Manhood, Masculinity, and Christian CharacterÀpẹrẹ

Don't Be Conformed

Romans 12 offers familiar words. Many are familiar with Paul’s admonition not to be conformed to the world. In Greek, you can also translate the word as age. We are not to be conformed to our age or era. Follow Christ, and you won’t fit in, it doesn’t matter the time in which you lived.

We, like Paul’s audience, find ourselves in a particular age. As Tolstoy put it, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” For better or worse, this age is ours. And what a time it is to be thinking about masculinity.

Perhaps at no other time in history has masculinity been more debated or controversial. Our age seems to offer men two primary positions. One side argues that traditional masculinity is toxic and should be deconstructed and rebuilt. The other side responds with passionate opposition, declaring that masculinity is salvific and men should indulge their masculine instincts to protect their manhood.

The church has struggled to find its own way forward. Studies continue to show that men are participating less in church and in private religious practices. So, most churches have settled for just getting more men to show up. The approach has usually involved plenty of beards, bacon, and blowing things up. We easily slip into an awkward caricature of what we think the men of our age are wanting.

The constant temptation is to conform to our time, to fit our conversations into the lines already drawn. In an attempt to be relevant or drug into the world’s disputes, we end up thinking like the world. Paul recognized that what we need is a renewal of our minds. We need a new way of thinking about our age and how by Christ we live well in it.

For Paul, this had practical benefits. When we learn to offer our whole lives as sacrifices, and when we learn to turn from the world’s logic to the gospel’s, we are helped to “discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” That’s the very thing we’re all struggling to figure out.

The ability to discern what is good and what is the will of God, strikes me as the fundamental challenge of manhood. Who does God want us to be? Who has he created us to be? How does our age pollute what is acceptable and good about manhood? How can we be renewed to see it again?

Life change begins with the renewal of our minds. If we are going to grow as men, if we are going to cultivate character and a better understanding of manhood, it will require us to think differently. You won’t pick this up at the gym, or from men’s magazines, or certainly not on your social feeds.

We need something not of this age to give us perspective on it. Something not of this world so that we might not be reduced to it. I want to suggest that the Bible offers us this better perspective. It offers us the lives of men, not that we might emulate them, but that we might learn from them.

Most Christians would probably say their sense of identity and gender comes from scripture, but I want you to really mean it. I want you to be transformed. I want you to see that in this book, there is a path to becoming a better man. Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The scriptures are the way forward.

How should Christians approach the question of masculinity differently from the world?