Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey friends, It's as Whitmer with Unpayed Christianity. I am starting something new this month, November of 2022, marks the four year anniversary of my book, Live Free Making Sense of Male Sexuality. Now, there's a few things that I'm excited to announce. Um, one is that we are in the process of developing a video series that accompanies this book. It it's actually standalone. Um, it's gonna be completely separate from the book, but if you're, if you've read the book and you would love to take a small group through it and kind of have it be a way of helping other people find healing from their sexual struggles, sexual addictions, and so forth, then the, the small group study will be a great resource for that. So stay tuned. It probably won't be, uh, produced in the, maybe in the next year, hopefully. We'll see. But, um, that's, that's exciting.
Speaker 0 00:00:59 We are actively, I think I've mentioned it, talked about it before. We've had some starts on the project, but, um, this is kicking into gear. We are going forward with it. I've heard a lot of feedback from different pastors and just men who work with younger men who long for a video course to, to go with it. Um, it's just easier to engage. Some guys don't read books. And so I'm excited to bring this resource to you, hopefully in the next 12 months. The other thing I'm excited about, I'm also somewhat embarrassed about, um, perhaps the biggest failure I've had as an author is the audiobook version for this book. And I'm not gonna get into it all here. It's, I had no clue what would go into producing an audiobook, <laugh>, and it's, I've several different times wanted to crawl in a hole because I promised early buyers of the book, a free copy of the audiobook.
Speaker 0 00:02:00 And then it's been one failure after another to get the audiobook produced. I was trying to produce it on Amazon through Audible. I published this through Amazon, and I have decided that I'm, I'm just gonna, I have the tracks. I'm gonna develop my own version of the audiobook. It's not gonna be on Amazon, at least not now, but I'm gonna follow through and get the audiobook available. And so by the end of November, you should be able to access, um, those of you that bought the book as a part of that, that, um, promo way back four years ago. You'll get a free version of it. But then anybody else who wants an audiobook, um, as a part of the membership program to unthink Christianity, you get a free copy of the audiobook. So even if you want to just sign up for a month, get the audiobook, and then discontinue your membership, you can do that.
Speaker 0 00:02:51 I'd love if you, you stay on continually and, and take full advantage of all the resources that, that are on the membership. But I'm totally cool. If you've been waiting for an audiobook and you just want the audiobook, you sign up for that one month, you download the MP3 of the audiobook, and then you have it for your own personal use. Um, that way it's not near as professional as if we were able to produce it through Amazon. And maybe I'll still follow through, but I'm kind of at my wits end. And truthfully, uh, this year we have made a huge move as a family and so forth. And so I really haven't been even attempting to solve the problems that bump that I bumped into with the audiobook until the last couple of weeks here. And I've just been trying to figure out how can I follow through, get the audiobook available, and that's, that's how I'm gonna do it. So you'll, as those of you that bought the book and you were promised the, the, the version of the audiobook, you'll get that, you'll get an email about that and access to it. And then the rest of you, if you would like a version of the audiobook, just become a member of Unveiled Christianity and you'll get access to the audiobook as well.
Speaker 0 00:04:10 The third thing that I'm excited to do is on and announce is on this four year anniversary, I'm gonna start something. Um, and it's, there's various reasons for why I'm doing this. Um, it's, it's one of the most exciting things for me, actually, <laugh>, I was told early on by a man who has done, had years in the public eye, public speaking, um, his, like, this was honestly like one of the things that kind of me as an author, he said, I was talking to him once and he said, Don't let the fact that 20 years from now, you're gonna say it differently, keep you from saying it. Now, I was talking to him at that time about writing a book. I never published that book <laugh>. I never, I never even really wrote it a whole lot, but I was just like taught tell, expressing interest about a book and how I wanted to, to write.
Speaker 0 00:05:09 And I was, I don't, I can't remember if I was 18 or 19 at the time, but I just remember that revolutionized my perspective as an author, as a speaker, as someone who teaches. I think we all deal with this sense of like, who are, we like to say something about anything. Some of us are either naive or arrogant enough to just like share our opinions anyways. But the reality is the farther we go and the more we grow in life, the more uncertain and, and we realize, you know, I don't know everything. And so just because you write a book, especially, it's one thing if you write a story book, right? And you can just tell a cool story. But when you write a book like this that is attempting to help people overcome something, you're kind of suggesting that you know something about this, that you can help people with it.
Speaker 0 00:06:05 And I don't know, like sometimes you get, you feel mixed things about it. Like I have, I have dealt with a lot, I think a lot of Paul, like how he talks about he beats his own body, makes it a slave so that he does not disqualify himself after he has taught. I've thought about that a lot. I dealt with more temptations in, in the area of sexuality during the process of writing and producing this book than I had in a long time, maybe even ever in my life, at least in my marriage. Um, and so the, the devil, especially when we're talking about things of God and faith, I I absolutely believe that there's, there's an enemy who wants to derail us, who wants to make us say, see or not, you know, who you thought you were. Um, and so I've definitely faced that.
Speaker 0 00:06:57 But one thing that has kept me going is, first of all, I've never been the person. I didn't, I didn't like pull myself up by the bootstraps. I wasn't the one who gave myself victory. Jesus has given us victory. And Jesus wants to give you victory to, he wants to give all of us victory. And so that, that's a huge thing, is staying grounded in that. Like, just so Jesus gave me victory. Now I'm writing a book, and all of a sudden I act like I gave myself victory. No, the devil can't thwart that. Jesus gave the victory. Pardon, If you hear my kids just outside the door here, but they're having a fun time, I might bleed through a little bit. So that's, that's one of the things is that I know I have a lot to learn and I know that I'm gonna say it differently as the years go by.
Speaker 0 00:07:50 So that's one aspect. Another aspect is I've done, like I'm in Bible college. I've been in bible college for five years out. It's a four year program, but with a family and working full time and everything, it's, it's been taking some time to get through it. But one of the things like the more I'm in it, the more we do like academic study and reviewing like other people's works and, and we'll read a book and then we'll, we'll interact with it and write papers on it and so forth. And so I've enjoyed even as an author, you know, interacting with other works out there that people have published. And so I might write a review on it, I might interact with it a little bit, and I've gotten some pushback to that. People, I don't know if sometimes they feel threatened, like you're attacking the person just because you're critiquing their work.
Speaker 0 00:08:43 And I don't, I've, I've tried to be respectful to the people I've tried to, to give a fair picture of the work of their book. Um, some of the more recent ones that I've done it to is, um, Emerson, Edgar Rich's book, Love and Respect, as well as I also did it to Voie Baum's Book Fault Lines. And there's, there's some other books that I've done. It. I, I'd have to go back through my blog to see who all I've, I've reviewed and, and written on, um, I, as a part of the membership, I know I've, I've reviewed different, uh, resources, maybe not even a book, but it might be some sort of resource and my intent in something like that, it's not attacking, it's reviewing, I think. So, so we all know, like when we're talking about authors and books and everything, like we all say, This is not the Bible.
Speaker 0 00:09:41 This is not scripture, Right? Well then why do we feel threatened when we're critiquing? We're bantering talking it about, And, and so like, if, if the book really helped you, that's great, that's fine. That doesn't mean it's a perfect book, right? And so I thought it was like, you know, I should write a review of my own book, critique my own book, just to give an example of like, Hey, y'all should be doing this. Even to me now, it's, it's rough. Like there are some principles we wanna follow when we're critiquing other people's works. One, we wanna be respectful. The other thing is we want to do good literature study. And some people don't. Some people like yank words or sentences or quotes way outta context and claim that the author is saying something that they're, they're actually not like a, a fair study of the book would indicate that they're not saying that.
Speaker 0 00:10:38 In some cases they're saying the exact opposite. And some people, we don't realize as readers how much, how many assumptions we bring to a work, whether it's a blog article, whether it's a book, whether it's, you know, whatever it is. But readers, we, we bring, we have a worldview, we have a framework that we're bringing, and the author is also working from a context and from a worldview. And so there's a lot of kind of analyzing, or deconstructing you could say of like, what assumptions am I bringing to this work? That it may not be exactly fair to assume that the author's saying this. Um, but then the other thing is like working with what's there, like what they said, Let's, let's work with it and let's allow it to say things or not say things. Um, depending on, you know, what we're critiquing or analyzing.
Speaker 0 00:11:33 So we wanna be respectful. We wanna paint a fair picture of what the message actually is saying. That's, that's something I've learned a lot in academic studies is learn how to articulate. Let's say I'm, I'm writing a persuasive essay, or I'm trying to refute something. I need to, for that to be meaningful and good and get a good grade on that. I need to be able to articulate well the argument of my opponent. And so sometimes we just try to make the opponent look ridiculous. And there's a lot of people, we see it done in politics, we see it done in primetime news and so forth. Talk show host and stuff. It's like, make the other person look ridiculous. That brings a lot of fanfare. There's fireworks and people kinda like to see a boxing match back and forth. Well, that's not, that's not how to do a good review, a good critique.
Speaker 0 00:12:24 Like we want to give a fair representation of the other side and then we'll present why we disagree with that or why we think it's not a proper view or whatever. Now, I do think in some of my own writing, one of the way areas where I have lacked is I jump too quickly to my review without giving that full fair representation of what the author is saying. I think of Emerson Edrich, I think his book, my review of that is similar. Like, I kind of dived in assuming that a lot of my readers knew what Emerson was talking about. And so then I dived into my analysis of it. Whereas I think it would've been better to present kind of this is the crux of what he is saying and this is why he's saying that, and then interact with it more. Um, but I just thought, just to kinda show that, first of all, when I write a review of somebody, I don't, I'm not sitting here thinking I know better than you, so I'm gonna critique this.
Speaker 0 00:13:26 No, I'm sitting there saying, this is how we should interact with large as a larger conversation. So when you're trying to, to overcome lust, when you're trying to solve your struggle with lust, like take this book and interact with it, with yourself, with other people in your community, but also with other books on the subject. Like this is not, I'm not gonna promote this as like the end all be all of, of making sense of male sexuality or overcoming lust. In fact, there are a couple books written since publishing my book that if they, if they had been published before I published, I don't know if I would've written the book because there's so much in, in many ways I feel like there's so much better. Um, but I still am confident you'll receive a lot of help from this book. I would not have published it otherwise.
Speaker 0 00:14:21 Um, but there are things in this book that four years later, I would say differently. And so I thought, well, I'm gonna do a review because 20 years from now, even after doing a review of this book, I would say it differently. I would put it differently at this juncture. I don't know that it's enough that I would make a revision or do a new version of the book. Um, so here's the plan. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take 20 days starting on November 4th. I'm gonna take 20 days, and this will take us up to Black Friday, I believe, Um, because I'm gonna release, uh, a really good deal for Black Friday, kind of, well, it takes us up to like the 23rd, 24th of Thurs of before Black Friday. And then I'll run a deal for fi about five days on Amazon where you can get this book or the Kindle version ridiculously cheap as well as that's when I'll open up for the audiobook and you could access the audiobook for, for really good deal.
Speaker 0 00:15:33 Um, so <laugh>, it is a bit of a promo. I'm reviewing it. I would say some things differently. So you're gonna, you're gonna get firsthand like what I would say differently, but I do not anticipate that I would say, Ooh, I I should not be selling this book anymore, <laugh>. There's just things I would maybe add to it or, you know, future works that I plan to expound on. And I knew when I published this, I knew that it would be that way. Like I knew there would be more, there's more that could be said. Um, there, there are some things though that as I read through it, so it's been, it's been at least two years, maybe closer to four years since I've read through it. I, I read through it once after I published it. So I published it four years ago. So it's probably been about three years since I read through it completely.
Speaker 0 00:16:23 I'm very familiar with the content, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna be listening to it to make sure I'm listening to the audio files that I developed four years ago, just to make sure they're good for you and to get them ready as an audiobook. And as I listen to it, I'm going to review it and I'm gonna write daily articles. I'll publish them on my blog. If you're a subscriber to the blog, I'm gonna create a separate list. If you don't want an email every day, I'll let you sign up. If you do want it, the rest of you, if you don't want an email every day, you'll just rest easy. You'll be fine. I'll just send out my weekly emails, kind of summarizing, giving you access to 'em. If you wanna go back and watch the reviews, I'm gonna, I'll probably do it via video, kind of talk about it, review it, maybe publish the transcript as well.
Speaker 0 00:17:10 But if you do want to get the daily video drop of my review, what I'm saying, you know, how, what I'm thinking of the chapter as I read through it, some of the chapters are really short. I might bunch a couple, I don't know, they'll just be really short videos I guess. Then go ahead and sign up to click the link below and that'll allow you to sign up to be a part of this journey. It's, it's totally free. Yes, I'm gonna do a promo at the end, A Black Friday deal for live free as well as the audio book will be available by that time. But if you don't wanna, if you get through this review and you're like, Ah, I don't really want the book, that's fine, that's completely fine. But I'm gonna do a review just to show, because there are some things I would say differently.
Speaker 0 00:17:58 There are some things that I have learned based on research that has been done since I worked on this book. Um, and so I think, I think there's, well, so I think I published when I, when I released Live Free, I also created some PDFs that you could download for free if you go to the live free book.com and you get access to further resources and stuff. And I think in one of those PDFs, I have some updated studies available. I also, in some of my blogging over the last four years, I have talked about it as well. I don't, I can't remember right off hand how I phrase it in the book. So it'll be interesting to see, uh, uh, one classic example is that traditionally we have thought, we've talked about how men are aroused by sight and women are aroused by touch or women are aroused by emotional connection.
Speaker 0 00:18:56 It kind of depends what crowd you're in. Um, that, that's been like a, a long stereotype. Well now there's been studies done that shows that actually there are at, you know, at least five components that go into sexual arousal. And it's the same five for men and women. Um, one is sight. And this is where I'm gonna get myself in trouble cause I haven't looked at the study recently cuz I don't know if I can remember all five, but sight familiarity, like how familiar you are with each other, whether or not you're able to follow through on the things you're feeling, like the setting that you're in. Um, touch, touch is also an aspect of arousal. And then the fifth one is not, is one I can't remember, but it's essentially the less familiar you are, the, the more like attractive and pleasing it is to, to your site.
Speaker 0 00:19:57 The more you're in a place in an environment where you could follow through without feel, you know, feelings of guilt or like people looking on or whatever. Um, and maybe there's touch involved going on, like all of those compound to making you feel really aroused. And so I, a classic example I like to use is when, when Teresa and I were dating, and this is getting a little raw here, but like, when we would hold hands if we were in public or around friends, like it was never sexual <laugh>. We didn't, and part of that is because we were in an environment where, hey, like nobody's gonna feel comfortable if we would start kissing. Like it's just not, some people think it's wrong, Like other people would just feel awkward. Like it, we, we weren't gonna start kissing off the hand, but then if we were on a date and we were strolling along the river, it's late at night or something.
Speaker 0 00:20:59 Um, holding hands was really arousing for me. And I think part of that is like we were alone. It was just the two of us. Like we could kiss if we wanted to and nobody would see, nobody, you know, would necessarily have an issue other than that, at the, at the time, like while we were dating Teresa and I didn't want to kiss. Well now as we're married, holding hands isn't, it can become sexual, it can become arousing, but it's not like we hold hands all the time and we're not necessarily sexually aroused. Well, why is that? Because we're way more familiar with each other now. Like then we were just dating now we've been married for 10 years. That's crazy. I still can't believe we have four kids. And so holding hands is, is a show of affection, is just something we do and we're with each other.
Speaker 0 00:21:49 And it, it doesn't spark the sexual arousal necessarily. Like if we want it to, we can go there, we can, we can make it. But that's just an example of how like studies come out and it kind of nuances our perspective, our understanding of how sexuality works. Um, another thing that, like the book doesn't get into at all that if I wrote the book again, I would speak to is people who struggle with same sex attraction. People who face same sex attraction and the com, the complexities that add that adds to living a life of freedom and sexual wholeness. Um, the reason I didn't touch on it was because it's not my story and I don't, I don't want to pretend like it's my story. The reason I would say something or speak to it to a certain degree is that it's, it's become a thing that a lot of us need to at, at the very least, like be aware of.
Speaker 0 00:22:51 And I have had numerous me guys reach out to me who, who are like, Hey, I, I struggle with this and as a result of writing this book, I've had people reach out and, and they're, you know, wonder for advice. And so, you know, I don't know exactly how I would do it. I'm not gonna try to pretend like I, I know how to, you know, if you're dealing with same sex attraction, here's what you should do. Here are the five steps. That's not at all how I would present it, but more just interact with some of my friends' stories, some people I've gotten to know now who, who deal with this and like some of the things that they've learned and are processing through it all. Anyways, I'll start you. I'll tease you a little bit. If you would like to join this journey, go ahead, click the link below, sign up and, and you'll get a daily video. It's not gonna be a long video. Um,
Speaker 1 00:23:46 I'm not gonna give a time limit to it <laugh>, because I always go longer than I expect, but I anticipate like super short, uh, at the most a 10 minute video. Um, but probably try to keep it to two to five minutes, especially at the beginning where the chapters are shorter and where I don't really, it's not like I would say much different. But the first section, so there's a forward by my dad, and then, um, the introduction you could say is if you're wondering whether this book is for you. And, and so the, the design of it, the goal of it was, hey, if you're not sure if this is a book you need or whatever, just read these fu pages. Um, I think it's like 5 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7 pages. Um, and it just kind of gives a, a little bit of a, uh, picture into my journey as well as just the journey at large and, and the things men struggle with.
Speaker 1 00:24:50 One of the things, I just listened to it, so I'm, uh, it's fresh on my mind. And one of the things that I'm really glad I did is in the, in that first section, I framed the whole conversation as a pseudo coup puzzle. So when we're trying to find freedom from sexual addictions, from just maybe lust and sexual struggles, like maybe we're not necessarily addicted, um, it's important that we view resources like this, just bump the camera that we view resources like this as a number in a pseudo coup puzzle. Cuz if you're like me, and this is how I was like, I would read all kinds of books. I would go to all kinds of lengths to, to try to come get free. Like this will fix it for me. I read, I thought I read pretty much every book on the subject that was available at the time, but it didn't necessarily work.
Speaker 1 00:25:54 Like you could read the book, you could apply the things, you could pray the bondage, breaking prayers and it wouldn't necessarily work. And as I found freedom, I look back on all that. I say all of those did give me something, they nudge me further. And if you think of a pseudo coup puzzle, I think, I think the reason why sometimes it feels like something is like, aha, this was the secret, and then you'll share it with somebody else and they'll be like, Yeah, that's not super helpful or whatever is because for you it was the last number in your box. And so now it's like, ah, I I'm freedom. Whereas for them, maybe out of nine numbers that's now the six or the fifth number or whatever. And so it's like, sure, that's great, it's helpful, but it didn't, like there's still other things that it didn't seem to speak to, whatever.
Speaker 1 00:26:43 And so I think it's just super helpful. And the reason I say I'm really glad I did that is because that is probably the number one thing that I hear positively about the book is something along the lines. I really like the way you set it up, set it up as a puzzle, as a pseudo puzzle. Like this isn't the, there's no formula to it. This isn't, this is one stepping stone you could say or whatever. Um, there's a few things that, that are repeated. Like when somebody comes up to me and they're like, Hey, I read your book and this is how it was really helpful, but one of the most repeated ones is definitely the idea of that pseudo puzzle and the frame that framing. And so it's so tempting when you're writing books, helping people to write like a self-help sort of formula.
Speaker 1 00:27:29 As an author who's, who's gone to writer's conferences and has taken a lot of training on how to write, like they, they really emphasize like giving a really simplified plan for people because that draws 'em in and whatever. It's like life, life is really nuanced. And I think some of the reasons like we, we get in trouble. If you look at someone like, yeah, some other options, I'm not gonna name any by name, but, um, and, and years later you look back and see how dangerous their book was, I think it's because they leaned into that, Provide a plan, provide a formula, like make it simple too much. And yes, I'm, I give you a plan, like I give you a path forward. I'm not gonna say it's like the foolproof path forward. Um, I think it'll unlock tremendous healing and freedom in your life.
Speaker 1 00:28:23 Absolutely. I stand by that, but I'm very confident in this message while also acknowledging it. It may not be what you need. Exactly. Um, and, and you know, there's, I can think of at least a dozen other men who have stories of freedom who could write their own books and it would be, it would sound different than mine. Um, and so like I don't want to be blind to the nuance and the complexity of life particularly of an issue like this. So I'm grateful that I framed the whole story. I don't, there's not really in that introduction part, there's not really anything that I would do different that I'm aware of. However, you should read it <laugh> and see if you're like, Hey Asher, why did you say this? Or Wait, what do you mean by this? And that's what I would love this journey to be is if you have a book, pull it back out, um, you know, and read along with me and engage me.
Speaker 1 00:29:20 Ask me questions. If you sign up, subscribe to follow along, I'll put you in a Facebook group and we'll be able to have discussions along the way. Um, I may share some of these videos every now and then on my main Facebook page, but I'll keep just, so if people are really don't want to see that every single day, um, I don't know. I'm thinking about that now as I'm talking, I'm like, well maybe I'll just put it on my Facebook page. Um, I don't really have time to like try to put content on the Facebook page as well as in a private group. So I don't, we'll see how we do it, but if you would like to follow along and be reviewing my book for yourself, you have a perfect opportunity to ask me questions, the author questions firsthand and say, Hey, what do you mean by this?
Speaker 1 00:30:12 Or Hey, I don't agree with this, why'd you say it this way or whatever. Um, go ahead, pull out your book. If you don't have a book, buy a book <laugh>. Although there is a really good deal coming over Black Friday because that's what we do. We do deals, we do discounts over Black Friday. Um, so, uh, if you are close to where I live, I have about a hundred copies here in my office and I could just give you one for cheaper than what you could order it on Amazon. If you're not close, guess you gotta buy on Amazon. So anyways, till next time, God bless.
