Last week, I began a two-part look at the crisis that faces our culture’s young men: a crisis of disillusion, disengagement, and disastrous despair. I proposed that to fight this crisis, we need to stand on four integrated pillars which themselves sit upon the solid foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Those four pillars are 1) freedom from shame, 2) fellowship and community, 3) kingdom vision, and 4) resilience and endurance. Last week’s installment integrated the first two of these pillars and this week will examine the last two.
The Problem
The problem of course is the crisis of maladies that face young men in our culture. And those can be enumerated ad nauseam: sexual addictions, drug addictions, disengagement from life, education, and career, etc. But in many ways, I think these are, while in some sense roots, also symptoms of deeper problems.
Masculinity has been under attack in the West for awhile now and I don’t see it’s possible to deny that with even just one eye open to the culture around us.
The problem is that this war on masculinity has had unintended consequences, namely the aggressive reaction against emasculation which leads into toxic chauvinism and unhealthy understandings of masculinity.
Jonathan van Maren at First Things says it quite well, writing on internet influencer Andrew Tate: “Tate’s popularity is a reminder that in a society frequently hostile to traditional masculinity, lucrative opportunities arise for hucksters to amass influence by selling the genuinely toxic kind.”
So on one hand we have young men who have been stripped of their masculinity and have thus disengaged and (sometimes literally) become underground basement-dwellers. On the other hand, we have other young men who are convinced by wolves like Tate that hubris, misogyny, and violence are the substance of what we’ve “lost” as Western men.
Kingdom Vision
The Bible calls men to a kingdom vision that rejects the above extremes for something far better.
It is a vision that disengaged and “socially emasculated” young men need. They need a campaign to engage in that makes video game battles pale in comparison. They need a call to conquest that gives life meaning and purpose. They need to see a vision for what they’re meant to bring to the world. And chances are, if they’re men, what they’re meant to bring is going to be quite masculine.
It is also a vision that Tate-inspired conquistadors need. It is not that they lack vision but the problem is a matter of the vision itself. Men need a vision that aligns with reality and with the Gospel. That is not to say that it needs to be an effeminate vision, much the opposite.
Here is where our theology is absolutely crucial.
Christ is King. He is the new Adam. Where the first Adam failed in his duty to “work and keep” (Gen. 2:15, Hebrew: ‘abad [cultivate, work, till] and shamar [keep, guard, watch]) what God entrusted to him, the second Adam succeeds. As King, Christ rules the nations with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:7-9). But He does so with tenderness towards His people, while promising judgment to His enemies. He nourishes and cherishes His bride, the Church (Eph. 5:29). This is not the picture of a self-absorbed egomaniac. This is incredible condescension and service to a beloved bride.
We must follow the “whole Christ“. We are stewards in Christ’s kingdom. He reigns now from Heaven and we are His kingdom (1 Pet. 2:9, Rev. 5:9-10). As we recognize that Christ is the second Adam we also realize that His commission (Matt. 28:18-20) to His followers is the eschatological realization of Adam’s original commission to “take dominion” over the Earth (Gen. 1:28). The words “dominion theology” have become loaded. It is not that dominion theology is completely wrong but it must be right. We must get this right. Dominion does matter. But it is Christ’s dominion that we are proclaiming in His kingdom. And as His, it is naturally and unquestionably benevolent and gentle dominion.
This vision for living in Christ’s kingdom as stewards of His reign and rule is what we need in order to reject the defeatism of a generation of spiritually emasculated men and the chauvinism of misguided men.
Lest I be misunderstood, I do not hold to a theonomic postmillennialism that demands that the church become the mechanism by which we “win” in our culture. Trying to “establish” the kingdom of God on earth would be like trying to “establish” the atonement. You can’t do something that’s already been accomplished. Of course, the kingdom is not a one-time event like the atonement but it is something that God does (using human means at times, admittedly). We see this in all the favorite “postmillennial” passages:
- Psalm 2:7-9 tells us that it is God who will give the nations to Christ as an inheritance. They are not something that needs to be won by the church.
- 1 Corinthians 15:25 is often quoted by postmillennialists but we read in v. 27 that it is God who will place Christ’s enemies under Him as His footstool (1 Cor. 15:27).
I recently saw someone pose a question in the form of a meme (ironically featuring Tate) that asked whether the church was called to persevere and “hold the garrison to the bitter end” or to conquer and “raise Christ’s standard in the world”. (Words in quotes are my own.)
I believe the answer to that question is a resounding “both”, backed by a Biblical understanding of the Kingdom of God.
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
Revelation 12:10-11, ESV
This passage from the book of Revelation expresses the paradox of the kingdom vision. The saints conquer but they do so by loving not their lives unto death. Likewise, this paradox is expressed earlier in Revelation 1:9 when John writes that he is partaking with the churches in Asia Minor amidst the simultaneous “tribulation, kingdom, and patient endurance”.
Endurance
This leads us to the last pillar in our model.
Young men need to know that Christ’s call upon them to steward His kingdom calls all of them, their masculinity included. It also calls them to steward the kingdom in the same manner that the King Himself rules it: with justice, gentleness, love, and righteousness.
That is not a well-accepted ideal in our current culture. And living in Christ’s kingdom in our culture will probably not look like living in great political power and rule over pagan powers for awhile. We are crossing into a deep valley, not reaching the ridge of a mountain. The current trend of our culture is going downward. Persecution is coming. Paganism is rampant and only increasing. It’s not the time for triumphalism. But it is the time for endurance.
There is a sort of eschatological spectrum. On one hand there are hand-wringing fatalists who live like they’re standing aboard a sinking ship. (“Come, Lord Jesus” should always be our heart’s cry but not in a pessimistic and escapist way.) Others, want to see new creation perfection in this world. The already-not yet model of eschatology enables one to endure in the short-term trials with a knowledge that the long-term future is bright because of Christ’s imminent coming. His kingdom is growing as it has grown since the original disciples in the upper room at Pentecost.
As Tertullian said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”. When hard times come (and they are coming), we need not despair nor bluster triumphantly. We must endure and live and worship resiliently.
These two pillars are connected: kingdom vision and endurance/resilience. Young men need a vision. That vision is the call of Christ to live, work, and worship in His kingdom, being conformed to the likeness of the King. Young men also need to learn endurance through hardship since this is exactly what they can expect when they follow Christ’s call and pursue His kingdom vision.