ABOUT THIS EPISODE
What if the crisis facing boys and men isn't a lack of rules, but a missing aspiration? A vision not just of what to avoid, but of who to become?
In this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons sits down with author, ordained minister, and New Testament scholar Zachary Wagner ( Director of Programs at the Center for Pastor Theologians, DPhil graduate of the University of Oxford, and co-host of the Pastor Theologians Podcast) to talk about his forthcoming book Men of Virtue: How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World (Brazos Press, May 26, 2026), the follow-up to his 2023 Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality (InterVarsity Press).
Zach lays out a framework he calls three revolutions leading to a fourfold crisis: the Industrial Revolution, which untethered male embodiment from meaning-making; the Sexual Revolution, which reshaped gender roles and intimacy; and the ongoing Technological Revolution, which is accelerating the displacement faster than we can metabolize it. The result is a generation of boys and men casting around for something, anything, to fill the void: parasitic masculinity influencers, martial arts as identity, deaths of despair. What if the answer the Church has been holding all along is the fruit of the Spirit?
Together, Jarrod and Zach explore:
- Why "don't misbehave" is the lowest possible bar, and what an aspirational, virtue-rooted vision of manhood actually looks like
- The legacy of Wild at Heart, purity culture, and Joshua Harris, the good, the bad, and the wreckage left behind
- Richard Reeves's Of Boys and Men and why both left and right finally agree something is wrong
- The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control — as a Christian alternative to neo-Stoic "bro-icism"
- Why organized sports, martial arts, and even fraternities historically emerged as responses to industrial displacement
- The theological scandal of male embodiment, and why disdain for our own bodies isn't piety, it's pathology
- The three things boys and men need from older men: acceptance, aspiration, and delight , including the simple, unfashionable words "I like you."
Zach's hope is straightforward but rare: a vision of masculinity that is distinctly Christian, biblically grounded, embodied, and aspirational, not a culture-war flag, not a list of prohibitions, but participation in the divine nature itself.
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