Ep 1264 | Why Intimacy with God & Their Wives Is So Hard for Christian Men

Unashamed with the Robertson Family

Tread Lively

Religion, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 24.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Al, Zach, John Luke, and Christian wrestle with why intimacy feels so difficult for American men—both with God and in marriage. Following along with C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy, they explore how knowledge alone can’t produce real closeness, and why desire and longing shape the way men actually live. The guys challenge the idea that faith is about mastering concepts instead of participating in a relationship. They point toward a hopeful vision of intimacy that isn’t forced or performed, but rediscovered through joy, presence, and learning to live inside God’s story rather than observing it from a distance. Today’s conversation is about Lesson 3-4 of C.S. Lewis on Christianity taught by visiting Hillsdale professor Michael Ward. Take the course with us at no cost to you! Sign up at http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/. More about C.S. Lewis on Christianity: Encounter the faith & wisdom of C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis’s writings bring the great questions of the Christian faith to life. Through his imaginative and invigorating style, Lewis answers these questions in ways that are compelling to those outside Christianity and energizing to those within the Christian faith. In this free, seven-lecture course, Professor Michael Ward—a leading scholar of C.S. Lewis—will explore Lewis’s: argument for objective moral value in response to the rise of modern subjectivism; bittersweet path to conversion and the role of enjoyment in the Christian life; advice regarding the proper way to pray and read the Bible; teachings concerning the purpose of pain and how to confront suffering and loss; insights about the nature of heaven and hell. This course examines these fundamental topics not only through his classic works—including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Abolition of Man—but also through Lewis’s personal experiences with doubt, conversion, suffering, grief, and joy. Through this course, students will discover Lewis’s core lessons regarding the truth and goodness of the Christian faith and how to apply those lessons to one’s life. Join us today in discovering C.S. Lewis’s enduring lessons about the meaning and practice of Christianity. Sign up at ⁠http://unashamedforhillsdale.com/ Check out At Home with Phil Robertson, nearly 800 episodes of Phil's unfiltered wisdom, humor, and biblical truth, available for free for the first time! Get it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and anywhere you listen to podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/at-home-with-phil-robertson/id1835224621 Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. Chapters: 00:00 Why This C.S. Lewis Lecture Is Tough 03:02 When the Philosophy Gets Heavy 06:42 The Inklings & Writing Under Critique 11:06 Why Lewis’s Conversion Feels Underwhelming 15:26 Conversion Isn’t Always a Moment 20:08 Why Desire Drives Our Actions 25:26 The Beam of Light Explained 31:12 Joy as Longing, Not Satisfaction 36:58 From Holding the Garden to Living in It 42:26 Conversion as Intimacy, Not Performance 47:12 Final Reflections on Living the Story — Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I am unashamed. What about you? So welcome back to the Unashamed podcast. This is our Friday
0:10.0	episode, Unashamed with Hillsdale. We're taking these courses that Hillsdale offers for free.
0:16.0	You guys can join us at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. We are in the CS Lewis course on CS Lewis on Christianity.
0:24.0	I've thoroughly enjoyed this, but I was kind of wondering, because we're now, this is
0:30.8	episode, this is the fourth lecture.
0:33.1	It got a little hairy, if you're not a philosophically minded person.
0:37.1	But Al, how you you guys
0:39.4	you know Zach it so it wasn't as bad as when I was in college and I was in
0:47.8	quantitative methods which was a statistics the next level statistics course It wasn't that bad because when the guy was talking,
0:58.6	he was like given the first lecture,
1:01.4	it sounded like the Charlie Brown teacher.
1:04.4	Or wamp, wamp, wamp, wamp, and all I got was if you're not serious about statistics,
1:10.4	you don't need to be here.
1:11.5	And so I got up and I walked out of that class and I walked over to my advisor.
1:15.6	And I said, I'm dropping that course.
1:17.2	He said, well, you can't get your business degree without this course.
1:20.5	I said, then what else we got here?
1:24.0	So it wasn't that bad.
1:27.0	But it was about halfway through the lecture i mean i was i was kept
1:32.4	backing it i'd stop it and i'd back it up and i would listen again and i just i wasn't getting it
1:37.6	i was like christian kid we're we together yeah no that halfway through listening to it i was
1:42.7	like i hope me and i'll are on the same page but I know somewhere out there, Zach, it's just foaming at the mouth because he's enjoying this. I said two of our four are thinking this is the best thing ever, and two of our four are thinking, what is he talking about? I will say this, and we'll get there at the end of this podcast, but it all came together at the end. It would have helped. I did not read this book, and it would have helped had I read it, I'm sure, because it helped. Because the first one is on his book, Surprised by Joy, which is his, that's his, really kind of a little bit like his testimony of how he came to faith in Christ.
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