Paul's Meaning of "Act Like Men" (Part 2)
The Pitfalls of Biblical Manhood
[This is part two in a short, two part series. You can read part one here.]
Understanding Masculinity
In my post last week I discussed how it is incorrect to interpret Paul’s words to “act like men” (as it is translated in the ESV and KJV) as a rallying cry for men to be more manly, as it has been used in many context in our current cultural moment to fight against the so-called “feminization of the Church.”
It’s important here to highlight an important fact, though a hard pill to swallow it may be pill. Masculinity and femininity are products of our culture, not timeless and universal realities. Masculinity and femininity are how a particular culture in a particular time and a particular location works out what it means to be male and female. It is a set of norms constantly being renegotiated within a culture, giving us a vastly wide variety of ways of being masculine and feminine throughout time and across the world.
Believe it or not, there was once a time when this was a picture of en vogue masculinity:
I’m not intending to poke fun at Louis XIV (though that hair looks like it could use some better product). What I’m intending to highlight is that the masculine norms we assume are normal are anything but. They change between cultures and over the passage of time. Just a few of generations ago, the ideal male figure in a family was somewhat aloof and unavailable to his children. Millennial dads have forever flipped the script on that cultural norm, prioritizing direct involvement in child rearing. Even the business suits men commonly wear in corporate America were once thought to be subpar forms of dress for proper men.
That masculinity and femininity are cultural constructs does not make them bad. They’re not shackles to cast off. But they’re also not shackles to place on ourselves, or others. Especially when those shackles are very narrow views of what it means to be a man.
It is important to understand this for three reasons:
There is no direct biblical justification to conform to a particular stereotypical vision of what manhood looks like—especially when Jesus himself did not model the vision for manhood proposed by the “act like men” folks.
Masculinity and femininity norms are an ever changing target. Hitching the validity of one’s Christian walk to how a person adheres to a narrow vision of “acting like a man” is fertile ground for shame, frustration, and spiritual abuse.
Policing faithful Christians into mid 20th century American norms of being masculine and feminine robs the Church of a great tapestry of diversity in the name of a needless cultural imperialism.
The Church, our Mother
The fears expressed that the Church is being “feminized” are unfounded and rooted in a fear over a greater equality between men and women in the Church. When we men benefit from the privilege of patriarchy, equality feels like a threat.
What’s more, there absolutely should be a feminine feel to the Church! The Church is, after majority female. In fact, when Gordon Conwell’s Gina Zurlo conducted her “The World as 100 Christians” study, she determined that, “A typical Christian today is a non-white woman living in the global South, with lower-than-average levels of societal safety and proper health care.” If the Church globally is majority women, but possesses an exclusively masculine tone to it, something is amiss. When the Church is decisively masculine and resists the female voice within it, it is not as God intended.
In his book Journey to Jesus, Robert Webber noted that early on in its history, a primary metaphor used to describe the Church was that of a mother:
“The image of mother suggests that new Christians are not left on their own in a world of principalities and powers, but are brought into a community of people from whose bosom they are nourished and given all that is needed to survive.
Descriptions of the church as mother abound among the early church fathers. Tertullian speaks of ‘Our Lady Mother the Church’ who nourishes us ‘from her bountiful breasts.’ Clement of Alexandria extols the church as ‘virgin and mother—pure as a virgin, loving as a mother.’ Cyprian, whose writings on the church are replete with female imagery, proclaims the church to be ‘the one mother plentiful in the results of her fruitfulness: from her womb we are born, by her milk we are nourished, by her spirit we are animated’” (39).
Webber goes on to note that the Church walks out this feminine life in the world in that it is the womb in which God’s children are born and it is also nurtures its children into maturity (39-40).
In this light, when the biblical manhood brigade bemoans about the Church becoming too feminine, it might be that they are feeling the uncomfortable pull of the Holy Spirit, beckoning the Church to reclaim this place of mother. That certainly doesn’t exclude men. But the metaphor is valuable in that it reminds us that the Church is to be a place where women can flourish—and that’s something to be proud of.
So What, Then, is Biblical Manhood?
This all begs the question then, what is biblical manhood? I answer that question in this segment from Your Daughters Shall Prophesy:
There is a special kind of biblical manhood that the Bible calls us to embrace. Indeed, it is a more biblical variety of biblical manhood than some who use that term to prop up a 1950s Leave it to Beaver version of American manhood.
It is a biblical manhood that walks in the way of Jesus—a Jesus who spoke up for women (Luke 7:36–50).
It’s a biblical manhood that goes out of the way to elevate the status of women in their community (John 4:1–26).
It’s a biblical manhood that fights for a woman’s right to sit in spaces normally reserved for men (Luke 10:38–42).
This variety of biblical manhood doesn’t need to adorn itself in camouflage and play with swords and use military imagery and participate in axe-throwing competitions and all of the other culturally-specific perspectives of how a “real man” should be. Instead, it is confident enough in its own place in God’s kingdom as to take up the noble cause of elevating the voice of women instead of silencing it. Biblical biblical manhood doesn’t engage in the make-believe fantasy that men are knights rescuing fair damsels locked inside the castle of feminism. Instead, it takes up the mantle of slaying the fire-breathing dragon of patriarchy so that women may walk out the calling God has placed upon their lives.
If you want a noble, manly task to take up, advocate for women (36).
While this vision for manhood isn’t relegated to the advocacy of women as a whole, women are primarily in view here. Biblical biblical manhood does not need to legitimize itself through cliché stereotypes. It may be my Finnish heritage (a people not given to self-aggrandizement), but I don’t think men who are secure in who God has made them feel the need walk around talking about why they’re a real man. They preach that message, not with their lips, but with their lives.
As I see it, the vision for manhood in the Bible is tied less to a particular set of cultural norms and more to passionately pursuing God, participating in his mission of reconciliation in the world, and using one’s position in society to lift up those who are cast down. The Bible’s vision for men is none other than Jesus—the lifter of the lowly, the friend to the orphan, the healer of the broken, the one who laid down his life so that humanity might be liberated from the oppressive bonds of sin and the grave. That is the kind of man I want to model my life after.