Who (or What) We Think We Are

Around Hillsdale and around InterVarsity, and around Christian circles altogether, we've created a ghost.  We've created a standard not only impossible to attain, but impossible to define, at least correctly.

There are sermons.

There are books.

There are support groups.

But I'm beginning to think it might be a big mistake or at least a gross misreading.

I'm pondering the idea of "Biblical Masculinity" and I'm a bit puzzled as to from where the idea springs.  I don't have a seminary degree, I'm sure there's a lot more I have to learn about the Bible, but other than the instructions in Ephesians for men to "Love their wives," I'm not so sure there's a lot for us to base an idea of what it means to be a man, biblically speaking.  

"There are men in the Bible we can look to because they're called holy and Godly!" you say.  

Yes, but outside of Christ, none of them are perfect and none of them are praised for things delineated as specifically good because they are men.  Indeed, most of the lauding of people like David (an adulterer) or Gideon (a idolater later in life) have to do with where their hearts lie and their motives...absolutely nothing about "manly character."  All of that being said, it's not even taking into account the fact that our Biblical stories exist because God wanted us to have a record about his faithfulness...not so we'll have people to pattern our lives after outside of Christ.  If, in fact, we're striving to be like anyone aside from Christ, that's very near sin and extraordinarily unbiblical.

So where does it come from?  If you have any insight, let me know.  I have my suspicions though, and, as always, they're steeped in the ongoing lie the western church buys wholesale known as modernity.

As I outline within the first few pages of my I.S. (and onward), modernity is the increasingly defunct ideological pursuit of the best possible version of everything.  It relied on ideas that things had thingness and they were at their best when best reflecting the truest version of that thingness.  That is a load of crap, of course, as Foucault and Derrida would tell us.  But still the idea persists and gets applied across the board.  As it applies to the false gender dichotomy, the idea that something could be "more" manly than other things emerged, (or, of course, more "lady-like").  That was always incorrect because the idea of man and woman being intrinsically different was created for a patriarchal hegemony, but it somehow survived, especially in the Church.  From the idea that something could be more masculine than something else the Church decided that wasn't always helpful but, if we baptize it in enough churchy jargon, maybe we can keep petting the ego of men by telling them they can still be more masculine than others, if they do it biblically.  Newsflash: That's still harmful and has led to woman hating themselves, gay people being hated by the church, and men who are less up to the (totally baseless) standard we've established hating themselves too.  So who benefits?  As always, the patriarchal hegemony.  That's not Christlike.  That's the last thing Jesus would have ever wanted.  And yet...it's what we call a biblical model.  There are virtues we identify as manly, of course...how could those be bad?  They aren't...but they're virtues if women have them too.  Taking charge and being in control of a situation are completely gender neutral and should be...but we don't let them be...because that wouldn't help the hegemony.  

Our Regional director in InterVarsity has a life's principal, that he'll never let a racially disparaging comment go unanswered.  I try to do the same.  I think I'm going to start striving to call shenanigans on the principal of masculinity, wherever it's found while I'm at it...it's harmful too.

-Zack

"Tell me tell me, could you ever really comprehend what goes on in his head?"

-Sons of Adam