Last Sunday I listened to a very good preacher declare that there was (is) a crisis in masculinity. As I read the news and listen to the postmodern culture pundits, I tend to agree. We have been in a crisis for about 20 years now, maybe longer. With our cliches and emphases on metrosexuality and homosexuality, how can we not see that we are in a crisis? Have you watched many shows lately? Men are portrayed as sexually confused, sexually perverted (in every sense of that term), or sexually weak. The only men shown in a positive light are those who have achieved enough enlightenment to be in touch with their feminine side, or those who have shown great tolerance to those who wish to be sexually perverted, or have willfully submitted themselves to their female partners. A strongly masculine man is often portrayed as a homophobic, intolerant, whoremongering sociopath. That, or he is so stupid he cannot tie his own shoes.
Even commercials show men as mental slugs. We know nothing. We are incompetent. We can't do it, whatever "it" may be in the commercial. Women to the rescue!! They save us from ourselves.
When did it begin? Do we blame "Gloria?" Do we blame that association of pyschologists that declared that homosexuality was an alternate lifestyle, worthy of acceptance? Do we blame our moms or our dads? Look deeper, dude.
Two things happened in the 20th century that changed us. One, during WWII many women left the home to go join the work force. It was deemed to be a necessary evil. We needed women to run the factories while our men went off to war. But when the war was over, the women had tasted the "freedom" that this gave them and they liked what they had tasted. So culture shifted and now women were slowly accepted into the work force. How they were treated is another story we cannot go into now.
Second, we came home from the wars and conflicts pretty disillusioned. Our perspective on spiritual things was changing. We lost our spiritual anchor. As we became biblically illiterate and sexually liberated, we did something unthinkable. We began to use culture as the primary source of biblical interpretation and we changed the meaning of Scripture to fit our cultural understanding. We contextualized Christianity and left the biblical message that describes the home. Because men, in general, lost their interest in spiritual things, we allowed the popular thought of the day to govern our ideology. That includes how men see themselves.
Yes, there is a crisis in masculinity. God still asks us men the same question he asked Adam in the Garden of Eden, "Where are YOU?" We need to rediscover our masculine role and get busy in the things God expects of us.
2 comments:
This is an interesting post and I wholeheartedly agree. I think masculinity in our age has lost its value and men have forgotten what sets us apart from women and where our strengths and power lies. To quote Jars of Clay, "We don't know who we are instead."
I'm not sure women in the workplace is as big a contribution as is normally credited to it. Maybe the extent of how much they left the home is a factor but I think more than anything, it was the fact that men in general were emotionally repressed after WW2 and Vietnam resulting in their sons going the opposite direction. I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist but that's what it seems like from my limited view.
Great post, very intresting
Hunter,
Good to hear from you. Thanks for your input. As for women in the workplace, it should never have been an issue. Proverbs 31 shows women in business; the OT and NT never speak to that specific subject in and of itself. But what happened in the overall western culture? Many women began to ask why they even had to be in the role that the church said they should be in. It only happened when the great spiritual divorce happened,though. When that took place in western culture, the entire family unit began to disintegrate. Women enjoyed the power they began to receive. Men began to enjoy the back seat in which they found themselves.
At that point, something happened. Men left the homes emotionally first, then began leaving physically. If you go back through modern history, you will see that all this began with the post-WWII culture, a culture that included a surge of women in the work place.
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