Calvary Road Baptist Church

“TOXIC MASCULINITY” Part 1

Proverbs 31.3 

The title of this message is “Toxic Masculinity,” a term that has been popularized over the last few years in the medical and psychological establishment, as well as in popular culture. It is a prized identifier of all things about men that feminists hate and is a severe issue in the Western culture of Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, and also in aspects of Japanese culture influenced by Western feminism and the consequent reluctance of Japanese women to marry.

I have focused on the issue of effeminacy in Christendom for almost half a century as a result of my reluctance to embrace Christianity as a young lost man because of my perception of the Christian faith as non-masculine. What changed my mind, at least in part, was the personal testimony of my favorite uncle growing up, Leon Waldrip, one of my dad’s older brothers.

Leon Waldrip was on Corregidor in Manilla Bay in the Philippines at the outbreak of World War Two, was captured and became a prisoner of war held by the Japanese, both on the Bataan Peninsula and on the Japanese main island until his prison camp was liberated on VJ Day, August 14, 1945. Five years later, when the Korean conflict erupted, my uncle joined up again, this time in the United States Marine Corps, and served in the First Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir, the famous “Frozen Chosin,” who served under the most famous of all Marines, then Colonel Chesty Puller.[1]

No one who ever knew Leon Waldrip had any doubts about that quiet and soft-spoken farm boy with the winsome smile. How could someone who joined the Army and fought on Corregidor, who then survived Bataan and 3½ years as a Japanese prisoner of war with distinction and heroism, and followed that up by choosing to serve in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean conflict, not be recognized as a thoroughly masculine adult male?

But that was back in the days when the Armed Forces of the United States was a thoroughly masculine ecosystem and not the woke and sissified metrosexuals they are today, led by such simps as former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark A. Milley and current Secretary of Defense Secretary and retired Army general Lloyd Austin III, a remarkable failure as U. S. Central Command man in charge, and now serving as the Secretary of Defense despite his failures, said by some because he was once friends with President Joe Biden’s late son Beau.

A brief aside. Just in the news today are reports that politicians and military leaders are looking for ways to remove the United States military establishment from direct civilian control because they want to eliminate any possibility of the U. S. military being under the control of the president of the United States if former President Donald J. Trump wins the presidential election next year. This is reported by NBC News and verified by Mollie Hemingway, Editor-in-chief of The Federalist.[2] It should tell you something about the current state of the U. S. military that such ideas are being openly discussed while the people in uniform remain silent.

Back to my uncle. In 1965, when Uncle Leon and his wife came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and they visited us in the hopes of introducing my dad, my mom, and me and my brother to Christ, my opinion about Christian men being effeminate sissies began to change. The most thoroughly manly guy I had ever known, along with my two grandfathers, was now a Christian gentleman.

But it was not God’s time for me. I could not grasp the significance of spiritual truths. First Corinthians 2.15 certainly applied to me: 

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 

It was not for another nine years that God the Father drew me to His Son, Jesus Christ, and I was saved from my sins. Even so, I had a residual prejudice against the effect of the Christian faith on men, somehow questioning what God wanted a Christian man to be like. My initial experiences as a believer in Christ in my workplace environment didn’t help much.

Converted to Christ over a weekend of isolation and Bible reading, that following Monday was the first time I dropped in on a conference room Bible study that noon a few floors below my office. The group of gathered Christians were not at all happy when they saw me walk in and sit down. My reputation for confrontational and profane behavior preceded me. And my prejudices about sissified Christians seemed to be confirmed by that group. Among those who worked in the same building were among the most effeminate so-called Christian men I had ever seen in my life.

I wondered if God wanted me to act like they acted. It concerned me because from my two grandfathers, my dad, and my uncles, as well as the men on the Indian reservations with their warrior cultures I had lived on, I had grown up around men who were the epitome of thoroughly masculine guys. That said, so many of the professing Christians I had observed at a distance growing up in regular American schools and communities, whether they were public school teachers who claimed to be Christians or the men I observed on the very few occasions we went to Church, did not fill me with confidence that God wanted His men to be real men.

That began to change when I was introduced to a guy at work who said, “I am told you are a new Christian,” to which I said, “Yes.” He then asked me if I had a Church home. “I guess not,” I said, “I don’t know what that is.” He then asked me where I lived, and I told him I lived in Torrance. He also lived in Torrance and invited me to Church.

When I attended Church the following Sunday, I didn’t see the guy who invited me. But the pastor was a solidly built and manly-looking guy who was a veteran who had served in the 82nd Airborne, with no traces of sissy evident in anything about him. I settled into the Church, was baptized, and served in the Church, delighted to interact with new friends and serve God, and more than thrilled when one of the Church women brought a little brunette named Pamela Lucille Franco to the Church house.

Only later did the not-so-evident traces of sissiness come to light as I observed the pastor’s family life. His conduct toward his wife and daughters did not seem to reflect what I saw as I read God’s Word, where the spiritual leader is without question or equivocation shown to be the husband in a marriage and the father of the children. He proved over time to be genuinely fearful of angering his wife, while she was not at all fearful of angering him. He did not know as much as I had hoped he knew about spiritual leadership.

Over the next forty-five years, I have learned a great deal. Some of what have learned has been from a study of God’s Word. Some of what I have learned has been from personal experiences and observations, which I think have been filtered through God’s Word. The learning process is ongoing. But what has astonished me has been so much evidence of the failure of men to lead that is endemic, not only among the men of our general population but among the supposed spiritual leaders who handle the Word of God and ought to be the best examples of male leadership to be found anywhere. Sadly, that is not at all the case.

In Proverbs 31.3, Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, highlights the advice she gives to her son to ensure his success as a leader, as the King of Israel, and as a man: 

“Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings.” 

I urge you to examine the entire context of that verse when you have the opportunity. When you do, you will see that this wise mother advises her son about success as a man. Sadly, we know from the Bible that her son did not take his mother’s advice, bolstering my contention that mothers do not raise sons to be men. Had he heeded his mother’s advice, he would have met with great success as a man and king.

Verses 1-9 in Proverbs chapter 31 provide two keys to success in the life of a king and any man’s life insofar as being manly is concerned. Verse 3, of course, is to never surrender your strength as a man to women, in general, or to any woman in specific. Why not? The unstated reason is that God did not make men surrender their strength to women, as a general principle. In all men-to-women relationships, excepting only little boy relationships with their mothers, men are not to surrender their strength.

This does not preclude any man from working for a female boss or any male citizen submitting to a female authority figure. But concerning interpersonal relationships, it is not to happen. Be a gentleman. Be kind. Be respectful. Observe boundaries. But never surrender your strength to a woman once you reach manhood. That is the first principle of leadership.

What is the second? Verses 4-8 speak to the debilitating effect of alcoholic wine on a man’s judgment. There are two kinds of wine found in the Bible, the alcoholic variety and the nonalcoholic, as evidenced by Jeremiah 48.33, where grape juice squeezed from grapes is referred to as wine. Here in Proverbs 31.4-8, Solomon is charged by his mother with avoiding beverage alcohol.

The question, of course, is why in the world Solomon’s mother, giving him advice to succeed as a king, to succeed as a man, would speak, first, to the issue of giving his strength to women and, second, to the issue of consuming beverage alcohol? What does a woman possessing a man’s strength yield to her, and beverage alcohol consumed by a guy have in common?

They both impair judgment. Get angry with me if you choose. React indignantly with me if you object. But assuming the inspiration of Scripture and the correctness of the Bible regarding everything related to faith and practice, what do you think these verses mean if they do not mean what I suggest?

Please return to me with a chapter and verse if you think I am wrong. Our concern is to interpret God’s Word correctly and accurately and to apply it properly. I have no interest in defending a position or proving that I am right. My interest is in showing men how to succeed at manhood and showing women how to succeed as women.

While a boy is growing up and living at home, he should honor his mother as indeed as his father. And honoring father and mother means obeying father and mother until you are mature enough to move out of the house, so that you then treat your parents respectfully instead of obeying them implicitly.

I do not think parents need to fuss much with their kids. When your son shows that he no longer feels the need to obey his father or his mother, I suggest that you congratulate him on the occasion of reaching manhood by having a final great meal at home before he moves out. Why so? No son or daughter has any business living in a Christian man or woman’s home who will not obey. To allow a disobedient child to live in your home is to subsidize sinful behavior. And if you think your son is too young to live independently, he is young enough to get his rear end paddled to correct his folly or rebellion. It is either or. There are no alternatives that I am aware of found in God’s Word.

One conclusion that I would like to draw in closing this brief message under the broad topic of so-called Toxic Masculinity is related to the inability of a mother, any mother, to raise a son to be a proper kind of man. That is why Christian women, blessed with the humility described in James 4.6 and First Peter 5.5, and the grace that corresponds with such humility, know they need help with their boys if dad is not in the home, or if dad is an unsaved man.

She will expose her sons to godly Christian men regularly because godly Christian men, not Church men who imagine they can influence boys just because they want to, but godly men who read and study God’s Word, who seek to reach the lost, who provide for their families, who are raising or have raised their own children, who are prayer warriors and testifiers of God’s work, always have sufficient love for boys whose dads are not around, either spiritually or physically.

You folks know that I was not raised in a Christian home and that my present dad was noticeably present emotionally, spiritually, or in any other way than physically. That was probably a blessing in disguise. Imagine the damage that is caused when an unsaved dad wants to influence his sons, but he absolutely cannot because, as a lost man, he is the enemy of God. My vacation time contact with wonderful grandfathers with powerful personalities gave me great benefits. And you have heard me testify of my Uncle Leon more than I can remember.

The only thing that might have been better for me, with an unsaved dad, would have been to regularly attend a Gospel preaching Church, where I could have seen and been able to observe godly Christian men living their lives, loving their wives, and nurturing their children. That is what single moms do for their children, especially their sons, to expose them to the Gospel, and to expose them to godly Christian role models. This is because proper manhood and appropriate masculinity are as much caught as taught but not taught by women.

After all, how does a woman lead a young man to lead without leading him? Have you seen old women bullying boys and simp men? It’s a sad picture. Have you observed boys who have grown into men without good men in their lives to model? The boys, as often as not, end up being like President Bill Clinton, learning from his mother and without any man in his life only how to manipulate women.

Boys need men in their lives to grow into men. Toxic masculinity is so often the result of boys who never had men, or good men, especially not godly men, in their lives. To be successful in manhood, a man must develop good judgment. But alcohol and women he has given his strength will impair his judgment.

Bathsheba was absolutely spot on in her advice to her son. Sadly, however, she was his mother rather than his father. He did not heed her advice. I suggest to you that boys rarely heed such advice from their mothers, too often seeing their moms as interfering with their development into manhood even when they are no such thing. The remedy? Get those boys around godly men whenever possible and pray as you have never prayed for anything else in your life that your children come to Christ.

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[1] Eric Hammel, Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War, (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1990)

[2] https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1746636909189726685

 

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