Why the Church is Never Going to "Get Masculinity Right", Part I

"Biblical Masculinity" Is Good Business, But It's Not Good Theology

We talk about narcissism a lot these days. The word narcissism derives from a Greek myth about Narcissus, the beautiful son of a nymph and the river god Cephesus. According to Ovid’s version of the story, Narcissus’ mother is warned by a seer that her son will be doomed if he ever “discovers himself” - i.e., if he ever sees his own beauty. As Narcissus grows into a young man, he is sought after by many would-be lovers, but he proudly rejects them all, sure that no one is good enough for him. One day, the teenage Narcissus bends down over the river to drink, and for the first time catches a glimpse of his own reflection. Narcissus becomes so infatuated with his own reflection that he refuses to leave the riverbank and ultimately dies of starvation.

In modern vernacular, Narcissus has become a shorthand for the self-destructive behavior of an inward-looking person; a person incapable of entering into the feelings or experiences of others because they are so absorbed with themselves. We call this kind of a person a “narcissist” and have even named a psychological diagnosis after the hapless Greek youth. Christian theology has long observed the human tendency towards self-absorption, and its effects. Augustine is credited with coining the Latin phrase incurvatus in se, which means to be “curved in” towards oneself rather than oriented towards God and neighbor. In Paradise Lost, Milton depicts Eve as falling victim to the serpent’s temptation through becoming increasingly more curved in towards self. The story of Narcissus may be a pagan myth, but it hits on something very true: we can’t live off our own reflections, and if we try, we will find ourselves withering away. We need something to look out at to be whole.

“Biblical Masculinity” Isn’t Counter-Cultural - It’s Just Good Business

But you didn’t click on this article to read about Greek mythology. What, you may ask, does the story of Narcissus have to do with American Christianity’s ongoing quest to “reform” masculinity? I promise it’s relevant: keep Narcissus in mind, because we’ll be coming back to him throughout this series.

Earlier this week I was eavesdropping, as I often do, on a twitter conversation in which a group of Christian men were discussing the phenomenon of Andrew Tate: a secular masculinity “guru” who disciples men into arrogance, misogyny and just generally bad behavior, in the name of “being a real man”. For the men discussing this, the following that Andrew Tate has amassed only proves that the church has failed young men by not providing them with an inspiring, but biblically-informed vision for masculinity. I’ve heard the same regarding the popularity of Jordan Peterson, a secular psychologist whose writings on masculinity have inspired non-Christian men and Christian ones, alike. These secular masculinity coaches (so the theory goes), are simply filling a vacuum created by the embarrassed silence of the church, on the topic of “true masculinity”; i.e. masculinity that is informed by Christian values found in the Bible.

The first problem with this argument is, there is simply no such vacuum. On the contrary, since the eighties or so, there have been more books written on “biblical masculinity” than any man is likely to ever read in an entire lifetime. Here are a few titles to jog our memories:

Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul, John Eldredge

Biblical Manhood: Masculinity, Leadership and Decision-Making, Dr. Stuart Scott

The Mark of a Man: Following Christ’s Example of Masculinity, Elisabeth Elliot

Family Shepherds: Calling and Equipping Men to Lead in Their Homes, Voddie Bauchum

The Masculine Mandate: God’s Calling to Men, Richard D. Phillips

Disciplines of a Godly Man, R. Kent Hughes

If you’re reading this as an American evangelical, I’m willing to bet that you’ve heard of at least a few of these. I’ve tried to choose only the most well-known, widely-read titles, by the most respected authors. Even among those more well-known books, I purposely avoided some of the more controversial or extreme “masculinity manuals.” And I limited myself to titles that are only on masculinity, rather than including the many, many, many more Christian titles that address “biblical” masculinity and femininity together.

I repeat: there is no such vacuum. But what’s behind this deluge of Christian books on “how to be a man”? I propose that these books aren’t succeeding because they are reforming masculinity to accord with Christian teaching, but because they are re-packaging Christianity to cater to men. Every good marketer knows that you don’t sell people a product: you sell them an idealized picture of themselves. When soda companies show hip, young and beautiful people cavorting on a beach drinking such-and-such-cola, the subliminal message they want you to receive is: if I drink such-and-such-cola, I will be hip, young and beautiful. The advertiser wants the consumer, like Narcissus, to get stuck gazing at the idealized reflection of themselves and become consumed with reaching it.

The secular advertising industry long ago discovered that gendered products are an easy sell, because they’re generic enough to appeal to a very wide customer base, but they also play into their audience’s desire to constantly establish and re-establish their sexual identity through performative contrast with the opposite sex. And marketers have gotten increasingly shameless in marketing this way to men. The rise of mass-production has resulted in countless brand names and brand lines to cater to a broad range of tastes. We’re barraged with a dizzying array of options for nearly any product we consume. Marketers don’t want male shoppers to walk down the aisle and think, “We have soap at home,” they want them to think, “I need man soap, so I can smell like a man.” They don’t want men to remember that they have a Costco-sized box of disposable wipes in the closet, they want them to buy “Dude Wipes.” By appealing to men’s desire to secure their sexual identity by distancing themselves from women, marketers can get a household to buy two of everything, instead of one, and that’s just good business.

Selling to people - and especially men - based on gender distinctives is actually a tried-and-true, low-risk sales strategy, but you wouldn’t know that from the way the authors of Christian gender manuals write. It seems like every time another Christian book on masculinity drops, the author begins by telling us that they are doing something very brave and daring by talking about the unique calling of men. In reality, the Christian book business has simply done with religion what the rest of the marketplace has done with everything else: over-gendering Christianity so it can more effectively target men and women as a demographic. Flip through a CBD catalogue and count how many of the products are clearly marketed to one sex or the other. Check out all the different special-focus Bibles you can buy for men or for women. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Christianity was actually two religions: Christian manhood, and Christian womanhood.

The Gospel Isn’t a Motivational Speech And the Bible Isn’t a Self-Help Book

A certain degree of gendering in the Christian market-place is to be expected, and not necessarily concerning. I’m not going to get on anybody’s case for wanting their Bible to come in a pretty pink - or to not come in a pretty pink. But gendered religious material isn’t always harmless. With men statistically being less involved with religion than women, the Christian book industry has even more reason to aggressively court men on their own terms. But how much Christian doctrine can survive being “re-packaged” as men’s motivational literature? How do you fit “you must become like a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven” into any culture’s expectations of masculinity, and what will happen to Christianity if you try? In the next post we’ll explore why men are in crisis, and why “getting masculinity right” isn’t the way the church can help them.