A final excerpt from Hearty
Masculinity.
A savior who rides a donkey, a savior
who makes this world right by wooing it, not through force or brutality,
ideological scheme or overwhelming rhetoric, but by faithfulness and love.
That’s who Jesus is.
This line of thought, perhaps, sounds
scandalous to you. After all, most role models for men offered to us from the
Bible are antithetical to what I’ve just laid out. “Consider Adam” while he
maintained dominion over the world and over Eve, he was alright. “Consider
Moses” be a patriarch Law giver and a law follower, surely that flows from the
faith. “Consider David” he is a man after God’s own heart, you too ought to be
a King like him. “Consider those verses that pop up and prop up preconceived
notions of masculinity predicated on predatory power, stoic self-sufficiency,
covetous sorts of prayer, misreading biblical mistakes as models of leadership,
and airing ancient prejudices as God’s advice for men.”
Just
as reading two-thousand-year-old mail is tricky, so is reading any ancient
text.[1]
If someone is trying to convince you that “The Bible is clear” on some modern
issue or problem, they either aren’t showing you their work, or haven’t done
the work.[2]
Whenever we apply the Bible to our life,[3]
we’re doing interpretation, we’re making a call, we’re making our faithful best
guess. Pretending otherwise is being a bad witness to the God pointed to by
scripture.
All
that to say, when a 3,000-year-old prayer about increasing farmland is used to
sanctify a particularly suburban understanding of capitalism—I’ve known men who
use the Prayer of Jabez as justification for remodeling their kitchen cabinets,
when “Biblical Manhood” involves monster trucks and sword swallowers, when we
make boy bibles and girl bibles, one with camo[4]
and one with rhinestones, we’re not being more biblical people, we’re doing a
distinctly Christian form of Performative Masculinity.
But
some of those places where we try to grasp at Biblical models of masculinity
are worth fleshing out a bit. Consider David, Moses, and Adam. All of them,
types of Christ. Just as the first man Adam falls, the second man Jesus rises
and justifies. Just as Moses brings the Law, Christ this law fulfills—truly his
yoke is light. Just as David is God’s chosen King, Christ’s presence is the
Kingdom come and the only example of true authority we have.
A
wise dear friend and colleague offered me this image that I now pass on to you.
Think of David, watching Jesus in action. He would be shocked and say something
like, “Wait, ambiguously identify with outsiders, but then when a kingdom is on
offer, stay outside the city gates, remain with them even when it means
utter abandonment! I didn’t know you could do that! I fought alongside the
Philistines, until it was to my advantage to side again with my own kin against
them. Wait, instead of a grasping greedy sexual love destroying the objects of
my affections, hold fast to a voluntary celibacy like the Prophet Jeremiah as a
way to focus on a singular calling. Wait, instead of my lacky Joab doing my
dirty work, so I at least appeared clean, Jesus was betrayed by those who knew
him best, rather than let them convince him of their vision of Messiah and
Lord. In total, he walked a path that I most certainly couldn’t trod, but oh
how I wish I could have.”
Or
consider how Jesus hangs all of the Law, the Torah of Moses, on love,
and how he insists that rules are made for humans, not humans for the rules.
When actual living people are caught up in the consequences of adultery,
crushed by the burdens of disease, cut off from community in so many different
ways, he consistently interprets the Law as bending toward mercy and human
flourishing, restoration of community and revival of life so nearly lost.
Instead of pollutants and curses being catchy, healing and blessing overflow
and become fellow travelers for all those he encounters.
Or
even Adam, what kind of Man was he, what was the center of his being? Earthling
from the Earth, he kept this creation and labored with joy. But when things
went bad, he turned to blame. Think of that strange scene, God asks the
Earth-man “What happened?” and he responds by pointing to the woman, who then
points to the snake, who does not have fingers to point and scapegoat
elsewhere. But Jesus, he allowed everything to point at him, allowed himself to
be the scapegoat, only to reappear, wresting the power of scapegoating from our
arsenal forever.
Surely,
these models of masculinity mean something different if Christ is indeed Lord.
Power and authority are wielded authentically when centered in humility. Life
and the rules of the game are interpreted with a predisposition toward
blessing. Blame is relativized by responsibility and forgiveness.
[1]
Just think about it, none of the folk in the Bible had a modern sense of the
self, or Penicillin.
[2] A
Truism from seminary that is pretty darn catchy is: “A text, without a context,
is a pretext.”
[3]Or
someone elses, though that is probably less in the spirit of what I am offering
to you.
[4]
And to be clear, nothing against camo. When I was a kid I set a goal of one day
living in castle painted camouflage… I thought it came out of a paint can in
that pattern.
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