A Tale of Two Masculinities

I always loved Christmas because it was one of the only times a year that I would get a new Star Wars toy. I remember one Christmas my parents had bought me some cheap space toy knockoff that wasn't Star Wars because they just thought I was into space toys in general. But as any Star Wars fan knows, there is no substitute for the real thing. There is Star Wars and there is everything else that wants to be Star Wars but isn't. Suffice to say, it wasn't a good Christmas in the mind of a five-year-old.

We have many cheap knockoffs in our culture when it comes to masculinity. Our culture has been recently infatuated with the question, "What is a woman?" In many ways, this question is not as important as its counterpart, which is, "What is a man?" If we can get that question down, the other will become clear. 

But before we can answer the question, "What is a man?" I want to explore how we make our version of men in our culture and why this is primarily the problem.

In the ancient and biblical world, men are a product of the nurture of their families until marriage. They learn responsibility in their father's family until that responsibility is transferred over to their new family. This is the reason a man leaves his father and mother, to cleave to his wife and begin a new branch of his father's household. Sometimes he doesn't leave at all but incorporates his new family into the responsibilities of the former.

Hence, he moves from family responsibilities to family responsibilities. Manhood is a role of familial responsibility, or as the ancient world would put it, love/devotion. He has sacrificed his time, energy, resources, desires, etc. for the sake of his father's family and now goes directly into that same role in his new family where he sacrifices his time, energy, resources, desires, etc. for the good of that family. Manhood is sacrificial responsibility.

This is what the Bible describes when speaking of the husband's role with his wife, but it should be extended to the larger family as well. He is the one who must provide and protect in the sacrifice of anything else he might want to do instead. He must learn from his father's family how to do that in order that he might teach his own sons to do the same, not only in word but in demonstrating it day by day.

Our culture, however, does something that completely derails this by having the son leave the home and enter into a period of "freedom." This is seen as a rite of passage. He is let loose to party. He is let loose to do whatever he was not allowed to do in his father's home. Now, he can make drinking his escape, be sexually indulgent, participate in lude conversations, etc. This is his break from responsibility if, in fact, he even had it at all in the modern family. 

Now, some people bounce back from this. They realize that this isn't what being a man really is. Being a man isn't freedom from responsibility and acting like a frat boy. It is the very opposite of that. Scripture tells us that being a mature man is a life of love and sacrifice. It is choosing to deny oneself what the world paints as freedom and joy in created things and calls us away to find our peace and joy in God and in the betterment of His people in their relationship with Christ. It is training up other men to be responsible, whether in your immediate family or in the church. 

Biblical masculinity chooses not to partake in the frat boy version of masculinity because it teaches men to glorify the party period of their lives and extend it into their families. I cannot count how many men I have known who neglect their families so that they can drink with the boys, end up committing adultery on their wives in one way or another, get into drugs, just spend the rest of their days in their child-like hobbies or donate their time to futility by watching countless hours of tv and surfing the internet on their phones. 

We have taught our men to escape, to abdicate, to spend their time in fruitless discussion, and to party; but we have failed to teach them that masculinity is taking responsibility for those in their families, to guard and protect children, to enter into discussions that edify young men and women, to engage in behaviors that communicate that Christ alone is our joy and peace and we need no created thing to be the idol of escapism because we are not trying to escape from the responsibility Christ has given to us. 

We show men how to submit by being in submission ourselves. We show men how to lead by leading as men lead, through the command of God's Word and not through the emotional manipulation of relationships. We act as fathers and not as frat boys. We show men how to run toward their families, to incorporate them into our lives, rather than how to find ways to avoid them.

Biblical masculinity is not how you take your alcohol or how many girls you can get. It isn't who wins in a debate on any topic that exists solely as a dominance contest, who wins at arm-wrestling or has the best stuff. But these are the things that have been ingrained into us as masculine because we learn that when one is grown up, he leaves his family and does these things. Freedom from responsibility, not taking on responsibility, is what we have subconsciously taught being a man is. 

There are of course its counterparts with women as well. Being a woman is the freedom to be a whore, get drunk, and do all of the unladylike things you're not supposed to do as a girl. But true womanhood is a life of submission to a man who is responsible for you and the family, and true manhood is taking upon the role of the one in that position of responsibility. 

If I am responsible for others, I will care about what they need to mature, not what I want to do in disregard of what they need. Applying that principle will lead down a path that many frat boys fear to tread because its applications will lead to the death of the frat boy's lifestyle. 

The culture I want to create in the church will be one of family, not individuality. A man off on his own is an individual and communicates that he is an island from his family. Instead, a biblical culture will emphasize the inclusion of family in our gatherings, the demonstration of responsibility in how wives and children are treated both inside and outside the home; and this will create an atmosphere of edifying conversations, a consumption of nothing but what the entire family should consume and partake in, and an elevation of Jesus Christ, along with the privilege of the responsibilities He has given us, as our joy and peace. 

The exclusion of family is repeating the same error of our culture. It elevates the freedom from family that our culture glorifies and is present in every broken marriage in our church. Yet, this very freedom creates eternal boys, not men.

In other words, there is no such thing as a man without the responsibility of family because there is no such thing as a man without him being a father. Manhood is fatherhood and all of the love and sacrifice that comes with it.

James Bond is our culture's masculine ideal, but he's a forever bachelor. John Wayne had three wives, having been divorced twice, and lived the type of masculinity that the frat boy would adore. But his masculinity wasn't biblical. Neither was the abdicating masculinity of the simp culture to follow. What I want to point out is that both of these supposedly contrasting masculinities are simply one and the same. They both abdicate in seemingly opposite ways but neither can claim the title of being truly masculine. 

If love is spiritual maturity as the Bible teaches, then he who loves the most is the most mature, and he who is most mature as a male is most masculine. Love is not some sappy feeling, it is not letting others indulge in whatever fancies them or having a gay old time with your buddies. It is sacrifice. It is edification. It is responsibility for the soul of the other. Anything less is a cheap knockoff.