The Effects of Femininity on Our Culture, Part VI: Our View of Masculinity

Boys are not yet men. In the ancient world, some cultures don't even seem to recognize the gender of children before puberty because they all seem to be one amorphous creature that is indistinguishable from the others. Think of how you can put long hair on a boy and everyone thinks he's a girl. Even though our culture has tried to do that with men, very few men can pull off the trick and only then with so much makeup that they could probably also pass as an alien or creature from the Black Lagoon. In this way, it's hard to distinguish boys from their feminine counterparts, i.e., girls.

Many who see the effeminization of our culture often try to counter it with a strong dose of what they think is masculinity. The problem is that femininity in our thinking runs so deep that often the counterattacks miss the mark or simply are too superficial in nature. 

For instance, I have seen a lot of men attempt to counter feminism with male chauvinism instead. So if women are lifted up too highly, at least in theory, then the counter would be to put them in their place by treating them as lesser. I have heard of men telling their wives to shut up in public or just being plain rude to them in ways that display to the other men that they are in control. I have seen men attempt to take upon the John Wayne persona by doing what little boys in our culture often think is manly like flaunting their ability to participate in "adult" things like smoking and drinking and cursing. In the so-called red-pill community how many women one can sleep with is included with the rest. I have seen men display extreme forms of competitiveness to show how fit they are, how able at sports they may be, how much they can lift, or in a more "spiritual" guise, how deep their theological speculations can be in coming up with new ideas or applications or how many new teachers from different traditions they can listen to in a similar way that Millennials used to try and outdo one another by finding the most obscure music and bands to listen to. Yet, when these same men are rebuked or corrected, many of them respond in defensiveness and even resentment toward those who would rebuke them, evidencing a spiritual weakness within. 

This is because their idea of masculinity is tainted by their current experience as warriors and therefore their counter to feminism isn't complete, and therefore, isn't balanced well. Biblical masculinity means different things depending upon what period of life the man is in but it has a mutual goal throughout all periods of a man's life. 

For brevity, I'll simply note the three stages of life for a man that I think are dominant: the boy, the warrior, and the sage.

Masculinity does not merely look like one thing in a man's life, therefore, but it should always be growing toward one thing, and that one thing is not bravado. The goal is to be like Jesus Christ in His spiritual toughness. Biblical masculinity then works toward spiritual toughness in a world where physical and social toughness cannot last. It is becoming like Christ as a warrior that joins God against the cosmic battle of dark forces in and around the world. The final stage of a man who has truly become a man in his life is the physically weak man lying on his bed having been fully prepared to meet his final enemy with the true spiritual strength of Jesus Christ to endure it.

This is not to say then that the warrior should not be physically tough and train himself to be physically tough for when he enters that stage in his life. But an old man is no longer a warrior. He is a sage. He has moved out of the physically competitive sphere and now needs to use wisdom to fight the spiritual battles within his community. Likewise, the boy is not a warrior but one who must be quiet and listen both to the instruction of the physical warriors, the younger men, and the spiritual wisdom of the older men, the spiritual warriors, i.e., the sages. If the boy does not do so, he will remain a boy, i.e., an untrained man who has the building blocks for a man but like an unfinished Lego set never becomes one.

Too often, this is flipped. The young men who are still spiritually weak and foolish are sought after to fight spiritual battles that belong to the older, i.e., elder, men of wisdom in our culture. This is because foolish people cannot distinguish between physically strong and spiritually strong people and our culture worships the warrior stage because we are materialists who look toward what we see as strong and healthy rather than toward ultimate strength and beauty. One who is spiritually strong is not merely one who is zealous or is learning as a teachable man. That is the plight of the boy and the warrior. One who is spiritually strong isn't merely so because he can win a wrestling match. That is the role of the younger men. But the spiritually strong are those who have been through the fire of spiritual battles, through the furnace of suffering, and have come out the other end spiritually stronger than they were before. The more experience one has in being spiritually tested, the stronger or weaker he will show himself to be, and prove whether he has achieved a proper place in his role as a sage.

Likewise, sages are judged by younger men based upon the criteria for what constitutes being a good man in the warrior stage and even sometimes in the boy stage. But if we judge men as we would a fish for how well it flies or a bird for how well it swims, we can justify any condemnation of someone for their lack of achievement as a man.

Masculinity is strength, but not mere strength, since many who are strong in one way are extremely weak and effeminate in others. It is strength used for fatherhood. It is disciplined strength to learn when men are boys. It is physical strength to defend and provide when men are young. And it is spiritual strength to learn the wisdom that the rest of the community needs to fight the ultimate war of our world. This means that it is being tough when rebuked and corrected as a young man rather than becoming resentful because biblical ideas are usually used by young men as sparring matches and no one wants to lose face by losing a sparring match. It means being humble to recognize what role in life you are playing and where you need to focus your time and energy. All stages should have evidences of the other within them but each aspect will usually and primarily be evident in one of the stages of manhood. 

In the Bible, the age of someone doing physical labor might be a good gauge the period of a boy, a warrior, and a sage. The warrior had to be at least 20 to join the military. For the priest to do the physical work of the tabernacle he had to be at least 25 and could not do it anymore once he was 50. Although he could still help, it was not to be of a physical nature but an advisory one. This is because the physical labor of the tabernacle was quite intense (constant killing and dissecting of animals, setting up the tent of meeting, grinding the grain and baking the shewbread, carrying the ark, etc.). It's likely these are the times of the warrior in ancient Israel. It may be quite different for us today, and I don't think that it is always based on age, but rather we see a tendency toward the roles during these times.

Now, to be sure, there are those in our culture who don't suffer much. They don't ever mature past the boy or warrior stage. There are also those by the grace of God who become sages in their youth but their youth is usually filled with suffering and trials. The true femininity in our culture is the comfort of not having to go through the suffering and sacrifice of war: war to provide for one's family, war to protect one's family from the physical threats of wicked men, war to protect and provide spiritually for one's family. Comfort from these things is not masculine. A life of luxury is a feminine life, where all of the these types of threats are taken care of so that the household in which the woman and her children live are at peace. This is not to say that in our fallen world women have taken upon themselves the role of men and have experienced war but merely that this ought not be. Likewise, men who look for comfort and peace without war tend toward the feminine life and never mature as men.

This is why I have always said that masculinity is fatherhood. What I mean by that is that masculinity is taking the strength: disciplined, physical, spiritual, and becoming a protector and provider of one's family with it rather than an abdicating destroyer of it. You will know them by their fruits. Warriors turn boys into warriors. Sages turn warriors into sages. But fools who live in luxury and comfort turn all into boys again.

What feminism has done to our culture is to convince it that masculinity has to do with degrading the woman in some way rather than in becoming less like women by having spiritual strength to fight spiritual battles with the wisdom gained from trials and suffering as our primary goal in life rather than the comfort and peace that riches and power bring us. Riches look to be provided for. Power looks to expel annoyance and discomfort, i.e., to be protected. We are looking for the role of the woman by looking for success in money and power. Women are to be provided for. Women are to be protected. Yet women are being degraded in front of others while we show our display of "manliness" through physical strength and how successful we are? 

Women are physically weak. They need protection and provision. This is not to say that womanhood does not have its own goal of being spiritually strong but its process looks different than the man's. The trials tend to be more internal struggles than wars fought against outside forces. There are exceptions to all things of course.

But feminism has affected our culture too deeply for it to be removed by such superficial gestures of bravado. We need real men to subject themselves to the teaching of the sages, the elders, rather than boys who think they have already arrived as sages and have no need of them. Arrogance can lead to the assumption of supremacy while in an inferior state. We need men who will understand that their physical strength must be reconstituted into spiritual strength if they are to see their physical strength restored one day in the new heavens and earth. We need men who subject the body to the spirit, who subject their physical strength to the works of God in providing for and aiding the poor, who subject their virility to God's commands concerning sexuality, who subject their tongues to speaking the truth in love and to edify rather than to tear down.

A sage would see the strength of masculinity in how you treat your wife and children, whether you take your role to exercise authority for the building up of your family rather than in the tearing down of others in order to feel like a man more than to actually be a man. 

Abdicating men refuse to enter into the ultimate war. After all, women don't go to war, or at least, they shouldn't. Effeminate men avoid the ultimate war even if they are forced to enter into physical ones that are foisted upon them.

Although women should be feminine, feminine men are wicked and are therefore wicked women. Wicked women will tear down others because they have no real strength. Women can only fight with the words of their mouths. Wicked men may replace spiritual strength with boasts of their physical acumen, but wicked men are weak men. They look to the outer man who is decaying day by day rather than the inner man who is renewed day by day in the image and glory of Christ. We must always remember that men who follow the path of the feminine are boys, and boys are not yet men.