Mohler has a very thought provoking article up today. Below are the opening few paragraphs of NewsNote: Masculinity in a Can, Fight Club at Church, and the Crisis of Manhood:
You do not have to look far to find evidence of the fact that males are in trouble in these confused and confusing times. On the university campuses, women undergraduate students outnumber young men by a clear margin — 60% to 40%. A frightening percentage of young males are or have been behind bars, and the vast majority of young men are delaying their assumption of adult roles and responsibilities until well into their twenties or early thirties.
A crisis of fatherlessness marks the lives of millions of boys and young men, with boys growing up without fathers in the home now comprising a majority within some ethic groups and urban populations. At almost every grade level, boys are performing below girls, and are often left behind as girls go on to more advanced levels of learning. Then, adding insult to injury, reports from scientists indicate that both sperm counts and testosterone levels are falling among some boys and men — blamed on anything from hormone supplements in the food chain to chemical contamination of ground water.
In many churches, young men and older boys are simply missing. The absence of young men ages 18 to 30 is just a fact of life in many congregations. Though this is especially acute in the mainline Protestant denominations, it is increasingly true of many evangelical churches as well. …
Read the rest of NewsNote: Masculinity in a Can, Fight Club at Church, and the Crisis of Manhood.
While Mohler exposes the wound he doesn’t offer much (in this article) on how to define healthy masculinity and pass that information along to men today and in the future. Many of the Exodus Member Agencies have created teachings and resources concerning healthy Biblical masculinity and femininity and there are quite a variety of opinions out there even within our networks.
I personally have benefited from the teachings of Joe Dallas, Andy Comiskey and Sy Rogers. All three have really dug into what it means to be a man and while it is complicated … it is gloriously complicated. Men bear the Image of God in a unique manner as men. It is imperative to know what this means and abide in what it means to be created by God to be male. We do this not only to become mature and secure in our own gender identity but can come alongside women in a gender complementary witness to the fullness of God’s Image here on earth.
Men bear God’s Image uniquely. Women bear God’s Image uniquely. Together we bear His Image in full in such a way that neither of us could do alone.
What thoughts come to mind for you concerning this crisis in masculinity? Any feedback about the specific issues brought up in the article linked above? Feel free to leave a comment here, message me through the contact link above or on the facebook page (link to the page on the toolbar below.)
About Randy Thomas
Wow Randy, I just love this topic. As the mother of four boys ages 9 to 18, this to me is so critical to our (Karl’s and mine) success in raising them to become independent of us and move into full dependency upon Jesus.
They must embrace and celebrate all of their maleness in the fullest way possible. It is critical to their success as followers of Christ, as husbands and fathers, and as positive contributors to our general society.
From a wife’s perspective I had this revelation during the conference last year and wrote about it in my blog. I needed to embrace the reality that I needed my husband to be what God created him to be, a man. You can read more at:
http://jenschatonthat.blogspot.com/2009/07/reflections-exodus-conference-july09-my.html
It’s the same over here in the UK. Not many men around in churches. For every single Christian man, there are three single Christian women. So, marriage for 2/3 women in church is not looking likely.
I think there is a wider problem with the way the West represents Christianity, especially amongst the newer and more lively churches and denominations. The songs and prayers are very emotional, touchy-feely. There’s sentimental music played on the keyboard as someone at the front is outpouring more emotion as a prayer. People are either jumping up and down or crying.
Because of my mental disorder, I don’t have access to much emotion. I have found myself unable to worship in churches, or pray, and I thought there was something wrong with ME – well, there is, but I thought it was this giant problem that I really needed help with.
When I returned to the traditional Biblical Methodist church last year, all of a sudden, I found myself able to worship, pray and at last, connect with God, in church. Why? Because worship in our church is not based on emotions or sentimentality, which can change like the wind. It is based on what is written in the Bible. It is based on standing strong in faith. It is like this in Taize worship, too, because Taize chants are mostly lifted directly from the Bible.
I think modern worship is great, but we need to get away from the sentimentality and emotionalism that has crept into church life, and stand on Truth.
I also think a diversity in church activities can bring a more diverse population into the church. Eg, for me, a pamper evening makes me feel sick, and other gay women say the same. I’m sure men feel the same! But a hike, climbing, abseiling, canoeing etc is attractive to both women and men. Getting away from gender stereotypes (yes, I bang on about this, but it’s so big in churches, and we wonder why some people stay away from church) and away from the middle class activities that have taken over, like a ladies’ pamper night and a men’s curry night, and just doing what normal people do might make more people feel normal in churches.
Also, doing more actively for charities might help. That is lacking big time in a lot of churches, whereas Oxfam and other charities are blooming as people, especially men, take up bike riding challenges, because they care and want to do something to help people worse off than themselves, and with Oxfam, they can do something physical and sporty and raise money.
Hey, even Adam screwed up.
I think it’s hard to find out what biblical, much less healthy masculinity looks like. It’s been buried in the bad behaviors and such of our fathers and their fathers, etc. Though I’ve heard and even known some older guys who took care of the youngsters they came across. I wish I had more time with them.
I wonder this alot, even earlier today.
For a time I was quite enthusiastic about the idea of clear divide between masculinity and femininity, but then I found myself moving towards the opposite direction.
You see, I was a sensitive boy, cried a lot, sensitive to both physical and emotional pains, and adding to my experience a violent father whose number 1 “disciplinary” method was beating me up: slapping my face, kicking me, and verbally humiliating and shaming me.
Masculinity didn’t mean a lot of positive things to me, rather, it equated with brutality, violence, hatred, never compromising (even when it’s necessary), killing (see how many boys love war themed stories, games, etc; killing is glorified in the counterfeit masculinity), rudeness.
My sensitivity was rejected, I did not feel I was masculine.
But now, let’s take a paradigm shift: what if, there had never been any vaguest idea that boys and girls should be fundamentally different, that they should have completely different personalities, and completely different interests? Because when you make a statement that boys are like such and such, you are excluding some other boys who just happen to be different, the end result? They feel alienated. Such was like my story, if boys are not supposed to cry, yet I was still sensitive, and I really did want to cry, the statement that boys should not cry made me feel excluded from the world of boys. And what if these different boys are forced to conform, to suppress their natural feelings of sadness or their God-given talents in things like poetry, music, arts? Do you think it’s God’s will for them to be forcefully changed into someone that God never intended them to become?
However, if from an early age I was told, it’s OK for a boy to be sensitive, it’s OK for boys to cry, and it’s OK for boys to have feelings, and that real men are not supposed to be violent and brutal and mean and selfish and etc. I would have been more confident to claim my masculine identity, instead of losing it amidst heaps of unreasonable demands and expectations.
I find it sickening when someone tries to define masculinity as one single concept, and effectively excluding other men from being able to claim that they are masculine.
The bottom line: if boys, whether sensitive or less sensitive, extrovert or introvert, sporty or artistic, are accepted as masculine boys, more boys will grow up feeling reasonably good about their masculinity, male bonding between boys would be more easily accessible, and fewer boys would grow up having their need for healthy male identification left deficit and seek sexual relationships with other men as they grow into adulthood. Even as adults, they would realise there are different types of men, some may be more sporty and they may be more intellectual themselves, but they are equally men nonetheless.
Hi SL, I hope you are well and doing OK today.
and thank you for sharing your experience! I grew up hating females and being seen as female for similar reasons: To me, females under 40 were easy, tarty, thick bitches, there to be used and abused. I understand where you are coming from.
We hear preachers trying to bring more men into church by saying Jesus was this rough carpenter, but they neglect the full man He is, that He raised the profile of women, educating women and being close friends with women in a time when that was a total no-no. Jesus is a feminist! If we look to Jesus as the example of masculinity, we see a man who welcomed children to Him while He was teaching, and put His hands on their heads. Jesus drew attention to a widow, He touched diseased people/outcasts, His followers were not educated people. So Jesus is not just this big, rough carpenter who drove people out of the Temple with a whip, He is a gentle man who understood people, and spent time talking quietly in a gentle way with people individually.
Just like the role model for a woman is shown throughout the Bible, as women not making themselves up (how many churches teach women to make themselves up, and basically act as sex objects for their husband?), and Proverbs 29 says a woman is to be physically strong (how many churches would see this as ‘masculine’ or ‘butch’ or ‘gay’?), mentally strong (whereas a lot of churches teach that women are to be subordinate, and prefer to keep women as weeping emotional wrecks), be able to make sound business decisions for her own business (whereas a lot of churches decry the feminist movement because it has wrecked the family – instead of saying that men need to love their wife by doing their share in the home, and refusing to acknowledge that the feminist movement started from Christianity by both Christian men and women), and the woman is to be respected by everyone (how many women are disrespected in churches if they voice contrary opinions or are not ‘feminine’?)
What churches teach, what society teaches, and what is in the Bible are often very different things. What society teaches in the UK and the US are mainly down to the culture that has developed. If we went to the Amazon, other parts of South America, different tribes in Africa, countries in Asia, we see men and women behaving in different ways to how men and women behave in the UK and US. And these might not be contrary to the Bible.
Being from the UK and not conforming to what society wants women to be – and at the moment a lot of churches support this – and who travels, I think our societies are very arrogant, thinking we have it right, that what our society says about gender is true and Biblical, and everyone else is wrong. I mean, in Tunisia, 60% Science university students are female. To me, that is progression, that is women living out their lives with the gifts God gave them instead of being the thick, oppressed women we have, who concentrate on the easier subjects, like the Arts – I’m an Arts graduate, by the way. In the UK and US, we’d be lucky to get 20% female science university students. We think we know it all in the UK and US about just about everything, I like to think I know it all, and we don’t.
I’ve been longwinded, but yes, I think our society damages us beyond what we recognise, they expectations put on us, just because of what body parts we happen to have.
Better go. God bless you,
C -x-