Wednesday, January 30, 2019

New Battlegrounds for the Souls of Men


Adding fuel to the campaign against what the media and culture elites have labeled "toxic" masculinity, the American Psychologists Association (APA) issued a study saying “traditional” masculinity is a "pathology" that is harmful and needs to be cured. One of its authors said, "If we can change men, we can change the world", echoing the emasculation movement’s agenda since the Garden of Eden. 

Shortly thereafter, the venerable razor company Gillette came out with a commercial not about shaving but one stereotyping men as rude, crude, and worse (Video Here). All of this fed more male bashing and drumbeat to obliterate "toxic" masculinity but it’s also sparked fierce backlash and awakened some creative counter-punching. Check out some of those reactions below:

Egard Watch Company’s Response to Gillette - HERE

Barbasol Shaving Company Preempted Gillette with this ad back in 2013 - HERE

Culture critic Ben Shapiro gave this point-by-point rebuttal of the Gillette’s ad and its ideology - HERE


‘What is masculinity’ is a crucial topic that needs full, open debate in the culture. Gillette is giving at least a chance to engage it.

Today men are more confused and conflicted about what it means to be a man than at any time in history. If men are that confused, then women are confused about femininity and children are confused about what it means to be a child. As go the men, so go the marriages, the families, the churches, the communities and the culture.

The crisis among men is not how God has designed, wired and purposed men for what He created was good, very good. But it’s the actual absence of biblical masculine virtues and models that leads to so many sin-bred, social pathologies. It’s not that biblical manhood has been emphasized too much but not much at all.  Years ago the church relinquished the field to secular culture to define and model manhood and then watch what men without God produce. Gender itself is now being radically redefined and modeled by culture elites while churches remain in the tall grass.

At the heart of mature, traditional masculinity is God’s Word, which bestows on men benevolent responsibility to lead, to provide for and to protect women, children, the innocent, the weak and the vulnerable. What that means was sanctified and modeled by Jesus Christ in the 33 years in walked on this earth.
God created us male and female in his image with different and distinctive DNAs, biologies and roles and responsibilities. In unprecedented ways and with blazing speed, the secular culture is denying and rebelling against God’s design and order.

A famous cigarette billboard ad back in the sixties pictured a burly, bronze-faced, muscular macho man with a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth. The script said, "Where a man belongs." That was a lie. John Piper once wrote, "Where a man belongs is at the bedside of his children, leading in devotion and prayer. Where a man belongs is leading his family to the house of God. Where a man belongs is up early and alone with God seeking vision and direction for the family.


So how did we reach this state of confusion and conflict about manhood, womanhood, childhood and even what it means to be human made in the image of God, Well, here’s what God says:

“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” Romans 1:28-31


BY DAVE BROWN, DIRECTOR AND PASTOR, WACMM

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