Manhood in dire straits: Where should men find their identity?

Manhood, the experts claim, is in dire straits. Boys  are more likely to drop out of  school and more likely to get involved in crime (haven’t they always?) than girls. More men do not want to work. In the time of the Titanic, most men gave women and children their places on the lifeboats*, while the same cannot be said of men in modern times.

The culprit, say many in the church, is feminism. Casual sex mean that men don’t have to get married any more to get intercourse. So they do not marry. And men drink in the feminist notion that women do not need men. They start to feel useless, and then they act on what they feel.

My first observation will be that this is a remarkably shallow view of men: “Men can get sex easily, so there is no need for them to marry,” it says. Is this all men want? I sincerely believe the average guy wants more than just that out of life. And men, in days of old, could get that easily too:  Sorry to be crude here, but it’s called “the oldest profession on earth” for a reason.

Secondly, by this theory, men act useless because they get their cue from women. “Feminists” say men are not needed, and men believe it.

This, so concludes these theorists, means we should oppose women having equal rights with men. Can you see the substitution of terms? Feminism, in the beginning of the text, referred to sexual immorality and calling men redundant.  Now it refers to whether women should have equal rights or not.

I suggest another solution: Tell the men to find their identity and value in Christ, not in the “feminist” sector of society that finds them worthless, or in the amount of women they can seduce.

For that matter, oppose the “feminists” that are allegedly responsible for this situation, by teaching that God made us all to need each other. God gave all of us gifts to use to the benefit of the community, so every man can ask God where he is needed. Of course, men are needed in God’s plan as much as women are. Preach against sexual immorality – which is certainly older than feminism and not to be laid at the feminists’ door.

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Note

*On the Titanic, the captain ordered a “women and children first” policy, and the crew enforced it. On a ship like the RMS Empress of Ireland, sinking in 1914, nobody ordered a special policy and only 3% of the children, 13% of the women and 28% of the men was saved. There was a few minutes in which male passengers could have stood back and helped female passengers and children into the available life boats if they wanted to, but in the absence of enforcing such a policy from the top men seemingly acted in their own interest and not as heroes. Most men in those days, it seems, were not much different from men today.