The problem I am addressing in this second blog entry on the subject is neither men nor masculinity per se. Its mainstream masculine culture, characterized by what I call “the unholy trinity” of machismo, misogyny and militarism. The world is currently focused on how or if men should love each other sexually. I’m more distressed by the extent to which men are killing each other.

But in the Bible I see men who modeled a masculinity that is more reflective of what God made Adam for. Of course there is Jesus, the Second Adam, who treated women in ways that were subversive and counter-cultural for First Century Palestine, as well as Twenty-First Century America. He is probably the first Jewish rabbi on record to have female disciples, like Mary and Martha, who “sat at Jesus’ feet,” a reference to the disciple’s proper position vis a vis his/her teacher. In Jesus and his treatment of women we see restored the equality, interdependence and mutuality of men and women with which, and for which, humanity was created, whether married or not.

Another male role model who never took up a weapon was Daniel, whose courage, unarmed, went “above and beyond the call of duty.” Fighting on his knees in prayer, sitting calmly and quietly among lions, speaking truth to power, Daniel was not afraid of his power. But never did he abuse it by violence, domination or self-aggrandizement.

In mainstream masculine cultures there is often a crazy-making attraction/aversion complex about homosexuality, fearing it on one hand, and joking about it on the other. It is almost as though the only two choices for males relating to males is either to be engaged with each other violently, in combat or competition, or to be engaged with each other sexually. Violence and/or sexual activity are often considered the sole or the supreme forms of male bonding and intimacy.

Men should love each other, deeply and intimately. When Jesus told his disciples, “I no longer call you servants, but friends (Jn. 15: 25),” he was explaining and inviting them to a way of intimacy with himself and each other that departed from the common and contemporary pagan views of male-to-male intimacy, either, again, through violence or sexual activity with each other, or both. There are long-standing Christian traditions which also give men and women ways to love others of their own genders deeply and intimately. Such love is the entire aim of The Rule of St. Benedict, developed in the 6^th Century AD for managing monastic communities. It not only includes guidance on spiritual and material aspects of the lives of monastic men and women, it also contains guidelines to prevent or discourage them from being sexually active with each other.

I doubt that that was because St. Benedict was a macho man with a hysterical, knee-jerk homophobic complex. Rather, he understood, like too few people do today, that sexual intimacy is not always nor automatically the most intimate of intimacies. Benedict knew that the spiritual maturity and intimacy among men that he wanted to see would be short-circuited by physical sexual intimacy. The intimacy among men that Benedict encourages would scandalize both today’s mainstream macho types, because it is so tender, deep, honest and unconditional, as it would the most ardent advocates of the Sexual Revolution, because it is chaste.

The Rule of St. Benedict aims for an intimacy of prayer, of confession, of worship, of mutual aid and of common labor together. Its no accident that men especially (but not uniquely) experience deep bonding through laboring together, when they can see a visible result they have achieved together, such as a building project, a cleared field, or a project that improved other people’s lives. Both labor and prayer are key to life together under The Rule of St. Benedict: “Ora et Labora.” Theirs is an intimacy of listening ears, helping hands, sweating backs, worshiping spirits, and loving hearts, developed over years of commitment and communication with each other as friends.

As a pastor and a Christian, this is when I have also experienced deep intimacy with members and friends of the church. Our shared life of prayer, worship, mutual aid, and honest accountability to each other, can become, over time, quite deep and intimate. We are growing an intimacy of spirit, Word and worship. My sex, as a male, has an important effect on this intimacy. But should any of these relationships become sexualized, all other intimacy and trust would be lost and come crashing down, at a terrible price to all.

Travel much of the world and you will see many monuments on many battlefields to soldiers who fought and died there. But for the armies of the losing sides at least, no lasting results remain for their many human sacrifices. I’m not always sure what it is that the winners gained, either. The permanent Communist revolution for which the Red and White Armies fought in Russia nearly a hundred years ago is no more. By contrast, some of the most powerful and enduring changes in the world have come about by persons who never lifted a sword or fired a gun, but who still exercised power, as men. Mahatma Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were powerful and influential men. They were also pacifists, who did their fighting unarmed. While neither of them were blameless in their relationships with women (King had some extra-marital affairs, and Ghandi became celibate without consulting his wife), they both exercised power, as men, in ways that were constructive, not destructive, peaceful, nonviolent, and respectful, not contemptuous. They took responsibility for the powers that came with their masculinity, and used them to make a better world with and for women and children, and for the generations to come, as well as for themselves. I think that’s what masculinity is supposed to be about.

Pastor Mathew Swora, Emmanuel Mennonite Church

It has happened again. A young man in the Twin Cities area, fearing for his safety, even for his life, recently transferred from his high school to another. The threats came from fellow students because of his perceived sexual orientation. But not only from them. The circle of ridicule even included some of his teachers. Yet the young man says he is “straight.”

I believe him on both counts, that he was targeted for being “gay,” and even when he isn’t. For having long hair, playing the violin, being bookish and un-athletic, and too shy to date, I too was identified in high school as “gay” and was threatened, teased and beaten up for it, by the self-appointed enforcers of the male code of machismo.

While churches and denominations are rightly engaged in discernment over our pastoral and missional responses to homosexuality, there is a broader and bigger issue of sexual broken-ness that we must recognize and deal with: mainstream masculine culture.

Males and masculinity are not the problem. Being male or female is a gift of God. “God created them male and female; in his image God created them (Genesis 1:27).” I take that to mean that men and women are necessary to each other in order to best reflect the image of God, whether in marriage and family, or in any other relationship and contact in life, church and society. Thus, the more equal and mutually-supportive in power and dignity men and women are for each other, whatever the relationship, the more they reflect the image of God, both personally and together.

There may be problems in mainstream female culture, but I, being male, am not in a position to name them or address them. Sin and its distortions leave no one untouched. But as a man, I am most responsible to address the distortions and problems of mainstream male culture, which are common to most times and cultures. They showed up at the very beginning of history and the biblical record, when Adam and Eve suddenly felt the need to cover themselves with fig leaves and to hide from God, when before, “they were naked, and un-ashamed.”

That sin left its estranging and divisive effects mark on their relationship we can tell by the way in which Adam, in place of confessing and asking forgiveness, blamed his problems and his misconduct on “that woman, which you gave me (Gen. 3:12).” Its no surprise that, within only a few generations, we read of Lamech, who took two wives, and who threatened anyone who injured him with “vengeance seventy-seven times (Gen. 4:23).” One aspect of sin is this rift between the sexes, which runs not only between men and women, but between the male and female aspects of ourselves. Healing these relationships is vital to being healed ourselves of sin’s shattering effects.

In Lamech and his boast we see three common aspects of mainstream male cultures, whatever time and place on earth and in human history we are considering. I call them “the unholy trinity” of misogyny, machismo, and militarism.

Misogyny is the contempt of women and all things female. You hear it as a common staple of male banter: blaming their conflicts or misunderstandings with their wives on their wives’ hormones, their periods or pre-menstrual syndrome; joking about things women allegedly can’t do well; focusing solely or mostly on physical characteristics they find attractive or not. When they feel threatened by women’s power in the home or the work place, some men will simply tune women out, or take a judging and adversarial stance toward their suggestions. A few will even resort to sexual innuendo or even sexual harassment. Lamech, by taking two wives, was saying, symbolically, that each woman was only half his worth.

He was also saying, symbolically, that women were livestock which he could collect, to show his power and worth. Which brings us to machismo. Though it is a Latin word, it is common to many world cultures. Machismo is the belief that maleness is about domination, control and ownership over women, because, at heart, they see power as something for which men and women must compete with each other. Men thereby measure themselves, and each other, by their control over women, their desirability to them, and by how many women they have “owned,” or with whom they have “scored,” sexually. Its what drives men to boast of their sexual conquests (even of other men’s wives), even while they boast of their wives’ fidelity and submissiveness, without admitting that, mathematically, they can’t all be telling the truth. Nor do they admit the degree of insecurity this introduces into their lives and relationships. But of course, it reflects deeper insecurities to begin with.

Militarism is the sense that male power is primarily destructive power, the power of death, destruction, and the threat thereof. Lamech’s boast of seventy-seven-fold vengeance is another step, after the murder of Abel, in the militarization of the world. Mennonites, in their pacifist sub-culture, may be unaware of the degree to which, in some countries, and even in some parts and sub-cultures of the United States, military service is virtually a required male rite of passage. And while movies like Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers may contain very realistic and discouraging images of the wasteful brutality of war, many other aspects of these same movies reinforce religious messages and sentiments about warfare and weapons. Even while men are dying and killing in the most gruesome and painful ways, the background music is often as solemn, emotive and majestic as a hymn or a chorale. Thus is reinforced the notion that men can only be brothers, they can only share themselves intimately and love each other deeply, while they’re in combat facing a common enemy. Or when they’re ragging on women. Or when they’re drinking.

More thoughts on healing male culture and dethroning the unholy trinity of mainstream masculine culture will come in later posts.

Pastor Mathew Swora

I Timothy 1: 15Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. ¹⁶But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.

Let’s all take a deep breath and repeat after me (actually after Paul), “I am the chief of sinners.” Which is true, at least as far as I am concerned, because I know no one else’s sin the way I know my own. On a clear day, mentally and spiritually, my sin, besetting and actual, looms before me like a telephone pole in my eye (Mt. 7:3-5), compared to the speck in yours. On more cloudy days with fuzzy, blurry spiritual vision, I tend to fixate on the specks in other people’s eyes first and foremost, and I get very, very afraid of them.

But its always been that way, ever since we grasped at the knowledge of good and evil. Through rebellion, we became very clear-eyed and conscious of evil in other people, and blind to our own. I still find that true: when I am most lax morally and spiritually, I am also most judgmental and angry at others. Eve told God, “The serpent tempted me, and I ate (Gen. 3).” Bad serpent. And Adam said, “The woman whom you gave me, she gave me the fruit and I ate.” One sentence, two accusations. How economical. And efficient. But neither of them took responsibility for themselves. They fixated on the speck in each other’s eye, and overlooked the logs in their own.

Now what if we all began our moral discernment on any issue from that point of view, that we who are doing the discernment are the worst of sinners? And therefore, we want to discern the moral value of an action or a desire, not to control other people’s lives and choices (which we can’t) but in order to help and protect ourselves, “the chiefs of sinners,” the ones most likely to get into trouble? Or the ones already in moral/spiritual trouble?

We’d come to matters of moral discernment more like attendees at an AA meeting than like Carrie Nation charging into bars with an axe. It would put all of us at the foot of the cross, on the same level. It would also turn the focus from people to choices. Because so much moral and spiritual discernment is carried out on the level of “Are they in or are they out (of heaven, the kingdom of God, or the church)?” Or “Are they good people or bad people?” And “Does God love them, will God accept them or not?”

These become pointless questions, whatever the issue, when we remember that any one of us alone is the chief of sinners. “Are they in or out?” becomes “Why should I be in?” The answer: only by the grace of God, with no more claim to being in than the thief on the cross.

As for “Are they good people or bad?” a Christian response is, “As far as I know, being the chief of sinners, it shouldn’t surprise me if they are better people than me, and I will count them and treat them as such.” And as for whether or not God loves them (whoever they are), “God was merciful to me, the worst of sinners, so that Christ Jesus might demonstrate his infinite goodness through me, so that I might become an example to other sinners who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” So if God loves me (which he does, because of his goodness, not mine) he surely loves them.

Accepting that we are “the chief of sinners” also neutralizes another way of absolving ourselves from moral discernment, and from doing selective, surgical discernment on others, but not on ourselves, when we say, “At least I don’t do [insert favorite sin here] like you-know-who,” or when we say, “But they do you-know-what while they judge us for [insert whatever it is you want most to justify].” Not only does that amount to abandoning our responsibility for discernment, while making someone else “the chief of sinners,” it is a form of pride (the bad kind, not a sense of self-worth, the good kind). Pride is when we compare ourselves to each other. Humility is when we compare ourselves to Jesus. Comparing myself to him, I look like “the chief of sinners.”

No sin puts us out of God’s kingdom, God’s church, or God’s love. But by willfully persisting in sin (whatever sin it is) and refusing to  discern and repent (like Adam and Eve blaming God and each other) we drive ourselves out of God’s kingdom, God’s church, and any reception of God’s love, because that’s what sin is: loving something more than God.
Once we accept that we (or I) are the chief of sinners, all that’s left then is to discern the values of behaviors and actions, knowing our propensity for sin, because we’re sinners. Unless I’m the only one. At least I’m the worst one. And how we respond pastorally, morally, missionally or ecclesiastically (that is, in church life) to sinful behaviors and actions will often have to be finessed on a case by case basis, depending less upon where we’re at than on where we’re headed, either toward repentance, restitution and reconciliation, or toward more rebellion, recklessness and the destruction of people and relationships. Just as Paul’s repentance, restoration and re-orientation of life gave life and hope to other (lesser) sinners, so might someone’s continued resistance and rebellion give despair or misdirection to other sinners.

But confessing ourselves “the worst of sinners” is no license to give up on moral and spiritual discernment. It is not to say, “We’re all sinners anyway; how can we judge anything? no one’s perfect, so anything goes.” The church, being a collection of sinners, must discern the value and the effect of actions and words upon the healing process of all the sinners in its embrace. And a lackadaisical approach to moral discernment would bring that healing process to a stop, and even reverse it. Confessing ourselves “the worst of sinners” is not an excuse for surrender, but a call to discernment, starting (and usually staying) with ourselves.

But being the chief of sinners, I cannot, and should not, do moral and spiritual discernment on my own.

If we can’t agree on this, that we are each the chief of sinners who must work first on the logs in our own eyes, then we lack the common language and the common starting point to do moral discernment together.