This whole Driscoll thing got me thinking about masculinity and following Jesus. As I was responding to a comment on my last post, I found myself getting in touch with some tough issues in myself, and I suddenly had to process them. If you know me at all, not a single thought goes through my head without thorough processing. I don't even go to the bathroom without examining my own motives, level of need, social mores involved, environment, and the affect of my own worldview and confirmation bias. I overdo it a bit. Most of the time, I just want to shut my brain off and be "normal", but then I would no longer be me.
My entire life, I have struggled with being a man. Not until very recently, as I have gone through some intense and extensive healing, have I even felt like a man. I was 39 years old, and I was still thinking of myself as a kid. I'm not sure if something froze in my development, or if I just have always felt like an impostor.
I actually agree with Driscoll's assertion that men in the Church have been emasculated. There is no doubt in my mind that this is true, but I see it more as a societal issue than strictly a Church issue. Men everywhere, both inside and outside the Church, seem to be emasculated. Stop. Right there, we run into trouble, and it is a symptom of our emasculation. What is a real man? What does one even look like? That is the core problem that has led to our emasculation as men. We are not permitted to define that for ourselves. We have authorities in our lives, from the time that we are very small, attempting to shape us into the image of manhood that they see as valid. Government, society, church, family, school, friends, employers, spouses, media, and other authorities, all attempt to define us. So, men are left not really being in partnership with God in finding our true identity and definition of manhood. It is established independently of us, and we fight to live up to those images and their accompanying expectations.
Now, when I say men have been "emasculated", I am not saying they are "girly". That is another narrow definition. This is my main problem with pastors who define manhood and womanhood, and then dare to anoint their definitions as "biblical". They complain about the lack of manliness in church, but their narrow definitions of that term only serve to further emasculate men. No, what I mean by emasculation is that, because it is impossible to live up to these images, men are left being nothing at all. They are kind of a soup of neediness and perpetual boyhood with life-long mommy issues. They are undefined blobs of gray, because they have no idea what they should be. That is emasculation. What they should be, is what they were made by God to be. Is Forrest Gump less manly than Rocky Balboa? We will talk more about that in future posts. Let's look, first, at how I think this phenomenon came to be in the West.
As an amateur historian, I see an historical progression toward this reality, especially in America. Warning: This mini-history is not based on any solid research or any educational expertise on my part, save a U.S. History course in my freshman year in college. It is entirely reductionist, sensationalized, revisionist, and filled with sweeping generalizations. I am completely biased in my use and abuse of history, because I am merely trying to make a point. Well, there you have it. At least I'm in line with most of the history taught in schools.
Looking back, we hold the image of the rugged, "manly man", beginning with our picture of the pioneers. However, the vast majority of men who came here were actually either escaping persecution or were bored, bourgeoisie aristocrats looking for new adventures and revenue streams. Of the aristocrats, most were writers, ministers, artisans, scientists, politicians, and other such educated professionals. They did not have calloused hands or weathered faces. At Jamestown, they were so terrible at survival, that they resorted to cannibalizing their dead, in order to stay alive. They didn't know a thing about farming, building, or hunting. These skills were taught by First Nations Peoples, who were later paid back with wholesale slaughter and forced relocation. But, I digress. My point is, most of these settlers were either desperate and afraid, or rich and pampered. These were not the Daniel Boone, Marlboro Men that we have spun them into with folk tales and legends.
In the 1930s and 1940s, as we were coming out of the Great Depression and going into World War II, men went from fear to more fear. Yes, very tough and rugged immigrants came in around the turn of the century to fill factories and city housing, but they were just as fearful about feeding their families as those who were here already. This is evidenced by the women working long hours in clothing sweatshops, while the men built dangerous high rises and labored in meat packing yards and foundries. These men were not above "letting their wives work or help raise money". They were not threatened by not being the sole bread-winner. They just wanted to stay alive. It was all about survival. Then, with the onset of war, the male population of America went from fear of starvation to fear of dying. Men did not go to war with jaws set, ready to take on the Germans and Japanese. They went there pissing themselves and died by the tens of thousands. Watch Saving Private Ryan, a frighteningly realistic film. There are no heroes. There are those who were shredded by bullets and explosives, and those who, luckily, were not. I am not trying to sully the heroic nature of our soldiers. I am not sure I could have even gotten on the boat to go to the beach. I would have died of fear on the dock! What they did was incredibly brave. Their sacrifice is precious. I am just saying, as we are one day from the theatrical release of Captain America, that the idea of people being "good at war" and always knowing how to dodge bullets is the stuff of comic books. In reality, the line between life and death on a battlefield is arbitrary. Bullets are everywhere. You either get lucky enough to live to be shot at tomorrow, or you don't. In those cases, macho man bravado only makes you more likely to get killed. Many of the ones who lived were the ones smart enough to be afraid. They were the ones who pretended to be dead, while covering themselves with the corpses of their friends and neighbors.
During that time, women ran the country. They went to work. They handled the home. They built planes, ships, supplies, and ammo for the war effort. Then, after the war, women did not want to quietly go back to the home. They loved the freedom and ability to work. The propaganda machine tried to change culture and de-legitimize the powerful contribution of women. Shows like "Leave It to Beaver" and others, tried to get people to conform to the projected image of "normal", but this was never normal for the vast majority of the population. Only the cultural and economic elite were surviving on one income before the war.
This American Dream, completely fabricated as a fantasy by those who would try to shape culture, became part of the curse of men. This was the very first time, for example, that the word "Capitalism" became part of the vernacular of American thought. Our founders, in forming the Constitution, seem to have pictured more of a Socialist Democracy. In the early 1950s, the tax rates for everyone were up over 50%. Yet, miraculously, people were, generally, very happy. Healthcare was provided, the housing market was booming, the auto industry was fighting to keep up with demand, and people were able to work reasonable hours for reasonable pay, while still enjoying life, family, vacations, and the other pleasures that add to the quality of life. With this talk of Capitalism, people began to question whether the high taxes and social programs were making us more like the dreaded Russians. There were actual commercials in the 50s that talked about Capitalism as being "ordained by God". They started teaching Capitalism in schools (except Catholic Schools, who stood against the growing tide of greed). It was great if you had a car. Wouldn't it be better if you had two or three? Work more hours, and work harder. You deserve it. It's the people on welfare who don't. You can show you are better than they are. You can not just be happy, now you can work to be better. We shifted from contentment to greed, from "enough" to "more".
So, we became valued, as men, by our ability to produce, earn, and, most importantly, consume. Our country started borrowing money like never before. The USA was "booming". We had prestige after World War II, as being the most powerful nation in the world. With our new Crusade of Capitalism, we now needed to be more than just powerful. It could no longer be enough to simply have no one in the world dumb enough to ever attack us. We now had to go and pick fights and spread this new religion of Capitalism. The concept of Empire, the downfall of Ancient Rome, had found its new home in America. There were a few bright spots. Jimmy Carter, in my opinion, possibly the greatest President (and, possibly, also the most despised) of the 20th Century, tried to warn us a number of times where this Capitalism train was taking us. In 1979, he interrupted prime time television with a speech entitled "A Crisis of Confidence", to warn us of the possibility of future financial collapse. If you read the speech, you will see that it is eerily prophetic, predicting, in detail, what just happened 2 years ago with our economy. People complained that he had disrupted their television viewing, and his railing against Capitalism was written off as the Chicken Little-esque, anti-American ravings of a fear monger. He was a Christian leader, speaking prophetically into a nation headed for disaster.
Men were working harder and harder. For women, staying home with the children became a symbol of status. The messages being sent to women were confusing as well, as Feminism was on the rise. They were being told by the left to be free and go to work, while being told by the right to prove that God rewards Capitalists, so stay home, just to prove you can. Ugh. But we'll deal with women later. Right now I am talking about men.
The children of the men of the Capitalist (or Boomer) Generation, grew up fatherless. We watched our fathers reap the fruit of Capitalism: career idolatry, workaholism, alcoholism, drug abuse, clinical depression, exhaustion, absenteeism, adultery, divorce, suicide, rage, domestic violence, gambling addiction, over-extended credit, bankruptcy, unemployment, identity confusion, sexual orientation confusion, greed, hypertension, heart attacks, and miserable lives. The promises of happiness and freedom, offered by the American Dream, were only for the Wall Street Elite, bought with the blood and sweat of the middle class, to whom that dream was sold. It is slavery, pure and simple, where the rich slave owners use ideology as chains. The middle class has adopted the slave mentality. We beat down one another, when we see someone try to be innovative or go beyond this pathetic existence. People in my generation, who have inherited the suffering wrought by the Boomers, are still foolish enough to buy the same lie. This is not about politics. This is now, again, about survival. It is about the right to life being, not just about drawing breath in the mechanical process of respiration, but about the quality of life; the good life.
Let's get back to today, and back to me. I'm going to try to unpack this in the next few posts, but I wanted to set this foundational history in place today. You see, Jesus did not come to save us from our miserable existence, in order to beam us out of here to somewhere better. That is all the rhetoric of the American Dream. We are all so goddamn happy, that we are miserable enough to invent an eschatology, where we all can get the hell out of this hole we're in. That is not Good News to me. That is as lame and empty as all of this American Dream talk. Jesus came to transform this existence - to REDEEM it - so that we can have life to the full. I am confident that I will see the glory of God in the land of the living! That is good news! That is the Gospel!
Following Jesus is about going after the life to the full that He promised. I want Living Water, not the putrid sludge that I am offered as a slave. I could get on a boat to storm the beaches for that! I could give my life, waste everything, forsake all else, for such a vision! The problem is, when I talk about trading in the American Dream for the Cross, I feel like Jimmy Carter interrupting TV. But there it is. Jesus did not come to give us the American Dream. He has not ordained Capitalism. In His economy, it is the poor that are favored. It is the last who are first. It is widows and orphans that get our attention.
Where have the men gone? They have been emasculated, not by Feminism or "The Gay Agenda", but by an unreachable, untenable, and unsustainable glorified and romanticized image of the Real, Red-Blooded, Independent, Individual, and Self-Made American Man, Pursuing the American Dream. What a crock. I don't care how much you have bought into this. Do you really think this is what our King envisioned as the fullness of life? Is this the fruit He wanted men bearing? I think it is like filthy rags before Him. And where are the men in the Church? They already feel enough shame about not living up to this image in the world. Why, in God's Name, would they go to an authority that has been complicit in not only adopting this image, but Sanctifying it? No, men stay away from the Church, because survival of the fittest is alive and well in the Church, much more so than in Darwinian Secularism. The Church has blessed the American Dream as being Holy and Good. Capitalism is God's Plan in Evangelicalism. So, in the Church, men face further emasculation. And pastors who glorify this "manly man" image, while mocking creative and worshipful men as being "limp-wristed", are, themselves, doing irreparable damage.
What does it even mean to be a man who follows Jesus? How is it different than being a man pursuing the American Dream? I would love your thoughts on this, and I will talk more about this soon!
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