What Is A Man?

Introduction

In 1891, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled “A Nation’s Strength” it reads as follows

What makes a nation's pillars high

And its foundations strong?

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand

Go down in battle shock;

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,

Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust

Of empires passed away;

The blood has turned their stones to rust,

Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown

Has seemed to nations sweet;

But God has struck its luster down

In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make

A people great and strong;

Men who for truth and honor's sake

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,

Who dare while others fly...

They build a nation's pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

Yes, it’s true, our self-reliant friend got this one right. It’s brave men who work while others sleep…Men who dare while others fly…Men who build a nation’s pillars deep and Men that lift them to the sky. Men are the strength of a nation. Men were made to rule – and they will rule regardless of what anyone has to say about it…the only question is whether or not that rule will be constructive or destructive, but they will rule, nonetheless. It is men who make a nation great or burn it to the ground.

And as the old African proverbs says, “If the young are not initiated into the village they will burn it down just to feel the warmth.” So, as we look around and watch Rome burn and see all the young with their marsh-mellows we need not ask why…just look at the numbers:

85% of all children who exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes

90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes

71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes

75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes

63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes

70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes

85% of all youth sitting in prisons grew up in fatherless homes

80% of rapists come from fatherless homes

Bonnie Taylor might ask, “Where have all the good men gone…And where are all the

Gods?...Where's the street-wise Hercules…To fight the rising odds?” We know exactly where they’ve gone – we’ve cut their dicks off, if not physically yet certainly metaphysically, and apparently that was a pretty important part of being man.

Bonnie needed a hero, the kind with a pair of balls, not some badass female heroin who is 105 pounds wet and wearing boots (you know, the kind in every marvel movie)…And though, we like the idea of interchangeable parts today, or perhaps rather the blending of all parts, (androgyny anyone), It simply doesn’t work that way and it doesn’t work that way BY DESIGN.

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” C.S. Lewis

We’ve exchanged True Grit for Broke Back Mountain and wonder why things are as messed up as they are. As it turns out, when you remove the balls from a society you also remove the accompanying spines…God apparently designed the two to go together. Given, that Nature abhors a vacuum, when men don’t act like men, women and the governments fill the void and they both suck at it!

So although, it’s en vogue today to ask, What is a Woman? Or to explore why Eve is in Exile, in part, because we have a rank idiot on the Supreme Court who doesn’t know what a woman is, until it comes time to kill her baby. Which is proof positive that hiring based on skin color is a terrible idea.

There is certainly nothing wrong with asking what a woman is, nor is there anything wrong with exposing the toxicity of feminism – amen to that! However, the logical antecedent which kills to birds with one stone is being able to answer the question, What is a Man? But, I might have to wait as long for that documentary as a feminist has to wait for me to apologize for saying that the question, What is a man, is logically antecedent.

Long before everyone wasn’t a biologist…and men still had penis’ and such…King David could tell his son Solomon in 1 Kings 2:2 …Perhaps it goes without saying, so let me say it, Solomon didn’t need to assemble all the wise men of the kingdom to decipher what his father meant.

Likewise, the Apostle Paul could write to the church in Corinth, which was one of the most messed up, sexually depraved and confused cities in the ancient world to,

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”

Corinth was such a messed-up city, that it became synonymous with sexual immorality…so much so, that when one indulged in sexual immorality it was slang to say they were acting like a Corinthian. I say all that, to say, that even in such a messed-up context the Apostle could tell the men of this church to act like men and presuppose that they, not only knew exactly what that meant, but that it was something to aspire too.

How could these men (King David and Paul) be so grossly presumptuous?...we can’t be certain, but it would seem obvious that they must have been lighter skinned Jews because they were so evil. David and Paul could presuppose that their audience knew exactly what it meant to be a man, because up until the last decade everyone knew what it meant to be a man because it’s baked into the cake, and no matter how hard we may kick against the goads, preference will not change design.

Everyone Has a Spine but Only Men Have Balls

Design is very much front and center of our current cultural experiment…as evidenced by the most controversial words in the Bible which are the very first ones, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Which means that God alone has the ability and the authority to say what a man is and what a woman is…not some bitter gender studies professor who has been divorced three times and has six cats.

This is true of masculinity. Any attempt to describe masculinity outside of God’s good design will be counter-productive and ultimately destructive regardless of whichever way it errs – to the right with a super hyper-1980’s action hero masculinity (which is dominion turned into dominance), or to the left with a soft, limp-wristed, gay masculinity (which is dominion turned into passivity and manipulation).

Doug Wilson has defined masculinity as the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility and Amen to that. However, one may ask, “How does that differ from femininity?” Aren’t women also to be sacrificially responsible and to do so gladly? Also, we could start naming virtues that we think are distinctively masculine such as strength and honor and the like, upon which someone could rightly ask, aren’t women also to be strong and honorable?

My point being, that it is only the Biblical worldview and its accompanying design regarding males and females that can make sense out of anything. So when men assume the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility it is a distinctively masculine sacrificial responsibility and when women take on the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility it is a distinctively feminine sacrificial responsibility…which means that men and women were designed distinctively different and that difference evidences itself in respective roles.

So when David says, “show yourself to be a man” and Paul tells the Corinthians to “act like men” they have this in mind. That is, they are telling everyone who reads those words with balls to act like men…you know, the kind with balls – let the reader understand.

What is a man? Surely, it has to do with more than just having balls. Absolutely, but let me just state the obvious by saying that it starts there…and, said balls are foundational to a spine that stands upright leading to broad shoulders that are meant to carry a load. That is, God has designed men physically and emotionally different from women as too fulfill the mission that God has created for him…the same could also be said of women. God designed them physically and emotionally different to be a helper to the mission that God has given man.

With that being said, this is probably as good of a time as any to inform my soft

complementarian evangelical brethren and sistren that complimentarity only makes sense and only functions within the framework of patriarchy…

“But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God… For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” 1 Corinthians 11:3-8

Why did God make man? One could quickly answer, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Which would be right, but How do we glorify and enjoy Him? Michael Foster says,

“The reason that God creates man on earth, according to Genesis, is for productive, representative rulership. This is what it means to exercise dominion: to fruitfully order the world in God’s stead.”

We glorify God and we enjoy God by having dominion…that is, fruitfully ordering the world in God’s stead…in our lives, in our relationships, in our homes, in our vocations, in our churches, and in the public sphere – we seek God’s honor and God’s glory.

God created man in His image, as a steward, as a representative over creation. He was to work and keep, to guard and to protect that which God entrusted to his care. He was to cultivate and create…to put God’s fingerprints on creation…Woman was then created to help man accomplish his mission…of filling, subduing, working, keeping, cultivating, ruling: he is the Head and she is the Helper…he is on Mission, his wife is on Sub-mission.

This doesn’t not mean that all men are to rule over all women any more than one elder in a local congregation is to rule over all congregations. Man is to rule himself first, by bringing every thought captive to Christ, but then he is also to rule in his respective spheres of authority, or influence. This begins in the home with his wife and with his children. This means that all of man’s authority is derivative which means it comes from God and is to be directed back towards God.

It should go without saying, but unfortunately, everything that should go without saying are the very things that need to be said today…so here we go, a wife is under no more obligation to obey her husband when he asks her to sin than a congregate is obligated to a obey an elder that asks them to sin or a citizen is obligated to obey a wicked magistrate that asks them to sin. Authority functions within spheres, and when it does under God’s ordination and law, all under that authority are blessed.

Therefore, men were made to rule, rule, rule, rule, rule…and they will, either righteously or un-righteously…either according to God’s standards or mans. This is not something that should be taken lightly but should be approached with humility and a certain degree of fear and trepidation knowing that we will either be a blessing or a curse to those whom we influence by our rule.

When men abrogate or abuse their God-given authority…Surrender their God-given rule, and cease to practice their God-given dominion everyone suffers!…especially women and children! As Robert Lewis Stevenson once said,

“Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.”

Hence all the aforementioned stats on fatherlessness, which explains why the banquet of statism and feminism is set before us now.

The secret sauce, then, in the redemption of our culture is rooted in the redemption and

restoration of masculinity. So, although I greatly appreciate someone like Jordan Peterson

especially when he says things like, Or someone like a Jocko Willink with his gospel of discipline equaling freedom…they, and men like them, can’t restore masculinity, though by the common grace of God they reveal much more of what God intended for men than most of the wet noodles and soft turds in evangelicalism like Russell Moore or Matt Chandler.

How do we fix this mess? You can’t just say, “man-up”…You can’t demand that the heart pump blood through the veins when there is no heart…What fallen men need is a new heart…We need the redemption that comes through Jesus…a redemption that works itself all the way through, all the way down and all the way out…we need the 100-proof hot gospel…

We need to look to Jesus who is the standard and archetype of what God intended man to be, and in looking to Christ we understand the weight of gladly taking up the mantle of sacrificial responsibility. True, masculinity bleeds and lays down one’s life in obedience to Christ…for his wife, his family, for his church, for his nation…and does so with gladness, knowing that in this sacrificial responsibly Christ is seen in us.

Conclusion

What does it mean to act like men? The Apostle Paul tells us. It means being watchful, standing firm in the faith, being strong and letting all that you do be done in love. It means walking in the fear of the Lord, repenting of sin, working hard, and sacrificing much for those whom God has put in your care.

The restoration, growth, and glory of our nation is going to flow from churches that are lit up for Christ and want Him to be glorified in all things. These churches are going to be rooted in families that are rooted in the fear of the Lord and want to make much of Him and are thinking generationally…These households, these families upon which the Christ-exalting expansion of civilization rests will rest upon the broad shoulders of Godly men who fear God and love Jesus!

Brave men who work while others sleep, Who dare while others fly... Who build a nation's pillars deep…And lift them to the sky.

Because their eyes are already set upward upon Christ.