Tag: masculinity

Is Masculinity Bad?

Is it bad to be a man?

Recently, I was still going through The Bully Society and I was reading about the bully economy. While the book has a lot to say about the problem of bullying, it fails a lot in the area of solutions, and in this case tying the problem in with capitalism. Am I to think that if we went to socialism, all the kids in the world would join hands and sing Kum-Bu-Yah together?

Anyway, the author notes that some of the attributes given to masculinity are also similar to capitalism. Those are aggressive, competitive, and powerful. That is the way the market is seen sometimes. I could defend capitalism here, but I have done that in other posts.

For now, I notice that it seems that being aggressive, powerful, and competitive are bad things inherently. There is no doubt these can be used for evil purposes, but that does not mean that they are evil. I can use my car in my apartment parking lot to drive to work and church. I can also use it to drive over little old ladies crossing the street. The car is not the issue. The person is the issue.

You can think it wrong for a man to be powerful, but if a man is going to make a positive change, he needs some power. You can think it is wrong for him to be aggressive, but if he is going to go forward in pursuit of a goal and stand up to evil, he needs to be powerful. You can think it is wrong for him to be competitive, but if he is going to want to excel, he needs to want to be better than those who don’t.

I can say on my end that while I do not see myself as aggressive or powerful, competitive does ring true, but that is what has caused me to study academically far more. It is wanting to be the best at what I do that has got me here. Had I not had this kind of spirit in me, I would have heard the doom and gloom about a diagnosis of autism and said “Oh well. Guess I’ll never amount to anything.”

What would be better is to ask the question of what a man is instead of saying that those ideas of masculinity are bad, or at least implying that they are. This is part of the problem. We do not know what men are, but usually it is assumed that whatever they are, they are bad.

If society does not know what men and women are, it should not be a shock that we have issues like failing to understand marriage and relationships or that we have debates over transgenderism. I acknowledge that in some ways, the question of what a man or a woman is is a simple question. In another way, it is a complex question. It gets to a question of essences, which I consider a problem for a purely materialistic position.

So if a man does not have any indicator that he is a man, then what will he do? He will try to seek it elsewhere. He could do so by being powerful in a gang. He could do so by being competitive in sports or even video games. He could do so by being aggressive in business or with women. Some of these are fine, but some aren’t. It is fine to be competitive on the athletic field, provided you are not wronging the others out there. It is not fine to be powerful in a gang and seek to do wrong to other men and women. It is fine to be confident with women. It is not fine to be so aggressive that you force your way onto them.

If a man doesn’t know if he is a man, he could still try harmful ways. He could think he has to sleep with as many women as possible, highly persuasive since sex often leaves a man feeling like a man. He could be willing to cheat to get ahead in sports, say by taking steroids. He could seek power by trying to beat up other men or even kill them. He could try to get material possessions as a status symbol to everyone else.

By the way, women will also try counterparts, but seeing as I am a man, I am talking about them.

What he likely will not try is to try to build up character and be a man of virtue. We have lost sight of virtue as what builds up a person and ultimately a society. A society cannot last if goodness is not one of the goals of society. If all a society cares about is going for all that you can get and the vapid pursuit of pleasure, it will fail.

Unfortunately, not much is said about that. Everything else is blamed. It’s the video games. It’s the guns. It’s the schools. It’s capitalism.

No. The problem is us.

We need to change.

We need a return to virtue and men being virtuous men and women being virtuous women. Unfortunately, with moral relativism, we don’t really know what virtue is either. The more we blame everything else, the less we will care about virtue.

Masculinity is not bad, but anything we do without virtue will taint everything else. We must return to that and I contend only Christianity can truly give us the virtue we need.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 5

What happens when men embrace toxicity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re going to have a short look tonight at this part. There comes a time when after awhile, people get so often told that they are such a way that they become such a way. This is what happened to men eventually. Want to keep labeling them as unfaithful and barbarians and everything else? It will not become a mark of shame. It will become a mark of pride.

And so it did. Men decided that this would be who they would be and let the women just deal with it. Unfortunately, the lie has gone on so long that now most of us believe it and we don’t even realize we believe it. Consider this one quote from Pearcey:

Sociologist David Popenoe, codirector of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, writes, “Men are not biologically attuned to being committed fathers. Left culturally unregulated, men’s sexual behaviour can be promiscuous, their paternity casual, their commitment to families weak.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 169). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Many of you could be reading this and thinking, “Yes. No question about that one.” Pearcey has a different take:

Note the assumption that men are not created to be faithful husbands and fathers—a dangerous message that fosters male irresponsibility.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 169-170). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It’s so simple and yet it goes right through. Pearcey sees what many of us would take for granted and says that if we go this route then we are assuming men are a problem to begin with. Apparently, nothing is said about what women are created to be.

Within the past month or so, I posted on a story on the Babylon Bee Facebook page and had a feminist woman reply to me. It was on the topic of abortion and she was telling me if I wanted to eliminate abortion, I needed to deal with, and I will edit her language for the sake of some readers, but simply, men having an irresponsible release. It never occurred to this woman that it takes two to tango. She also said that if men do not control themselves, then women will have abortions. Yep. It’s all up to the men what the women do.

Thus, we live in a world where men are guilty of the crime of being men. You find some extremes where men form a manosphere and then manhood is often defined by how many women you sleep with. The women complain, but at the same time, they go right along. (Which means also the women have to be being just as promiscuous as the men, but there’s hardly anything said about controlling the female sex drive.)

Yet now what if we take this even further? What has this done to Christianity? Even in churches before the American Revolution it was noted that men were not nearly in attendance as much as women. What happens when masculinity is redefined?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 4

Is culture fair towards boys? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Sometimes I hear about problem students at school. Inevitably, they’re boys. These are boys that seem to always act up in class and parents can’t figure out what’s going on. Sometimes, I think I also know what the problem is.

They’re boys.

No. It’s not that being a boy is a problem, but it’s that the schooling system we have today is much more geared towards girls. Sit at a desk and be quiet and don’t move and do your work that way. Many boys would rather be active and they are gunning inside of themselves to be active. Also, if they don’t find themselves challenged, they will either make artificial challenges, like I did, or they will cause trouble, like I didn’t.

This started more and more when fathers went off to work and sons were left at home often to be raised by the mother. This isn’t to say that a mother can’t raise a son, (See this book for instance) but there is a challenge as a mother can’t pass on masculinity. That’s one reason many excellent single mothers I still would encourage to get male role models for their sons that they can personally interact alongside.

Pearcey says that the way boys were was shown in the novels of the day. Boys were more and more being scamps. Think of something like Huckleberry Finn. The good boys were boring and the bad boys were going off and having adventures.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with spirit and spunk. Boys are on average more physically active and aggressive than girls. Many of them love to pretend fight, to play competitive games, to be a hero. But being high-spirited is not the same as misbehaving. The bad-boy books taught boys that being good was boring and girly—that to be a “real” boy meant to break the rules and defy adult standards of behavior.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 144). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In many cases, this led to an escape to the wilderness because home was where femininity reigned. Why did Thoreau go out to Walden Pond? To get away from femininity. What about the classic tale of Rip Van Winkle? Just go and look and see what he had to say about his wife!

Why were men going out west? Not just to find gold and riches, but to get away from centers of femininity. Real manhood was to be found out on the open range. One went out into nature to get in touch with one’s manhood. It sure wasn’t going to happen in civilization. Yet Pearcey says about this that:

Yet, instead of escaping into boy culture, a more biblical response would have been to recognize that Christianity does not strip away the virtues of boyhood—the natural drive many boys have to fight, to compete, to build forts, to win. Instead, it calls men to direct those masculine traits to fight evil, overcome sin, protect those they love, and strategize how to advance biblical truth in the world. Christianity does not suppress men’s thirst for risk and adventure but redirects it to eternal goals.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 151). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This idea of escaping femininity and the noble savage even impacted the formation of the Boy Scouts.

Today few people remember that scouting was also originally framed as a means of liberating boys from the world of women. A 1914 article distributed by the Boy Scouts argued that, at a certain age, a boy “slips the apron-strings” and discovers “a world in which petticoats are scorned and an attempt at petticoat rule is resented.” As one historian explains, scouting was intended to be “a boy’s liberation movement, to free young males from women, especially from mothers.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 152-153). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

By the way, Pearcey doesn’t have anything against the Scouts. She says she was a cub scout leader for a year and loved it. What needs to be asked though is why was there a need to have an idea of a noble savage? What were boys not just running to, but running from?

Think about things like Dude Ranches as well. Men are needing to find masculinity and are not thinking they can find it at home. They think it is out there in the wild.

Well, what about Jesus? Many men don’t identify with Jesus who is often seen as weak. What about gentle Jesus meek and mild? As Pearcey says in response:

It’s true that Jesus described himself as meek: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29 KJV). But in the first century, the meaning of the word “meek” (Greek: praus) was quite different from what it is today. A Greek military leader named Xenophon used the word to describe war horses that were well trained—strong and spirited yet highly disciplined. Socrates said a meek person was one who could argue his case without losing his temper. Plato used the word to describe a victorious general who was merciful to a conquered people. Aristotle referred to a meek person as someone concerned about justice but whose anger does not degrade into revenge or retaliation. The common theme in all these uses of the word is power under control—which certainly describes Jesus better than any saccharine Victorian image.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 156-157). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Power under control is not what many of us think of when we think of Jesus as meek.

She ends this section with a battle cry hopefully men can get behind, as well as women.

We are called to engage in the battle for the advancement of the kingdom . . . employing all the natural and spiritual gifts with which we’ve been equipped to fight against hunger, poverty, and ignorance and to fight for truth, life, and justice . . . to redeem culture and transform nations.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 159). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I will certainly take part in this battle and hope I already am.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 3

Do men bear responsibility? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What happens when you divorce the public and the private, the sacred and the secular? What happens when femininity and masculinity are no longer seen as complementing one another but are seen as competition? What happens when the individual becomes more important than the household?

There’s not much to say on this one tonight except when two groups start to form a divide, generally, they make it get deeper and deeper. Men who were seen in a negative light, well, they became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They started living that way and before too long, you had saloons. You had men spending extra money on alcohol. You saw that since the women were taking charge of the household, the men were starting to abdicate responsibility.

It’s a sad reality that we all will usually choose the path of least resistance and the path that requires the least work. Today, a woman will have sex with a man thinking that he will then marry her. In reality, he’ll usually see that and say “Okay. I guess I don’t need to go any further.” Why should he? He’s got what he wants and he doesn’t have to enter any further risk, such as getting married and losing half of his money and having to pay alimony for the rest of his life.

And the women in all of this? Well, they developed a sort of take-charge attitude in this. Many reform movements were beginning because women were of the mindset that things would be better if they were in charge. This is the beginning of feminism today and sadly, it is the beginning. As I said at the start, if you keep pushing people down a divide, that divide will grow worse and worse.

So then, you have the idea that we need to have reform. Where does that lead? Today, you can have a hashtag that says to Kill All Men.

Sometimes you need to go back to where you lost your way and find out what happened. One step Pearcey takes is to look at how Jesus treated women. Jesus would be with women in public and speaking to them. Jesus would include women in His teaching and have them listen to His teaching. Jesus even traveled with women and had women who were supporting Him.

Jesus had a tender heart towards women.

So far in all of this post today, we have discussed what happened between men and women. I have stated that men and women drove further apart. Instead of being allies and working together, they were becoming enemies and working against one another. However, marriages don’t normally have just a husband and a wife. They also have children. Some of those children are also the future men.

What happens to the young boys when the Dad is not only away from the son because of work, but away from the son because he is out drinking with his buddies?

That will wait until tomorrow.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War on Masculinity Part 1

What do I think of Nancy Pearcey’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Let’s take a break and review a good book. This is a book that I highly encourage all of you to buy immediately. You can buy it here and support what I am doing at the same time as well.

The scene is at a bar. College students frequent this bar for hanging out and socializing. In comes a 28 year-old man who tosses in a smoke grenade for confusion and then comes in and starts shooting.

In response are men who start pushing others under a table, especially the women, and shield them with their bodies. They break windows so people can escape and repeatedly go in and out of the bar leading people to safety.

From here, Pearcey talks about how the APA in 2018 said traditional masculinity is harmful, but then asks a question.

Who here showed traditional masculinity?

Hint: It’s not the shooter.

Real masculinity has been shown in history when the Titanic goes down and men watch as women and children are escorted off. A famous story has one man putting on his tuxedo so he can die as a gentleman. These men knew they were dying. They knew the women would go on. They accepted it.

This is not the problem.

Pearcey says that when we make a blanket statement though on masculinity being a problem, the solution is really for men to be emasculated. Not necessarily physically, shudder the thought, but at least psychologically and emotionally. She contends that masculinity is not toxic. Sometimes, strength is needed to protect the innocent. Masculinity as it was made is good.

When you denigrate manhood, many men remain boys. One aspect of this is a fear of commitment. Not a problem for many of them. It’s especially easy for them to get casual sex for instance, without having to commit. The very women complaining about men are the ones enabling the traits that they don’t want.

It’s not any better at church. David Murrow wrote a book called Why Men Hate Going To Church which is well worth reading. Jesus is often portrayed as a weakling. No. I am not saying Jesus should be some macho type, but we should be able to see Jesus as a man we want to be like. That could mean we need to change our idea of masculinity, but we definitely need Jesus to be a man.

But doesn’t the Bible tell wives to submit? Here’s something interesting. She cites Bradley Wilcox who says the most violent husbands in America are nominal Protestants who attend church rarely if ever. They have enough Bible verses they can use to justify themselves in their eyes without a worldview behind it.

By contrast, who are seen as the most loving and faithful husbands? Conservative evangelicals.

Why is it that churchgoing, theologically conservative family men test out as the most loving husbands and fathers of any major group in America? The key factor, sociologists discovered, is that these men have a strong commitment to the family as the foundational institution in society. They believe marriage is not primarily about individual fulfillment but about forming a stable, loving home to raise a family.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 38). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

These men know they are to cherish their wives. These men know they are to build a family. These men know this woman is going to be the mother of their children. Evangelical conservative wives have the highest satisfaction in their marriages and it’s not about gender roles and who does the workload. It’s about getting valued for your contribution.

Now some skeptical men might be saying “Yeah, but these are religious prudes.” Well, consider this:

Women who are highly religious also report greater sexual satisfaction than other women. This surprising fact turned up as far back as 1977 in a survey by Redbook magazine, and it has been repeatedly replicated. One study found that “for both the wives and husbands, feeling that God was part of their marriage was positively associated with sexual satisfaction.” Another study concluded, “When it comes to relationship quality in heterosexual relationships, highly religious couples enjoy higher-quality relationships and more sexual satisfaction, compared to less/mixed religious couples and secular couples.” The National Health and Social Life Survey, the most detailed analysis of sexual behavior in America, found that people in intact marriages who worshiped weekly “were most likely to report feeling wanted and needed during intercourse” (94.9 percent).

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 40-41). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Another important aspect is a conservative Christian approach changes men:

For example, anthropologist Elizabeth Brusco conducted a study of evangelicalism or Pentecostalism (she used the terms interchangeably) in Colombia. As a feminist trained in Marxist thought, Brusco expected to find that Christianity would be “a powerful tool of patriarchy.” Instead, she discovered that when a man converts to evangelical Protestantism, he stops drinking, smoking, gambling, and sleeping around. He begins to direct his money to his family. As a result, the household income goes up and the family’s standard of living increases. The children are better educated, they develop better life skills, and the entire family experiences upward mobility. Brusco concludes that conversion to biblical Christianity has the effect of “re-attaching males to the family . . . thereby dramatically improving the quality of life within the confines of the family.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 44). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

While many feminists see the biblical attitude as a problem, it’s quite the opposite:

Surprisingly, Martin argues that biblical Christianity has done far more than Western feminism to improve the lives of poor women around the globe. In her words, gender equality has been rigorously preached by Western development agencies and mainline church organizations. Yet, it is not Western feminism, even in its Christian variant, which has transformed for the better the lives of millions of poor women in developing societies. They have been “empowered” by a “regressive,” “fundamentalist” Christian movement whose theological rawness and lack of intellectual sophistication causes problems and embarrassment to enlightened Western observers. Martin concludes that “if there is a ‘women’s movement’ among the poor of the developing world, Pentecostalism has a good claim to the title.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 45). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Some might also think that these could be Puritanical attitudes, but as Pearcey shows, the Puritans get a bad rap. They were not living in the constant fear someone might be enjoying themselves. If anything, most men would love to hear things like this from the pulpit:

Another minister, William Perkins, wrote that sexual relations between a married couple should be “an holy kind of rejoicing and solacing themselves.” He insisted that sex is as “spiritual” as preaching: “Yea, deeds of matrimony are pure and spiritual . . . and whatsoever is done within the laws of God, though it be wrought by the body . . . yet are they sanctified.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 78-79). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The Puritans also preached against domestic violence. They had no patience for a husband who abused his wife.

In 1641 the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the first law anywhere in the world against domestic violence: “Every married woman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband.”42 The law was soon amended to include wives beating their husbands, as well as “unnatural severity” against children and servants. One Massachusetts man was even brought to court and fined when neighbors complained that he told his wife she was “but his Servant.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 79). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This all sounds good.

But how did we get from here to an age where you can have a hashtag with Kill All Men tweeted around?

We’ll take a further look at that next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

On Toxic Masculinity

Is masculinity a problem in our culture today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Gillette has recently come out with an ad dealing with the problem of toxic masculinity. This is always a difficult term to talk about as no one I know really defines toxic masculinity. It can often be thought that a man being a man is guilty of toxic masculinity.

One example given in the video is a guy saying to a girl, “Smile, sweetie.” Perhaps it’s not necessarily the best thing to say, but if you turn yourself into a victim because you hear that, you have a far worse problem. Guys think women are beautiful and guys want women to smile. When my own wife has put up pictures of herself on Facebook, she has been told she needs to smile.

There has also been debate about the boys fighting in the video. Women have looked and said, “Bullying.” Men have looked and said “roughhousing.” The latter is not a problem at all. It’s how boys often bond with one another. Boys fight. You might say “Well, my son is a nerd. He’s not into fighting.”

Is that why he goes to see those superhero movies and Star Wars and plays video games with heroes fighting villains?

Yes. Even nerds fight in their own way. They may not be as physically capable of fighting with their own bodies, but they have the dreams just as much of being the heroes as their more physically capable fellow men do. Nerds can have just as much of a desire for adventure as other men do.

Today, we live in a culture that it trying greatly to feminize men. On the other hand, we’re also trying to make women into men. Consider the recent celebration in New York over an abortion bill. Don’t tell me that you see abortion as a sad evil when you light up a tower in pink to celebrate. These are people who actively want abortions and yet abortion is one of the most unfeminine actions there is. Abortion makes a mother into a murderer of her own children. However, women think they have to have this to be on the same playing field as men. Note also that about half of the victims in abortion will be women who are murdered.

Men meanwhile are guilty of great crimes if they think that a woman is beautiful and seek to pursue a relationship with her or compliment her. Now, of course, there can be always a danger. I do follow the Pence rule, which goes back to Billy Graham, of not letting myself be alone with women that are not family. The problem comes when as soon as a man expresses any interest, he is declared a pervert. At the same time, these women will ask where all the men are. They’re not there because any time they asked you out, they got shot down and learned eventually to not do it.

I have long held it as a policy to hold open the door for women. That is called being polite. Not so with the new feminists today. That is an insult. It is saying that they can’t open the door on their own. So if a man does something he thinks is nice and honoring to a woman, he is again a problem.

Men are also regularly told they need to be more peaceful in how they handle conflict. Years ago when I was a teenager, I did study karate for a season and we had a saying. Peace if we will, but power if we must. Men should always strive for peaceable means of resolving conflict, but sometimes peaceable means don’t work. Neville Chamberlain’s approach to Hitler did not stop him. It took leaders who stood up to him and fought back to stop him.

Interestingly, what was not addressed in the ad were countries that are Muslim who engage in female genital mutilation and throwing acid in women’s faces. Why did Gillette not say anything about this? Could it be that that was not politically correct? Gillette. You are not being courageous when you stand up and say whatever the culture around you is saying. If you want to show courage, go after Middle Eastern Muslim cultures that do this kind of behavior.

Men today live in a world where they are increasingly seen as villains because they are men. Most anything can nowadays be considered sexual harassment. A man will be less prone to even ask a woman out because he thinks he could be charged with a crime. This despite men living in a world where women try to look their best, which they should, and sex is all around him in media and in advertising. Men are wired to think about sex and yet if they respond to how they are wired and compliment a woman, they are punished for it.

Men are by nature creatures of high energy and we are not as relational as women are. When I talk with my friends, normally it’s about politics, apologetics, or video games. That’s how we bond. Women don’t bond the same way. That’s okay.

Men are also not perverts for thinking women are beautiful. We are designed to be that way. I was in a group on Facebook a couple of weeks ago asking why we think certain parts of our wife’s anatomy, none specifically named, are attractive. What did most men say? “We don’t know. They just are.” I pointed out that if we say that their bodies don’t matter, we’re not being Christian. We’re being Gnostic. Christ was born in a body, lived in a body, died in a body, rose again in a body, and today is still in a body. The body matters. The female body was made to be beautiful to man and as a married man who sees a female body, I have to say that God did a very good job.

Men are more aggressive, but like all good things, it can be controlled and directed. That energy and passion and aggression will cause men to do great things. The women in their lives also have a great influence. A woman can influence a man so he will do things he never dreamed possible before all because of the love of the woman. My wife got me to change my diet for instance. That might not be a big deal to you, but it is a big deal if you have Aspergers and haven’t changed your diet in about 30 years or so.

Gillette is not doing well from what I see in the culture. Recently at the grocery store here, I saw in the discount section a lot of Gillette products. I was playing a gameshow on my phone last night where the host mentioned a deal on Gillette products and the comments section immediately lit up with people saying no.

The huge majority of men don’t have a problem with toxic masculinity. They have the opposite. They need to be more masculine. Gillette is just engaging in the feminization of men. Where will the women be who push this when they want the men to protect them and the men are not there?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Should We Use Gender-Inclusive Language For God?

Would it be wrong to describe God as feminine? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently got into a discussion on Facebook on if we should use gender-inclusive language for God. Would it really be a problem if we used more feminine language to describe God? Could it help men and women to better relate to God?

The motive is good I am sure, but that does not mean that the action itself is. We know there are many ideas that are tried today that have excellent intentions, but they do not produce excellent results. What we would need to know is if there is any data that would help.

Fortunately, there is. This is in a book I am currently going through (Though I have paused to read Bart Ehrman’s newest that came out today) called Why Men Hate Going To Church. It is by David Murrow and I have found it to be incredibly eye-opening. For my own part, I can relate to much of what he says.

Murrow says that there are many men who believe in God and hold orthodox beliefs, but they just don’t care for church. I can say there are many times I can be sitting in a service and my mind is more on a game I’d like to play when I get home. Why? Because in much of church there is nothing challenging and you often hear the same kinds of messages over and over which is pure application. There is little wrestling with the text, serious exegesis, going back to the historicity of the accounts, etc.

One exception to this was a church we attended in Knoxville called The Point. I remember still texting a friend of mine into apologetics during the service and saying “I can’t believe I’m hearing a sermon on the Conquest in the Old Testament.” Some of you might be aghast at texting during church. Don’t be. ours encouraged it. They wanted us to let people know what we were doing and also to text in our questions which the preacher would answer afterward and if it was a lengthy response, he would put up a video message of it during the week.

Murrow says that we have in many ways feminized the church. This is not to say that women are unimportant, but when women dominate a church, the church doesn’t often get the benefits that men often bring, which is greater risk-taking and such. We become internally focused about the family of God instead of externally about the kingdom of God.

Murrow has no thoughts of changing the Gospel. Absolutely not. Instead, remove the feminine focus. Some sayings that guys have a hard time with that he gives as examples are intimacy with God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Intimacy in the Bible refers to sex. Men don’t want to think about sex with God. We love to think about sex and to have it, but not that way. We also don’t talk about personal relationships. If I called a male friend or they called me and one of us said we wanted to talk about our personal relationship, we would be asking if the other was gay.

Jesus does do many things that are not seen as masculine today, such as weeping openly, and no doubt some of our ideas about being a man are wrong, but not all. Jesus is not just the Lamb of God. He is the Lion of Judah. We have often turned Him into Mr. Rogers.

Years ago I read Five Views on the Historical Jesus. One view presented was John Dominic Crossan’s. He talked about how John the Baptist preached a fiery message and got arrested for it and put in jail and executed. Jesus saw this and decided to tone His down to a much greater message of love. Big problem with this theory. This Jesus is a mamby-pamby weakling. This Jesus is not a threat to anyone. This Jesus would never be crucified.

Unfortunately, the data is in and men do not really like going to church when church seems too feminine. The solution again is not to change the Gospel, but to make it a place where men feel they belong. They need to be in a place where they’re not ashamed to tell their fellow men where they are. Men need a place where they think masculinity is accepted and welcomed.

How is this going to be helped by speaking of God as feminine? Men look to other men to be leaders and having God described as a woman won’t help. Yes, I know there are some passages of Scripture that speak of God in some feminine terminology, but these are the exception. Most of it is masculine and needs to be emphasized.

We can also be assured that when men start going to church, women will go more too. Women will go more because wives and children often follow the husbands. Not always, but generally if you want to win a family to Jesus, you start with the father. Women will also go if single to find a good and godly man as well at a church where real men are gathered.

While I can understand the desire to help people feel more comfortable at church, I can’t support the idea of changing language for God. If God has described Himself in terminology that’s largely male, maybe we should leave it at that and consider that God can describe Himself better than we can. A little idea can have disastrous results down the line.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Why Is Bruce An Exception?

What do you do when a man’s very being says he’s a woman? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My wife shared on her Facebook a meme of some soldiers going to say they were going to congratulate Bruce Jenner for his courage, obviously said in sarcasm. Some of her friends from high school showed up to try to correct on her on this point which naturally means that her apologist husband has to go to work. I spent some time telling one that Bruce is still a man and why should we think otherwise? The reply I got was that “her” very being said “she” was a woman. Well that’s interesting. What about these other cases then?

Here for instance is Jerusalem Syndrome.

In this case, someone goes to Jerusalem who has otherwise been a normal person, and then believes themselves to be a biblical figure, like Jesus, Samson, or Mary.
If we are loving to such people, should we treat them like they are such figures, or should we seek to get them the help they need even though their very being says they are such figures?

Here is Cotard Delusion. The person with this delusion is convinced that they are dead and often have evidence from their own experience to back that! Their very being again tells them they’re dead. Are we loving to them if we treat them like they’re dead?

Here is Capgras Syndrome. In this, the person thinks their loved one has been replaced by a double or impostor. Is the loving thing to do agree with them even though they are mentally convinced of this?

Fregoli Delusion:
In this case, the person thinks that multiple people are really one or two persons in disguise. Is it loving to go along with this belief?

Apotemnophilia. In this case, the person thinks they should amputate healthy parts of their body. Is the loving thing to do to rush this person off to see a surgeon?

After writing that, I found more delusions and I’m sure there are still more out there.

Here is Truman Show Delusion. If you’ve ever seen the movie, that’s what it’s like. The person thinks they’re living in a reality show with cameras and actors all around them.

There is also even a video game delusion. In this, the person, yes, thinks that they are in a video game. One case of this involved stealing a more powerful car at gunpoint so someone could get bonus points.

There is also clinical lycanthropy. In this case, the person believes that they have turned into a werewolf.

We recognize each of these as delusions and we do so by looking at reality. Why not do the same in the case of Bruce?

Because I do not intend to participate in the delusion, I will still be referring to Bruce as Bruce. I will still be using the masculine pronouns in description. I have no desire whatsoever to join the Cult of Caitlyn.

In Christ,
Nick Peters