As things continue to devolve, as things get ever more crazy, as our culture, to use that term loosely, continues to come unstuck, many believers have become discouraged, not knowing if there is anything they can do. Other believers have been eschatologically immobilized, thinking that these dire developments are just baked into their “last times” cake. This is just the way that worlds end.
But there are some believers who want to be involved in the fight. They believe that fights matter, and that fights can actually be won, but they want to know where the center of the fight is. Where can they go? What can they do?
I do not call Dreher’s Benedict Option a Benedict Arnold Option because there really is a difference between retreating and going over to the other side. But ill-advised retreats can nevertheless be disastrous, and so we want to make sure we do not take up that offered option hastily. Strategic retreats have sometimes worked in the past, what one general once called “advancing to the rear.” But to separate ourselves into a ghetto where the secularists control every street going in and out does not commend itself to me as one of those possible opportunities. Martyrdom is a possibility and so is victory. But a managed truce should be off the table.
But there are Christian leaders who would rather be generals in a retreat than lieutenants in a victory, and we live in a time when far too many of our leaders have felt the tug of that particular appeal in their hearts. And once settled in the heart, it is not long before it seeps up into the head, where all the strategies are kept.
Biblical masculinity is cultural gluten. Without it, the cookie just crumbles to pieces in your hand, and is tasteless on top of that. Or someone at the organic equivalent of DuPont comes up with an artificial bonding agent that either doesn’t work, or turns the cookie into an all-natural shower tile.
What are we to say of those Christian leaders who are masculine enough to want to be in leadership, but not biblically masculine enough to accept the assigned sacrifices that go with it? One of the central sacrifices is this — one who assumes authority in the kingdom must be willing to be the drudge servant of the others (Matt. 23:11-12). But after three years with Jesus, the disciples got into a quarrel on the road to Jerusalem about who would be the greatest (Mark 9:33). After three years with Jesus, the disciples were disputing among themselves at the Last Supper about who would be large and in charge (Luke 22:24). Does anybody honestly think that the leadership of the North American evangelical church is free of this temptation that repeatedly snared the disciples?
I am fond of quoting Chesterton’s great observation that the one taste of paradise on earth is to fight in a losing cause, and then not lose it. That prospect is before us now. But it brings us back to my earlier question. Where do we go to fight? Where is the center of the fight? There are various aspects to this question, but one of the more obvious is that in order to be the center of the fight, there has to be fighting. As the fellow once said, this ain’t bean bag.
Without Christ, nothing holds together (Col. 1:17-18). But in order to be an active part of His kind of bonding, leaders have to be more than hirelings (John 10:12). They have to be gifts from Christ to His people, and in order to be complete gifts from Him, they need to be more like Him. But we need to be done with leaders who want to be like Jesus, only not so bloody.
When that gracious gift is finally given, then God will raise up leaders who can look at the chaos of our battlefield and see a straight line path to victory. If God does not give it, then our particular cause is lost, and see you in the Resurrection. We can look at all the game film then — and we will be able to handle that because there will be no tears there (Rev. 21:4). Whatever the case, we are well past the point of being able to save ourselves. We have to quit pretending.
As Tozer once put it, if revival means more of what we have now, we most certainly do not need revival.
Carry on please, Doug. I was just getting into what you were saying.
Hear hear!
As a Christian, Martyrdom is a victory.
Please define what you mean by masculine and feminine? What is a feminine woman allowed to do? A masculine man? What should the punishment be for someone who doesn’t follow that script?
At first, firm rebuke, in love, Proverbs 27:17 style, by other (usually older) Godly men. Failing that, the “nancy boy” type ought be shamed, both for their own good that they might repent and grow a pair, but also that other take warning.
What, precisely, does this shaming involve? How do you do it?
And for girls who act masculine? How does that work?
Perhaps you can give a biblical text specifying which behaviors are Nancy boy-ish.
Onan
That was primitive birth control.
I thought it was a sin. IIRC, Onan had a Levitical duty to provide his (deceased?) brother with an heir. Onan went all nancy-boyish on the matter and was punished for it (again, IIRC)
Ask Charlie Sheen. He is well aware of the punishment for not being masculine.
Huh? How was Charlie Sheen NOT masculine? He had sex with lots of female prostitutes. Is a man who has sex with women now “feminine?” Do we take your precious bodily fluids?
What if we stop talking about punishment and start talking about the rewards and the joy to be found there? Men who know how to be men and women who know how to be women often enjoy many fruits and treasures. The system was not designed to make us miserable.
So show me. Define feminine and masculine and explain those rewards?
Two days and no answer to my questions. If can’t define feminine and masculine, how on Earth do you expect anyone else to think they are important?
Deconstruct much?
Feminine is holding the ball. Masculine is kicking it. Lucy is a feminist.
And Charlie Brown is a complementarian.
A.) Do you need a definition of feminine and masculine? or are you looking for flaws in other peoples definotions?
B.) How many peoples sence of their own importantce is based on anyone here answering your questions?
Yes, I need a definition. That’s why I asked.
In the words of Douglas Wilson on masculinity “True masculinity is the humble, glad assumption of God given responsibility.” I don’t have as sucinct a definition of femininity but here’s one that works. (Im not sure who wrote this) In Genesis 2:18, God saw it was not good for man to be alone and determined to make a “helper suitable” for him, or in the original Hebrew an “ezer-kenegdo”. As a female image bearer, a woman’s core calling is as an ezer, or essential counterpart. … A woman, as an ezer, reflects God as an Ezer, as someone who comes… Read more »
Regarding the disciples’ argument, they might have all had good claims but I bet they divided into factions around Peter, James, and John. Mrs. Zebidee seems to show that this had been going on for a while (Matt. 20:20), It’s interesting how the epistles seem to show that they took Jesus’ rebuke to heart.
Doug, where do you think the center is?
And according to Edersheim (Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah), the argument about who was greatest was won by Judas Iscariot.
As a gluten-sensitive individual I found this post both problematic and triggering.
But seriously this is an excellent point and one long overlooked. I recently read a post pointing out that the family is not the foundation of civilisation — savages and barbarians have families too. The foundation of civilisation is men working together in a naturally ordered hierarchy. http://thefutureprimaeval.net/mannerbund-101/
I read this article and was a bit repelled by its view of women. There are chaste women who do not require the status of being property in order to maintain their virtue. Even today.
There are some, but they are not close to being the majority of unmarried women. The author is generalizing. That Janet Reno is like six and a half feet tall and Robert Reich is like four and a half feet tall in no way invalidates the fact that men are taller than women.
Yes, there are some exceptions, but the vast majority of unmarried women today are sexually active.
Certainly. And there are men who do not require law to keep them behaving civilised. One doesn’t organise society to only work for those men and women, though.
Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. Colossians 2:8 (NKJV)
OK? Anything in particular you want me to be aware of…?
Yes, there is. Everything The Bible has to say about mankind. Let that inform your anthropology.
OK. Done.
Where is Jesus in that framework? It seems pagan, more like the Roman paterfamilias.
Where is Jesus in any observation of the natural and social world? Families, nations, civilisations can all be faithful or unfaithful. As Pastor Wilson notes, masculinity is a prerequisite to civilisation — whether pagan or Christian.
I don’t see how civilizations can be unfaithful, but then again, I am not Reformed/Calvinist.
Actually Teresa is getting at much the same point I was, only more directly. I don’t know about Roman, but it strikes me as an expression of some form of neo-paganism with a veneer of science-y sounding explanation.
Perhaps a philosophy, or an attempt thereat, but not one rooted in a Biblical view of man or much of anything else that I could tell. I wanted to get you to look and think.
Words of wisdom here, “One of the central sacrifices is this — one who assumes authority in the
kingdom must be willing to be the drudge servant of the others.”
This too, “Whatever the case, we are well past the point of being able to save ourselves. We have to quit pretending.”
Perhaps that is the point and purpose behind most of our hard times?
We cannot save our own selves, nor can we save civilization like Batman might. Ultimately we need Christ and we need to become truly aware of why we need Him.
I’m not sure how the difficult exercise of political prudence – sizing up the particular situations and applying general principles to them – has anything to do with “masculinity” defined as zeal to fight on the assumption that if only we do,God will bless us with victory. I wonder sometimes if postmillennialism acts not as an illuminating force, but as a blinding one. That is, since God wins in the end, we must assume we should always win now – and if we don’t assume that, we are “effeminate.” Somebody in a context of radical cultural unbelief once wrote, “Make… Read more »
There may have been a bit more to that context. Just because cultures are at war, it doesn’t mean that everyone is called to the front lines. There are still civilians, even in a culture war.
“That is, since God wins in the end, we must assume we should always win now”
Assuming immediate victory is hubris, but conversly it would be wrong to assume that “This isn’t the end so we will inevitably lose and shouldn’t even try”
A major way to fight is in the bedroom. We win by out-breeding.
The only problem with this is that they’re coming out with some truly delicious gluten-free cookies these days.
LOLOLOLOLOL
I think it is happening outside the pulpit. You have your “organized church” and you have His church. The two sets are not disjoint, yet the place that they do not intersect are foreign to each other. It takes a theologian and a preacher to not see God’s Spirit moving like a lion throughout this land. He is touching His peoples hearts and steeling them, preparing them. As He is doing this, His people see the division between pagan and His grow. They see too, the rapidity of the descent into hellish madness of a people who have rejected Him.… Read more »
2 Chronicles 20 17 You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance theLord will give you, Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the Lord will be with you.’” Luke 7 6 So Jesus went with them. He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself… Read more »
Does the SBC stand for Sodomy Baptist Convention? Recently the Gospel Coalition, which is dominated by “men” in the SBC, posted an article saying Christian parents shouldn’t have any preference as to whether their kids grow up to be straight, or gay. Today they’re linking to, without comment, an article in the NY Times, about a popular hipster church in Los Angeles called Mosaic, which many people may not be aware, is part of the SBC. The head pastor of Mosaic is Erwin McManus. In the article, this is what he says about homosexuality: “We have people in our community… Read more »
Looks like they took the link to the story down. I guess someone at the top decided they were moving things too fast, and they’d better pull back for a while.
I think Barnabas is right regarding how heavy to hit, but, to your point, the picture at the top of the NYT article is perhaps evidence for an effeminate version of worship.
I hadn’t read the article yet, but that picture stuck out to me.
“Biblical masculinity is cultural gluten. Without it, the cookie just crumbles to pieces in your hand, and is tasteless on top of that. Or someone at the organic equivalent of DuPont comes up with an artificial bonding agent that either doesn’t work, or turns the cookie into an all-natural shower tile.” Hahaha. It’s kinda cute when non-bakers misunderstand what gluten is and does. Sorry to burst your bubble, but many of us from other cultures grew up on delicious Christmas cookies, based on ancient recipes, without any wheat or gluten, and these cookies never crumbled to pieces, nor did they… Read more »
What does gluten do? I add it to my bread for texture.
Simplest explanation is here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten
“Whatever the case, we are well past the point of being able to save ourselves. We have to quit pretending.” We never could save ourselves or sanctify ourselves. What makes us think that men — no matter how properly masculine they may be — could possibly sanctify our culture? Far too many of the comments here remind me of 2 Timothy 3:5 — ““holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power”. One would think, reading here, that Christianity is a religion that relies on human effort, and human solutions. Perhaps the right kind of education or… Read more »
Right on, Rebecca. But this is a PostMil crowd. It influences their entire worldview.
Surely you don’t mean to imply PostMil theology necessitates prideful self-sufficiency, a lack of genuine repentance, and an unwillingness to rely on the Holy Spirit.
Not sure why my reply didn’t post, but I’ll try again.
I’d like to think that PostMil theology doesn’t necessitate prideful self-sufficiency or anything else that would stand in the way of genuine, humble, broken-hearted repentance — or that it would blind people to their desperate need for the Holy Spirit’s work in their lives.
I find PostMil appealing because it jibes with my optimism. That does not make it true. I find pre-mil unappealing because of its defeatism. That does not make it untrue.
A man’s man I admire, John C. Write, is an amillenialist due to his Catholicism. To attribute his masculinity his eschatology is an error because his masculinity predates his conversion.
Something else is at work.
As Tozer once put it, if revival means more of what we have now, we most certainly do not need revival.
And if conservatism means more of the likes of Bush 1, Bush 2, Cheney, McCain, Romney, Boehner, Bush 3, Cruz, Rubio, Rand, Christie, Carson…we most certainly don’t need conservatism.
Masculinity isn’t just cultural gluten. It’s also political gluten. That’s why Trump is huge.