Soiled

I started taking notes for another book. Let me know what you think, I’m for sure the wrong guy to write this one, but I could be persuaded. I always wanted to write a book for new believers about how to avoid sacrificing the wrongs things during the alter call, like your brain, decency, and healthy relationships.

It was going to be a book about what it means to live with Christ in your heart and mind. It would cover things like reading Scripture, singing in church, church in general, new relationships, Christian culture and subculture, science, and relating to people of various other faith backgrounds. Essentially it would have been the first steps of discipleship. Which led to the follow-up book I’m currently working on about Open and Relational Spiritual Formation.

I have so many ideas and so little time because of my job and my commute. If you like any of these ideas, let me know which ones and get your friends to become paid subscribers so that I can write full-time and teach as my hobby.

Ok, here’s the introduction that I wrote a few minutes ago.

Photo by Willy the Wizard on Unsplash

This book exists because the manosphere exists. I would not have written a book for teenage boys, but teenage boys need a book like this, and who better to write it than anyone at all?

I am calling the book Soiled because I was just watching one of my favorite Instagram influencers—sorry I know I am writing to a young audience, but I don’t want to call it IG, that feels to cringy. I can give advice as an old man without pretending that I am the same as you or use the same words. Anyway, that influencer was responding to a gym-bro who was betting that everyone he was about to interview in the gym had shit stains in their underpants.

And they all said things like yes, 100%, of course, all the time. And that’s a problem. Like disease, rash, bacteria, see a doctor kind of problem.

Wiping your butt is not gay, and if it is, be gay! More on gay stuff later. It is not the shame-inducing, fear-mongering stuff Andrew Tate and others are telling you. Ugh, fine, I guess I will elaborate here a little more: some people have made you think that being gay is gross or sinful. And the best I can do is explain why this conversation is NOT black and white like some people would have you believe. Take the word sin for example, sin can be an identity (like all humans are sinners), sin can be a behavior (like you might find in the commandments or Paul’s lists of sins when he writes to the Romans and Corinthians—this will wait until later so that I can have more time to explain whether or not believers and non-believers should read Scripture and if so, how to read it through all of the contradictions, even though some people will try to gaslight you into thinking the Bible is without contradiction or error). Or sin can be the state of your relationship with God. If your relationship is out of sync, then you could work on syncing it so that you are more aligned and better suited to create overall flourishing in the world.

Taking a shower and cleaning your exit-hole, butthole (this sounds grosser than asshole. Just say asshole. In my book I never finished, The Poop Pamphlet, I started an essay asking if Jesus had a butthole because buttholes seem antithetical to cleanliness and holiness. But my answer was yes, the historical Jesus would have had all of the human anatomy and it would have worked like yours. Jesus pooped, even if that doesn’t seem like the holy thing to do. And it might be irreverent, but a book for teenage boys will have to be if it is to be honest, and at this point, boys need honest men to explain what the hell happened to the world.

All this talk about poop to show why Soiled is the perfect way to describe the world, humans, and you in particular—though I don’t know you specifically, I know that if you are a human, then you are a mess. My friend wrote that some things are Holy Freakin’ Skubala—which in the original Biblical language σκύβαλα (skúbala / skubala) in Koine Greek, means garbage, or dung which is the polite word, but not the actual word: shit. We, friends, are shitty. And you could stop being shitty.

Don’t swear, kids! This will be a chapter, too. In that chapter I will explain that swearing means keeping your most severe promises and contracts. Profanity refers to how we treat sacred things. Cussing is made up. And I will go down the whole list, but basically the answer will be the same, there is a time and place to do some things. Like drinking alcohol. If you are younger than 21 years old in the United States, drinking is illegal, and therefore it is not a moral or ethical conversation you need to worry about for yourself. When you turn 18, you can vote about lowering the drinking age and then making it an ethical issue for yourself, but in the meantime, it’s not for you. Like the best time to punch someone is while in the boxing ring and your sparring partner is ready for the match. Time, place, and now I added consent (knowledge and willingness to participate—this will be an important concept in this book).

Teenage boys are not the problem, but if you are a teenage boy, you are definitely confronting the problem. The problem is so big, it will take the entirety of the book to begin to define the problem.

In this book I will cover masculinity and toxic masculinity, healthy relationships and boundaries, birds and bees and wasps and divorce and raising children out of wedlock and abortion, intoxication and addiction, education and career, faith systems and spirituality, and some other things I’m sure, like AI and social media and distraction and cyberbullying and cheating / plagiarism — forfeiting your unique voice and style so that you can barely meet the arbitrary sub-standards set for you by society.

This could be an interesting, and maybe if the right person writes it, important book.

Let’s get 7 million people to donate a dollar. One person to donate 7 million dollars, or something in between so that I can write books and create MasterClasses about reading a book a day!

This number is in anticipation of having to give my books away, obviously I’d rather make money teaching and writing, but if you don’t already know, this sentence is hilarious!