I need to vent to you about something I am seeing online every dang day.
Some man with a ring light, a podcast microphone, and no pastor anyone can identify discovers six words of Scripture. Within forty-five seconds, he has explained why women need to submit, why compassion makes men weak, why empathy is a sin, why compromise is cowardice, and why the real problem with Christianity is that nobody is letting him be in charge.
The presentation changes. The stupid beard changes. The baseball cap changes. The advice remains remarkably consistent.
I have a name for it: dirtbag theology.
Dirtbag theology is casually selected Scripture masquerading as Christian common sense. It contains just enough truth to make the poison difficult to taste. It takes a genuine virtue such as courage, leadership, discipline, or sacrifice and swaps in domination, contempt, fear, bigoty, or control. Then it puts a Bible verse on the package and tries to sell you a barbed wire cross to wear.
My anger about this is personal.
A while ago, a young man I know was going through a difficult season in his marriage. He was hurting, frustrated, and looking anywhere he could find for an answer that sounded plausible. The algorithm saw him coming.
The answers were ready: Be more assertive. Stop giving your wife options. Women respect men who command authority. Do not take no for an answer.
That last one should stop every Christian in his tracks.
The advice was compelling because it contained just enough truth to disguise the poison. Passivity can damage a marriage. Avoiding every difficult conversation helps no one. Confidence, honesty, and the ability to make decisions are healthy and attractive qualities in any adult.
Then the toxic gobbledygook began. Leadership became control. Confidence became coercion. His wife’s independent judgment became an obstacle he was being taught to overcome. The social order of his home needed to be rearranged.
Thank Christ above that he was still talking to me. I could offer some counterbalance while the appeal of that material ran its course. Strength does not require domination. Christian leadership looks like service and sacrifice. Your wife is an adult created in the image of God, not a subordinate whose resistance proves that you need to become more forceful. And no remains no, even when somebody on a podcast has found a Bible verse he thinks says otherwise.
The season passed quickly. I still think about what might have happened if nobody who loved him had known what he was consuming, asked questions, or kept the conversation open.
This material is not dangerous because every sentence is false. If it were, almost nobody would watch it. It is dangerous because it finds a real wound, offers one recognizable truth, and then smuggles in an entire theology of power. The young man came looking for help. The algorithm offered him permission to become something the Gospel forbids.
Jesus gave us a wonderfully efficient test: “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16, NIV). Advice teaching a husband to disregard his wife’s objections and participation in household decisions has already produced rotten fruit. We do not need to wait for the rest of the harvest.
Nor is this confined to anonymous men broadcasting from their basements. Pastor Doug Wilson has spent years producing a more elaborate version of this theology. Wilson’s dirtbag theology imagines a Christian nation where women do not possess the individual right to vote; wives owe husbands constant and visible submission; consensual homosexual acts are crimes for the state to punish; government privileges Christians and may exclude Muslim immigrants specifically because they are Muslim; and Southern slavery is softened into a comparatively benign institution that should have been gradually reformed rather than overthrown.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (I refuse to call him Secretary of War) has helped give Wilson’s theology reach and institutional credibility, first by amplifying his work and then by inviting him to preach at the Pentagon. Because Hegseth has the President’s ear, Wilson’s theology now has a plausible route to the Oval Office, where a man not known for theological sophistication may easily mistake it for Christianity itself.
I have watched Wilson on live television. Whatever his intellectual gifts may be on paper, television does him no favors. In debate, he often seems dumb as a box of rocks. Still, his ideas do not need brilliance. They need distribution. In this upside down world, seeming ill-equipped might actually increase his influence rather than reduce it. Still, while Wilson supplies the vocabulary, Hegseth supplies the authority. Social media does the shipping and delivery.
So please, talk to the young men you love about the dirtbags lurking in their feeds.
Do not begin by mocking them for watching. Do not assume that banning a channel has removed the hunger that led them there. Ask who they listen to. Watch a few clips. Ask what sounds true and what problem the speaker claims to solve. Keep the conversation open long enough for them to tell you what they are afraid of, ashamed of, or desperate to fix.
They do not need another person yelling at them. They need somebody who loves them enough to challenge a lie without humiliating them for having found it compelling.
People are being catechized by their feeds every day. Most do not realize that is what is happening. The feed is already a pulpit, a confessional, a marriage counselor, and a men’s group. Someone is forming the person holding the phone.
This is why I believe Message From the Margins matters. We can do the careful work. We can read the whole passage, honor the tradition, and refuse to trade rigor for a rush of outrage. We can also show up in the feed with enough clarity, humor, and nerve to say, “No, that man is lying to you about God.”
I am no St. Irenaeus combatting the great heresies by any stretch of the imagination. I am, however, a native New Yorker, and I have no problem calling out a dirtbag when I see one.
Have you seen any of these types of videos or podcasts? Have you felt their impacts? Who is talking to the young men you love? Have you found a way to keep that conversation open without shaming them for what they have heard or believed?
If someone you know is trying to keep a young man from being discipled by the algorithm, please send this to them. They may need the reminder that the conversation is still worth having.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that today’s newsletter is quite a bit shorter than most of what I’ve been sending lately.
I’ll be honest with you: I think about this ministry morning, noon, and night. Somewhere in all that thinking, I started wondering whether I might be inundating you. An hour-long podcast here, a long reflection there, and then another long reflection right behind it. Y’all did not sign up for a chaotic graduate-school program in theology.
So I’m going to try a different rhythm for a while. Each week, you’ll get the podcast which you can enjoy while you’re driving; one long-form reflection; the Sunday homily; and a couple of shorter reflections like this one. They should give you something worth thinking about without requiring you to carve an hour out of every day to keep up with all this material.
Next month, we’ll begin adding live hermeneutical Bible studies as well.
I’m also thinking about creating full-length courses that you can opt into when a subject genuinely interests you: Mariology, the lives of the saints, Christology, sacramental theology, the Fathers of the Church, ecumenical ministry, or whatever we decide to explore together. You could choose what interests you and take it when you have room, without having every class dropped into your inbox.
Y’all are my whole world. But just because this ministry fills my days does not mean it should fill yours. As I freely admit, my brain does not work quite like most people’s. I can turn almost any interesting theological question into a twelve-week seminar in my sleep. I never want Message From the Margins to become one more thing you’re struggling to keep up with, or a source of guilt because another essay is sitting unread in your inbox.
I genuinely want your feedback. Is this welcome news, or are you preparing to pelt me with rocks and garbage? If the courses interest you, what would you want to study first? Let me know down in the comments. I’m listening. This space is just as much yours as it is mine.
Your Possibly-Over-Enthusiastic Brother in Christ,
I need to ask once more for your support of this ministry.
I don’t love asking for money. But I have been part of financially unstable ministries before, and you would not believe the toll that instability takes. It makes every decision harder, turns every unexpected expense into a crisis, it means forgoing great opportunities to extend charity and build the kingdom, and eventually drains time and energy away from the minister and the ministry itself. I do not want to build Message From the Margins that way.
The benchmark Substack routinely puts in front of writers is 10 percent paid support. Right now, about 2.6 percent of MFTM readers are paid supporters. I would like to get this ministry to the level the platform itself says is possible. Reaching it would give us real stability. It would also let me spend far less time asking for support and far more time building the podcasts, reflections, Bible studies, courses, and live ministry we have been talking about.
The sooner we reach that goal, the sooner I can stop putting this request in front of you. In fact, once you become a paid supporter, these appeals will disappear from your newsletters entirely.
If financial support is not possible right now, I am still grateful you are here. But if you have been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber and can afford it, let’s make today the day.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being here, and your support.
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