Bart Hansen joins The Redeemed Man podcast. Bart Hansen is a founding board member of the men’s ministry Wild at Heart. In teaching men how to reclaim masculinity from emasculation, false machismo, and “poserism,” Hansen says one of the best things they can do is examine the life of Jesus Himself—a man who was fierce and unapologetic in his opposition to selfishness and hypocrisy, but who was motivated by compassion and a sincere love for His fellow man. “G.K. Chesterton said that the fierceness of a warrior is determined not by the enemy in front of him that he hates, but by what he loves that he is fighting for,” Hansen explains. “And that really does describe the heart of Jesus. The greatest motive we can live for is love, and that’s what Jesus did.”
Visit The Redeemed's website for discussion question sets, show notes, inspirational articles, and more resources.
The Redeemed is an organization giving men from all backgrounds a supportive, judgment-free environment, grounded in Christian love without demanding participation in any faith tradition, where they can open up about their challenges, worries, and failures—and celebrate their triumphs over those struggles.
Visit The Redeemed's website for downloadable discussion question sets, show notes, inspirational articles, more resources, or to share your testimony.
Join our Exclusive Newsletter: Signup today and be the first to get notified on upcoming podcasts and new resources!
The Redeemed is an organization giving men from all backgrounds a supportive, judgment-free environment, grounded in Christian love without demanding participation in any faith tradition, where they can open up about their challenges, worries, and failures—and celebrate their triumphs over those struggles.
Follow The Redeemed on Social Media:
Bart Hansen joins The Redeemed Man podcast. Bart Hansen is a founding board member of the men’s ministry Wild at Heart. In teaching men how to reclaim masculinity from emasculation, false machismo, and “poserism,” Hansen says one of the best things they can do is examine the life of Jesus Himself—a man who was fierce and unapologetic in his opposition to selfishness and hypocrisy, but who was motivated by compassion and a sincere love for His fellow man. “G.K. Chesterton said that the fierceness of a warrior is determined not by the enemy in front of him that he hates, but by what he loves that he is fighting for,” Hansen explains. “And that really does describe the heart of Jesus. The greatest motive we can live for is love, and that’s what Jesus did.”
Visit The Redeemed's website for discussion question sets, show notes, inspirational articles, and more resources.
The Redeemed is an organization giving men from all backgrounds a supportive, judgment-free environment, grounded in Christian love without demanding participation in any faith tradition, where they can open up about their challenges, worries, and failures—and celebrate their triumphs over those struggles.
Visit The Redeemed's website for downloadable discussion question sets, show notes, inspirational articles, more resources, or to share your testimony.
Join our Exclusive Newsletter: Signup today and be the first to get notified on upcoming podcasts and new resources!
The Redeemed is an organization giving men from all backgrounds a supportive, judgment-free environment, grounded in Christian love without demanding participation in any faith tradition, where they can open up about their challenges, worries, and failures—and celebrate their triumphs over those struggles.
Follow The Redeemed on Social Media:
Welcome and Speaker Introduction
[Timestamp: 8:27]
Good afternoon and welcome. From a lovely but rainy day here in Columbus, Georgia. My name is Paul Amos, and I’m the founder of The Redeemed. The Redeemed is an organization that was built so that men could come together in an open community, in an open environment, where they could come and share about life’s greatest challenges and feel that they are free of judgment.
Today we have a truly special guest, Bart Hanson. Bart is one of the founding members of the Wild at Heart ministry. And he’s been traveling all over the world, helping men understand what masculinity truly means and what we can do to help bring about the love, patience, and the message of Jesus Christ.
Recapturing Masculinity
[Timestamp: 9:58]
The Redeemed is an incredible ministry, a safe place to recapture masculinity. The promise of the gospel is life. We think of that and know that it’s true, especially when we look in Isaiah 61. When Jesus announced his ministry, he said, I’ve come to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty and freedom, and to set the captives free.
But on just about any given Tuesday, I find myself so disoriented, I don’t know which end is up, and sometimes it just seems that God is so distant from me. With the promise of the gospel and with our everyday experience, we have to ask ourselves, ‘What is in the way?’
Do you have what it takes?
[Timestamp: 11:30]
I’ve been involved with Wild at Heart ministries for 20 years. John Eldridge wrote the book Wild at Heart about 20 years ago, and it’s been the best-selling men’s book for 20 years. In that book, one of the premises is that there’s a question every day, and every man is trying to answer that question. When we get up in the morning, as we live through our day, as we go to sleep at night, we’re trying to answer the question of, ‘Do I have what it takes?’
That question really does echo back to the brokenness of the garden when Adam just wimps out. We think of Eve’s deception as being the sin that mankind fell upon, but it wasn’t the original sin. The original sin was Adam’s passivity.
How do you handle it?
How do we handle that question? How we do handle that question really surfaces so much in our masculinity, much about who we are, and it has to do with each of our own stories. Where we were raised, who your parents are, what our story is. That question comes at everyone, and every man is trying to answer. The real answer to that question comes out of what God has given us: courage, love, and sacrifice. But in a fallen world, we fall short.
We ask ourselves over and over ‘Do I have what it takes?’
And so much of the time, the answer is really, no, I don’t, I don’t have what it takes.
We tend to go one of three directions when trying to answer that question.
Fear of Exposure
[Timestamp:15:25]
In Genesis 3:10, it says, when God was seeking Adam after the fall, Adam said, I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked. There is the fear of exposure. As we try to answer the question and as we try to present ourselves as having it all together, there’s this fear underneath that we’re going to be exposed.
I recall early in my career, I moved to Southern California and found Christ at about 29 years old. I was a very driven young man. I kind of sanctified my brokenness, my busyness and called it “my calling. My work, my ministry, I volunteered for so many things in ministry, and filled my time with activity. Looking back, it was a front that I was trying to make everybody think I had it all together, when really underneath there was a very broken man.
The False Self
[Timestamp: 16:50]
While it can look good, and can look very successful, it is the false self. We really have to bring the full work of Christ into this. When we’re saved through the work of the cross, through the crucifixion, we tend to stop there. Post-modern Christianity just says, ‘get saved and go save your neighbor’. It’s in the power of the resurrection that God can promise to change these things, as Jesus said in Isaiah 61:1.
So many stories opposing my busyness was something that I hid behind, a major fig leaf in my life, and it surfaced throughout my 20 years of ministry. I had an intervention by my brothers, that I was just hiding behind this busyness. They came in and basically said, quit working and had me go spend 45 days all by myself. It was probably one of the most disruptive things in my life that I was stripped from these fig leaves that were in front of me.
The Poser
[Timestamp: 18:03]
I recall about two years ago, I was seeing my doctor for a physical, and he comes in and he does everything, does a blood test, he says, I’ll call you in a couple of days with the results. Well, after a couple of days, he called, and says, “Everything looks pretty good, but you’ve got a high sugar content in your blood.” He told me it’s almost pre-diabetic.
He asks, ‘What are you eating these days?’ I told him my diet, and he said, ‘That won’t do it.’ He says, ‘What are you drinking?’ And I said, I have occasional glass of wine maybe once or maybe twice a week, and he says, ‘That won’t do it.’ So he advises that come back in 30 days and reassess.
I hung the phone up and in five minutes, I picked the phone up again and I called him and I say, ‘Let’s go back to that question about my drinking. Probably nearer to the truth is, that my wife and I go out probably five or six nights a week, and we order a bottle of red wine. She has a short glass and I finished the bottle. He says, ‘that’ll do it.’
I really looked at my motive for calling him back. I asked myself if the diabetes and the pre-diabetes thing was not an issue, what I have called him back?
I think the answer is probably no. I would have left that impression, that Poser, that I’ve got it all together. But it took that thread of my health being the real motive that had me call him back. That’s where that Poser comes in.
I think about this all the time. I think I’ve gotten a lot better with it, but I can pose. I can pose any time at the drop of a hat, because that’s built into a man’s brokenness.
Discovering the False Self
[Timestamp 20:38]
To really discover this whole issue of posing, the false self, if we’re going to recover our true masculinity and our integrity as men, we have to see this false-ness, this brokenness in our masculinity. We have to see it first, we have to own it, and then we have to confess it.
Honesty is the best friend we can have as we live together as men and look at each other’s lives.
At Wild at Heart we have four questions that we ask of the poser:
Discussion Between Bart Hansen and Paul Amos:
[Timestamp: 22:33]
Finding the Strength
Paul Amos: Those are four terrifying questions. I find myself here as someone who’s been exposed to this message, who understands the poser. Who has lived my life as a poser and covered myself with the fig leaf. To ask those questions, and specifically ‘What am I afraid that someone would say about me?’ keeps me in fear.
It evokes a lot of shame when you think about the fact that you’ve done things throughout your entire life. You’re trying to put on this facade, you’re trying to cover up the faults you see in yourself.
How do you talk to someone who is riddled with shame, to come out from underneath this poser, this facade that they built? How do you give them the strength to break free?
Bart Hansen: Shame is one of the biggest enemies that we have as men. All people are paralyzed by shame. What we have to do as part of the promise, that as we give our lives over to Christ and the power of the gospel is owning those things that shame us. We have to expose them, to be honest, come out of hiding. We need to come into the light of the Gospel.
Jesus is Different
[Timestamp: 25:50]
Paul Amos: It is tough sometimes. You think about all of the pain that comes from all of the years that we’ve spent trying to hide who we really are. As you think about posing, as you think about someone who is trying to let down their guard, what is it that we see in this message that’s so unique from Wild at Heart about how Jesus is different than the person that we originally think of him as in pop culture today?
Bart Hansen: Jesus, I think we’ve kind of gotten him wrong. We have this picture of Jesus as being this guy that wears a white robe with the lamb around his neck and has all the children around him. He’s certainly compassionate, and he loves children, but Jesus is the consummate man. He’s what we’re after. His model of masculinity is what we were made in the image of.
Jesus was a great disruptor. He loved people, but he would go after hypocrisy, especially with the Pharisees. Week after week, he would come back to the temple and pick fights with the Pharisees because he wanted to expose their hypocrisy.
Jesus has this courageous heart of a warrior. Exodus 15:3 says, ‘The Lord is a warrior, The Lord is His name.’ We are made in that image. He’s given us a warrior’s heart, because Jesus had a warrior’s heart.
We think of Jesus is this nice guy, and that’s kind of what we project ourselves as what the Christian man should be. But Jesus is fierce, and compassionate, and he’s all of the things that God’s character manifests into human flesh. That’s the kind of man that we’re trying to get to.
Chasing Validation
[Timestamp: 28:04]
Paul Amos: You’ve got this warriors heart on the inside, and yet every day we’re standing up and we’re asking that question, ‘Do I have what it takes?’. What does it take for a man to, on a daily basis, from a routine perspective, from a prayer perspective, from a faith perspective, to really answer that question and reveal that warrior’s heart?
Bart Hansen: We are chasing validation when we are trying to answer that question of, ‘Do I have what it takes?’. We seek that validation in all kinds of places. We seek it from our work, our performance, from women. But true validation and the true answer to that question only comes from The Father and our connection with The Father.
One of the most intimate relationships in the universe is that relationship between the father and the son, and the father and daughter. The Father has a role in a place to validate us and to answer that question, ‘Do I have what it takes?’. And if he doesn’t answer that, we’re going to go chasing it all over the place, and in all kinds of places. But when he does answer it we live with courage, we live with sacrifice, and we live with love. And love is the most important component of all those things that Jesus did. He was fierce, but he was motivated by love.
GK Chersterton once said, “The fierceness of a warrior is not determined by the enemy in front of him that he hates, but rather by what he’s compelled to protect, the love behind him.” A Warriors heart is more motivated by love that it is by hating an enemy.
The Fiercest Warriors
[Timestamp: 30:21]
Paul Amos: When I watch Braveheart, there’s definitely that thought going through my mind of, ‘Do I have what it takes, would I be willing to exhibit the type of courage that it takes?’. I like what you just quoted because in reality, I think of it as having the anger, to want to defeat the enemy, when in fact, it’s really about the love that you’ve got to protect what it is that you’re fighting for.
Bart Hansen: That’s what makes the fiercest warriors. We have 25 years of our forces that have been overseas, fighting in all kinds of wars. You get stories back of all these special forces, and we’ve seen a lot of them come to Wild at Heart, but what compels them to do what they do, is actually the love that they have for one another. That they don’t want to let each other down. That’s what makes them such a fierce group of warriors. They exhibit that heart of a warrior, and it’s really because of the love, the camaraderie that they have together.
It’s hard to assimilate back in because they have this high level of love for one another in a very, very explosive environment.
True Validation
[Timestamp: 32:07]
Paul Amos: We talked earlier about validation and searching for validation in some of the wrong places. One of the most common places is trying to look to our earthly father for validation.
I know for me, I was constantly chasing the approval of my father trying to win his love and his affection, knowing that he is a man a broken man, he could not fulfill that need and that longing that I had for God and for Jesus.
How do you help men think through the wound that exists in them, so that they can truly become validated from The Father?
Bart Hansen: We’ve all been wounded by our earthly father. It’s not to blame fathers because they were wounded by their father, it’s a generational sin that’s passed down.
With myself, my dad died when he was 49 years old, I was 19 years old. He was in the Marine Corps and fought in the South Pacific in some of the bloodiest battles over there. He lost so many of his men and he never did recover from that. Back then, they didn’t know what PTSD was.
I had that question, could I have done what he did? And I was afraid the answer was no. So I sought his validation and his affirmation of me as a son. But he never spoke those words to me, but the one thing that he did compliment me on was hard work. So, I thought, That’s it. That’s how I make my way. That’s how I please my father, is hard work.
I’ve had job ever since I was 11 years old, and I did it to please my father. I look back and I burned up a lot of life chasing that validation. There’s a lot of brokenness in not getting our validation. Understanding that question and that process of being validated by our earthly fathers, if our earthly father has not done that, then I think we have to go to our Father God, because that’s what he promised. The promise of the Gospel is that He will validate.
Unquenchable Thirst
[Timestamp: 35:10]
Paul Amos: It reminds me of the woman at the well and the unquenchable thirst and the living water, because I think back to the validation that I received in many ways, it should have been enough. But it was an unquenchable thirst on my part, a need for validation times 10, times 100, times 1000. I feel that that ended up creating so much insecurity in me and an inability to see the path forward.
Bart Hansen: I think it speaks about performance, that if we’re not talking about unconditional love between a father and his son, then there’s conditions on that, that it usually involves performance.
It’s like when you play sports well, and we get all this affirmation from your dad, but when we don’t play well, he’s pretty silent. That really does reinforce that it’s the performance and there’s a condition upon that affirmation. Then we become very addicted to performance, and it’s just never enough
I chased that for many, many years, and I find myself sometimes being pulled back into that struggle of performance.
Paul Amos: Performance equals love. And it wasn’t just given to me, it was something that I found on my own because the more successful I was in specific aspects of life, sports or others, the more I felt love come from the people around me, and so, sadly it’s a bottomless pit.
Q & A