Recently, I saw a number of posts about the “Act Like Men” Conference, led by big names like Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler, James MacDonald, among others. The conference gets its title from 1 Corinthians 16:13-14:
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love
Something about it stuck in my craw. I wasn’t irked by the conference itself, but more the kind of rhetoric it represented, which I see all over facebook about what ‘men’ need to do. To stand up. Be strong. Watch UFC. Woo a woman. You know…man stuff.
First, using that verse in that way has some translation and hermeneutical issues. The word for ‘act like men,’ is seen in the Septuagint a few times and gets translated into English as ‘be strong and courageous.’ So maybe we aren’t talking about taking off our shirts and building a fire as much something like the modern phrase ‘man up.’ It has little to nothing to do with gender, but with putting on your big boy pants and killing that bug.
Then there is the problem of the huge shift in audience in the closing remarks of Paul’s letter: do we think that he suddenly starts to talk to only males at the end of 1 Corinthians without any indication? Or was the whole letter just written to the men of Corinth?
But that feels like nitpicking. Maybe I can get back on track here. Having a “Man” conference, by definition, is to have a conference that is intended to exclude a group of people, either:
- Women
- Boys
Both are, in some way, opposite or left out when we use the word “men.” The way that these things are often presented makes it seem like they are all about option 1. That the men of the church need to do something….manly. Do what Christian MEN are called to do, as opposed to what Christian women are supposed to do.
Case in point: I have seen one (or perhaps more) Driscoll talk that criticizes 26 year old boys who live at home and can’t get a job or pull their lives together. And, while I am not usually a big Driscoll kind of guy, I kind of agree with what he says. Extended adolescence, while guaranteeing that my future as a youth pastor will likely be busy, is nonetheless a significant problem. Whatever guidelines you use to judge when someone has entered adulthood, they are being met later and later in life. This separates the social growing up process form the physiological and physical process of growing up. It turns what was at one point a rite of passage into some nebulous drifting into being a grown up. And part of what the church should do is help people get through that phase of already-not-yet and into living out and living into a life that serves God. So Driscoll’s challenge is to grow up and be a man.
But while the tone of his talk (and other like it) seems to cover both options 1 and 2 (that the actions prescribed are to distinguish oneself from both boys and women), I think it is really should be addressing option 2. I don’t want to see young women sitting at home, mooching off their parents, with little to no ambition, avoiding having to grow up an take normal adult responsibilities. Because women have a calling and need to fill whatever their vocation is as well. Women are also called to become adults and serve God and bring his kingdom.
I certainly am not the first one to bring up that the church needs to have a serious discussion about what it means to be male and female. And without a ‘traditional’ definitions of maleness and femaleness, I am not sure exactly what terms to use.
But I don’t think that those ‘traditional’ understandings (breadwinner and homemaker) are particularly Biblical. The “Proverbs 31 woman” seems like a breadwinning small business owner to me. Luke regularly makes a point to say that “not a few Greek women of high standing” responded to Paul’s message in Acts 17. And Rodney Stark points out, in ‘The Rise of Christianity’, that early Christian women outnumbered men, and this was a significant factor for Christianity’s early exponential growth.
So, while I think we have to really challenge millennials (myself included) to step up and act like adults, I don’t think my call to be bold in my faith and love others is a call based on my gender. And with the success of the early church as a model, I pray that the call to be strong and courageous is heard by many women, not girls, who will rise to the challenge.
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