What Is Masculinity?

0:07 How we change that, that narrative we've been doing, as you know, the man cave, but even before the man cave, we've been doing men's ministry for several decades, literally since 1995 in one form of another small churches and whatnot, and just really doing some cool stuff. Most of that in the earlier years was just getting guys together. That's all, you know, there wasn't really a form. It was just really, Hey, we got to get guys together some way, somehow so we can fellowship together, pray together. In most cases, we did outreach together, which I believe outreach is a masculine thing to do. And I believe that churches should have vandalism and men should be highly involved in those areas. Now, women can also do that too.

0:47 It's just that when you go out into the streets, I just don't believe that you should be sending your women out into the streets. I just believe that that's something that men should be doing, right? What we do nowadays is as we begin to. See how churches operate. Now, let me share some personal experience over the years. I've seen a lot of abuse of how churches and, or pastors dealt with men, basically almost abusing that there's a verbal abuse that sometimes happens where, whether it's actually said or it's, it's insinuated a lot of times you'll hear where men need to be more like. Their wives be more like the women being more like the sisters and doing certain things in the church.

1:29 And because men aren't doing it, then perhaps they don't really love the Lord. You know, there's all this other stuff. And, and that's not, that's not good. Number one reason why a lot of guys are like, you know what? Screw it. I'm not, I don't need to go in there. I don't need to, I don't need to take that. I don't need to be compared to my wife or my girlfriend or my sister or whatever, or the sisters. Then the other example typically would be, well, you know, be like more like the pastor and he's the, he's like, he's like the only masculine dude that's there. At least that's what they tell us as if other men can't be masculine or even more masculine than the pastor. And so it's like, well, he's a real man, but all of you are the wimps.

2:10 Man to Man 360 starts in three, two, one. You've tuned into Man to Man 360, the show for men by men dealing with all subjects. The twist here is we come from a biblical worldview to encourage and empower men to make it in life through the power of Jesus Christ. Chopping it up, chopping it up, chopping it up, talking about it. You're talking about sometimes it's cool, sometimes it's heated, this is Man to Man 360.

3:02 Welcome to a brand new episode of Man to Man 360. And of course, I'm your host, Daryl Anderson. And in today's topic, I'm going to talk about a topic that we, well, we talk about this a lot but it sort of almost takes me back to an old episode. In our first season where we talked about toxic masculinity, and we sort of, not sort of, we did define that and explain what that was and the fact of what it wasn't. And I almost want to go back to that topic, but instead of going into the toxic masculinity, I just want to really go in and define masculinity and what that is and what that's about and why we do what we do. Here on man to man 360 in the man cave in the ministry that that I'm a part of and, and, and pretty much in all these different circles and conversations, why this piece is so important, especially when it comes to the church.

3:56 And so the audience I'm list I'm talking to, and who's listening right now, pretty much men. And probably most likely young men between the ages of maybe 28 and probably about maybe 40 or so. And obviously there's some, it's going to be some older and some younger. And of course there may be some women listening too, but, but my primary audience is that 28 to 40. More specifically, my, what we call my avatar. Audience is 32, but anyway, as I'm talking to these men, and as, as I'm talking to you, man, I want to bring up this topic on masculinity and see, first of all, let's sort of define it and.

4:42 See how this fits into the church world, how this fits into living out your faith and how this fits in with Jesus, right? One of the resources that I've had for a long time, so if you remember back in episode, I'm sorry, season two, I think it was, we, we, Talked about the book, Adam, where are you? Why black men don't go to church by Jawanza Kanjufu. And this, I've always called this the white version because it's well, there's a white guy on the cover, at least sleeping in a pew. And, but this, this one is called why men hate going to church by David Murrow. And this was, I don't know what year this was written.

5:23 It's in here somewhere, but that's irrelevant. But he's got some great information in here, and I've referenced some of this stuff in the past on other episodes, but I want to do more of a little deep dive specifically into chapter 14. And a little bit in chapter four, chapter four is the masculine spirit and the feminine spirit. And there's a part, a chart here I've referenced before I'm going to talk about in this episode here, but the main area we're going to be in is, I'm sorry, I said 14. I meant to say chapter 13 and in chapter 13, that one is called the pursuit of manhood, his greatest quest, and this is a pretty good one.

6:06 I just want to reference some points on here. But listen, before we get into that, obviously go to man, demand three 60. com. That's man. The number two man, three 60. com. And there's where you're going to be able to share the show, listen to past episodes. And even let us know what you think about the show, the episodes and, and, and everything here. So let's just dive right in, into this. And I want to talk about this here about masculinity, the pursuit of manhood. Now, Murrow argues that men, especially in contemporary society, struggle with their identity within both secular and religious settings.

6:47 So the insight. So his key insight he offers is that many men feel disengaged because they perceive the church is feminized, which we've talked about on several episodes. We've even had an episode called Is the Church Feminine, which we don't agree with that. We believe that there are parts that have been portrayed that way, though. But anyway. Where he perceives the church as feminized, inadvertently alienating the masculine spirit. And so the pursuit of manhood therefore becomes vital. It's not only about stepping into roles traditionally espoused by society, but embracing a version of manhood that resonates deeply with biblical teachings.

7:28 And we're going to talk about that in a moment. It's about courage, leadership, and faith. And, but more than about brute strength, because sometimes when we talk about masculine, people are guys are talking about only brute strength and, and all these things. And that's not, that's a narrow definition of masculinity. You missed the point in a lot of areas. See, it's about resolve and integrity. It's about standing firm in faith, even when facing the storms of life, because we serve a savior who walked this earth as the living embodiment of masculinity.

8:08 And so as we continue, I want to encourage you to reflect on your personal journey and ask yourself, what does it mean to be a man in your current context, are you embracing the role of provider and protector and priests? With the biblical principles firmly rooted in your actions. So as we look at, well, you know what, I want to go back to this chart. Now in this chart, there's a chart. If I was to show you a picture of it, obviously you're listening to an audio podcast, so I can't do that, but it's got two columns. One says left set and the other one says right set and the question the pop quiz here says examine these two sets of values So it says which one best?

8:59 Characterizes Jesus Christ and his true followers the left set or the right set So let me just read the left set. The left set is competence, power, efficiency, achievement, skills, proving oneself, results, accomplishment, objects, technology, goal oriented, self sufficiency, success, and competition. The right set. Is love, communication, beauty, relationships, support, help, nurturing, feelings, sharing, relating, harmony, community, loving, cooperation, and personal expression.

9:43 Which one characterizes Jesus and his true followers? Now most of you. We'll say, well, the right set, the one that says love, communication, beauty, relationship, support, help, nurturing, et cetera, et cetera. And that's typically where 95 percent of people choose. The, the, the, the problem though is that this is a trick question. This was not about Jesus characteristics. One side was actually identifying and women versus masculinity and men. And this actually, this list actually came out of a book called Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.

10:27 So that's where that came from, but automatically people typically think that Jesus have the more feminine Attributes and the people of God would have those, but when we look at things such as, you know, achievement. Skill, proving oneself, results, accomplishments. We think that that's bad and we shouldn't be doing any of that stuff. The fact is that that's wrong. We should be doing those things. And so that's where men will sometimes feel and guys, and it starts as young as Young men, boys and young men in church environment and, and actually nowadays in 2024, it's throughout the, the work of United States.

11:11 I'll keep it in the United States. Cause I'm not going to say that's all throughout the world, but these things are discouraged in men to sort of get that more emasculated feel and guys all over the place. And so that's where we feel, well, that's where the world feels that the church is soft or feminine. And that's why guys will typically feel that same way and, or have a tough time of saying, yeah, you know talking about the things of God and church and all that kind of stuff because they don't really want to appear soft because that's the image we've put out there for a long time.

11:51 But rightfully so, it was the wrong image and it has been out there for a long time. So let's go into this chapter 13, the pursuit of. Manhood and his greatest quest, because as we look at this, you know, one of the things he says here, and as he starts his chapter, he says, why do men act so macho and why do they avoid anything associated with femininity? Why do so many men cultivate a dangerous image instead of a warm, friendly one? And why do certain men strut their manliness like a peacock displays the pole? Plumage now, this is not a recent development. Obviously, masculinity has been a paramount importance to men for thousands of years.

12:36 It's also been important to society and without masculinity, where would these civilizations be that we know of today? But as society has changed and frown on masculinity, then that's where things change for men overall, church, and everywhere else. I want to jump to, there's something here that I thought was pretty cool. So first of all, let's look at where he, where David Murrow, where he says, what is masculinity? And masculinity is an informal code imposed on all the men of the tribe. In order to be accepted as a man, one must stand up to danger, bear up under suffering, Sacrifice oneself for the good of others.

13:23 And this code of conduct helps a man overcome his natural instincts of fear, hunger, loneliness, and et cetera. So he will do what's best for the tribe, not for himself and masculine traits, such as bravery, stoicism. And self sacrifice don't come naturally to a man they're drawn from the cultural well. And if a man fails to be brave or stoic or self sacrificing, he's branded a coward. He becomes an outcast and he suffers total rejection. Now this may seem cruel, but remember the survival of the tribe depended on men who would fulfill their roles. And this transmitted a powerful lesson to the boys.

14:05 Be a man or you will be rejected. Now the masculine code is alive today, especially in time of war. Soldiers will get scared, but relatively few desert. They stay in a fight, not out of fear of court martial, but out of fear of shame that would follow them the rest of their lives. So from their perspective, men are preoccupied with machismo. Because society demands that they are masculine. And when a young man does risky things, he's just practicing for the day when that he may be called to risk everything to save his family or his country.

14:48 We'll pick up from there, right after this. The man cave is developed around, we call it the five pillars. There's praise and worship. Or we sing a song or two and really just invite the presence of God in and get the guys singing and clapping and whatever, and really make a push on getting guys into the music. It's typically guys like to avoid praise or lifting of hands or singing and that stuff. So we really put a focus on that. And then we go right in from that into prayer, you know, intercession prayer.

15:28 We ask guys if there's certain things that they want us to pray for, to agree with them in prayer for and we make sure to focus it on them. Sometimes guys will say, Hey, yes, I got this neighbor. Can you pray for them? And we're like, no, no, no. We want to know what is it that you need prayer for? Because, because you're the neighbor. That's your job to pray for your neighbor. From there, we actually go into the competition part. Now that's the exciting part of the man cave. It just creates that competitive. But it gets that testosterone bubbling up and everything else. And there's a reason to that, really, too. I've been doing men's ministry now for almost 30 years. A lot of times, men don't really have those men focused things at churches. So, in some cases, To guys, it can feel a little feminine or emasculated in some cases.

16:14 And because of that, we want to make sure that there's a masculine feel to men's fellowship. It's both fun. It's inviting. It's also used as a fish bait to get guys out. The other reason that we do competition is so we can create two teams. And in creating two teams, we create a camaraderie between those guys. They stay on those teams for the duration. You don't go from second Friday to second Friday. No, you're contacting guys in between guys, able to reach out. Guys are able to, Hey man, I'm really dealing with this thing. I'm struggling with this thing. So they can reach out to somebody. We go from the competition part and then we go into the work. We go into scripture, we do some teaching and then we might.

16:54 Breakout into breakout groups. The breakout groups allows guys to be able to answer some things or share their thoughts on those same topics that was just preached a few minutes ago. The word is a two edged sword, it cuts open things. It exposes us, to ourselves at least. To what's really happening on the inside or the things we've been trying to cover up and hide. And then we break from there and then we, we eat. That's a great time to be able to dive in and just really see how guys are doing. Pastors and churches don't have a men's ministry. You're missing out on the opportunity to Free that man from that thing. He's been trapped in that, that stronghold has been in his life.

17:35 In his ministry allows him to be free, vulnerable, and then free follow or subscribe to man to man 360 at Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and now Tik TOK access all of this at man to man 360. There you will be able to catch shows you may have missed and have access to exclusive interviews as well as live streams. Help us grow our tribe by following and sharing man to man 360.

18:48 The masculine cold forces men to be manly in peacetime and to ensure their bravery in wartime. But here's the rub. Masculinity isn't something you switch on and off. If a man is going to stand tough in the face of danger, he needs to practice being tough every day, just as an Olympic sprinter practice day after day, after day, year after year for race, that's over in just a few seconds. A man practices masculinity every day. So when the time comes to be strong, he's ready. Manhood is something a man earns one deed at a time, a task at a time and interaction at a time.

19:30 Anthropologist David Gilmore puts it this way. Real manhood differs from simple. Anatomical maleness that it is not a natural condition that comes about spontaneously through the biological maturation, but rather is a artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds. Manhood is something you earn. One coin at a time. Now with this whole coin thing, he talks about how you gain these masculinity or deposits on a regular basis, or sort of like your, your, your masculine bank, and he talks, he talked, he actually calls it the masculinity bank.

20:16 And each time we succeed in manly endeavors, a few coins drop into this bank. So for most men, the bank can never be filled. A man will spend his entire lifetime gathering masculinity coins. Although his pursuits of coins may become less consuming as he ages, men don't know they have a masculine masculinity bank. They just know it's important to do things that are manly in the eyes of their peers. That's important. But as society has changed, now this is, this is, I'm no longer reading the book, this is me speaking. Now as society changes though.

20:57 The peers change and so as the peers change, what you'll have is they don't see or assume the masculinity bank the same way that may have been, let's say, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years. 200 years ago. So now, especially depending on how young the men are today, that masculinity bank may or may not exist. It may, I think it still does to some degree. And obviously everybody, you know, it's not for everybody, but, but unfortunately a lot of young men are challenged not to be that brave, not to have a certain work ethic, the same as maybe just a few years back or a few decades back.

21:43 And there's certain things that. They're challenged to do that. I'm going to be honest with you, man. I've seen things both in real life and you see it on TV and you see it in social media. It's like, Hmm, that's not very masculine at all. And it's a group of guys portraying this and even encouraging this. And that, yeah, it's, I don't know where they get that from, but that's not. Their peers are not helping them become more masculine or stoic or whatever you want to call it. As a matter of fact, they're helping them become more of the opposite. So in church going in the same chapter, there's a section here. He calls it churchgoing, a good way to deplete your masculinity bank.

22:26 And because many, he says here, because many men regard churchgoing as womanly behavior, it costs a fella a few coins every time he enters the sanctuary. It costs him more if he gets around at work that he loves Jesus. Now imagine this scene one Wednesday night after a long, hot day on the construction site. Bill says, Hey, where are you guys going after work? Well, Dean says, I'm going out for beer. Jeremy says, I'm, I got tickets to the Dodgers game. Bill says, well, how about you, Sam? And Sam says I'm going to church. So it doesn't necessarily sound that masculine compared to these other guys in our society that, you know, we, you know, we would look at.

23:10 Maybe Sam is not being necessarily soft, but he's not really doing any tough, you know, manly or masculine things, right? He's gonna, he's probably, and it would be assumed he's probably following his wife and kids there anyway. He's not leading them there. That's the other part too. But so when you look at this, you can also hear the masculinity coin spilling out of Sam's bank when he says that. And so in the eyes of Sam's peers and his peer groups going to the bar or to the game, that's masculine going to church is not now in this, I have another chart here that says real men and one that says church men. Now, I didn't say that this isn't correct.

23:51 And this isn't me, or even the author of this book saying that this is true, but this is just how some things are perceived. Real men, number one, live a wild life. Church men live a restrained life. Real men enjoy sexual conquest and sexual variety. Church men experience sexual depravity, no, experience sexual deprivation or monotony. Real men look at women. Church men look at Bibles, or look at their Bibles. Real men drink beer.

24:32 Church men drink grape juice, real men go to parties, church men go to potlucks, real men drive cool cars, church men drive the church van, real men light cigarettes, church men light candles, real men hang out with babes in bars, church men hang out with the babies in the nursery. So I think that's just a funny little chart, but, but that's how best a perception sometimes people see. So I'm not going to go into a whole lot more in this book, but I will mention the little sections here a church church, a woman's destination pre sustained from manly behavior and how money and manhood go together.

25:22 Women can be manly, but men cannot be womanly. Let's see. I think that's it there. So those are just some highlights there, but I want to just go into how we changed that, that narrative. We, we, we've been doing, as you know, the man cave, but even before the man cave, we've been doing men's ministry for several decades literally since 1995 in one form of another. I had small churches and whatnot, and, and just really doing some cool stuff. Most of that. in the earlier years was just getting guys together. That's all. And, you know, there wasn't really a form. It was just really, Hey, we got to get guys together some way, somehow, so we can, you know you know, fellowship together pray together.

26:07 And, and, and in most cases we did outreach together, which I believe outreach is a masculine thing to do. And I believe that churches should have masculinity and evangelism and men should be you. highly involved in those areas. Now, women can also do that too. It's just that when you go out into the streets, I just don't believe that you should be sending your women out into the streets. I just believe that that's something that men should be doing. Right? So when, when you look at that earlier on, like I said, you know, guys getting together and doing some of those things, what we do nowadays is as we begin to see you.

26:48 How churches operate now, let me share some personal experience over the years. I've seen a lot of abuse of how churches and or pastors dealt with men Basically almost abusing men now. I don't mean like guys just taking hits and licks and I don't mean like that but I mean there's a verbal abuse that sometimes happens where Whether it's actually said or it's insinuated, a lot of times you'll hear where men need to be more like their wives, be more like the women, be more like the sisters and doing certain things in the church. And because men aren't doing it, then perhaps they don't really love the Lord or, you know, there's all this other stuff and, and that's not, that's not good.

27:38 And that's a number one reason why a lot of guys are like, you know what, screw it. I'm not, I don't need to go in there. I don't need to, I don't need to take that. I don't need to be compared to my wife or my girlfriend or my sister or whatever, or the sisters, you know, my, my, my example should be sister. So and so on the. Usher committee or whatever. We used to say back in the day, the ushers. You know, it's nothing wrong with being an usher, but you know, our, our example was not supposed to be some other sister. Then the other example typically would be, well, you know, be like more like the pastor and he's the, he's like, he's like the only masculine dude that's there.

28:19 At least that's what they tell us as if other men can't be masculine or even more masculine than the pastor. And so it's like, well, he's a real man, but all of you are the wimps, you're, you're nothing. And so if we're not careful, those. Ideologies and thoughts that been around for a while. I'm not saying they're everywhere. I'm not even saying they're in most places, but I've heard them. I've seen them in one form of another over the years. And so when you look at that and you're asking, you know, what is masculinity? You start to realize that. You know, we, we, we really need to understand what is masculinity in the church. And so even when we talk about, like, we're talking about fathers or husbands or the role of men is to provide and to protect and to priest, you know, that even that to some degree is a little bit narrow because yes, those are the responsibilities, especially for fathers and husbands, but That's not the, that's not the role of men exclusively.

29:21 It goes beyond that and bigger than that because there's so much more. Adventure is a part of what men do and, and what men should be. Adventurous. One of the things we always, I try to always ask men is, Hey, what project are you working on? You know, if, if there's any, Improvement projects. Sometimes those improvement projects might be, you know, some home improvement projects, even if you're not you know, a construction guy, you know, maybe you're a customer service guy at work, but, you know, those things like those projects there's a guy used to work with not too long ago that we, every time we saw each other, we'd ask, you know, what are you working on?

30:06 He might be working on, you know, he's painting his There's a living room. He's doing a, they're doing a paint job there, right? I'm installing some underground sprinklers and or rebuilding the back porch or something like that. And, you know, because those are the things that allow us, me and him and other guys to just have that feel manly for a little while, especially if we work mostly in an IT or some world where we're in front of computers most of the day or something like that. So, every guy should have a project, every guy should have something he's working on, building on, improving on, creating, being creative not just making money, but what is he doing that, that allows him to use his masculinity.

30:50 To be a positive force in the world, especially, you know, godly men, you know, when we got to say, you know, I know a lot of guys who do evangelism and street ministry. Well, that, that, that can be pretty impressive, especially the areas they're going into. They might be going, a lot of these guys go into some pretty well. What are your neighborhood or your city might call dangerous areas, but they go there for the sake of sharing the gospel, for example. Right, but that's, that's super masculine. When you understand that, you know, there's high risk there, things can go down the wrong way in these neighborhoods and whatnot, they're taking that risk doing something masculine because.

31:39 You know, the Great Commission, you know, Jesus embodied a lot of these principles serving as a model of strength combined with compassion, power tempered with humility. And his example shows us that true masculinity involves serving leadership and sacrificial love. So when you think about Jesus, you think about Yeah, well, unless you don't maybe maybe you think about him wrongly and and like we mentioned in that chart earlier So many think of Jesus on the feminine side and that's not that's just not who Jesus was He was definitely masculine It's definitely a man and it didn't mean that he worked out in the gym all day and fixed cars You know, even though he did You know, do carpentry work.

32:27 So he was, he was skilled. As a matter of fact, if I look at that chart again, let me see, where's that chart? If I look at that chart, these, you know, we want to look at people want to say that the, it was the right side that was more Jesus like with the love communication and all that, which he was that too, but Jesus was competent. He expressed power. He was efficient. He had achievement. He had skills. He was proving himself. He had results. He had accomplishments. He had objects. He had technology. You know, when he would get into a boat to project his voice, that's, that's Technology. We always think technology is electronics.

33:07 It's not. But he was also goal oriented. Hey, listen, you guys get in the boat, go to the other side. I'll meet you there. There was a goal he had in mind. I'm only going to be here for a short amount of time. I'm here on assignment with, for my father. That's goal oriented. He was self sufficient. He expressed success and, and to some degree, he also expressed competition. Now, not so much when he was here on the earth necessarily, but, but, but in scripture, you'll see where, you know, Jesus wins and, and Satan loses. That's competition. That's, that's the spirit of competition. If Jesus is our perfect example, which he is, then we can be masculine like him and do tough stuff, build stuff, be competent, be skillful, have success, and not feel like we're, you know, being carnal or something like that, right?

34:08 Because these things are important. These things are super important. So Jesus is that guy and we can be that guy. Jesus was masculine. If we're already masculine, we don't have to feel guilty like we have to change every time we walk into our church. No, this is actually what should happen. I'm going to use this as my closing point. What's supposed to happen is your church is supposed to already have a masculine feel to it. I mean, think about it. From Genesis to Revelation, Everything in those books and those chapters was dealing with men, men farming, men building mill, men killing men, men fighting.

34:57 It was just all men stuff. And so now today in 2024, the church is supposed to be feminine. That doesn't make sense. And so that model should always be that it has a very masculine feel to it and masculine spirit to it. And you should find ways. To help your church move along with a masculine spirit, because Jesus and his disciples had a very masculine spirit as well. All right. So as we close, remember your journey to understanding the pursuit of true manhood is not one walked alone.

35:38 With each step, we leverage the teachings of our faith, empowering us to conquer the challenges we face. So until next time, definitely follow up with man, the man three 60. com. Let us know what you think about this episode and these new episodes here in this new season. And let, let us know, let me know what you think. And also because we're doing more with the man cave and men's ministry and whatnot, You know, if that's an area too, that you want to learn more about or get help in, you know, definitely reach out to us on that as well, too. So listen, I'm going to be out with this and I'll see you guys next week, next episode on Man to Man 360.

36:27 This episode of Man to Man 360 is a wrap, but you can check us out next week, wherever you get your podcast and listen on demand to Earlier or exclusive content. Visit us at man to man 360. com that's man. The number two, man, 360. com. This is an ambassador media production.