I'm Writing a Book

I write to you, young men, because you are strong

Please, contain your excitement

I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God abides in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.
- 1 John 2:14

I walked into the cafeteria, like every other day in middle school, and moved towards the clump of friends I sat with before class began. Ryan Turnsen moved aside and motioned for me to come and join the huddle of heads craned together, apparently fixated on something of great importance.

What held the attention of my fellow seventh-graders was a piece of paper that had been folded and crumpled and folded (in an attempt to conceal its contents) down to the size of a piece of gum. By the time Ryan unfolded it, it was textured like a topographical map. On the avocado skin paper was a blurry image. His printer was low on ink (and the image nearly the size of the entire sheet of paper) so the result was a fragmented mess of yellow, pink, and black stripes that—if you squinted—revealed: a naked woman.

We solemnly passed it around the quorum of other perverts like archeologists examining sacred papyri, nodding approvingly, eyes wide, silently mouthing: Nice.

Ryan became a kind of seventh-grade folk hero to the rest of us that day.

When my mother found the piece of paper in my pocket later that night—after Ryan generously shared such a prized possession with me—I was embarrassed, but defiant. Guys look at this stuff, there is nothing weird or wrong about it.

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I’ve always loved writing. In 11th grade, Mrs. Clish, my English teacher pulled me aside by the end of the year and told me that if I didn’t write a book someday, she would hunt me down and force me to.¹ I have written consistently for close to fifteen years, but nearly all of it has been a shouting into the void of Wordpress. But that’s okay, because I genuinely like writing. It brings clarity to my thoughts, creativity to my language, and helps cement ideas more firmly in my mind. As a pastor, those are all helpful practices. But I’ve always aspired to write a book and spare Mrs. Clish the bother of having to track me down and forcing me to at knife point.

Back in February, I got connected with

Rachel Joy Welcher

, an acquisitions editor for Baker Books. She was looking for book proposals that had to do with sexuality from a Biblically orthodox perspective. She asked for a one sentence pitch, and here is what I cranked out:

Sexual sloth: God’s design for sexual desire as an engine to virtue formation (courage, industry, selflessness, curiosity—the character needed to find, pursue, attract, and marry a spouse), set against the cultural forces that pull us into a posture of passivity (fear, risk-averseness, acedia, vanity, lust, porn, technology-addiction, parasocial relationships supplanting face-to-face interaction).

Over the ensuing months, that germ of an idea turned into a full-fledged proposal (after the title “sexual sloth” was dropped because, according to my wife, “ew, that sounds gross”). And while everything I say in the book could be helpful to both sexes, we decided to aim the book specifically at men—young men in particular.

Just a few weeks ago I got the word that Baker accepted my proposal and offered me a contract:

[Right now the working title for the book is Redeeming Men, but it is likely to change as time goes on]

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When I tried to defend my crumpled contraband to my mother so many years ago, I thought ogling women was a kind of rite of passage into manhood. It was a trope I saw in coming-of-age movies: the leg lamp in A Christmas Story, the Playboy in Buzz’s trunk in Home Alone, Wendy Peffercorn in The Sandlot. I had heard my own mother talk about men like they were animals, sniffing the air, controlled by their urges. She fumed over this. But I listened and learned: To be a ‘man’ is to be like that. This isn’t my mother’s fault, of course. It was mine, and the world which normalized and produced all the smut.

The book isn’t just about porn per se, but it is addressing the problem that led me to make porn a normal part of my journey to manhood. I thought what I was doing was normal. My sexual desires seemed to naturally lead me to seek out pornography. I didn’t realize I was actively stepping away from masculinity through my lust.

In a perfect world, a man’s sexual desires would serve as a kind of engine to empower him towards maturity. The unstained stream of desire would push him towards becoming a man of integrity, curiosity, strength, understanding, and self-control. He would know he must become worthy of marriage if he was to follow the course of this desire to its logical conclusion. And in so doing, this desire would lead him to seek out the essential character of a man.

Lust ruins all of that. It circumvents the design. You don’t need to commit or love or trust or provide for a wife; you just need sex.

And while lust remains the same as it was back in my school days, there are new dimensions today. What I saw in seventh grade was prediluvian—we were limited in access by needing a physical object (a tape, magazine) or by stone-age versions of the internet on our PC’s in the family room. Plus, what was depicted was quaint by modern standards.

But today the fountains of the deep have burst forth and young men drown in a flood of pornography that is more graphic, depraved, and easily accessible than anything my fellow seventh-graders could imagine.

What would have happened to us if we had access to infinite, glossy kaleidoscopes of violent sex?

What if we had them on a tiny screen that we could easily access (for free) in private?

And—God help us—what if we could speak directly to the woman (real or AI) on the screen? Practice faux-intimacy when our little brains were most susceptible for the worst kind of impression, so that the hooks sank beyond just the limbic system and into the tender places of relationship and feeling?

We may never have climbed out.

This is a book in response to the masculinity crisis we are facing today. Men are checking out, pushing back, and retreating within—especially when it comes to pursuing relationships and marriage. Young men don’t know what it means to be a man, what to do with their sexual desires, how to talk with women, let alone love and commit to one.

And while some Loud Voices are fighting for cartoonish extremes of what a man should or must be, most young men are uncertain and confused, set in a default of “reaction” and “retreat.” They adopt the posture of passivity: standing back on their heels, waiting for something to happen because doing something is just too hard, too risky, and cratering to super-stimulating experiences (like porn) is just too easy: it is sexual sloth.

There Is a Purpose to Sexual Desire

In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, he describes a man in the grip of lust who is confronted by a flaming spirit, a messenger from God. Lust is represented by a small, sinister lizard perched on the shoulder of the man, whispering wicked dreams and thoughts into his ear. The angel insists that if this man longs to travel into the high country of heaven, the lizard must be killed. The man is terrified; he is certain that if the angel were to kill his lust, it would kill him too. The angel, like a metronome, answers every protest from the man with: “May I kill it?...May I kill it?” In a moment of panicked, uncertain faith, the man yields to the angel’s request, even as he cries out in agony.

The angel lowers his burning hand onto the lizard and breaks its back and tosses it on the grass. The man, who previously was a ghost, solidifies into a real man. But the lizard doesn’t stay dead. It twitches and struggles, and then begins to grow…grow…and grow. Eventually it is transformed into a massive, silvery stallion.

Lust is transformed.

The renewed man then climbs on to this new stallion—a symbol of lust slain and then resurrected into what it always was meant to be—and rides the horse up the mountains, into the very presence of God. The lesson: “Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”²

If a man—by the grace of God, with the help of the Spirit, and the ministry of the local church— day by day kills lust, three things will happen:

1. He will find a “richness and energy of desire which will arise” on the other side that is given by God.

2. This healthy, God-given desire will serve as an engine to drive him into Christ-likeness (sanctification).

3. The more he becomes like Christ, the more eligible for marriage he will become.

I want to cast a vision for what a man can be by using the Cardinal Virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and the Theological Virtues (faith, hope, love) as coordinates. I believe pursuing these seven virtues will both help in the war against lust in particular, and in the pursuit towards Christ-likeness in general. If a man wants to know: what should I be aiming for as a man? these classic virtues serve as a helpful set of goals.

I intend to show how each of these virtues both help a man reject the passivity that saps men of vitality, and also pushes them positively towards a goal of who they are supposed to be. I will then examine how each virtue plays a unique role in the romantic pursuit of a woman towards marriage, and then provide ways in which a man can actively pursue the cultivation of this virtue, right here, right now, regardless of whether he is currently in a relationship or not.

My hope is that this book provides a response to the many young, single men who are persisting in their singleness for less than virtuous reasons. Those who are not remaining single out of a desire to serve Christ a la 1 Cor. 7, but who feel too afraid to approach a woman, too stuck in their porn habit, too lazy to work hard enough to provide, too scared to commit and trust, too confused about how to choose a partner, too content with with the path of least resistance.

I am writing to you, young men, because (as the Apostle John writes) you are strong. You may not know that. You may have not had anyone tell you that you have something to offer the world, but God thinks otherwise. He made you and made you strong for a reason. There is a richness of desire and energy that is congested and latent in you that can overcome the Evil One.

Subscribe to my Substack stay up to date on book news and—please!—pray for me as I undertake this endeavor.

1. That’s the kind of teachers we need today! Willing the issue threats to motivate and encourage!

2. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce