Aaron Wolf, associate editor of Chronicles Magazine, has written a powerful and far-reaching essay on the perfect manhood of Jesus and why his example of masculinity matters. "Every definition of masculinity into which our Lord Jesus Christ does not fit belongs in the rubbish heap. Indeed, there could be no greater example of a man than He."
The contemporary Western church is failing to teach that ideal. To the contrary, in the face of the debased popular standard of masculinity, the church has retreated into feminization. "[T]he popular hymn In the Garden represent[s] the modern American imagination of the essence of Christianity: a romantic fantasy in which a chivalric Jesus rescues me from my own loneliness and despair and fills all of my emotional needs."
Modern culture presents a model of masculinity as self-centred self-gratification.
The macho American man is a "selfish hedonist," who lives fast, plays hard, and beds women at will. Loving a wife, rearing children, and serving others are the least of his concerns. . . . The flip-side of this concept of manhood is the homosexual . . . whose very label means self-gratification. . . . Furthermore, a society that celebrates this (or any other) sort of hedonistic masculinity is warring against the very essence of Christianity.
The church's response is not to teach Christ's positive example of manhood as authority, courage, respect, and honour, but to encourage a sentimental understanding of Christianity as good feelings. Mr Wolf includes in his indictment replacement of liturgy by repetitive praise-and-worship choruses celebrating feminine emotions and experiences. Church discipline has also been discarded and replaced by "a particularly insidious moral disorder: Since God looks on the heart, we need not have any rules."
Mr Wolf pulls no punches. He addresses a problem that the church needs to recognise and counteract. Read the whole thing.
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