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The Sadducees brought Jesus the most complicated question they could craft against him and his talk of resurrection. They imagined a family of seven sons in which each died passing along their wife to the next brother. They asked Jesus, “In this coming resurrection, whose wife will she be?”

Jesus’s answer was simple, “You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.”

Micah warned likewise, “they do not know the thoughts of the Lord; they do not understand his plan.”

Let me be very clear, I will not untangle our nation’s problems in a thousand-word blog post, and neither will anyone else. I don’t intend to try. Who understands all that God is doing?

All Things Exposed

One of my favorite stories from the Bible is Saul’s attempts to capture David at Ramah. Saul got word that David was hiding with Samuel and his community of prophets. Saul sent subsequent rounds of men to capture David and each failed to return. So, Saul went himself. We’re told that when Saul reached Samuel and his prophets, Saul was filled with the Spirit, stripped off all his clothes, and lay naked prophesying.

Clothing is a critical part of the Saul and David stories. Jonathan gave David his cloak, Saul offered his armor to David before he faced Goliath, Saul tore Samuel’s robe and in return, Samuel predicted that God would tear the kingdom from his rule. Michal rebuked David for his choice of a common linen ephod to lead the ark. And Saul took off all his royal robes when the Spirit came upon him.

Do you remember when Saul went to inquire of the witch at Endor? He went in disguise but as soon as the spirit of Samuel appeared, the witch immediately saw through Saul’s facade and recognized exactly who it was seeking her service.

Things always end up exposed. Neither the garments of power nor the cloak of deceit can ultimately cover what is true. Before God, all men lay naked. All power melts away. All pretense is dissolved. All schemes are laid bare. No one gets away with anything. Neither Saul nor, God’s own man, David.

How dumb David was to not recognize the Prophet Nathan’s story. Nathan came needing a judicial opinion about a rich man who stole a poor neighbor’s single lamb. Having just murdered Uriah and swiped Bathsheba, a child could have recognized Nathan’s setup. But in his pride of having supposedly “gotten away with it,” David couldn’t recognize his own life laid out in the story. David called for the rich man’s punishment. And with just two Hebrew words, Nathan declared, “you’re him.” David too was exposed.

We the People

If I have learned anything from the past few weeks of our nation’s intensifying political conflicts, it’s that we truly are a government of people—we the people. Our government is not eternal nor sacred. It is not made of marble or bronze. It is not monuments or rotundas. It is not guaranteed nor inevitable. It is people. Complicated, compromised, flawed, frustrating, and sinfully rotten people. Men and women like Saul. Men and women like David. Men and women—as much as I wish it weren’t the case—like me. Like you.

Franklin wasn’t joking when he explained we possessed, “a republic, if you can keep it.” Count on people and you’re sure to taste some disappointment.

There has been much recent talk about what the constitution does and doesn’t allow, everyone is now a constitutional scholar. But we should remember that its opening words are not about rights, checks, or powers. Its opening words are an assumption that what follows is based on us being people—“We the people of the United States.” It assumes we know how to be people. That may be the real challenge we are facing. Do we know how to be a person, a people?

We have become ideologies, crowds in support of slogans, likes, and retweets, polls, and projections. Better defined by which podcasts we subscribe to then by our families, careers, faith, or place. According to several recent studies, fewer American’s know the names of their neighbors than ever before. But I bet you have suspicions about their politics. Maybe those yard signs already gave it away. We are increasingly more ignorant about and isolated from people, yet we assume more than ever.

When Did We Stop Being People?

In the late 1880s, Neitzche wrote a story about a madman who lit a lamp in the morning and went searching for God. “Where is he,” he cried. The gathering crowd laughed and mocked him. “Is God a child that you must go find him?” “Has God gotten lost somewhere?” They were enlightened people, no longer lost in superstition or fairytale.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us—for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

The crowd went silent and stared at him in confusion and astonishment. Probably the same response you had. Seems a little mellow dramatic but pretty good writing for a crazy man.

At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.

He finally concluded; they hadn’t felt enough of the consequences to have recognized what they had done. The madman had come too soon. But one day, they would feel the consequences of their death to God.

Do we not feel it? “Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down?” “Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?”

Neitzche was convinced that the only way to deal with the death of the divine was to become gods ourselves. Where else would we turn for morality, for meaning? We would take up the work of good vs. evil. We would become judges of our brothers and sisters. We would expose and we would condemn.

The world of God’s rule shattered into a pantheon of men climbing Olympus to claim his spot. It is a zero-sum game in which he who holds power declares right and wrong.

Man was created for things greater than what we now possess. We feel it. We know there must be more. But having laughed away any narrative of the divine, having rolled our eyes at talk of the eternal, having relegated religious narratives to the realm of medieval history, we are left to find our own story, our own meaning. We must find our own good vs evil in which to take sides. We mock such ideas and yet our rhetoric is increasingly full of it. Our culture laughs at those who speak of evil and yet accuses nearly everyone else of it.

The novelist Walker Percy captured it in the despair of his Moviegoer:

“and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.”

The Truth

What was the prophet Samuel doing during all that turmoil of Saul’s unraveling? Apparently, he was with a group of prophets worshiping. What exposed Saul was a group of people, filled with the Spirit in worship. It is always that way. What exposes the world, what exposes you and me, is worship. It is the most subversive act in the world. To simply say, Jesus, is Lord. To worship him.

The truth is not exposed through ballots or speeches, not through power or revolution. The truth is exposed to the world through people who gather to worship God and to have the truth humbly expose them. You can not legislate the truth, you can’t advertise it, or force it down people’s throats. Because the truth is a person.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus explained.

We know the truth by knowing a person. By humbling ourselves and reaching out beyond ourselves. Odds are, His Spirit will expose you and leave you naked, but you need that. You must love him with all your heart, soul, and mind. He is not a political ideology. He is not a position to defend. He is not an argument to be won. The Christian religion is not a philosophy or a culture, it is a person. A person who will challenge your ideas and your conclusions.

And learning to follow him teaches us to be a person as well. It teaches us how to recognize other persons. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. He teaches us to be human. To be a named individual, a soul. And so we are instructed in how to recognize others as souls too.

He took fishermen and tax collectors, zealots and Pharisees, men and women, and reworked their identities into named disciples.

Smite us all; Save us all

Some will say, this is naïve and too moderate for the importance of the moment. You’re probably right. You are going to have to make decisions.

The truth is, I have plenty of opinions as well. I cast a particular ballot for a certain candidate. I have thoughts about economics and social justice and election integrity. I have thoughts about big tech, about foreign policy, and black lives matter, and about our police officers. I have thoughts about global warming, and China, and North Korea, and Iran. I bet you have thoughts too. And I bet there are plenty of places we disagree.

But I am convinced that my first decision must be to know Christ more. He has exposed me enough for me to know I am often right and wrong.

The political story is not the only story. We are people. We have to learn to see one another as people. To hear one another as people.

I’m under no illusion. We will continue to disagree, even as believers. But God help us if we reduce one another to less than a person. God help us if we reduce Christ to less than a person.

And I’m of the “Samuel” opinion that the best place to do all of this “re-personing” is in worship with other persons and with Christ.

I have been praying the line from a G. K. Chesterton prayer all week. Smite us all; Save us all. Let us know you as the truth and expose us in any depersonalizing pretense. Expose what is true. Strip us of our royal garments. Strip us of our disguises. Strip our nation of falsehood and propaganda. Pour out your Holy Spirit and drive us all to the ground before you. Give us courage and give us meekness. Give us Jesus.

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.
Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.
– G. K. Chesterton

 

I’m grateful to the team at The Gospel Coalition for publishing some of my thoughts on leadership and the identity of the pastor.

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I never liked the title “pastor.” My plan was to practice law and pursue politics. I was fascinated with leadership, and all those career tests told me I had a knack for it. But unexpectedly, at a youth summer camp my junior year of high school, I felt a distinct call to become a pastor.

When I informed my high school debate coaches that I wouldn’t be pursuing my college debate scholarships and would instead be attending a small midwestern Bible college, one pleaded with me: “Why would you throw away the gifts God has given you?” Like her, I imagined pastoral work would be pedestrian and marginal—a sacrifice of my potential and plans.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Read the Article

As a pastor responsible for a congregation of believers, it’s been a tough week. There are hard decisions to be made and challenges to serving those who are most in need.

It has been shared widely, but these words from C. S. Lewis have been a wise reminder of how Christians live not just in these complex days, but every day. Lewis was writing about a spreading fear from nuclear proliferation, but you need only replace his context with our own pandemic to recognize his broader point.

C. S. Lewis writes:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds. — “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

A Word from the Psalms:

Also, as many pastors have, I’ve been turning to the psalms this week. Much attention is being given to Psalm 91.

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say[a] to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
5 You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8 You will only look with your eyes
and see the recompense of the wicked.
9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
the Most High, who is my refuge[b]—
10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
no plague come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

What’s so interesting about that psalm is the way it was distorted by Satan during Jesus’s temptation. In his second attempt, Satan encouraged Jesus to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple and allow the angels to rescue him, a display of power and importance that was sure to catch the attention of the world.

Satan quoted from verse 12 of Psalm 91: “On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.”

Too many people read Psalm 91 in the same way that Satan distorted it—reading it as a promise that nothing bad will come upon those who follow God. Given our current situation, we too can clutch verse ten’s promise that disease will not touch us.

But what are Christians to think when they do become sick or when sickness does invade their bodies and congregations? Jesus understood something more profound about this psalm’s intention.

Like the psalms so often do, they lead us by our most honest prayers and desperations to the higher truths of God. That truth comes through clearest in verse 15. “When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble.” God’s promise is not that trouble will never come. His promise is that He will be with us in the midst of it. The promise is His presence. Or, as the final verse reminds us, God will show us His salvation.

I’m reminded of Christ’s beatitudes. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are persecuted. For they shall see God. They shall be comforted. They shall be satisfied.

This satisfaction and vision and comfort come in the midst of suffering and poverty and hunger.

Dionysius and Joy

What Christians have is not a secret antidote against pain or death. Faith hasn’t yet reworked the believer’s genetics. We are as susceptible to sickness as any of our neighbors. But we do possess an inoculation against fear, anxiety, and dread, though too often we forget we have received it. For it is often in these places of sickness and suffering that God’s presence is most powerfully known. Our sickness is transformed into something strangely different.

We are capable of every effort to protect our communities and comply with all their recommendations and to do it without fear. For the spread of hopelessness and the distrust of God are a far greater risk than any virus. It is this sickness and this trouble which the psalm promises to rescue us from. The sting of death as scripture refers to it and the hope of a new and whole creation.

In 252 AD, the ancient city of Alexandria faced a massive plague. Christians, like Dionysius, were at the center of both its costs and Christian responses of support. Writing about their situation in an Easter letter to his churches, Dionysius explained, “other people would not think this a time for festival [but] far from being a time of distress, it is a time of unimaginable joy.”

Dionysius was surely thinking of James’s words: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

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God, make us steadfast people who see every moment of struggle as another moment to taste more deeply of your salvation and to sense more tangibly your presence. Pour your Spirit out upon your church even as we are separated from one another. And fill us with joy, not that we might escape this suffering, but that it might be transformed into hope, faith, and steadfastness of service.

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The Bible warns of man’s tendency to over-identify with his impulses of aggression and passivity, a topic I’ve explored at length in a previous article. But the Bible is also careful not to present these traits as mere personality types. We make a profoundly naive mistake in imagining that some men are aggressive while others are passive. As if the difference can be located in a gene or predetermined by some developmental event.

The Biblical image—and in my opinion, the fairly obvious observation of life and one’s self—reflects that we are more likely to swing repeatedly from one to the other. Aggression gives way to apathy, which eventually explodes again into aggression.

It may be that each man is more naturally inclined to one position, but our frustrated attempts at control often leave us searching for means of coping—means which can appear unlike ourselves. The man who finds his most ardent attempts at power and aggressive control to have failed often resigns to withdraw. The man who actively disengages eventually finds that his passivity has really been aggression, and he too lashes out when he can’t have his peace the way he wants it.

These oscillating attempts at control can be found in almost any number of Biblical characters, but Moses is a helpful place to observe it.

Moses’ Action and Inaction

At some point, Moses, the prince of Egyptian power, upon seeing the suffering of his own people, began to identify with their cause. The passive and powerless image of a baby carried by the currents of the Nile and raised by royal servants gave way to an impulse for action, an impulse driven by conviction. It is the defining act of Moses. Seeing an Egyptian master beating a Hebrew, Moses acts. Moses struck the Egyptian. He killed him and hid the body in the sand.

It’s hard to know just how premeditated Moses’ sudden involvement may have actually been. Was this the momentary impulse of passion or were there impulses building for something more, for a revolution, for a new way, for freedom, for a new identity? Whether it was first degree or second, Exodus suggests that it was violent and it was spoken of as murder. It is the Biblical image of aggression: Cain with is raised rock, Joab’s hidden dagger, and Pharaoh’s call to drown the infants. It is Moses’s first independent act, his coming of age—Moses, the man.

He becomes one by taking the life of another. And it backfired horribly. Far from sparking revolution or seeding defiance in his native tribe, his people mocked him. The next day, a fellow Hebrew, fighting with another Hebrew, snickered back at Moses, “Are you going to kill me too.” With neither the people nor Pharaoh on his side, Moses’ attempt at control had produced only isolation. He ran. Far from Egypt, he fled to the wilderness. Tucked into the rocky crags of Middean, the sound of bleating sheep around him, the cries of Egyptian cruelty finally resolved into silence.

It’s hard to criticize Moses for wanting the solitude of that place. It changed him. Moses of the wilderness now seemed so far from the Moses of Egypt. Take Moses’ hesitancy when God called him back to Egypt. “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue… Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.”

It’s hard to imagine Moses as a man afraid to speak. It’s hard to imagine the aggressive and impulsive Moses begging to keep his seclusion, wanting someone else to go in his place. His defining first characteristic had been action and Moses would go on to speak boldly before Pharaoh and passionately before his people. We have an entire book of his sermons. Or remember his frustration at the people’s lack of faith. Just before he raised his staff and struck the rock? He berated them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” He hardly seems “slow” of speech. Is not his striking of the rock an image of the same aggression which he showed that first day in Egypt? So who is this timid man in the desert?

Like most men I know—myself included—Moses can not be easily dismissed as either aggressive or passive. His life is a complicated twisting of these traits. Intertwined in his story are these two ways of acting, two ways of carving out a way of being in the face of a world which so rarely gives way to his control. Moses strikes, and Moses retreats. Moses acts, and Moses begs not to be involved. Any man who is honest with himself—shy and timid or are aggressive and resolved—knows that these two ways of being exist in all of us.

No One Is Talking About Meekness

Twisted with these two threads is an uncommon virtue which Moses is credited with possessing more than any other man on earth. “The man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.”

I have come to believe that meekness is the defining quality of Biblical manhood. Probably not something you’ve heard before. Without a proper understanding of what it means to be meek, we are ill-prepared for understanding masculinity, maturity, and in the end, ourselves. I think I can show you why it is so important.

I chose not to use the word meekness in the title of this article for a good reason. I’m not naive. Talking about meekness is not a topic most men are interested in. It gets some vague sense of approval for Jesus’ having included it in his Beatitudes, but no one is talking or thinking about meekness—not in this world. How would you take it if someone said, “When I think of you, I always think of meekness. You’re just such a meek person.” Could you even conclude that it was meant as a compliment? Whatever Jesus meant by “the meek shall inherit the earth,” it’s hard to see much evidence of it. Who of our heroes would we call meek? Who of our great leaders? Who of our great masculine role-models?

But Moses earned the distinction, “meekest man on earth.” He earned it through a specific situation recounted in Numbers 12. Israel was trudging through its wilderness years and beginning to show wear. As seems to happen anytime a group of people attempt a common goal, complaining set in and suspicion soon followed. Worst, the most destructive resistance was forming within his own family. Miriam and Aaron were whispering and critical behind Moses’ back. “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” Word was getting around, and even Moses must have realized things were coming to a head.

How did Moses respond—the man who had received his audible calling from a burning bush, the man who had faced off with Pharaoh and his sorcerers, the man who had received the law on the mountain of God and had led Israel through war and water? How did he respond? Moses did nothing. He didn’t respond. Moses chose not to act. But it wasn’t passivity. He would eventually pray and beg God to spare the very people who cut him down. For this inner strength, navigating when to act and when to refrain, Moses is called meek. Maybe that seems weak to you. If so, you’ve probably never tried it.

A Pollutant of Progress?

The aggression and passivity that are typical of our responses are really both symptoms of insecurity. The man who strikes in anger and the man who shuts his eyes share this similarity, they are both insecure. They are both searching for a way to control their situation, one by dominating it the other by ignoring it.

Moses’ meekness is not his natural disposition. He, too, was prone to strike and run. But the faithfulness of God had formed in him a perspective which, even when his control was tested, mitigated that insecurity and allowed him to overcome the impulse to revert to his base inclinations. The inner strength which Moses possessed was a faith that control is not ultimately his anyway.

The German philosopher Nietzche saw meekness as a Christian pollutant, hindering the progress of man. Nietzche saw modern man’s rejection of God as an opportunity to form a new stronger humanity. From Nietzche’s perspective, the constraint meekness imposed on man’s ambition only held him back. Virtues like meekness kept man from claiming the full potential of his control. Derek Rishmawy explains that Nietzche “thought meekness was exactly the sort of false virtue that the weak would applaud because, well, it’s about the only virtue they could actually pull off. Since the weak can’t win by the standard rules, they change the rules.”

I think Nietzche’s evaluation of meekness feels very modern. It is a virtue weak men claim to justify their weakness. It is the virtue of a man who has no success to call his virtue. It is the kind of virtue we only claim when we have failed or are too passive to try. But Nietzche was wrong. He, like so many men, are blinded by their own ambition and unwilling to call virtuous anything which might force their control into submission.

What Nietzche, and we, often get wrong about meekness, is that it is not an absence of power. Neither is it the warmed-up leftovers of our failed ambition. Meekness is a virtue precisely because it must be earned, it must be practiced, and it takes both maturity and strength to keep it.

A Better Image of Meekness

The greeks are known for their debating the value of various virtues, and meekness is one which often made their lists, although, as we will see, the Bible offers a unique source for obtaining it.

Plato uses the word to describe a general who, victorious in battle, was put in a position of ultimate power. He was justified in annihilating his enemy completely. But Plato called a general who instead spared the conquered people, meek in his treatment. Plato saw that not as appeasement but strength.

Similarly, the Greek philosopher and soldier Xenophenon used the word meek often in his description of war horses. The best horses would be tamed but not broken of their spirit. A horse prepared for battle would need to maintain its power, energy, and wild nature but be brought under the control of its rider. It’s nature needed to be disciplined but not forfeited. A prized warhorse still possessed all of the traits that made it wild: strength, determination, and fearlessness. It would face cannons and muskets, fire and smoke, cries, and chaos. But it must also recognize and respond to the most sublet shift of its rider, the kick of a heel, the whispered command, and at its best, anticipate even before commanded.

My wife grew up showing horses. She spent plenty of summer afternoons correcting my form and telling me to keep my heels down. Our horse could hardly be described as one ready for battle, but the willingness of an animal his size to cut in a new direction by only the slightest pressure of a knee is remarkable. Even after years of riding, he has not lost his disposition. He is still mischievous and prone to test the limits of each new rider, but once established, his obedience is remarkable. He is meek, not a statement of weakness but disciplined strength.

I marvel at the same strength in my bird dog, Millie. We have spent years hunting together, and watching her work a field of pheasants is one of my favorite ways to spend a day. A great bird dog does not need to be trained to be interested in birds. You don’t teach a dog to hunt. That comes naturally. A dog with good genetics knows what to do and will often display beautiful points even as a puppy. The real question is, will the dog hunt with you. Will the dog hold point for you to get into a proper shooting position? Will the dog retrieve a downed bird to hand? Will a dog hold when it can smell a field of prey before it?

Meekness doesn’t breed out the horse’s power or the dog’s impulse to chase; meekness matures these drives into something useful, something controllable, something disciplined. A meek person feels the same burning passion for acting, but they have discovered their real strength lies in the discipline to be led by God, not their emotions.

This meekness is strength without the insecurity to prove it. It is self-control that doesn’t need to be in control of others. So much of what appears to be power is desperation, and so much of what appears to be strength is insecurity. Similarly, so much of what appears to be indifference is an obsession. Meekness knows what is true, without the need to prove it to oneself or others.

The Value of Authority

You could characterize the Greek virtue of meekness as a kind of disciplined self-control, but the Bible is more realistic about the difficulty of ruling ourselves. The Bible suggests we are the horse, not the rider.

The virtue of meekness can not be drummed up by determination. Such strength can not be manufactured by strength. Any attempt at self-control which is attempted by controlling one’s self is constantly prone to crack under the pressure of insecurity. The wild horse can not be tamed by himself. He needs a higher authority.

Peter captured an image of Jesus’ meekness in writing, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.” Where did such restraint and strength come from? Peter continued, “Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” Jesus’ meekness is not his passivity before man, nor is it self-determination to demonstrate virtue and show himself to be a superior man. Jesus’ meekness is a submission to a greater authority. He entrusted himself. His meekness is a sign of his submission.

Spurgeon picks up on this mystery in writing, “‘The Lord is slow to anger,’ because He is GREAT IN POWER. He is truly great in power who hath power over himself. When God’s power doth restrain Himself, then it is power indeed: the power that binds omnipotence is omnipotence surpassed.”

The real question of meekness is not what you recognize in yourself but the authority you recognize beyond yourself. It is this yielding to surpassing omnipotence that produces meekness. Your strength is directly related to the strength of that authority to which you are willing to commit. Meekness requires a rider, a commander, an authority. We so easily identify and long to be that lone rider, seated upon his horse, determined and confident as he rides westward into the setting sun. But that is not our calling. We are the horse. Confident and strong, only when we are ruled by guiding authority. Without his direction, we are an undisciplined horse, spooked, and restless.

Consider how Andrew Murray linked this idea of meekness with a proper understanding of what it means to be a man. He wrote, “Men sometimes speak as if humility and meekness would rob us of what is noble and bold and manlike. O that all would believe that this is the nobility of the kingdom of heaven, that this is the royal spirit that the King of heaven displayed, that this is Godlike, to humble oneself, to become the servant of all!”

The Pull Potential of Man

Our modern masculine ideal is individualistic, ambitious, independent, and self-determined. Submission is its antithesis. Submission is seen as weakness and the forfeiting of the masculine ideal. Submission is domestic and womanish. To submit is to be broken and robbed of your masculinity. It’s no wonder submission becomes a perverted word in our demands of submission from others. But submission is rightfully a masculine ideal. It is man’s most wise move by which the strength of meekness is given room to form. It is our submission that builds strength. We must be broken, not to lose our masculine spirit but to have it matured into something stronger—something of use in this world, something of use to God.

The man, who can not be led, who submits to nothing but himself, is far weaker than the man who submits to God.

We need a new image of meekness and its priority in the lives of men. Meekness is the bridle of our aggression and apathy. It is the tugged reins by which God calls for our halt and by the same loosened, which he calls for our courageous action. Only the man who has submitted to his lead can discern the difference. He is a horse well prepared for battle, his undisciplined brother, only for pasture.

Nietzche was wrong. Meekness is not a sign of subjugation but submission. It is the power by which the kingdom of God reclaims the earth. For the proud men of Troy who boast only in victory, meekness is a trojan horse. As they beat their shields and fight to take the hill, they only lose it and themselves in the brutality of the process, a stream of men dejected and disengaged in their defeat. Our power is not in our elevation; our power is in the one we elevate above ourselves.

The full potential of man is not ultimately in his self-achievement but in his self-submission. Maybe this seems impractical and unrealistic. Perhaps it seems so idealistic as to be completely irrelevant. Nothing in this world seems to actually work that way. But it may be as Chesterton put it, “It is because we are standing on our heads that Christ’s philosophy seems upside down.”

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My kids have a little wooden nativity set that each year we assemble beneath our Christmas tree. This time of year, you see them everywhere—plastic ones illuminated in front yards, wooden ones set up in front of McDonald’s, some metal and wrapped in Christmas lights, others expensive porcelain or olive wood.

This year, nativity scenes even made the news being used by some churches to make political statements. Growing up, some of the Catholic churches in my home town were forced to bolt down their baby Jesus—stealing them having become the popular teenage seasonal prank.

That little scene is more than 2,000 years old, and although 2,000 years of nativity nostalgia have slowly evolved some details of the original scene, where else do we set up historical depictions from the First-Century world.

It’s easy, these nativities yanked out of their ancient time and set alongside our wrapped presents and busy shopping lines, to lose a sense of the nativity’s actual place. We often imagine Christ’s birth wrapped in darkness, only the light of that brilliant new star washing down over the family: Marry, Joseph, and Jesus, aglow in heavenly light. The scene more made for holiday cards with glitter than the actual complexity of First-Century life on the margins.

Like the Christmas song puts it, “Radiant beams from thy holy face. With the dawn of redeeming grace.”

Jesus was born in Bethlehem. A small town, but rich in history, and in Jesus’ day, probably home to a few hundred people. First-Century towns like Bethlehem were built tight, families often adding rooms to existing houses as their families grew. With the census underway, Bethlehem was more crowded than usual, crowded enough that Mary and Joseph found space with the animals, probably in a seller, cave space beneath the family’s house.

The place of Jesus’ birth alludes to how little attention was given to it; after all, the families of Bethlehem must have been busy. With relatives in town, there were grandkids to play with, meals to be fixed, extra bedding to pull out, and talk of life in every other part of Judea. An out of town Jewish girl about to give birth was hardly a thing to note. Mary and Joseph slipped into their place, most likely unnoticed by the others going about their business. Maybe a few hellos. Maybe a few “good to see you again.” But never a bending knee or word of worship.

It’s not hard to imagine what had caught the attention of Bethlehem—there was plenty to talk about. Jesus was not born into a historical blank space. That year had not been divinely chosen because nothing else significant was on the world’s calendar. Hardly, the world into which Jesus was born was fully occupied with power and politics—revolutions, collapses, impassioned arguments, rumors, and growing divisions.

The Gospel’s subtle references to these tumultuous times have become such a part of our reading that very little of these events still color our Christmas imagination. But the gospel writers make several significant historical references surrounding that first Christmas morning.

The Political Atmosphere of Jesus’ Birth

First, there was the most proponent name in the list, Caesar Augustus. For us, it’s an Imperial name indistinguishable from the rest, but in Jesus’s day, Augustus was a name plenty were talking about round Bethlehem dining room tables, just an earshot from Jesus’ manger. Augustus had risen to power less than thirty years ago, the soul victor of the massive Roman civil war sparked by the assassination of Julius Caesar. The war had produced legendary names like Brutus, Cassius, Marc Antony, and Cleopatra. Surely, it was one of the most significant events in world history.

Augustus used the war to not only gain power but to reinvent Rome itself. He is remembered as the first Roman Emperor, having all but decimated the old Roman Senate. He was a man of vision and ruthless determination, and after the blood bath of eliminating his opposition, he ushered in an era, known by historians as the Pax Romana—the era of Roman peace. Peace earned by the sword and ensured by his legions.

The birth of Jesus intersects this monumental figure in the order of Caesar Augustus’s decree, “all the world should be registered.”

These censuses were extremely controversial in Israel because they were seen as an attempt to tighten control and inevitably raise more taxes. The jews saw the order as a political move in the wrong direction. There would eventually be several registrations taken of Judea, some before the rule of Quirinius, who is mentioned by Luke, and some during. The Jewish historian Josephus traces the Jewish revolt and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD, all the way back to opposition to these registrations by Augustus.

The Jewish leadership, like the High Priest, were able to convince most of Jerusalem to participate, but more conservative regions like Galilee, where Jesus’ family was from, remained a hotbed for talk of revolt and opposition.

There is an interesting note in the Book of Acts when Gamaliel is the lone member of the Sanhedrin to recommend not persecuting the new Christians. He mentioned that maybe Jesus was a false leader like other revolutionary. He specifically named Theudas and Judas the Galilean who had led revolts against Rome and failed. We know for sure that Judas the Galilean lead his revolt from Galilee and in opposition to these very censuses we read about in Luke 2.

I know Christmas Eve is not typically a service to use as a history lesson, but I give you this history to hopefully make a point; Jesus was born into a world immersed and engrossed in politics, controversy, and hotly divided opinions. I’ve said nothing about the violence and insecurities of Herod the Great or the political divisions on how to handle Rome led in opposing directions by the Pharisees, and Sanhedrin, and Essences.

Politics at the Table

It’s not hard to imagine that night, a Jewish family whispering in the dim oil lit light of their Bethlehem home. One begins, “We are Jews. God is our emperor. Caesar Augustus is not our peace. And now he wants more money to pay for it.”

Another whispers back, “We should resist. I hear there is a man leading a rebellion near Galilee. Some say he may be the Messiah who will finally overthrow Rome.” Another family member pushes back. “It’s too risky. We still have the temple. I don’t want to risk losing that too.” Still, another, hearing mention of the temple becomes more frustrated, their voices now above a whisper. “The temple is as corrupt as Rome. We should leave while we can. There are priests in the desert who are practicing our faith as we all should.” In that day, politics and religion were topics no family could avoid, nor would they try.

But they find themselves at an impasse. What is this world with its kings and armies and taxes? What does it mean to follow God in it? Do you resist? Do you comply? Do you ignore everything and pretend?

They blew out their lamps and fell asleep, divided, yet with a mix of fear, uncertainty, frustration, and longing shared between them.

A few yards away, a baby is born and brakes the stillness with its first cry. What a world to be born into.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.”

And to the shepherds, heavy-eyed, watching sheep on the margins of town, suddenly an angel, and a word, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

“And this will be a sign for you..”

What will be the sign of this savior? What will be the sign of this new Lord? What is this good news and joy for all people? What is this revelation of God breaking into the darkness, into the silence?

“You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”

At that very moment, somewhere in Rome, Caesar Augustus was probably plotting and signing more decrees. Pundits were weighing-in on clashes between the emperor and the Roman senate. In Galilee, rebels were also plotting and planning their resistance. They would wait no more. There was a nation to save. In Jerusalem, priests were trying to balance conflicts and keep their own positions of power. There was so much at stake.

And yet it would be this little nativity scene—young unknown first-time parents, poor bowing shepherds, a stone feeding trough holding an infant, and scrapes of cloth for swaddling—it would be this scene that was remembered.

Remember This Christmas

I’ll offer you only this, Christmas reminds us that God is with us, but not in the ways or places many would expect.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,  for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And I might add, for this Christmas, blessed are those wise enough to look for him, passing by kings and emperors and revolutions, to find him here, in this nativity. Because it is no easier for us to recognize him than it was for those of his own time.

The light of our Christmas Eve candles isn’t enough to burn away the complexity of our own time. There is just as much talk of power, and politics, and disagreement on how to handle them both. Such things matter, but maybe not as much as some others. Maybe not as much as this.

“And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”

I want to close with this Christmas poem from G. K. Chesterton.

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

I want to remind you tonight, far more is going on than the news finds reason to report. In fact, the headlines of Jesus’ world became nothing more than the historical footnotes surrounding his birth. Could it be true here as well.

It would be this baby by which history itself would pivot, the count of this Christmas, 2019, derived from that moment of his birth.

This is the ways of God. As Paul would put it, “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

The kingdom of God is at hand. Here it is. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

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I’m aware; toxic masculinity is a phrase of extreme controversy. Wrapped up in the phrase are hotly debated ideologies, fueled by very different perspectives on what a man is and should be.

At the center of these masculine critiques is a concern of over-identification with the attributes of violence, aggression, and dominance. In 2018, The American Psychological Association released findings entitled “Harmful masculinity and violence: Understanding the connection and approaches to prevention.”

The APA summarized:

“In early childhood, violence and aggression are used to express emotions and distress. Over time, aggression in males shifts to asserting power over another, particularly when masculinity is threatened. Masculine ideals, such as the restriction of emotional expression and the pressure to conform to expectations of dominance and aggression, may heighten the potential for boys to engage in general acts of violence including, but not limited to, bullying, assault, and/or physical and verbal aggression.”

The APA suggests that instead of maturing out of childhood aggression, our socially constructed masculine ideals teach men to identify with and lean into their aggressive traits. The APA also suggested that a struggle by some men to live up to these masculine expectations leads them to overcompensate with aggression and violence.

The APA is not wrong in recognizing and condemning the violence and aggression many men act out. In a previous article, I considered the significant evidence that something is deeply flawed in the lives of, particularly, young men. Violence is a part of the problem.

However, the APA study went on to make several suggestions to help solve toxic masculinity. Consider these three suggestions: “Address social norms condoning male dominance and violence,” “Create marketing campaigns designed to modify social and cultural norms that endorse the unhealthy male code and consequent violence,” “Identify and treat psychological distress precipitated by gender role socialization.”

What’s Wrong With Us is More Complicated… And Much Older

The problems facing men are more complicated than the APA acknowledges. What’s wrong with men is not something an ad campaign or a public service commercial can solve. And the ways men go wrong are far more complicated than violence and aggression. It’s also worth remembering; we are hardly the first to deal with these questions. The problem is much, much older.

There is an Irish proverb that goes, “For every mile of road, there are two miles of ditches.”

I’m worried that our conversations about toxic masculinity have become far too narrow. Our culture’s characterizations of toxic men are incomplete. There is more than one ditch on this path to understanding manhood. Avoiding one doesn’t guarantee to miss the other. In fact, many drivers have learned that the real danger can be over-correcting, which often leaves you in the ditch on the other side of the road.

The Biblical Take on Man’s Aggression

The opening chapters of Genesis narrate how the first couple’s act of disobedience proliferated into a world that could only be described as cruel and perverse. As God put it, “every intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually.” The evil which now dwelled in man’s heart spilled out across creation. Cain murdered his brother in premeditated hatred and soon men were killing and taking as it benefited them. We watch as Adam and Eve’s curse corrupts every corner of the human experience.

Just after Abel’s murder and Cain’s exile, we are given a genealogy of Adam’s descendants. Eventually, from the descendants of Cain came Lamech. Lamech was the first man to have two wives. More descriptively, Genesis records, “Lamech took two wives.” He was also the second to be credited with murder. He bragged about killing a younger, and, as seems to be implied, weaker man to his wives. He taunted, “If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s (talking about one’s self in the third-person apparently being a universally recognized sign of a scumbag) is seventy-sevenfold.” It was a reference to God’s promise to protect Cain even in exile. Lamech boasted of his own vengeance and his own power for protection. It’s probably safe to call Lamech toxic.

The genealogies then lead us to what has to be one of the most perplexing passages in all of scripture—Genesis 6.

“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth…”

Lamech’s taking of wives becomes the pattern, as these “sons of God” began to take wives as they pleased, or as these women pleased their eye. These were the mighty men of old. We know very little about them. Commentators aren’t sure how to translate Nephilim. It literally means “fallen ones,” but may also refer to these men and their offspring as giants. And what are we to make of the title “sons of God?” Tradition has it that these are spirit beings who slept with women to produce demigods, legendary men of renown.

Ancient Men of Renown

The ancient world is filled with stories of such men—heroes. Heracles and Achilles. Perseus and Orion. These were the men whose names are forever remembered, the men whose stories are recorded in songs and memorialized in constellations of the stars. That generations of men would model their lives after such figures is how history progresses.

We can’t be sure if Genesis saw these legendary “sons of God” figures as truly divine or only as figures of mythical lore, many having claimed divinity. Still, we do know two things about how Genesis evaluated them. First, their tactics were oppression, violence, and wicked pursuit. They conquered women as they conquered land and cities. As Leon Kass put it in his commentary on Genesis, following these heroes, “The rest of mankind goes boldly and heroically wild.”

They become toxic.

In response, God would no longer allow men to live for hundreds of years, inflicting lifetimes of brutality and pain. Still, the toxicity of mankind became so great that God “regretted” that he had made man at all. He would send a flood to purge the earth of their violence.

But the second, and maybe the most surprising lesson of Genesis, is that the heroes of old have no place in the history of God. Their names are washed away with their time and with their violent deeds. Their power, their achievements, and their conquests are dismissed with a single summary sentence. “These were the mighty men who were of old.” Genesis has no interest in remembering their names or their achievements.

While the ancient world delighted itself in all the nefarious and sordid details of their heroes’ lives, Israel’s God paid little attention.

As Psalm 37 put it, “In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. But the meek shall inherit the land.”

The Man Who’s Name Was Remembered

Noah’s name is the one name remembered from those days. And what is it that placed Noah above the heroes of his age?

Genesis states simply: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.”

That is the full extent of what we know about Noah. These are the traits that earned him a place in the story of God. As one commentator put it, “we are put on notice that it is these qualities, not heroic manliness (prized everywhere else), that are divinely favored.” Noah walked with God.

Noah’s character is, however, more complicated than your Sunday school flannel-board may have presented it. In fact, there are tensions which run through the story of Noah which too few readers have recognized. Noah’s story is more thann an ark and animals. Noah’s story presents the full complexity of what it means to face our broken identity and to discover that there is more than one way we go wrong.

Our Expectations for Noah

Interestingly, the hairy-knuckled Lamech, who boasted of murder to his conquered wives, is not the only Lamech in Genesis’ genealogies. There was a second Lamech—Noah’s father.

Upon the birth of his son, this second Lamech named him Noah, explaining, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” In Hebrew, Noah sounds similar to the word, translated here, relief. Noah is a play on words for rest.

If the first Lamech was known for his bravado, this Lamech seems weary and pensive. The pain of centuries of toiling under the curse had left him longing for relief. His son might be the one to finally bring rest. No other son in all of the Genesis genealogies is given such expectations.

Both Lamechs were looking for relief, one by conquering it, the other hoping his son might accomplish what he had not. One through aggression, the other passively longing. Noah’s father makes no mention of God, but his hopes were messianic. Could Noah reverse the curse?

To then discover that Noah is, in fact, the single man to be recognized by God as worthy of saving, to the reader unaware of the story’s conclusion, the expectations could not be higher. But there is an interesting observation about Noah, which, once noticed, is impossible not to see. Noah never speaks.

He is the hope of humanity. He is the one selected by God. He is the one who thousands of years later, Fisher-Price continues to produce as a kids’ bath-time playset. Yet he moves through his own story speechless.

To his credit, Noah’s silence has the literary effect of reinforcing the consistency of his action and character. Each time God speaks, Noah obeys. There is no negotiating, no complaining, no boasting or fear. The simplicities by which God affirmed Noah’s righteousness is expressed in the simplicity of his obedience. His quiet dedication carried him through the floodwaters and onto dry ground where his silent sacrifice placed upon a fresh alter was received by God as a pleasing aroma.

But his long silence has another effect; it produces a jarring and horrific impact when Noah’s first utterance is a curse upon his own son. “Cursed be Canaan.”

Noah, the son who had been his father’s hope for rest from the cursed ground, now speaks his first words, a curse upon his own son to the devastation of his father’s hope.

The Second Ditch of Masculinity

I have often wondered about the world into which Noah stepped from the ark. The images of doves and rainbows tend to wash the story in a sense of newness: green meadows, snow-capped peaks, and bubbling streams rinsed of their previous pollution.

But Genesis states only that Noah stepped out onto dry ground. After a year of floating on the ark, months of water covering the earth, the landscape may have appeared more martian than utopian. The horizon must have been stripped of its trees and bushes, the ground caked and cracking with mud. The ark, weathered and beaten, now wedged useless in the rock. And the animals, which God acknowledged, would now fear men, scattered, leaving Noah and his family with only their stone-piled alter and a thin wisp of smoke rising to heaven above.

Back in 2005, a dam broke not far from where I live. At 5:00 am, and with no warning, 1.3 billion gallons of water were leased down the side of a Missouri mountain, draining the 50-acre reservoir in a few minutes. The water stripped the ground bare down to the bedrock, piling up trees like tooth-picks at the bottom. More than ten years later, you can still see evidence of the disaster. It is an unmeasurable fraction of the water that was released in Genesis.

Into that bleak landscape, God commanded them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” This had also been his garden imperative to the first couple, but this was no Eden, a reality which would soon be evident in more than scenery. Onto this panorama, God’s rainbow stretched across the sky. The scene provides even more profound significance. Its colors now the only vibrancy in an otherwise barren world. Though the destruction had been catastrophic, and its aftermath must have been staggering, the world was not dark. By God’s covenant, there was color, light, and promise.

Noah was once again silent.

What does Noah do with this new world, with these new promises of God’s faithfulness? Noah planted a vineyard. “He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.” Noah cracked open a PBR and passed out half-naked on the couch. He becomes more Homer Simpson than Homer’s Odysseus.

Noah is alive—breathing at least—but unconscious and sprawled across the dirt floor, he has more in common with his neighbors washed away by the flood than his previous status of walking with God. And he is again silent, this time to his discredit. In Jewish history, Noah is credited with having invented alcohol, and he became the first of many who would disengage from the complexity of their world by the drink.

As G. K. Chesterton warned, “Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.” Far from reversing the curse, man was once again naked and ashamed.

As Kass puts it, “Noah’s drunkenness robs him – of his dignity, his parental authority, and his very humanity. Prostrate rather than upright, this newly established master of the earth has, in the space of one verse, utterly lost his standing.”

The one who was described as walking with God drank himself into immobility—passive and disengaged.

It’s not clear if Noah’s son, Ham, only mocked his father’s indecency or, as has long been posited, took advantage of his father’s unconsciousness with more perverse intent. What we do know is that Noah awoke to realize his shame and cursed his son.

And so, having avoided the ditch of violence and aggression, Noah slid into the ditch of passive disengagement. It, too, divided and wounded his family.

The Danger of a Passive Man

It’s customary to describe the Bible as a patriarchal tool used by generations of men to justify their misogyny. Critics point to what are clear injustices and oppression against women. But such readings don’t pay close enough attention. It’s like a middle school student reading the first racist pejorative and concluding that To Kill A Mocking Bird is a racist book and its author, clearly, a racial bigot.

The Bible offers plenty of evidence for how men tread along in the ditch of aggression—Cain, Samson, and Amnon, to name only a few—but the Bible also suggests the devastating tendency of man’s passivity and just as many examples of its destructive force.

Once you’ve recognized it, you’ll see it stretched across the Biblical story: Adam’s passive taking of the fruit. Abraham’s yielding to a perverse plan. David unable to discipline his disintegrating family. Barak powerless to take up the sword. And Noah, drinking away his reality.

Men produce destruction by more than violence. To warn only of man’s aggression is to imply that passivity makes him safe. Nothing could be further from the truth, for we all know that most passivity is only another form of aggression. As the novelist, Agatha Christie put it, “A weak man in a corner is more dangerous than a strong man.”

It’s not hard to look beneath the surface of most passivity to discover a brooding aggression. Our term, passive-aggressive, was first coined by a WWII Army psychiatrist, William Menninger. He noticed that some soldiers, while not openly defiant, exhibited more subversive forms of “aggressiveness” by “passive measures, such as pouting, stubbornness, procrastination, inefficiency, and passive obstructionism.” Menninger coined the phrase, passive-aggressive.

Is it possible that Noah’s drunken detachment is itself a kind of aggression, a refusal to participate in what God had ordered, a rebellion of apathy?

I worry that while our culture, often rightfully, warns about the dangers of violent men, we have produced too many disengaged men. Men who bear no responsibility for their children, nor time, nor pain they passively inflict on others.

Our culture, influenced by the suggestions of organizations like the APA, suggests that what men need are new models, new expressions of masculinity. So our shows are full of bumbling fathers who stumble their way through episodes, more joke than character. They never understand their wives, they feel awkward talking with their kids, and only seem happy when at work or in front of the TV. We play a zero-sum game, believing that to elevate women necessitates we degrade men.

To some degree, the APA is right about needing new masculine models, but the biblical model does not seem to be one they are willing to consider. The Bible offers both a fuller warning and a better way.

The violence of Genesis is perpetrated by men who are desperate and insecure. They are godless men who, afraid of being weak, use power to protect themselves. They see the complexity of the world and attempt to control it. Passive men see the same complexity and, seeking the same control, they content themselves to face only the smallest realistic possibilities which they can rule.

Both are anxious. Both are insecure. Both acknowledge very little of themselves yet depend only on themselves. Both are wounded animals—fight and flight—overwhelmed by their wounds and simmering frustrations. Both are dangerous. Passive and aggressive.

The single flash of light that illuminates the darkness of Noah’s story is the simple phrase, “Noah walked with God.” Here is the path which rises above the ditches. Here is the path that saves us from ourselves. Here is the path that promises true rest.

But to walk with God implies a way ridiculed by both the aggressive and the passive—the sacrifice of control. Maybe the best description for this better way is the virtue of meekness… more on that in the next article.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

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The last few weeks have offered plenty of takes on both Kanye West’s new album, Jesus is King, and his newfound faith. Personally, I’ve found it refreshing to be reminded that the gospel is powerful and capable of transforming any life. Honestly, it feels kind of good to be optimistic.

As my social feeds are usually full of Christians arguing viciously about every possible detail of Christian belief, the simple proclamation of Jesus as King, characterized by so much of Kanye’s new message, is a palate-cleansing reminder of what matters most.

I don’t have much more to contribute about Kanye’s conversion than has already been said, but there is a part of Kanye’s story which I think hasn’t been given enough attention—at least not what it deserves. Kanye found a pastor. He has a pastor who knows his name, who can speak about his faith, and who has apparently been walking personally with him over the past months.

In October, Christianity Today published a profile of Kanye’s pastor, Adam Tyson. Tyson is not a celebrity. His church, Placerita Bible Church, has an average attendance of about 350 people. It is a primarily white church that often spends an hour expositing scripture each week. Search Adam’s name, and most of the photos show him in a conservative coat and tie. The church’s website could be any small church. The site currently has promotions for a women’s Christmas event and a dessert reception for a transitioning staff pastor. Adam’s Instagram has 877 followers. He hasn’t written a book nor appeared on any list of influential pastors. Adam seems to be like so many pastors I know.

But it was into Adam’s church that Kanye walked, invited there by an employee and friend. According to CT:

“After the service, they chatted for a few minutes and set up a meeting for a week later. They walked through the whole gospel, including passages such as John 3:16 and the Romans Road, concluding their conversation with a discussion that shifted away from justification and more toward sanctification, Tyson said.”

Tyson has also acknowledged that he didn’t initially know who Kanye was. In fact, when shaking Kanye’s hand after service in the church lobby, Tyson opened the conversation by asking, “I’m Pastor Tyson, what’s your name?”

Since that simple meeting, Adam has continued to walk with Kanye, helped lead bible studies with him, and spoken at his events.

Reading and listening to Adam recount those life-changing events, it struck me how un-innovative the whole process has been: a modest church service, an evangelistic explanation many believers learned as children, shaking hands in the church lobby, a coffee appointment, a bible study, and conversations about justification and sanctification.

Kanye found the gospel, but he also found a pastor.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk with author Harold Senkbeil about his new book, The Care of Souls: Cultivating A Pastor’s Heart. We talked about the pastor as a physician of the soul. Like a doctor, a pastor takes the time to listen, to ask questions, to recognize challenges, and to walk with a patient back to wholeness. In our conversation, we noted how many Christians have never had the opportunity to have that kind of relationship with a pastor.

I wonder how many people have ever had a pastor who knew more than just their name—if that. How many people can walk into a church, talk to the pastor after service, schedule an appointment, and talk about their deepest personal struggles with faith? What struck me about Kanye’s story is the gift of a pastor with time and attention for that kind of relationship.

Everyone deserves a pastor.

In an age of leadership fascinations, staff delegations, scaling, and technological depersonalization, maybe the most culturally innovative ministry is the one in which a pastor attempts to know his flock personally. After all, the shepherd, by which we have inherited our work as shepherds, was willing to recognize the single missing sheep and to turn his attention to finding it.

Adam Tyson and Kanye West are a relationship few might have been able to predict. But who would have imagined Paul and Barnabas or Apollos with Priscilla and Aquila?

If you are a pastor, Kanye’s story should remind you of the dignity of your work. Small, unnoticed, and uninfluential are evaluations of this world. In the kingdom, this is the greatest work of all. This is what we do. We shepherd those God adds to our flock. We learn their names. We learn their stories. And we walk with them into greater faith.

It might not be a celebrity who walks through the doors of your church this Sunday, but it will be a person who needs a pastor.

“Before anything else, a church is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus’s name.” — Eugene H. Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir

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The past years have seen a massive spike in debates, articles, and books on the topic of masculinity, most centered around a call to redefine what masculinity means. What does it mean to be a man?

We call for it constantly. Be a man. Act like a man. Man up. Real men don’t…

But it’s worth asking yourself, do you have a good definition for it? How would you define what it means to be a man?

It’s typical to respond with either a list of personality traits or one of “manly” skills. For example, the controversial APA guidelines on counseling men and boys listed the attributes of masculinity as including “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression.” The APA concluded that these traits are harmful and has suggested their own evolved definition of masculinity.

On the other end of the interpretive spectrum are lists of skills. Men know how to use tools, smoke meat, and can throw a football. One recent study attempted to clarify what activities millennial men and women most associated with “feeling like a man.” At the top of their list, with 92% agreement was “cooking on the grill,” followed by, playing sports, fixing appliances, and paying bills.

Both attempts to define masculinity focus on inherent traits or abilities. Men, often subconsciously, seem to be feeling the pressure of our performance-based definitions. These approaches cut too many men out, and they tend to be based too much on shifting expectations. With such a weak foundation, it’s no surprise that masculinity is so easily called into question and supplanted with radically alternative definitions. If masculinity is nothing more than aggression and grilling, why not attempt to redefine it. But it’s a strawman. We may call ourselves men, but we are in desperate need of a stronger definition of it.

Is Bach less a man for taking up the organ?

Growing up, I was pretty terrible at sports. I assumed it was a lack of athleticism, strange considering my Dad played college football and my brother was a talented high school pitcher. My dad eventually became the superintendent of our State’s Highway Patrol, and my brother is currently a Captain in the Marine Corp. By some strange leap of genetics, my brother ended up six feet five inches with a varsity-clocked fastball while I ended up five foot eleven and playing first base, the position with the absolute lowest probability of having to throw a baseball. I played up until the year tryouts were required. I had enough self-awareness not to try.

Looking back, my real problem was not a lack of ability but a lack of competitiveness. I was more interested in conversation than competition. Neither can I honestly claim the masculine traits of stoicism or aggression. I’ve always been more empathetic, a trait I’ve come to recognize even more as I see it in my own son.

While I’m pretty handy with tools, a strange tick-borne disease has left me allergic to red meat (I’ve written about it previously on this blog). I often eat vegan—definitively not masculine; although, I’m also an avid bird hunter and enjoy few things more than an afternoon of sporting clays with my 20 gauge Benelli. I guess my point is that my own life fits oddly into the trait/skill definitions of masculinity. I think that is true for the majority of men I know. So why do we go about determining our masculinity by checking boxes and assigning ourselves a score? Ten points for driving a truck; minus five for crying at the Notebook.

These flimsy effort-based definitions fail one of my favorite philosophical ideas, Kant’s Categorical imperative. In explaining his universalizability principle, Kant stated, “Act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.” In other words, if you’re going to claim that real men BBQ and drink beer, then be consistent. Tell the recovering alcoholic, sober for one year, that he has had to trade his man-card for his sobriety.

What I’ve been searching for is a definition of manhood which can be true for all men—a potential for all men. Do we really want to insist that all men should aggressively pursue sports and guns? Is Bach less a man for taking up the organ? Walt Disney less for doodling cartoon mice? How about Winston Churchill who loved to paint or Dr. Seuss who obsessed over kids rhymes?

I think most of us are intuitive enough to recognize that our lists aren’t actually the measure of a man, but what has surprised me is our inability—particularly as Christians—to provide an alternative definition. Interestingly, adding the qualifier, “Christian” makes the process of defining even more perplexing. What is a man? What is a Christian man?

The Bible On Masculinity

I’m struck by the fact that the Bible doesn’t provide a simple definition of masculinity. In fact, in my opinion, it speaks very rarely to the topic. There are distinct discussions about the roles of fathers and husbands. And often Christians turn to these responsibilities in defining biblical manhood, but what do we make of Paul’s passion for the calling of singleness. Does authentic manhood require a wife and children? You want to be the one to suggest that Paul was less a man for his singleness?

Other Christian definitions tend to take biblical texts addressed to “man” and individualize them to biological men, while at the same time universalizing the same word elsewhere to speak to mankind. Similarly, we often point to Christ as a model of true masculinity. But does Christianity offer a similarly ideal figure of femininity? Is Christ a model for only men? It is to both men and women Christ presents his call to follow. Where the Bible does offer definitive lists of attributes—the fruit of the spirit and the beatitudes—both men and women are called to their adoption. Both men and women are called to spiritual poverty, mourning, meekness, love, kindness, and gentleness.

But with equal conviction, I recognize that the Bible does not deny nor ignore the created reality of gender. It is one of the foundational elements of the creation account and constantly an undercurrent through both testaments. Being male is not something the Bible ignores.

As culture continues to question the authoritativeness of gender, appealing to cultural construction to propose a more fluid interpretation, believers have rightfully held to their conviction that God created a gendered world. And it’s our culture’s destabilizing interpretations that make the need for a Biblical definition more critical than ever.

So I’ve been asking, as Christians, how do we define masculinity? I’ve asked pastor friends. I’ve asked my millennial peers. I’ve asked older mentors. And while most of the Christian men I know are committed to being a “man of God,” when asked, they too struggle to articulate exactly what that means. We are aiming at a target we can’t quite make out and can’t quite describe.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Michael Ian Black lamented:

“To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms, and expressions. Boys, though, have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to ‘be a man’—we no longer even know what that means.”

Definitions Matter More Than You Think

Definitions matter, but maybe not in the way you think. Most linguists will acknowledge that the definitions of words are not nearly as fixed as that fifteen-pound Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary would like you to think. Words shift considerably in their meaning. In fact, a dictionary is more a historical document than an authority. Words are defined by usage, and dictionaries serve only to track how words have been used. Change how a word is used, and you can literally rewrite the dictionary.

I previously referenced the APA’s guidelines for a new kind of masculinity. They explicitly acknowledged their goal is to do just that, to create a new, evolved definition for masculinity.

Definitions may seem boring, but we need them now more than ever. The discussion about masculinity deserves more than just consumer commercials, youtube rants, and 30 second sound bites.

Aristotle once wrote, “How many a dispute could have been deflated into a single paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms.” I think he was right. Defining our terms won’t solve the conflict with culture, but it will consolidate the debate into its more fundamental questions. Definitions quickly highlight what is really in dispute. I’m convinced that beneath our talk of redefining gender rumbles a rebellion against the creator’s authority and his call to individual responsibility. That rebellion is, out of necessity, eroding the foundations of masculinity.

As Eugene Peterson put it: “We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them, and then they end up using us. Our imaginations become blunted. We end up dealing only with surfaces, functions, roles.” We owe it to ourselves, to our sons, and to our friends to dig deeper. Our words are a responsibility which we must bear responsibly.

There is plenty of evidence for the collapsing definition of manhood.

Man-this and Man-that

In a fascinating article entitled, “The Death of Words,” C. S. Lewis explained how words could gradually lose their meaning. One of the signs he pointed to was a word, once precious in meaning, now requiring modifiers to make it precious again. He used the word “gentleman” as an example. Lewis wrote, “As long as gentleman has a clear meaning, it is enough to say that So-and-so is a gentleman. When we begin saying that he is “a real gentleman” or “a true gentleman” or “a gentleman in the truest sense” we may be sure that the word has not long to live.” The modifiers expose the word’s lack of meaning.

Mark Peters makes a similar suggestion in comedically pointing out our cultural proliferation of “man” words, asking if it’s a prefix or an identity crisis. He writes:

“Is it time for a manogram? Did you get your manimony check? Or is what you really need a (shudder) manzilian? If you feel like you’re seeing man words everywhere, you’re not alone. Movies, TV shows, ads, and the Web have been pumping them out. Some are painful puns, some crude slang, and as a genre, they say a great deal about our ever-in-flux gender roles.”

I think Lewis and Peters expose the demise of the word “man.” Take the qualifiers we now had to masculinity. He is a real man. He is a man’s man. He is a good man. He is a godly man. He is an alpha male. A macho man. Some of these amalgamations have even been added to the dictionary.

I’m not a dictionary, but how we use these words matters more than the dictionary. So, I want to offer three preliminary definitions to help reestablish what it means to be a man. I want to look at the words: Male, Masculine, and Man.

Def. Male: “a male person: a man or a boy”

To be male is to refer to a biological distinction of sex. There are male horses, sometimes called stallions. There are male bears, technically called boars. And there are male lemur monkeys identified by biologists as dictators; the females are called princesses—Wikipedia it.

We similarly categorize humans into the sexes, male and female. These titles are given based on biological distinctions. We don’t expect a horse to earn its status as a male stallion, nor does it take a degree in biology or a license in veterinary medicine to recognize the distinctions between a stallion and a mare. To identify a male is to make a biological distinction.

Even the most progressive definitions of gender identity—those who considering gender socially constructed and non-binary—will usually acknowledge the basic sexual categories of male and female. Science has even identified the precise prenatal hormonal exposures which steer the developing fetus towards male and female physicality. Even here there are complexities though. Our genetics can produce anomalies, in the same way, that all human experience fails in some way to possess its potential ideal.

Here is where Christian faith inevitably interjects itself. The consequences of sin are not just individual and abstract. Creation cries out for restoration: storms, diseases, and chromosomal defects. Mount Everest is not the full realization of its creation. The Bahamas are not the full paradise of Genesis. Neither are our bodies the fully intended biology of their creation.

The distinction of being male and female is not a false reality forced on our existence; instead, it is the foundational reality complicated by the existence of human brokenness. It is male and female, which God created in His own image and called good. It also means that maleness is not an achievement but a created reality, one which we await the full realization of in a new creation.

In God’s image, he created them, male and female.

Def. Masculinity: “qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of males.”

Here, the most important distinction I hope to make is pointing out that masculinity is too often expressed as the goal of being a man, but technically, masculinity is not an ideal to which we aim but rather an experience which we possess in complex and varying ways. Masculinity refers to common attributes men experience. If there is a biological distinction of maleness, then it follows that there would be a dissection in experiencing that maleness. Masculinity refers to those collective male attributes and qualities.

You can see this reference to attributes in the traditional definition of the word. Webster’s 1913 Dictionary defines masculinity as “qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men.” It goes on to offer an interesting example of the word’s use. “That lady, after her husband’s death, held the reins with a masculine energy.” Here, masculine is used to describe the characteristics of the woman’s actions. It isn’t a statement of biology but one of description.

Many will be familiar with theories on how the big five personality traits are distributed differently between men and women. Professor Jordan Peterson has done much to point out the research indicating that women tend to score higher in personality traits such as extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Other studies, such as one published by Italian cognitive psychologist Marco Del Giudince, have suggested that there is an “overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions.” As Del Giudice concluded, “there are grounds to expect robust and wide-ranging sex differences in this area, resulting in strongly sexually differentiated patterns of emotion, thought, and behavior – as if there were two human natures.”

That’s a scientifically precise way of saying that there are measurable differences between men and women, and we should expect there to be different experiences. It’s these common traits, typical in biological males that we can categorize as masculinity.

It’s important to note, the possession of traits does not mean that those traits are necessarily good nor intended by God at creation. If sin has introduced genetic distortions, it has also introduced trait distortions, just as a genetic predisposition to alcoholism isn’t a justification of alcoholism. Neither is a potentially universal masculine trait justification for its promotion. But neither can it be ignored nor simply dismissed.

It’s also worth noting, that just because these traits are typical of males does not mean that all men will have all traits. In fact, on the Big Five Personality test, I personally score high in extraversion, agreeableness, and moderately high in neuroticism, all traits typically higher in women. It’s probably fair to say that my personality traits are not characteristically masculine. But that is not to say that I’m less a man or am incapable of bearing the responsibility of manhood.

Where we make our greatest mistake is in assuming that the traits of masculinity are also our goal for being a man. Traits and attributes are very different from goals. As an example, aggression is commonly articulated as a masculine trait, but calling aggression masculine hardly means women are incapable of experiencing it, nor does it mean that a man must possess aggression in order to qualify as a man. To acknowledge it’s typical existence is not to encourage its unrestricted promotion. The attributes are only characteristics typical to men. It is characteristic for men to experience aggression.

You might think about masculine traits as a palate of colors with which an artist can paint. One end of the color spectrum, we will call masculine and the other end feminine. It’s possible for a painting to only utilize colors from one extreme—just as there are men who seem to express every masculine extreme—but most paintings will utilize colors from the entire expression. They will, however, have some form of dominate shade. We could refer to a painting as masculine or feminine because of its dominate color profile. When we do so, we are still only using the terms to describe what already exists on the canvas. The color is its characteristics. Saying the painting is mostly blue and yellow hardly describe Van Gogh’s Starry Night just as listing masculine traits doesn’t adequately describe what we mean when we refer to manhood.

Take the line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, as he describes the mixing of elements to produce a man.

“His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’”

Masculinity is not the goal, but rather the raw material by which we construct manhood. When we tell someone to be a man—without a clear definition of what being a man is—we inevitably produce a list of typical experiences and expect them to serve as a goal.

To better understand how we use the traits of masculinity, we need a definition of manhood for which we can work that material.

Def. Man: “An adult male person; a grown-up male person.”

Most fundamentally, manhood is a distinction of maturity. Historically, cultures have recognized a right of passage into adulthood by which a boy transitions from his child identity into the identity of a man. That transition is more a calling than a physically definitive change. There are echos of this in Paul’s call for the Corinthians to stand firm and act like men. There are echos in the dying words of David to his son Solomon, “Be strong and prove yourself a man.” Both seem to be calling for a kind of seriousness and the willingness to bear a greater responsibility.

Scientists tell us that the masculine and feminine distinctions which characterize adulthood begin their divergence during puberty. Up until puberty, boys and girls appear more similar in personality traits, size, and physicality, but by age 17 these attributes become more significantly aligned with adult patterns. This is true even across diverse cultures. As our bodies mature, we are expected to mature with them.

In other words, puberty, a biologically different experience for males and females, seems to initiate broader male and female distinctions. As our bodies mature into adulthood, we begin to experience our maleness in new and distinct ways. We are called to work these new attributes and experiences into mature manhood.

As Christians, the maturity for which we aim is largely genderless. Paul’s point that there is now no distinction between men and women is not an overriding of biology but rather a statement of how we are saved. The Spirit is poured out on sons and daughters. We must all humble ourselves, take up crosses, follow Christ, and seek first his kingdom. In the first generations of the church, persecution and death fell on both men and women, and the ways in which the sexes worshiped together was not only perplexing to the broader culture but created questions and challenges even within the church.

But the universality of Christian salvation doesn’t rework the attributes which make us male and female. Baptism and communion don’t modify our DNA. We each aim for Christ but often find ourselves on quite different paths while attempting a shared destination.

The course two ships take in traveling across the Pacific Ocean will depend primarily on the attributes of their vessel. A 100,000 horsepower cargo ship may cut a bee-line, while the single-handed sailor using only the wind. He may sail in the complete opposite direction to catch more favorable trade winds. Their attributes determine the best way to aim for the same destination.

So men and women must take inventory of their own masculine and feminine attributes in learning to follow Christ. This is what it means to be a man, particularly a Christian man. A man learns to understand his own masculine attributes and turn them in the direction of following Christ, maturing in faith. Just as there are typically masculine traits and experiences, so too, we would expect there to be typical challenges and disciplines associated with becoming a man.

So, some of a man’s attributes, like assertiveness, may make him bold in the face of persecution, while his aggression makes the call to meekness a sanctifying struggle. As the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier put it, “Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.” However, this same man’s wife may find meekness quite natural, while her own agreeableness makes the conflict of persecution a challenge. Both seek maturity—one through femininity, the other through masculinity.

Interestingly, the psychoanalysts believed that the second half of life involved integrating one’s opposite attributes. Men come to understand better and integrate femininity, not to become less masculine, but to become more whole. After all, Christ once described himself as a mother hen longing to gather her chicks, and that came only two chapters after he had turned over tables in the temple.

But Is There A Uniquely Male Responsibility

There is so much more we could explore about the Biblical calling to manhood. I’ve hardly touched on discussions of marriage roles, leadership, or the distinctive male/female curse articulated in Genesis three. But I have tried to lay a foundation for what I think is the most basic presupposition, ones which will inform my articles to come.

1. 1. Maleness is a biologically created fact
2. 2. Masculinity is the accumulated raw material and diverse experience of being male
3. 3. Manhood is a calling to mature those attributes into Christ-likeness

Maybe the most basic way to present this idea is that manhood is a calling—a responsibility. You are asked to be a man—asked by your creator. Manhood is not a list of skills. It is not a list of personality traits. It is not mere biological possession. To be a man is to take on a responsibility of maturity. To be a man is to learn to answer the call of responsibility. Men bear responsibility.

But a call to responsibility is a challenge to our culture. Responsibility implies authority. Without authority who are we responsible to. To bear responsibility is to be given that task by a greater authority than ourselves. The realization of that authority means that the chief definition of man is not something I get to decide.

Too many men live with no authority, no father, and no God. Their world is a gray windless horizon, moved only by their own unchecked passions. Without authority, they are responsible to no one but the lowest of their masculine impulses. They have channeled those forces for no good beyond self-pleasure. Nothing is expected of them, and they bear no responsibility.

What is missing from our cultural redefining of masculinity is a sense of authority. Without the call of God, without an image of his created goodness, who’s to say what a man should or shouldn’t be. But divinely called responsibility invites us into something far more. We must aim for more than being merely male.

A man is an artist, a gardener, like his most ancient father, the first man. His hands in the dirt of his own broken masculinity, working all his advantages and disadvantages, his skills and his sinful tendencies into selflessness, sacrifice, and faithfulness to his heavenly father. He does that work by painful toil, but he does it with hope and through faith. Faith that Christ goes before him and hope that a new earth is coming and with it a new experience of his masculinity—a day when he can fully feel the manhood he now struggles to bear.

I like how Richard Phillips puts it in his book, The Masculine Mandate:

“Our calling in life really is this simple (although not therefore easy): We are to devote ourselves to working/building and keeping/protecting everything placed into our charge.”

More to Come

But we are left with another question. What are those responsibilities we as men are called to take up? In pursuing Christ, are men given particular responsibilities?

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Last week I got my hair cut. My barbershop has been feverishly adding locations and rebranding itself in an attempt to monopolize the cutting of all men’s hair within a 50-mile radius. As their website puts it, they are just “your traditional neighborhood barbershop and the future of men’s grooming.”

The nostalgia of your grandpa’s vintage aftershave, now with a whole new line of male hair care products, complete with old-fashion lather shaves, mounted taxidermy, white subway tile, and antique chainsaws hung on the wall. My grandpa used to pay five bucks for a cut; for this new man-space, I now pay twenty-two.

It’s the kind of place you expect to see beards, but sitting in the chair, I realized that nearly every single person in the room had one. To be fair, I do too. Mine has been mostly a long-term attempt to avoid the daily ritual of shaving, and I keep it pretty short, but the beards at my barbershop were something more. Long, full beards, being scissor cut and shampooed. A few of them were remarkable, but no man comfortably remarks about another man’s beard, at least nothing more than “nice beard.”

Apparently, the rule is, “beards are manly, but talking about beards is decidedly not.” They are supposed to seem like some badge of months spent tracking through Himalayan mountains or tarpon fishing in remote parts of South America. Hemingway never talked about what beard conditioner he used, I have a hard time imagining Ulysess S. Grant oiling his beard on the Appomattox battlefield, and even in a barbershop which offers “beard grooming services,” the conversations stayed on script: baseball, BBQ, and recent superhero movies.

I kept expecting a British accent to start whispering from the corner, “Here we have a prime example of the male species demonstrating masculinity. Notice the way they signal their masculine confidence through the strutting presentation of their facial plumage. And here we see the alpha, his majestic beard, and Cross-Fit t-shirt mark his dominance to the rest of the herd.” Okay, maybe I have gone too far, but us men can be a perplexing gender. Obsessed with “being a man,” and not quite sure what that means at the same time

Do you remember in Genesis when Jacob attempted to pass himself off as his older brother Esau? He wrapped goat hide around his arms, an attempt to convince his aged and blind father that he was his hairier older brother. I’ve always thought there was something archetypal about the Bible’s depiction of these two brothers and their father. Esau, the meat-eating, burly hunter, was so driven by raw desire that appeasing the growl of his stomach was more motivating than the responsibility of his birthrights. And Jacob, manipulated and prodded by his jealous mother’s favoritism, was a sad and pathetic image of masculinity, faking body hair to steal from his undiscerning father. One brother couldn’t care less about the father’s attention while the other was so desperate for it he would pretend to be the other.

It’s all there: the disengaged father, the insecure man, the masculine compensation, and a family of men profoundly incapable of understanding one another or saying anything more complex than “Let me have some of that red stew!” Competition, father wounds, resentment, disengagement, and isolation.

The Messed-Up Men of the Bible

The Bible has far more to say about the complexity of men than is often acknowledged. Rightfully, we have given attention to the Bible’s depictions of men abusing power, the repercussions of their unchecked passions, and their frequent subjugation of women and weaker men. It’s easy to track the consequences of these violent and nihilistic forms of masculinity. Interestingly though, the Bible doesn’t shy away from showing us the devastation such men leave in their wake.

But the Bible also offers a much more nuanced depiction of men and their plight. It presents a deeper struggle to understand what a man is. This lust for power and blood is only a single distortion of the larger male question? It may account for men like Nimrod or Samson, but it fails to represent men like Jacob, Gideon, or Timothy. They are all broken but in more than stereotypical ways.

Something about the goodness of the garden’s male and female has been deeply marred by sin, degrading our genders into awkward attempts to regain something we can’t quite identify but know is lost. The Bible presents men who struggle to understand what it means to be a man. How do we find our way back into the garden, past the flaming sword and the angelic guard, to what being a man once was and ultimately is? This missing masculinity is spread all across the bible.

Read more closely. Adam, who once penned love poetry for his wife, ended up blaming her in an awkward attempt to justify himself before God. The first brothers, Cain and Able fell into a resentful competition that ended in the first spilling of human blood. Noah preserved the human race by his righteousness and then got wasted and exposed himself to his kids. Abraham passively participated in his wife’s scheme to produce a son through their slave. Saul sat helplessly under a pomegranate tree as the Philistines invaded. David murdered to cover up his sins and then wrecked his family by his inability to engage the complicated lives of his own children—lives which replayed many of his own sins. The disciples kept dozing off as Jesus sweat drops of blood. And while the women faced the danger of preparing Jesus body at the tomb, the men hid afraid behind locked doors. It’s to these women God granted the first news of Christ’s resurrection.

That list could be much longer, but it’s enough to demonstrate that men have been struggling for quite some time. Not with achievement. We’ve always mistaken masculinity as a kind of achievement—action over being. We imagine we can make ourselves men. And we get plenty done, through virtue and vice. We have conquered the world, built civilizations, mapped the globe, and explored the universe, yet most of us live with a deep sense of inner confusion. We don’t know who we are supposed to be, not as men, and each day, our missing masculinity is becoming only more apparent.

The question is now being asked more openly, and the recent string of mass shootings has propelled the conversation onto the pages of nearly every news organization. The single thread which connects all of the recent violence is not weapons, religion, or the political ideologies of its perpetrators. What unites all of these events is that they have all been perpetrated by men—particularly young men.

As the Florida Senator, Rick Scott put it, “There is something wrong with our young men in this country, and we are going to have to figure it out.” The problem is no doubt complex. Like most complex problems, there is no single legislative solution. The challenges men face mostly likely have no political solution at all, and depending on our politicians to sort it out is asking far too much. There is something deeply broken in the souls of men, and we are finding ourselves incapable of even talking about the problem.

This will be the first in a series of articles on the topic and my hope is to begin by diagnosing the problem. As our culture struggles to understand what masculinity is or should be, more men are disengaging from the question and its responsibilities. The consequences are significant.

Disengaging from Society

Let’s start with social and religious disengagement. Adult men report having fewer friends than any other demographic. The Boston Globe recently suggested that the greatest threat to middle-aged men is no longer smoking or obesity, but now loneliness. And this social isolation is a predictable feature in the profiles of men who commit mass shootings and acts of violence. David Brooks observed in his book, The Second Mountain:

“These mass killings are about many things – guns, demagoguery, and the rest – but they are also about social isolation and the spreading derangement of the American mind. Whenever there’s a shooting, there’s always a lonely man who fell through the cracks of society, who lived a life of solitary disappointment and who one day decided to try to make a blood-drenched leap from insignificance to infamy.”

Historically, religious communities have provided their members with these social networks, yet it’s long been documented that men are participating less in churches and religion. According to the Pew Research Center, in the United States, women are 8% more likely to attend a weekly religious service, 10% more likely to practice in daily prayer, and 13% more likely to acknowledge the importance of religion in their lives. As opinion columnist, Ross Douthat expressed in the New York times:

“Male absence and female energy has also been the story, albeit less starkly and dramatically, of Christian practice in many times and places since. Today, most Christian churches and denominations in America — conservative as well as liberal, male-led and female-led both — have some sort of gender gap, sometimes modest but often stark. Despite their varying theologies, evangelicalism, mainline Protestantism, Mormonism and Catholicism all have about a 55-45 female-male split in religious identification; for black churches, it’s 60-40.”

Disengaging from Fatherhood

It’s not just from friendships and religion that men are checking out. Statistics suggest that 1 in 4 children are growing up in a fatherless home. That’s 19.7 million children without an actively involved dad. This fatherlessness is creating a cycle of problems for each new generation of men, as they struggle to be fathers having grown up without one themselves. As the National Fatherhood Initiative put it, “There is a father factor in nearly all social ills facing America today.” Fatherlessness has been linked to a greater risk of poverty, a higher likelihood of teen pregnancy, substance abuse, incarceration, and a higher likelihood of committing violent crimes.

President Obama recognized the crisis in his 2008 Father’s Day address, explaining :

“Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives … family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation…. But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that too many fathers are missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

Disengaging from Intimacy

In late 2018, several news agencies reported on recent studies indicating that millennials are having significantly less sex than previous generations. While the number of Americans who now believe that sex between unmarried adults is “not wrong at all” has continued to increase, millennials seem to be acting out those views less frequently. There have been positive results. In a study from 1991 to 2017, The Centers for Disease Control reports that teen intercourse has dropped from 54 to 40 percent. Teen pregnancy rates have fallen dramatically. Many sociologists have been perplexed by the contradictory views and actions of millennials. Sex has never been freer and yet it has never been practiced less.

Many sociologists and commentators have suggested that we are just beginning to experience the impact of the pervasive consumption of online pornography. A Barna study found that two-thirds (64%) of U.S. men view pornography at least monthly and between the ages of 18 and 30 that number is eight in ten (79%).

In a 2018 edition of the Atlantic, titled, The Sex Recession, Kate Julian explained:

“Today, masturbation is even more common, and fears about its effects—now paired with concerns about digital porn’s ubiquity—are being raised anew by a strange assortment of people, including the psychologist Philip Zimbardo… In his book Man, Interrupted, Zimbardo, warns that “procrasturbation”—his unfortunate portmanteau for procrastination via masturbation—may be leading young men to fail academically, socially, and sexually.”

The Atlantic also reports that in a study conducted from 1992 to 2014, the number of men who reported masturbating weekly more than doubled. Men seem to be avoiding the complexity and vulnerability of actual relationships in favor of digital sexual consumption. The consequences are deeper isolation, more disengagement, and ongoing relational distortions.

Disengaging from Advancement

Over the past few decades, men continue to show signs of academic disengagement, a remarkable turn, considering that just a generation ago, women were massively underrepresented in higher education. In 1947 women accounted for 12.2% of college enrollment. Today they account for 60%. But it’s not just more women attending, fewer men are. Today there are 2.2 million more women in college than men. Men are more likely to drop out of school. This disengagement of men in education is playing out in the workplace as well. As reported by the New York Times in 2018, in 1950, 4% of men within the age range of 25-54 were not working or looking for work. Today that number is 11%. The New York Times labeled it the “Vanishing Male Worker.”

More than twice as many adults age 25 to 34 are still living at home compared to the late 1960s. That number represents 11.5% of all women within the age range and 18.3% of all men. Online forums like 4chan and 8chan, have produced entire subcultures of disengaged men. They have developed self-identifying terms like “neets” (not in education or employment) and “incels” (involuntary celibates). Under the protection of anonymous online aliases, these communities champion being “alone together” on the internet. It was to these forums that the recent El Passo shooter was a member and posted his manifesto prior to the event. Slate has noted that he was the third mass shooter to post a manifesto within the forum.

Disengaging from Life

Having disengaged from social networks, education, relationships, and work, it’s even more sobering to consider statistics on male suicide and violence. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, “In 2017, men died by suicide 3.54x more often than women.” White men accounted for 69.67% of all suicide deaths. Death by suicide continues to be the 10th leading cause of death in the US. The Los Angeles Times called the current rate of teen suicide a “high-water mark” and has pointed out that it is being driven by a “sharp rise in suicides among older teenage boys.” Men are also more likely to be the victim of a homicide and also the perpetrators of it. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that 92.9% of inmates are males. That’s 164,323 men to 12,570 women. Even our nations current opioid crisis is being led by men. Men are more than twice as likely to die from an opioid overdose. On average, men start using drugs at an earlier age, and men are statistically more likely to abuse alcohol and tobacco.

Confused About Being a Man

What are we to make of the ways so many men are disengaging from traditional expectations and responsibilities? Psychologist Helen Smith has labeled the problem, “men on strike.” She argues, in her book by that title, that men are doing the rational thing, responding to our culture’s lack of incentives for male engagement. As she has written, “Our society tells men they are worthless perverts who reek of male privilege… you reap what you sow.” Smith is convinced that male disengagement is a consequence of men receiving mixed messages and unclear expectations from culture.

Men are presented with a tangled and confused representation of masculinity. Take the Superbowl as an example. It is the most-watched television event of the year. Even men completely uninterested in football find themselves participating. We celebrate the traditionally masculine virtues of aggression, competition, and physicality. We love hard hits, spectacular plays, and the commercials. Typically they range from women in bikinis selling cheeseburgers to seductively interrupted scenes which tell you to go online to watch more. Then we were given Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” commercial in which men were told that everything they had previously learned about masculinity was out-of-date, that is until the commercial ended and we were back to football. That a major consumer brand would attempt to lead our national discussion on masculinity is a testament to our lack of proper dialogue. We need something far more than marketing to solve this challenge.

It’s not hard to find other ways our culture is confusing men, particularly young ones. In 2014, The Atlantic published a fascinating piece on Dads in sitcoms. As the article puts it, “On TV if there is a dad in the home, he is an idiot. It must have reflected our own discomfort with dads being competent… You put a dad in front of his kid, and the dad gives the worst advice. You put a dad in front of a toaster, and he burns the house down.” But it’s not as simple presenting men as fools. The definition of masculinity itself is up for grabs.

Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association published their first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys. Their guidelines are based on offering solutions to many of the trends we’ve already outlined. The APA acknowledges in the report, “Something is amiss for men,” but they went on to describe the problem as steaming from traditional understandings of masculinity. As the report explains, “The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.”

David French, in commenting on the APA’s guidelines for the National Review wrote:

“It is interesting that in a world that otherwise teaches boys and girls to “be yourself,” that rule often applies to everyone but the “traditional” male who has traditional male impulses and characteristics. Then, they’re a problem. Then, they’re often deemed toxic. Combine this reality with a new economy that doesn’t naturally favor physical strength and physical courage to the same extent, and it’s easy to see how men struggle.”

French is not nostalgic about masculinity. He rightfully points out in his article that past virtues came with plenty of vices. But guidelines like the APA’s do little to offer men a definition of what masculinity should be. They discard the tools and hand back an empty toolbox.

C. S. Lewis, writing on his culture’s attack on traditional values, explained:

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

How About the Church’s Contribution?

And how has the church responded? I’m afraid the church has failed to do much better than contribute more confusion. While attending Bible College, we often attended men’s and women’s chapels. There was never any question about the topics that would be covered. While the women would be encouraged in their value, worth, and beauty us men would listen to yet another talk on pornography and lust. A friend once commented, “they are princesses, and we’re perverts.”

Pastors find themselves caught in awkward attempts to reach men, some going as far as pyrotechnics, cursing, and free beer. There are calls for more “macho” pastors driven by macho descriptions of Jesus and his ministry. At the same time, we are attempting to come to terms with the devastation many men have wrecked on congregations. The Me Too movement is forcing us to reconsider our own concepts of “Christian masculinity.” As Campaign, a marketing and communications media group, put it, “Millennial men feel pressure to ‘be it all’ in ‘Me Too’ era.” They explain, “When it comes to masculinity, researchers found that 65 percent believe the most important job of a good man is providing for his family financially. Meanwhile, 92 percent of men and women surveyed chose Barbecuing as the “most masculine” activity for modern men.”

I think the survey captures well the complex absurdity we’ve attempted to define masculinity by—financial success and knowledge of grill briquets.

The surprising discovery through all of this messy process is that most men don’t have any clue what a man actually is. Just ask them. I have, and most of us struggle to offer any definition we feel confident about, and we sure don’t know what it means to be a Christian man. What makes a man? Are there characteristics unique to masculinity? Does the Bible offer a unique form of Christian masculinity? Get a man, to be honest, and even the most macho will often admit, we’re mostly faking it, not quite sure what “it” even is.

The Male Malaise

I would like to call this the male malaise. Malaise is a French word meaning ill-ease. It is a deep sense of uneasiness, a feeling that something is wrong but an uncertainty in diagnosing it. It is this malaise that is allowing so many to simply disengage. To abandon the complexity altogether.

Without a mark to aim at, men have retreated into late-night video games, pornography, and forum rants of bitterness and resentment. It’s not hard to see how such men are easily caught up in fantasies, destructive ideologies, and in the most extreme cases, radicalization.

We discover that it is not the strong man who is most dangerous but the weak one who’s desperation to reaffirm his power without any good definition of how power is properly used leads him not into masculinity but into a shallow characterization of it. Cain murders out of resentment and Jacob wrecks his own family out of insecurity.

I think the novelist Walker Percy captures this malaise best in his 1961 novel, The Moviegoer. The book tells the story of a young man struggling with the trauma of his Korean War experience and navigating the collapse of southern tradition in postwar New Orleans. Struggling to establish purpose or relationships, he finds himself living vicariously through movies. He articulates this male malaise better than anything I could write.

“Men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.”

Something is deeply wrong with your young men, and so much depends on us figuring it out. In the following posts, I want to explore some of the ways the church might better engage the masculinity crisis and reach many lost in the confusion.

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It’s hard to estimate the impact Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together has had on my concept of pastoral ministry. And maybe no sentence has ever impacted my work more than Bonhoeffer’s, “God hates visionary dreaming.”

I’m honored to have been able to share more about this passage in a recent article on Christianity Today Pastors.

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