In considering Christian manhood, it seems important to distinguish—though not separate—sex from various other identities, roles, and positions a male might take up. I’ve been a Christian since 1997, a husband since 1999, and a father since 2005. I’ve been male my entire life. For two years, I was a single Christian male.
Obviously, men can become husbands and fathers, yet becoming husbands and fathers is not a foregone conclusion. It may be a cultural expectation, but cultural expectations aren’t mandates. As such, when we think about Christian manhood—about raising Christian boys into Christian men—we shouldn’t ignore marriage and fatherhood, but we can’t aim at them either. We need to understand what it means to be a Christian man apart from being a husband and father. Unfortunately, our conversations about Christian manhood tend to collapse the distinctions between being a Christian man and being a Christian man who is also a father and husband.
Reframing Confusions
In a 2021 interview on Dial In Ministries, Paul Washer, Executive Director of HeartCry Missionary Society, discussed the idea of Christian manhood. He argues that manhood is rooted in a love of Christ and the imitation of Christ’s self-sacrificial love. While I tend to agree with this perspective, Washer’s brief comments in the interview also reflect the lack of nuance that, in my estimation, confuses (1) biblical manhood and discipleship and (2) instruction regarding roles like husband and father with being male more generally.
Regarding the confusion of biblical manhood and discipleship, Washer notes that being a Christian man requires men to look at Christ. While I am convinced that living faithfully under the authority of Christ requires men to conform to the image of Christ, I would also say the same thing for women. How we learn to live under Christ’s authority is not detached from our sex. Males are, at times, exhorted in different ways than women in the scriptures. We see this with other sorts of relationships as well (e.g., master and slave, parents and children, rich and poor, etc.). Are there temptations that present themselves to men in a given society that are less available to women? It would seem so. As such, while it is possible that the different exhortations given to men in the scriptures could be related to a biblical perception of masculinity or femininity, it is also possible—and I would argue more likely—that the challenges presented to the different sexes in a given culture require a different sort of discipleship.
For instance, in a recent article on systemic sin, I noted the “Gentlemen’s Clubs” I pass when driving from my home in Illinois into Saint Louis. These establishments are, in general, geared to (though not exclusively) men (see “Sexy Ladies Sexing Ladies”). You don’t get the sense that if one of the clubs decided to have male and female dancers alternating on stage that there would be a great deal of interest from the audience. These clubs illustrate the differences between the sort of instruction one might offer to men versus the sort one might offer to women.
In the case of the former, the instruction would involve avoiding the strip clubs. While one might also encourage men not to become exotic dancers, that advice would, in most cases, be superfluous because most men simply don’t have the opportunity to become exotic dancers. Visiting a strip club is far more likely for men. In the case of women, however, a different instruction seems necessary. As the digital sign on one of the clubs, I pass notes, the club is “always auditioning.” There are open opportunities for women to become strippers. Though women could also visit strip clubs, the reasons for their attendance could be different from men and, thus, require different instructions.
In the view I’m advancing, men and women both need to be discipled—an uncontroversial claim. However, I am also suggesting that masculinity and femininity are cultural stereotypes—even Christian cultural stereotypes—that often work against discipleship. What it means to be a man in general emerges from discipleship. What it means to be a specific man—an individual who is male—also emerges from discipleship but may look different than a more generalized notion of discipleship.
Regarding the confusion of instructions for males in specific relationships with being male more generally, Washer’s conversation of biblical masculinity quickly turns from what it means to be a Christian male to what it means to be a Christian husband and father. To be clear, what Washer says about being a husband and father is aligned with the Bible’s teachings. However, not all men are husbands and fathers. Not all boys will become husbands and fathers.
Collapsing biblical masculinity with headship in marriage leads Washer to think about the way he raises his sons. Again, he has a number of helpful insights about raising children, but it isn’t clear why these would be limited to male children even if they decide to be married rather than remaining single (1 Cor 7:6-9). For instance, Washer talks about the physical scenarios he used in raising his sons so they would be able to protect their family, noting, “I created scenarios to make them tough.” I’m not opposed to toughness; however, I’m not sure toughness is an attribute that should be limited to boys and men. I want all my kids to be tough—to have the sort of resilience that will allow them to remain faithful in difficult circumstances.
Does someone who is going to be married need to learn to love their wife? Absolutely. That love is to be uniquely self-sacrificial as the marital relationship refers to “Christ and the church” (5:32). Marriage is a unique opportunity for husband and wife together to showcase the relationship between Christ and the church. It is, based on Ephesians 5, an opportunity that men and women who never get married will not have. As such, Ephesians 5 doesn’t speak to masculinity more generally, but to being a husband specifically. Confusing the two is a problem in that what it means to be a single man is not addressed.
We could say the same about the instructions given to masters (Eph 6:9; Col 4:1) and slaves (Eph 6:5-8; Col 3:22-25; 1 Tim 6:1-2; Tit 2:9-10). Male bondservants are in a different situation from male masters. As such, living under the authority of Christ requires a different set of instructions. It is their social position that determines the instructions given. That isn’t related to their sex—though one could envision different instructions being given to female and male bondservants and masters—but to their social position.
I am not suggesting that these passages are not applicable to modern-day Christians who do not occupy positions as masters or bondservants. Instead, I am suggesting that developing an understanding of Christian manhood from such passages is problematic because the instructions are related to men in particular relationships (e.g., husband, master, servant). Collapsing the conception of manhood with the role of husband and fatherhood suggests that these are somehow intrinsic to what it means to be a male; however, such an understanding ignores biblical teaching to the contrary.
Driscoll on Marriage, Paul on Singleness
Still, discussions of Christian manhood tend to assume that men will be husbands and fathers, thus rooting concepts of manhood in the male roles of husbands and fathers. For instance, Driscoll’s Act Like a Man does not present singleness as a particularly viable option. In addition to making the rather spurious assertion that Paul remained single and without children because he like other “single men of God in the Bible died rather young,” He also encourages “single guys…to think through the second most important decision you’re ever going to make—i.e., who will be your wife…You need Jesus, but then you need a wife.” While choosing one’s spouse is an important decision, the assumption that every man should get married is problematic. There is no sense in which Paul’s singleness is linked to his age. Instead, Paul’s teaching on marriage and singleness encourages an undivided focus on the “things of the Lord, how to please the Lord,” and discourages a life of anxiety (1 Cor 7:32).
Similarly, when Driscoll cites “an article summarizing the book The Case for Marriage” (you can view the article here), he does so to combat cultural notions “calling marriage a ‘death sentence’ for men.” Critiquing cultural distortions of marriage is, in my mind, fair game; however, by suggesting that “marriage is good for men” and that “93%” of single, presumably Christian men, will opt to get married, Driscoll neglects the necessity of discipleship in developing Christian men. To put it differently, while the stats may show that marriage is “good” for men, marriage does not seem like a necessary step in a man’s discipleship journey.
Based on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians, there is a case to be made for a particular sort of singleness—a singleness characterized by a deep concern for pointing to and glorifying the Lord (7:32). In contrast, Paul says that those who marry will experience “tribulation in the flesh” or “worldly trouble” (1 Cor 7:27), which Paul would prefer they avoid. Because “the time is short,” Paul counsels an intensity of focus on the things that are to come that require the Corinthians to rethink marriage. Combined with the idea that a married man is “divided” because he must please the Lord and his wife (7:33-34) makes it more difficult for those who marry to be free from anxieties while living in “the present form of this world” which is “passing away” (7:31).
This section in Paul’s letter hinges on the passing away of the present world. The idea is that the Corinthians (and we!) are to rethink the practices of the present world because they belong to the present world, not the world that is to come. Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to be free from anxieties related to the present world. As Gordon Fee states,
“Because life is determined by one’s new form of existence in Christ…the believer should be free from the anxiety-ridden existence of those who are determined by the world in its present form. The Christian still buys and marries, but he or she does so ‘as if not.’ These things do not determine one’s existence; the clear vision of the future does. Thus, one is free from anxiety. In this sense, the passage does indeed speak to the unmarried who are anxious about marriage. But Paul wants both married and unmarried to be this way. Their existences in the present scheme of things differ, as the next sentences point out, but both are to be without anxiety.”
Paul, then, is not necessarily advocating for singleness—though he seems to prefer it—but for a way of being in the world that reflects the eschatological reality Christians have entered in Christ.
Single men in today’s world don’t necessarily need to get married. They may choose to do so for a variety of reasons, but the focus of manhood isn’t marriage, but living an alternative lifestyle that displays the difference Christ makes for those devoted to Him. Being a male Christian may involve marriage, but making marriage and/or fatherhood intrinsic to Christian manhood seems unnuanced at best and unbiblical at worst.
I have little doubt that Washer and Driscoll would affirm male singleness as a viable, if not profitable endeavor. Driscoll’s work in particular seems to be combating a series of cultural trends that distort a biblical understanding of marriage, fatherhood, work, and responsibility. In his zeal to critique such trends, however, Driscoll tends to drift toward advice for men as they look toward becoming husbands and fathers rather than for men more generally or single men in particular.
In doing so, he misses the dynamics that recast the Old Testament emphasis on biological multiplication to the New Testament emphasis on discipleship. To be clear, this recasting is one of emphasis—the Old Testament made provision for non-biological conversion into the covenant community, and the New Testament continues to encourage parents to raise godly children. However, there is a shift in emphasis in the Great Commission because the Christian community is not to expand merely through biological reproduction but through the making of disciples. Discipleship becomes not only the means by which God’s people build God’s kingdom numerically, but the means by which God’s people embody the world under Christ’s authority as male or female.
In the next article in this series, we will consider the idea of embodiment, which is drawn from cognitive psychology and various aspects of discipleship. As I’ll argue, Christian manhood emerges from discipleship and is often confused with and distorted by cultural perceptions of masculinity. Our cultural perceptions—even our Christian cultural perceptions—are always incomplete, though not always wrong. In part, that is why they can tend to be deceptive. Discipleship, however, pushes us to reform ourselves and, by extension, our misguided cultural perceptions so that our lives are ordered under the authority of Christ.
Photo Credit: ©UnsplashTim Marshall
