each other and talk, help each other. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 29:31 I'd like to come back to that, maybe it a little bit as far as when when we share or when we discover that someone or ourselves is involved in something big like, like whether it's addicted to pornography and not finding freedom or whether it's something violating a child. Before we go there though, I want to go back to you. You mentioned the, the power, how important it is that we as men. Uh, just second. Hello.
Speaker 8 30:08 Awesome.
Speaker 2 30:11 Okay. Yeah, I'm trying to think what I was talking about. Oh, you were saying when there's a case of sexual abuse. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, um, one, one thing that in of this whole thing with Cam, something that I've personally been thinking about a lot because I think it brings to light the, the how often sexual abuse gets covered up in our, in conservative Anabaptist churches. And, and I say that not entirely just based on this one account, but just from hearing, having heard other stories before. And a theme that often comes through is the church had like, um, some people that go to our church right now here in la, we're talking about a previous church they went to, had they're dealing with, excuse me, dealing with a, a guy who had molested another younger girl I think in the church. And um, they feel the church is handling it really well.
Speaker 2 31:26 But what has shocked them is they knew that this guy struggled with some moral failures, but they had no clue it meant sexual abuse. And so that seems to be a common theme kind of talking about it as moral failures, which clearly it is a moral failure, but it's much more than that. There's even legal implications that are involved in something like this. And what, how do, how do, how does the Brotherhood, the church, how do you work with a man you, you want to see him walk in victory. You don't want to just, you want to extend grace to him because that's what we're called to as Christians. And yet this isn't just a moral failure either. Right? And how, how, how should a church, how should a brotherhood deal with that is they're faced with and by brotherhood that that might be foreign to some of my audience. But that basically referring to the church body and the choir, I think it's important to have, um,
Speaker 4 32:40 uh, child protection and sexual ethics policy so that we know in advance when something happens, what we're going to do and the person involved knows what to expect. So then you're not on the fly trying to figure out what, what should we be doing? And it also gets detached from whose relative is this and how, how is it going to affect the influence of a family in the church or whatever. Like you have, you have a policy laid out, this is, this is what we will do. And then it's important to follow that policy so that it actually gets carried out. And I think that the, um, requirements for reporting vary from state to state. And from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And so we need to know what those are and what we're required to report and do, who it gets to whom it gets reported to.
Speaker 4 33:47 Um, but then within the body of the church, I think the membership has, um, should know the basic outline. Not all the gory details, but they should know the kind of the nature of the offense. Um, because if we're going to seek forgiveness and restoration, we need to know what's being forgiven and what, where we're, what the starting point is for restoration and restoration doesn't mean forgiveness doesn't mean that we act as if this never happened. And trust and forgiveness are two different, two different things. And when Joseph's brothers came back to him in Egypt, when they came to him in Egypt, he didn't automatically say, oh, so great to see you guys. Don't worry about it. You know, you guys sold me about no problem. You know, we all love each other and I forgive you. He put them through some tests to see how they would treat Benjamin.
Speaker 4 35:00 And I kind of think if they would have treated Benjamin the same way they treated him, if, when he was going to keep Benjamin as a slave and send the rest of them home, if they would have said, okay, well, fine, sure. And walked away, I think his response to them would have been different than when, you know, they come and say, please, like let me stay here and send him home. And so I think there's, I think, I think trust, restoration is, is a different, uh, a different thing than, than, uh, than forgiveness them. Yeah. So I think that in order for the church to know what the path to rebuilding trust is, they have to know at least, yeah. The basic details of what the offense was. Yeah. And Yeah. So,
Speaker 2 35:55 yeah. And it seems like that if, if a leadership of a church doesn't expose the basic details, honestly, it doesn't have to be the gory details, but more than just moral failures, like right. If they don't communicate the gravity of the sin or the, uh, violation and then later the body people in the body find out what it was. It, it does, could it possibly create some distrust in the lead, even if the leadership was sincere, not trying to hoodwink the body or whatever. It kind of creates some distrust that just being fairly vulnerable and open from the get go would, would have avoided.
Speaker 4 36:48 Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And I have been involved in a couple of situations and I don't feel like I've handled all of them really, really well. And I think that, um, I think that, um, what you're saying there is very true. And, and if, if people have a sense that things were hidden from us or are we weren't told, then that comes back later and destroys trust. And I, I particularly in one situation I would ever regrets of, um, how it was handled.
Speaker 2 37:32 Mm hmm. Yeah. I know you talking about situations where you feel you have mishandled. I know like my initial response to the Cam thing that obviously there was a lot of emotion and some people extremely emotional against cam just horrified by this. Some people were extremely emotional against Trudy Metzger who is the blogger and author who brought it to light. And um, I was
Speaker 8 38:05 okay
Speaker 2 38:07 the day that it Kinda came to surface, I was, the thing I kept thinking about was, oh, one of the things people were just appalled by as if cam knew this for so long, why, why are they just now coming? Or why are they, why haven't they been up front about it? And I was thinking try to put myself in a seat if I was in leadership. Obviously I've never been
Speaker 8 38:33 okay
Speaker 2 38:33 on a board of a, of a ministry at that scale. But like I know there's a lot of, of um, it can be easy if you've never been in leadership to look at leaders in and think they're just self protecting or trying to protect the organization or, or themselves. And there's more to this story. Like there's more, you know, to, to figure out a response that's appropriate. That's, that deals with the issue while also caring for other people in the organization or whatever. Um, so I was trying to rationalize through all that and I think there still needs to be plenty of grace given for leaders. But, um, you were a huge part. I knew you had done work in Haiti with open hands ministries. Um, and so I had emailed you just to validate this. I had some people responding to me wondering if I had any other outside of treating Medsker, any, um, sources, people that would validate these stories.
Speaker 2 39:41 And uh, and you were the one that told me that the, yeah, there was stuff going on back to, to 2012 or whatever. And I think like it can be easy to become very suspicious of any leadership, um, to kind of react in a way that, that um, eh, that doesn't trust leadership or doesn't trust passers or authority. And I think as I understood in my conversation with Trudy, I would not have, like, I would have, would not have picked up at all that she has some vendetta against Anabaptist or, um, even cam. But rather she really cares about victims and she wants then their voice to be heard. Um, I think as I observe on social media and so forth, it seems like what I'm talking about, the reaction so forth is kind of a ripple effect of, of all the rest of us who can't believe something like this would happen. I guess my question to you, as someone who's been in leadership roles, um, you, you just mentioned a little bit ago, um, experiences that you feel you, you have regrets on. What, what is inappropriate response for, for people looking on, for people under the leadership and what do leaders need in a time of crisis like this from, from the, the, the greater body of Christ as a whole, but maybe specifically this, the people
Speaker 4 41:33 they're directly leading. Does that question make sense? Yeah, I think there's, I think it's appropriate for people to say, I don't feel like you handled it appropriately. I've, I don't feel like I feeling you. It feels like you didn't tell us the information we should have had. Um hmm. And then I think as leaders, we need to acknowledge our own failures in communication and our own failures in whatever aspect of the whole thing it is, and have the humility to say, well, I made a mistake and I take responsibility for that mistake. Um, so I think that goes a long way. I think in the situation with, um, Cam, I was in Haiti over the time of the trial. I wasn't at the trial, but, um, I was in Haiti at the time. And so the missionaries there were talking about it and one missionary told me, you know, in the mission community here, and there's this divide of people who feel like, well, we should never have anything to do with cam again and we shouldn't, you know, we should just cut ourselves off from them. And, and then other people who say, no, we need to defend cam and try to protect them. And, and he was, he was saying, do I have to choose that or one of those sides or am I able to say, okay, they made some mistakes, but it shouldn't be the end of Cam in Haiti. And how can I be part of helping to go from here,
Speaker 6 43:30 okay.
Speaker 4 43:30 And, and bring about what help cam to figure out what they should do and how they should respond and how to move forward in a positive way. So yeah, and I think in the church, you know, we can so quickly alienated into two camps where we're against the leaders and in some ways we are against the leaders. Then it's sort of like, okay, we're really standing up for the victims and, and maybe everybody needs a little help to figure out this is a crisis and maybe everybody needs a little help to know how do we pull together and, and bring something constructive and something that's something that's going to help to avoid this kind of thing from happening again that we all, we all learn from it. And I know
Speaker 6 44:21 <inaudible>
Speaker 4 44:22 I know some of the men at Cam and I, I they are not disreputable men and they are are honorable men and I'm sure, I'm sure they, they look back on it with regrets and so to destroy them or to destroy their characters, I just, yeah, I just, I just think we want to make it a learning experience and yeah. Build something that's stronger together.
Speaker 2 44:57 Yeah. I think it's so important to remember that something like this is a crisis and so everybody involved is going to, is going to be entering territory or where they didn't plan for. Right. I think, I think it's been a wake up call and maybe it's overdue, long overdue for, um, Anabaptist missions or organizations to have in place. I forget if it was you or somebody else mentioned that a lot. There are a lot of other Anabaptist ministries who are now trying to draw what is their policy, what is it? Right. Um, and so it sad that that, you know, cam gets to be the Guinea pig or the
Speaker 9 45:45 Oh,
Speaker 2 45:48 of all of that. But, and do acknowledge the need for even leaders to have graces not at all to to somehow justify or say that they have no, they should face no consequences. Um, right. That's their reactions. Yeah. Yeah. But maybe, um, just to kind of wrap up our conversation here, I'd like to go back this whole conversation, um, about sexual abuse especially, but even even when we're having a conversation about taking responsibility for our sexuality, it happens as children. I'm learning who I am as a a guy or a girl. Um, and the, you mentioned earlier that we as men are to be protectors of the vulnerable that I think of like a, a men, the stereotype is men are aggressive and kind of, you know, the hunters like loud noises out there in your face. That's obviously not true of every guy. But our sex drive kind of drives us to be aggressive is a word and know what that looks in an unhealthy way is when a man fulfilling his sexual pleasures, whether it's abusing 30 young boys or just having sex with many different women are just consuming all kinds of pornography or even just habitual masturbation.
Speaker 2 47:28 Um, all that is, is our aggression be released in a selfish way, in a healthy way. It would be using that aggression to be the protector, to be the the man caring for children. If it's me as a father, caring for my children, my wife, um, if I'm not married or don't have a family, I'm, I'm caring for the vulnerable around me. What, what does that look like? Or how can we as men be calm protectors in our communities? What is that? What does that look like for the single guy who's 40 years old who doesn't have a family of his own? How do, how do we care for the vulnerable among us, for the children? You and your wife have done a lot of work with, with children. You have fostered several children for at least or more?
Speaker 4 48:33 Um, I think we did fostering for 25 years and I think, I forget they told us how many kids we had in our home over that time, but it was <inaudible>.
Speaker 2 48:43 But yeah, that's what Ryan is. We had four that were with us at longer. Okay. Yeah. Longer period of time, man. Wow. That's crazy. 27 children. Wow. So that's a passion of your guys' life and yeah. Just love to hear some closing thoughts. What it looks like for four men, four guys to be protectors of the vulnerable among us.
Speaker 6 49:10 Yeah.
Speaker 4 49:12 Well I think that, um, our, the drive of our sexual desire to drive of our sexuality is hard inner desire for intimacy. Hmm. And so, um, then for like some people say, well, what about the single man, uh, if he's not supposed to get into pornography and masturbation, like what's he supposed to do? And, and, um, but I think that her sexual drive is, is, um, comes from our inner desire for intimacy. So the, the solution for our sexual desires is real connection with real people. And where we are having conversations, um, in healthy ways, uh, that really matter. And so I think our, for some of us as men, we're so aggressive and so driven that if we didn't have the sexual desire, we wouldn't pursue intimacy. We would, we just kind of go about our lives and the loners. But it drives us to relationship and intimacy.
Speaker 4 50:29 And so I think having that in healthy ways is important. And then there are way more children in the world than there are healthy parents. And so there's so many opportunities for men to demonstrate healthy adult male relationships with children in the context of the church. It's ministry programs, um, just uh, in, in, um, in relating to, um, and I always say, you know, look for the, everybody's watching somebody who's 10 years older than them or more. And so as you go about your life, watch for the boy or the younger man who kind of hangs around you in group settings and, and wants to talk, be in the group you're in and like intentionally tune into those people and, and take them with you, do stuff with it. And then, and spend time with them. But again, it has to be in ways that are, that are healthy and where it doesn't, doesn't become inappropriate.
Speaker 2 51:44 Yeah. Yeah. Well thanks. Thanks for talking about this. Is that right? Any closing remarks? Anything you'd like to say to a broader audience in light of the conversation on sexuality and dealing with sexual sin and church and so forth?
Speaker 4 52:03 I think the combination of the secrecy about sexuality and our past and the highly sexualized society we live in creates a dynamics for it being one of the greatest challenges we have in, in this period of time. <inaudible>
Speaker 2 52:20 yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you Merle for coming on. You are, I always appreciate talking with you and hearing your perspective, your input into my life and into issues that we face in our everyday lives. And um, one thing I love about you and I love, I think it's fairly typical about men your age is the, the wisdom and the knowledge comes through like real life stories and just kinda talking about your own walk with God. And, and it's not so much just theory, but um, or an actual kind of already fleshed out or having experienced that. And so thank you for taking the time to, to share that with us. I always look forward to talking to you. The feeling is mutual.
Speaker 3 53:16 <inaudible>.
