True Masculinity

Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here this morning, and I consider it a privilege and an honor that I can share my thoughts and ideas with you. And hopefully, all these things will be ultimately from God and will serve some purpose. It's been interesting studying and sort of helping to bring together some of these things in my own life, some of the things that I've thought about but never really paid that much attention to. I'd like to also extend a welcome to all the visitors that are here this morning. And I hope that you can feel at home and worship with us. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article online about a subject that's almost considered taboo nowadays.

And as far as the article was concerned, it was actually a well-written article for being online. A lot of stuff is just kind of everyone's able to do it. It's just you get tons and tons of stuff out there. And it was actually a fairly well-written article. And I agreed with most of the things that it said.

But when it got to the end, it felt like it felt like it was sort of missing something foundational. It was a lot of good ideas all put together, but there didn't seem to be a lot of, I don't know, meat to it. It didn't seem like the author was really drawing anything drawing from anything. He was just kind of compiling a bunch of good ideas.

And I had the thought while I was reading it when I got to the end. I was like, you know, someone really ought to rewrite this article and draw from something specific and put some authority behind this article because there were good ideas. And I briefly thought about doing it myself. And then I decided that I didn't really have the time. And I didn't really feel like putting time and effort into it. And so I figured, well, I'll foul that away. And if I'm ever asked to share something, I'll just, you know, I'll pick that. And then shortly after that, Harvey called me and asked if I'd share a message. So I felt kind of responsible to follow through with that since I sort of made that promise to myself.

So that's what I'm going to talk about. The subject of the article, it was talking about masculinity. And it was basically making the argument that there's a difference between toxic masculinity, as you see it in the world today, and real true masculinity, real men.

And like I said, there wasn't a lot of foundation behind that. It was just a bunch of good ideas about why that's the case. But there wasn't really any good reason why that should be the case. And so I want to talk about that a little bit. And I think it's important to define some of these things a little more clearly than sometimes maybe we do as a group. Some of these things we take for granted just because it's we kind of know what they are. But I think there's this thing in society where society starts to change the definition of things very slowly. And it kind of creeps in on us. Unless we continually go back and figure out what God actually intended, it's easy to sort of accept those new definitions that society imposes on us.

And after a little bit, we either believe something that's completely wrong or we really don't know why something is wrong in the first place because we don't really have anything to pull from. So that's what I would like to do this morning is to look at what it means to be a real man or what true masculinity is by God's definition. And I think that gives us a little bit of a foundation to build off of when we're talking about all the things that come out of that.

And I'm not throwing off femininity as something that's not needed. I think they're very closely related to each other. And in a lot of ways, they overlap each other. But I want to focus specifically on this. And someone else can focus on femininity at some other time.

So, like I had already said so first of all, I'm going to thank John for sharing his method of putting together an outline by coming up with a structure first. It actually works pretty well. And so I'm going to take a I'm taking a page out of his book for that. My first point is masculinity demoted.

As I had said, society has taken a lot of definitions, a lot of things that were a certain way, and they've subtly changed the meaning of those things. And we end up with things that don't quite work the way they're supposed to.

So society's definition of masculinity, I think, by looking around, has kind of changed. It's become more or less one-dimensional. And it goes in different directions sort of. But sort of the overruling parts of how they define that is that, you know, men should suffer in silence. They shouldn't seek any kind of comfort or tenderness. They should only show emotions of bravery or anger.

And above all, you should never depend on anyone else because that's a sign of weakness. And regardless of what you're doing, always come out on top. And a few years ago, I came across a fitness group that that's kind of how they promoted their fitness. It was more or less focused on men. But that's kind of what they promoted. It was this tough, overruling, kind of overbearing, always winning, always coming out on top, always succeeding in some way, shape, or form. It was a very hardcore kind of thing. And I did some of their exercises for a while. And it made me feel good. I felt like a man, you know, getting out there and doing it regardless of how painful it was.

It didn't matter. Just get out and do it.

There was an article in "Psychology Today" that I came across. It said the consequence of this kind of messaging is boys who become men who are emotionally blunt and who may find it hard to connect with others, particularly their girlfriends or wives if they're heterosexual. In most cases, these messages will make it difficult for men to have a good relationship with their partners. But in the worst of cases, it can transform into rage and, unfortunately, murder.

So that was their take on this idea of what manliness is. Another thing that has kind of come out over the last number of years is in sort of society you see it portrayed in movies and stories and all those sorts of things is men are sort of portrayed as this big bumbling idiot that don't know anything. And the women have to come to the rescue.

And I think that's kind of an alternative way to view this. You know, you don't like the kind of stereotypical definition of what a man is. So you kind of take on this form of it. And the whole idea starts to get messed up. And then we come to the topic of toxic masculinity. And I've been hearing a lot about that lately.

And the way that kind of comes through is you have these masculine traits that are exaggerated in a really narcissistic way.

So you've completely suppressed the emotions. You have an appearance of hardness all the time. There's violence to show power. And you just need to man up, stop being wimpy. No pain, no gain. And that's kind of the it takes the sort of the stereotypical idea of what a man's supposed to be. And it takes all the feeling and all the humanness out of it. And it turns it into something that becomes violent and hard and, frankly, doesn't fit in society very well.

I think that there's a place to be physically fit and mentally fit. And I've pursued some of that in my own life just as a way of sort of staying young, maybe you would say. But there's something it brings some clarity to mind whenever you exercise a little, whether it's your body or your mind. And I think those things are good. I think God created our bodies to be exercised, to do something.

I think where the problem lies is that society has started to throw off some of the need for morals. And they've started to disassemble our structure for how we behave and respond to each other. And that results in some big problems.

We no longer have the lines to define where behaviors have gone bad, where things have become inappropriate because we've gotten rid of those moral laws that drive our humanness, our behaviors. So things start to get a little fuzzy.

We no longer have a standard for what it means to be human. We're just a different kind of animal now. We're part of the animal kingdom. And we've lost that identity. Or we're beginning to lose that identity. So when you take those things into consideration, then masculinity and femininity can be anything that I define them to be, personally. I can make them into anything. And when that's the case, then toxic masculinity becomes any kind of behavior from a man that I don't agree with. So if you're doing something that I disagree with, regardless of what it is, I can call it toxic because it doesn't fit my definition of what I think that a man should behave like.

So going back to the physical and mental fitness, there's some people that are really good at that. But they've left their spiritual fitness go completely to pieces or left it go completely. And when you don't have that spiritual awareness, those spiritual checks and balances, that's when the toxicity starts to happen. You no longer have the lines drawn for where behavior becomes appropriate and where it becomes inappropriate.

So it takes those good features that God created in us. It removes God from it as much as possible. And we wind up with something that's very toxic. And it's not very fun to be around.

So that's kind of society's idea of what masculinity is or is becoming. My second point is masculinity defined. And I'd like to switch gears here a little bit and talk about how God created what God created when He created men and when He created the behaviors and things that drive men, what He intended to be. And for that, we're going to go back to the beginning when God created men in the first place. You can turn to Genesis 1. Before I start, I want to go ahead and define two terms that we hear in society quite a bit today. And they're used pretty much interchangeably. And while I will agree that they're very closely related, I think there are specific differences between the two words.

And so I'd like to offer a simple definition here before we get started. The first word is the word "sex." And it's often used interchangeably with the word "gender." And while they're very closely related, there is a difference between the two things.

Sex refers to the physical part of mankind, the hardware, so to speak, to use a computer analogy. It's the thing that would require some catastrophic event, an injury, surgery, or whatever to change. It's the physical part of you.

Gender is the software. It's the thinking, the behaviors, the part that makes up who you are, in a sense, as male or female. To change that would require a change in thinking or habit or behavior.

And so if we take society's definition of what gender is, those behaviors and habits, then, in a sense, it kind of makes sense that you could change out the software for the hardware. I mean, it's just a set of behaviors and habits, right? So there's really no reason why a guy couldn't learn to act like a woman or a woman to act like a guy and take on those behaviors and habits.

I don't think that's possible. I think you can maybe get some semblance of the idea. But I don't think it's possible to go the whole way. And here's the illustration I'm going to use for that. As most mechanics are painfully aware of nowadays, most cars run on a computer. A computer drives practically everything. It runs the engine. It runs the transmission. It runs the windows and the door locks. Everything plugs in. Everything is connected with a computer.

As most farmers and construction workers know, most skid loaders nowadays are also run on a computer. I'm assuming it runs the hydraulics and controls everything just with the levers and switches. Do you think it would be possible to take the computer out of a skid loader, put it in a car, and get the same kind of operation?

Probably not. But why? They're kind of close to each other. I mean, a skid loader and a car are fairly similar. They both have four wheels. They both have a seat that a person sits in and controls it. It's got controls and levers.

They go forwards and backwards. It kind of seems like it should be a pretty simple matter to take the computer out of one and plug it in the other one and have it go. And I would say, if you're some sort of computer geek, you might be able to wrangle the code around and get some sort of function out of one and get it to work kind of in the other one. So you might be able to get it to go forwards and backwards and get some sort of control. But you lose the functionality that that piece of machinery was designed for.

You can't they're not compatible with each other. So while gender might just be the software and you might be able to sort of transfer some of the features into a different piece of hardware, into a different body, I think it's pretty much impossible to get the full functionality out of that because it wasn't created to go together.

I think we need to be very careful about the ideas that we accept from society about these types of subjects because it's very easy, as time goes on and we get used to the little changes here and there, the changes in definition and the changes in the way we view things, to start to believe some of these things or start to get confused about how they're separate.

There's a phrase that I've used it myself. I've heard other people use it. I'm not offended by it because I know what people mean. But it's the idea that men have a feminine side or women have a masculine side. And, like I said, I'm not offended when people use the term because I know what they're saying. Generally, it means that, you know, a man's doing something that a woman would generally do or something like that.

But I think that's an example of how subtle these changes in our ideas can be. When we start to define things in those terms where we start to mix the terminology a bit, it might just be a semantics thing. But it can eventually, over time, start to change how we view things.

Furthermore, statements like that kind of cheapen something that I think God created because it says that, you know, the thing that makes up who we are is just a set of actions or just a set of behaviors. It's something that anyone could do. We can change it around. And I think that gender was built into us from conception, from creation. And when we're born, everything's there and wired into place. And you can't take it out at that point. You can't change it out.

So what is masculinity?

Well, simply put, it's the qualities and traits regarded as characteristic of men. But I think it goes a little deeper than that. And for that, we're going to go to Genesis when God created men in the first place or mankind. Chapter 1, I'm going to start reading at verse 26. "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' So God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

And God blessed them. And God said unto them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' And God said, 'Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed. To you it shall be for meat and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life. I have given every green herb for meat.'

And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made. And behold, it was very good."

So God created man. And there's a couple of things that I'd like to pull out of here to notice. In the first part of verse 26, it says, "Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness."

God created us in his image.

And I think one of the important things to realize is that God was the creator. We are the creation, which automatically means that God is at the top of everything, everything that we see, everything that we think, everything that we are. God is above that because God created that.

He goes on in verse 27. "So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female created he them."

We're all part of this thing called mankind. Whether you're male or female, we're all part of mankind. God created us all equal in terms of that, in terms of creation. We're all equal. Women weren't created in the likeness of men. They were created in the likeness of God, the same as men were created in the likeness of God. So in terms of creation, we're all the same.

And finally, in terms of creation, we have this unique position of being part of the creation but above the creation.

In verse 28 or, I'm sorry, in verse 26, "Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." He put us in dominion over creation. So while we're part of the creation, we're also above the creation. So we're beneath God. We're above the creation.

So masculinity, I think, in terms of how God created it, is three-dimensional, not one-dimensional like society would sort of lead us to believe. And I'm going to illustrate that here. This is the way I kind of think about it.

So, like we see here, we have God at the top.

And we have what I'm going to call the creation order. So under God, we have mankind. And we're part of the creation. But we're above the rest of the creation.

All right? Then we have what I'm going to call a relationship order. Again, God is at the top. And we have mankind. But we're more or less equal with the rest of mankind. Oops.

We're all the same. We're all on the same level in terms of creation. God created us all in his likeness. And finally, we have a headship order. And again, God's at the top.

That's sort of how I think about it.

So whatever our definitions are for masculinity or femininity, they have to fit into those what I'm going to call those three paradigms. There's three completely different ways of thinking. And whatever our definition ends up being, if it doesn't work in one of them, then there's a problem. We need to go back and sort something out. So whatever definition we come up with has to fit into all three of those categories.

So we have a relationship to God. We have a relationship to mankind. And we have a relationship to creation.

So let's talk about our relationship to God. How does masculinity relate to God? For that, let's go to Romans, chapter 13. Familiar passage here.

I think part of this definition is recognizing the authority that we have in our lives.

Chapter 13 of Romans. I'll read the first two verses. "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

We, as mankind, and specifically men, have no authority except the authority that God has given to us, no more, no less. And if we try to take more authority than we should, and I'm going to put in there also to give up the authority that we've been given, we risk bringing on ourselves damnation because it's an ordinance of God. He designed it to be this way. And if we resist that, we take consequences for that.

If you go to where Jesus was standing in front of Pilate and Pilate said, "Don't you know I have the power to kill you or let you live?" Jesus reminded him of his place of authority. He said, "No, you don't.

God gave you your authority. You have the authority. You only have the power to do what God has allowed you to do." He reminded Pilate of his place of authority.

If we try to get around what God has designed for us as far as our authority in relation to all these three things, we risk taking damnation on ourselves because God designed it to be a certain way.

Masculinity, what it means to be a man, also has to relate well with the rest of the creation that God created.

And I find this rather interesting as much as mankind likes to be at the top of the pile. Everywhere you look, people are trying to bring creation up to the level of they're trying to humanize creation. And you see that with the pets, the obsession over animals' rights, veganism. It's all a way of trying to put us on an equal plane as the rest of creation, whether intentionally or not. And I'm not saying that having pets is wrong. I'm not saying it's wrong to love your pets or have a special diet for whatever reason or whatever. I'm not saying those things are wrong in their place. But there's a kind of an obsession over it.

In 2014, a man married his dog at Chapel of Our Lady at Presidio in San Francisco. In 1992, Mark Matthews married his horse and wrote a memoir about how he concealed it from his Methodist family. I thought that was rather unique.

We see these kinds of things going on. And we sort of laugh. But it's kind of a serious thing. And it's not new. If you go clear back to the Old Testament when God was handing out the law, He has some very specific laws about our relationship to animals and creation.

So there were strange things going on clear back then. It's not a new thing.

In the "New York Times," there was an article entitled "Humans or Animals? Let's Get Over It." And basically, the idea of the article was we spent way too much time trying to prove that we're not squirrels and we're not some sort of animal. It's just the difference is just in how we perceive the world that we're in, our self-awareness and our intelligence. You know, we look at them different. We're all the same. We just have a different view of how the world works.

And I think a lot of this thinking comes from making our starting point evolution. We've taken God completely out of it. We've said that everything came from nothing. And so, in the sense of evolution, we are all equal. We all came from the same slime somewhere. And there's really no difference between me and, you know, a rhinoceros somewhere, except I think I'm a little better looking than a rhinoceros.

But we've lost our respect of what creation actually is because we've taken the Creator out of it. I think that God has created us with an obligation to creation in addition to the placement of where we're at. And if you go back to Genesis in chapter 2, he says in verse 15 of chapter 2, "And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." So He gave us an obligation and a responsibility to take care of His creation.

We're still supposed to remain in dominion over it. But we're also supposed to respect it because He made it special. And He gave us a place to take care of it and to keep it.

And masculinity has a relationship to the rest of mankind. We have a responsibility to our fellow man, our brothers and sisters.

We were given responsibilities. In Romans 13, we were reading about the authority there. And if you go on and look at the rest of the passage there, it goes on to talk about the authority that God has given our leaders, our president, you know, our kings, the people that are over us in authority.

We all have a certain amount of authority just because we're mankind, just because we were created for a certain place. But then each one of us has different kinds of authority depending on where we're at in relation to each other.

Some of us are fathers. We have a certain amount of authority over our children. We have a certain amount of authority if we're in some place in our church or have some obligations or responsibilities. We have a certain amount of responsibility that goes with that. And I think that both as men and women, we've been given a responsibility to those other people to respect the authority that God has given them. And if you go to verse 8 of chapter 13, it says, "Oh, no man anything but to love one another. For he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." We owe a debt of gratitude and a debt of love to every brother and sister that we come in contact with.

And I don't mean just in our church necessarily, but everywhere, anywhere you might go in the world, we owe love to those people because we were created equal with those people. And sometimes, I will admit, it's not very fun or not very pleasant to show love to certain kinds of people because they've allowed themselves to get to a point that's not very nice. But we owe them that because God commanded it and because God created them. So I think, I believe by looking through these things that the foundational thing that defines what masculinity really is, what it means to be a godly man, it's the authority that was given to us by God. It's the responsibility to care for and take care of the things that God created.

And it's an obligation to show brotherly love and respect to all other members of mankind. And I think if we start there as a foundation and build all the other things off of that, a lot of things are going to make a lot more sense.

And my last point is masculinity defended. Why is it so important? Why is it important to get this right? Why is it important to have a good definition for what some of these things are? First and foremost, masculinity was created by God. He created men. And He created the thing that drives them. And that by itself makes it important because God created it.

But I think to try to eliminate or minimize what God created does a disservice to God and His creation. It's disrespectful because it essentially says that what He created is not very good. And we could have done a better job, maybe.

And second, if we accept the godless ideas that society pushes on us, after a while, we're not going to be just living in a broken creation. We're not going to have a creation that we're a part of because we'll have no context for what it actually means to be a part of a creation.

When we get God out of the context, when we remove God from the picture, there's really no reason left for anything. None of it makes sense. And I think that that's why you see a lot of depression and suicides and all those. People have gotten to the end. They realize that there's no point and there's nothing left to live for because they've forgotten who created them.

So let's go back and revisit toxic masculinity. What causes that? And I think it's pretty simple. It's when you take all the characteristics that define what a man is and you take God out of it. In fact, if you take God out of pretty much anything, it becomes toxic after a while.

So then we see violent aggression, lack of empathy, sort of an emotional constipation in society where you've taken God out of all these things. And all the good things that God created us to be become toxic because there's no lines anymore. There's no boundaries. There's nothing to drive the appropriate behaviors that we need to have.

And so what are some good things that come out of getting our foundation, the foundational part of who we are, getting that right? What are some of the good things that come out of that? And so I would like to share a short list of things that I think make masculinity real. And some of these overlap with femininity as well. I mean, I think they play equally in both. But I think these things, if we as men get these things right, you'll be a real man the way God intended you to be.

Honesty. You fulfill your commitments or you don't make commitments that you can't fulfill. You're truthful. And you can count on that. You can count on those kinds of people. Empathy. You can identify with the feelings and the emotions around you and can show an appropriate response to those people and their emotions. And I'll just say that men don't show emotions the same way women do. It just doesn't work that way. And I think in some way, that was created that way.

But it doesn't mean that we have to ignore those things and try to pretend like they don't exist. I think we still need to show the proper response to those emotions, whatever they may be. And I think that's where we see a lot of the toxicness when you see men saying things like, you know, I see men saying things like this to their children and their wives. It's like, "Oh, stop it. Get over it. Get over yourself." You know, "Man, you know, get tough. You know, toughen up or whatever."

There's a place to not let things get out of hand. But we also have to remember that some we don't have the same emotional response to things as what other people do. And we have a responsibility to respond to that in a correct way. So while we might not show emotion the way that someone else does, we have a responsibility to show the proper response to that emotion.

True men have integrity.

They're true to what they believe regardless of where they're at, regardless of who's watching. They're always going to behave in the same way.

They're timely with their behaviors. They have respect. They know their place. They know the place of the people around them. And they respect that and protect that and make sure that those lines and those boundaries stay in place.

They have authority because God gave them that authority. They don't take any more authority than God gave them. And they assume all the authority that God gave them. They don't try to shrug it off. They take responsibility for that. But they use it in a God-fearing way.

Just because I have authority over my children doesn't mean I get to abuse them. Just because I have authority over creation doesn't mean I get to take advantage of it and abuse it in bad ways.

True godly men are protective. And society has taken that to mean that you fight. You fight for what's right. And you get violent if you have to. And I think that's missing the point a bit. I think that protective nature refers to standing up and defending the attributes of God, what God's original intent is for all of us and all of creation.

We're going to defend those things. It doesn't mean we're going to go out and be violent and fight for it. But we're going to stand up for it and not let someone, you know, disregard those things. And finally, true men take responsibility. They take ownership for the result of whatever they're involved in, whether that's good or bad. They're not going to minimize their part that they have to play in that. They take full responsibility for it.

That's a short list. I think there's many, many more things that help to define what masculinity really means in a man. And here's a couple of questions that I've asked myself many times over the last months and years as I've thought about this subject and what God intends for me. And I'm just going to read them off. Think about them. Don't answer them out loud. But how you answer these questions sort of helps to show you where you stand and maybe some areas that maybe need improving.

Do you blame your wife, your family, your friends, your church, your community, everyone around you for why you are the way you are? That's the way my dad always was. Me and my brothers, you know, we always did it this way. It's the way it goes, you know. It's the area that I grew up in. You know, it's just how I am.

Do we shade the truth or tell an outright lie just to, you know, make things look a little better for us? And I'll just put in there that not telling the whole truth and letting someone under a false impression is just as bad as telling someone an outright lie. It's the same thing in the end.

Do you treat other people coldly? You refuse to have any connection with how they feel or with what they're thinking. You just, you push them back. You make sure you don't get involved with anyone. Do you back down or join in anytime someone treats people, creation, or God with contempt?

It's easy to just kind of disappear whenever the conversation turns. Or sometimes to join in even just by laughing along.

True masculinity builds community. It builds strong families. It's stability that provides that foundation for true security in families, churches, and communities. I think that God-fearing, truly masculine men, the way God intended it to be, will be appropriate leaders.

And masculine men will be able to fulfill the purpose that God created them to fulfill. Is there any response to the message?