Man Up!

In case one is not a connoisseur of hip-hop culture, "Man up" is an imperative directed towards a man whose manhood is apparently in question. It primarily connotes that one takes charge of his life and takes responsibility for his actions. It also connotes that one needs to "butch" and stop showing "sissy" qualities.

What does it take to be a man in this society? Such a question demands that one would know what a real man would look like.

In academic circles especially in the feminist/gender studies fields, masculinity is a category of privilege and power. To be a man means to be dominant, fearless, courageous, patriarchal, heterosexual, Adonis-like features, physically, mentally, and emotionally strong almost stoic, aggressive, abrasive, financially secure, sexually endowed. Masculinities vary across cultures. Western masculinity is heavily influenced by Platonism and the Christian religion. To be a man is to "have dominion over the earth and subdue it" as Genesis declares. A good Christian man of any denominational affiliation loves God and country, who takes care of his woman, his children, his business, and himself.

Over the last century with the rise of the feminist and gay rights movements and the sexual revolution, manhood has been challenged on all fronts. The Christian Church has been challenged from within to adapt to progressive ideology of "radical inclusion" and sexual freedom and social justice for God's "other" children. Various forms of feminism within Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant branches of Christianity have challenged the male privilege within the Church, some even challenging the masculine language of the Godhead (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) and call for "inclusive language of God".


The contemporary American male has access to many material pertaining to his manhood. There is countless resources for building better bodies, better financial portfolios, improving health, guides to woo women (in some cases other men), parenting tips, career advice, education, and so forth. The contemporary Western man strives to be a multidimensional free thinker; the exemplar of a post-Enlightenment world.


In our fairly progressive age many have challenged the notion of Western masculinity as the standard for all men. Artists, cultural critics, philosophers, activists, and clergy from all forms of religion are diligently fighting for a so-called free society where heterosexuality is not the standard for all humanity, that women have full autonomy of their own lives including reproduction, were children are free to explore sexuality without shame from their parents, teachers, our peers, were men and women can marry anyone regardless of sexual or gender "identities", and were the terms "father" and "mother" is replaced with the more generic and inclusive "parent".

Evangelical Protestants have attempted to counteract these movements within the larger culture by establishing such movement's has Promise Keepers, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and Focus on the Family promoting traditional positions on sexuality and family structure according to their interpretation of Holy Scripture. Still an alarming rate of self-professing born again, Bible-believing Christian marriage end in divorce, and many Christian men are addicted to pornographic material.

African American churches are dealing with the plight of young black men being jailed at alarming rates, murdered in the inner-cities, who drop out of high schools are a higher rate than their white and Latino counterparts, who produce children out of wed-lock, and are infected with HIV/AIDS. Yet we see hip-hop stars flash distorted images of what it means to be African American men in contemporary America.

With all this easy access information to improving one's manhood whether conservative or progressive, still many men are in deep depression. Many don't know what it means to be a man in the world or at least in America. With the problematization of gender as a social construct and many masculinities to choose from, many men are still in the dark groping for the light. What is that?

Maybe it is because men (and women for that matter) are in the constant state of patterning after fluidic models because the the failure of those models set before by others. We are all human. We simply don't know who we are as men. What is means to be a man and a woman is simply up for grabs.

As I study the Scripture, many men in the Bible don't seem to fit the mold of today's real man. For instance take Abraham, the patriarch of Israel. He has his women, wealth, and land yet Abraham wasn't man enough to put his wife Sarah in her place when she ordered him to evict his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael from the premises. Don't forget Gideon who wasn't man enough fight against his Philistine enemies. David's manhood was challenged by his wife Michal when she openly criticized David for dancing wildly before the square bringing the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. What about his relationship with Jonathan! John the apostle laid his head in the breast of the Jesus. If other contemporary men Christian or otherwise would read these men's live, what would they see?

Looking at a glimpse of these men's lives, many thoughts can run through people's heads. The reality of it is where we may find weak-willed, cowardly, seemingly sexually ambiguous men, God sees otherwise. God called Abraham friend and called him faithful. God called Gideon a mighty man of valor, called David a man after his own heart, and loved John.

The truth is what God has to say about us is more important then what we may have to say about ourselves or what others say about us. God's Word declares that humanity both male and female are created in the image of God. God's is more concerned about about relational status and our fellowship with Himself than our so-called manhood. Whatever manhood we may have is a perverted form of what God had made from the dust of the earth by His very hands and declared what He had made from the beginning to be very good.

So let us strive with warts and all to pursue the heart of the Father concerning His will, hearing His Word, yielding to His Truth, and leave the manhood part of it to Christ. At the end of the day when the sun will set for eternity, God is looking for his Son to be formed in us. He the only Real Man that really matters.