Missions, Not Martial Arts
A few months ago I posted some lengthy quotations on Biblical gender roles. Richard Walker has provided a helpful summary. I know I’m quoting a blog that quotes this blog, but he wraps it up nicely.
In a somewhat densely written post, Mike Bull suggests that the remedy for feminised men in churches is not more testosterone and martial arts etc, but a knowledge of the call of God on their lives – in other words to be on mission. Talking about the men and women of our great evangelical past, the Wilberforces and Newtons etc, he cites:
“This evangelical generation changed the world, or major parts of it at least: they broke the international economic system of the day because it was unjust; they reformed prisons, factories, poor laws, and anything else they could think of; they saw major revivals, and huge numbers of conversions; when it came to gender politics, they taught men to be gentle, and women to be active in ministry.”
But it would appear that as the church retreated from public life, this expression of gender politics has gone into hyperdrive. The movement lost sight of the mission and instead focussed on personal, private moral reformation.
“[The feminisation of men in the church] seems to me to arise primarily out of particular set of historical circumstances in which the interests of clergy and women aligned against a dysfunctional masculinity, and men were increasingly expected to conform and submit themselves to a cultural form of femininity, rather than to Scripture.”
In short, it would appear that it is not so much a recovery of biblical masculinity that is needed, as a recovery of biblical mission. True (gospel) masculinity finds it’s place in the upward call of God and doesn’t need to justify itself or be politically assertive and self-aware. Men and women can then work together under the direction of the Holy Spirit for the reformation of the church, the transformation of culture and the renewal of the whole creation!
What man (or woman for that matter) is up for a mission as big as that??!
