I couldn’t even make it past the title without cringing the entire length of my spine. “Man up.” You’ve probably heard that before. I’ve heard that one before quite a few times. I’ve heard it when I was afraid. I’ve heard it when I acted differently from other kids my age.
This often simply means “step it up.” It can be a totally benign call to do better, whether that means facing your fears, taking risks, pushing yourself—any number of things. That being said, it is all too often not used in this way.
Too often, “man up” is a phrase used by frustrated people to coerce others into meeting an expectation that is not being met; and implicit, even if unintended, is the message that the ones on the receiving end of this phrase are lesser people, less than men.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to spend a whole article obsessing over a colloquialism. We’re just going to use it as a baseline.
This, my friends, is a conversation about toxic masculinity.
I hope I didn’t lose you because I said “toxic masculinity.” Being that I am a man, I am not here to bash men. That is not even what the term is about, and clearing up the confusion is a big part of the conversation. Let’s do that first.
While it is true that some use the term to dehumanize men, that is not what it is about. Toxic masculinity put as simply as possible is a set of thoughts and behaviors that occur when typically-male attributes become destructive to oneself and others. There is more to it than that, but we’ll get there.
What makes it difficult to recognize toxic masculinity is that it is a version of the real thing. Many will argue that toxic masculinity is “false” masculinity, but that is not entirely the case. It really is masculinity, but it is only false in the sense that it isn’t what it was meant to be. It’s a version of it, a reshaping and a disordering of it that ultimately causes harm to those carrying it and affected by it, so we can’t dismiss it as just false. We would not have the same confusion if we labeled a “false” gospel as “toxic.” The elements that make the gospel of Christ distinctive are largely still there but with the addition of lies, the selective subtraction of truths, misorderings, and misinterpretations. Further, a false gospel causes harm, which is what a toxic thing does. If we accept that the whole world is fallen, then it is not only people who are fallen or corrupted in a general sense, but the nature of everything about us is fallen, including our genders.
The notion of toxic masculinity, therefore, should not be as offensive to Christian men as it often is. After all, we are called to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). That includes things that toxify the gospel or things that toxify our gender. It would be much easier to deny it because that would release us from reckoning with the abuses of our God-given attributes. Church people, you probably usually call that “sin.” You’d be right, but we need to look closer.
Our instinctive reaction might be to push back against the term because we might think it distracts from dealing with sin explicitly as sin and dealing with spiritual realities, but that is not the case. Throughout scripture, sin is both generalized and specific. Not only do we read that we are “sold into bondage to sin” as fallen people (Rom. 7:14), but we also read of numerous highly specific sins that sects and churches were warned against. John ended his first letter by warning against idolatry (1 Jn. 5:21). Paul spends an entire letter warning about “falling from grace” back into a self-righteous, ethnocentric requirement to come to Christ (Gal. 5:4). James warned against using our privilege to separate us from others and allowing continuing injustice for the unprivileged (James 2:1-7). And let’s not forget the low-hanging fruit that is the Ten Commandments. It should come as no surprise, then, that we should specifically address ways we sin by misusing the typical attributes of our gender. In a church culture that promotes specialized ministries, this shouldn’t be controversial.
We also misunderstand the intent of the conversation. While some do simply want to talk trash about men (as if men don’t do that to women, too), it is not as though all or even most of those joining the conversation simply want men to go away because they’re just the worst or that they are the only ones capable of sin. The reality is that we as men have been sinners as much as any. Paul, a man guilty of the imprisonment and slaughter of the early Jewish church (1 Cor. 15:9), even described himself as the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). If we as a community of believers misunderstand toxic masculinity as our society blaming all men for all evil, we have grossly misinterpreted the meaning of the term based on how one segment of people has approached it. We have been listening to the rhetoric, not the conversation. We have probably also failed to take responsibility for what men as a global demographic have done to oppress others, since we have held most of the power and directed most of the narrative for most of history. If Paul can do it for his own heinous acts, whether or not they had to do with his maleness, we who are guilty of less on an individual level are surely capable of the same humility. So, let’s dive in.
What does the bible say about all of this? Let’s start with the bible as a whole. When its parts were written, though it was to be taught to all, it was mostly men who read it because men held the privilege of being literate. Historically, that is how society had been structured. Unfortunately, women have often come second. So considering the audience of much of scripture, it is safe to assume that those to first be challenged to flee from their sin have historically been men, if only due to the fact that they read the words first. So implicitly, scripture already paints a pretty dismal picture of men. And that’s before we even look at a shred of text for examples of men in scripture. Let’s do that.
(Content warning: sexual assault, violence.)
Even the patriarchs were very twisted people, and while scripture does seem to elevate these people, it never vindicates their actions. Abraham is not vindicated in impregnating Hagar or lying to the Egyptian king about Sarah being his sister rather than his wife. Lot is not vindicated in trying to protect visitors from a gang-rape scenario by suggesting the perpetrators take his daughters instead of men. Jacob is not vindicated for stealing his brother’s birthright. Moses is not vindicated in his murder of an Egyptian slave master or his rage against the Israelites superseding his belief in God’s plan. David is not vindicated in raping Bathsheba and having her husband murdered in a war. Solomon is not vindicated for keeping sex slaves. Acknowledging these evils is not the same as bashing these people just because they are men, but scripture says what it says about them. Ultimately, it was their faith and contrite hearts that God credited to them as righteousness, and it was God’s kindness that led them to repentance. God made covenants with them not because they were good men but so that God could redeem them and the world. If we have elevated them beyond what they deserve, that is our own fault.
Interestingly enough, as much as I hate the saying, scripture does also call us to “man up,” sort of, ish, I guess. Thankfully, there’s more to it than surface-level rhetoric. Check out this passage:
“Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. All that you do must be done in love.”
Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 16:13-14)
Four specifics, one guiding principle. Four connected actions to be done in one context: love. The beautiful part? All you have to do in order to get the context is flip a few pages back to 1 Corinthians 13. I’ll summarize. No matter what good works you do, if you do it without love, they are ultimately meaningless. Love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud, not rude, not selfish, not easily provoked, does not hold grudges, and does not rejoice in evil but in truth. It bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. Love never fails, and for everything that does fail, love makes up for it. But it also makes us grow up.
“When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”
Paul the Apostle (1 Corinthians 13:11)
Here, the idea of “man” is in contrast with the idea of “child.” It isn’t about gender; it’s about maturity. If the idea of “acting like a man” in scripture has more to do with growing up than adhering to gender stereotypes, then the way to “man up” is to grow and conform to the image of love. The problem is that our understanding of love often does not include the biblical definitions above. How many of the things we call “masculine” even within the church are completely antithetical to the biblical definition of love?
We are expected to be intense, resilient, physically strong, ambitious, and able to provide or do pretty much anything. Those things aren’t bad, but they’re expectations, some of which are based on men historically taking on certain roles in society. But even then, not every society was structured that way. And even though not all of these things are bad, they can easily be turned bad. In the hands of a narcissist, intensity can be steamrolling, resiliency can be emotional detachment, physical strength can be a distraction from other aspects of life and result in abuse, ambition can be cutthroat striving, and refusing help can be failure to acknowledge the limits of clearly finite beings with lifespans. Whether any of these things are intrinsic to what it means to be a man, they can all be corrupted.
Therefore, our greatest fulfillment in life is not to live up to what is expected of people with our specific physiology. Maybe that is a part of the process because that’s our embodied experience, but we should pay more attention to whether we are being honest in our walk with Christ, and how we are being sanctified by his truth when it meets our honesty and vulnerability. Maybe that is precisely how we become what we were created to be. Maybe that’s how we grow up into love and become the men we were made to be.
The unfortunate part is that even for believers, toxic masculinity can fly right under the radar. If you have been in or around the church any amount of time, you are probably no stranger to gendered everything. Women’s conferences, men’s retreats, books oriented toward either persuasion, and select scripture thrown around with or without their appropriate contexts and meanings like confetti on their respective crowds… except if you’re a dude, the confetti has a roughly 50/50 chance of being actual bacon.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It makes sense that we should minister to the things that make people distinct, including things that make genders unique. Different people are different. We have different physiologies and different statistical tendencies based on that. In fact, at one point, I wrote a blog series entitled For the Perpetually-Single Christ-Following Dudes in the World. Can you guess who I was aiming for? Dudes. Well, everyone that struggles with singleness, but especially dudes. As a dude, that totally makes sense, right? I am a man, so I tried to relate to men in ways they would understand. That is just one small example of ministry to men. That kind of specialized ministry can be great because it can reach people in their specific experiences, and lots of organizations exist to meet those needs and have so much potential to do so, led by individuals for whom the flourishing of men is a great passion.
Unfortunately, ministries for men do not always do well because they often push misconceptions of what it means to be a man while entangling these misconceptions in the Christian idea of unchanging truth. I don’t mean that such a ministry isn’t successful on paper but that it doesn’t always produce men who are Christlike. If misconceptions are the basis for a ministry, then it is unable to produce an outcome of truly becoming like Christ. This is why the idea of “toxic masculinity” is a conversation we must have, especially in the church. Even with the best of intentions to fully realize life as a man in Christ, we often find our way into the same patterns as men who use traits typical of our gender, as well as assumed norms, in order to oppress not only women but humans of all kinds.
(Note: I’m not providing a list of people and organizations guilty of this. Plenty of other blogs and podcasts do so, but posting a ministry blacklist isn’t what this is about.)
For all our talk at conferences and in books about making sure men conform to “biblical masculinity,” this is what biblical masculinity is. It isn’t having enough facial hair, a deep voice, knowing how much you lift, making enough money, being confident, hunting or fishing every other weekend, being a grease monkey, chasing women, how much you can drink, how many hot wings you can eat (I’ll claim that one), being loud, or literally any other stereotype we see on TV or social media or, sadly, hear from the pulpit all too often. Not all of that is bad, certainly not all the time, but it has nothing to do with being men. Worldly expectations are one thing, but biblical masculinity is love, and it pushes hard against what much of the world, especially the West, has historically considered masculine.
What about those of us who don’t quite fit the modern masculine profile? What about the skinny boy who is bad at sports but great at academics? What about the kid who is too shy to act on the big dreams he has? What about the teenager who is way more emotionally transparent than his peers? What about the one that never gets the girl just because he’s not the stereotype? Is there a place for these in the world of men, or do they become socially stripped of their right to their own gender because they don’t fit every norm? Not all norms are bad, but is our obsession with living up to worldly expectations of how to be men just a front for our desire at best to be good enough, or at worst to be worthy of social worship and to satisfy our own pride? Isn’t that just the fragility of what we have warped into the male ego? Because male or not, we all have egos, and nobody likes theirs to be crushed. But maybe that is exactly what we need in order to conform to love, especially we men who like to pretend we are stronger and less afraid than we are.
Despite our pretenses, we were designed with a need for help. We were not made to be totally self-sufficient. It is not in our nature to do life alone (Gen. 2:18). What’s more, we were designed in God’s image to be diverse. To see God’s full image, we have to look at male and female, not just one (Gen. 1:27). We can even see this diversity as the generations pass. When children are born, they aren’t carbon copies of the parent that shares their gender. They bear the image of both, somehow beautifully woven into a new being. If God from the very beginning designed us with such diversity between male and female, both bearing his image, and that diversity only grows through generations, then why does it shake us up to see that not all men are the same? And why do we respond to it by calling it femininity? While there are some distinctions between male and female, have we taken those distinctions beyond their intended scope and begun labeling certain things “feminine” or “masculine” simply to maintain that distinction? Worse, have we done so to fabricate a false sense of supremacy between people who are no better than each other?
Maybe men fear the “feminization” of society because deep down they know that the version of masculinity by which they live is not what it was meant to be, that it’s not the standard they claim it is, and admitting to this would require them to humble themselves enough to accept people different from themselves who pose a threat to their status quo. Maybe they are the ones who are different and have internalized toxic masculinity, but becoming who they truly are deep down would require them to admit to their fears and fragility. Their version of masculinity actually has nothing to do with maleness or scripture. In fact, the purpose of scripture is not so that we have oddly specific gender norms to force ourselves or others to abide by. The purpose of scripture is to understand God’s relationship with his fallen creation, including how each respective gender has uniquely fallen. No, this version of masculinity has to do with power and pride, and it sees any difference or apparent weakness as feminine and inferior. Yet Christ’s humility is part of what led him to the cross, and it is into such humble self-sacrifice that we men are called both as Christians and as husbands. Think about that. The passage that talks about wives respecting their husbands, which is often abused as a means for men to be controlling, is followed by even greater humility that Paul compares to Christ’s own—not domineering or subjugating but humble even to the point of one’s own death, all within the context of mutual loving submission among all believers (Eph. 5:21-25). But too often, men oppress and or fail to support women because they believe in a supremacy that does not exist, not even biblically. They do the same to outliers among men.
In reality, being “too feminine” has not caused more damage to men than toxic masculinity because many of the things we consider “feminine” are simply aspects of following Christ that we don’t want to do. Men are supposed to be rough, hardened, and wild rather than gentle, self-controlled, peaceful, or patient (Gal. 5:22-24). But these are fruits of the Spirit, not fruits of feminity. So why do we fear conformity to these things, and why do we treat men who face their emotions in the light and grow up into Christlike stability as lesser people? In this way, “man up” is a cop-out response that plays on a person’s emotional security and gender identity rather than actually proposing a way to live well. It’s rhetorical nonsense. It’s manipulation. To treat someone as “less than a man” isn’t only wrong because it’s supposed to be emasculating; it’s wrong because it’s dehumanizing. But if that’s how we behave as men, who would want a way forward into that? Thank God, there is a better way.
Let’s circle back. Paul called the Corinthian church to “be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong,” and that “all that you do must be done in love.” The phrase “act like men” is among others that help define it. Standing firm, being alert, and being strong are all things men are typically known to do or strive to do, and they are to be done in love. This passage neither emphasizes nor centers upon “acting like men” but rather is meant to reinforce the preceding traits. In other words, what it means to “act like men” is to do what the rest of the passage says, and do it in love. (And as we saw earlier, that phrase may be more about growing up than being a certain gender, although the latter could be just as valid.)
Although these are descriptions of how men often act, literally none of these imperatives are only applicable to men, and Paul was not an idiot. This was a message to the whole Corinthian church. Men and women, children and parents—all would have heard this letter read in front of the whole assembly because there weren’t mass copies of scripture. Corporate reading was how the church worked in the first century, and for an era of church history wherein persecution was inevitable, everyone would have needed to be on the alert, stand firm, and be strong, regardless of whether they were men or women. They were called to bravery in love. All of them.
While we ascribe all too many of our own preferences and norms to masculinity, bravery is the trait most consistently biblically associated with masculinity. Joshua was told to be brave when leading the Israelites into Canaan (Joshua 1:9), and Joseph was called to bravery in marrying the one who gave birth to the Messiah despite the messy circumstances (Matthew 1:18-21). And how many times did Jesus tell people to take heart? Yet women are not excluded from this call to bravery. Was Rahab not brave to harbor Israelite spies? Was Jael not brave to assassinate Sisera in the age of the judges? Was Mary not brave to mother the Messiah? Was Lydia not brave to spread the gospel in a hostile empire? In a world that marginalized women, was it not brave of the prophet Joel to prophesy—and of Peter to cite his prophecy—that because of the outpouring of the Spirit of God people’s “sons and daughters [would] prophesy”? (Acts 2:17-18).
If women have been called to resolute faith, strength, and bravery as much as men have been, yet historically enduring much greater dismissal, oppression, and scrutiny, should we not consider it an honor to be rejected by the kind of men who care more about preserving their egos than showing love to anyone else? After all, Christ said that we are blessed when people say all manner of evil against us falsely for his sake (Matt. 5:11-12). If simply being different is what earns rejection, whether that means a smaller build, a more timid heart, or having nonaggressive tendencies, why would we want what the world calls normal masculinity? Should our inspiration be worldly men or Christlike women?
In a lot of ways, my wife and many other women are way braver than me. She moved across the state, away from her tight-knit family, to an unfamiliar place, married sooner than she planned, and modified her career in a way to took her further outside her comfort zone than she ever expected, in a field (history education) that is typically male-dominated. And women like her are just the tip of an iceberg full of people who, besides having to work against male-preferential systems, have been looked down upon, prevented from advancing, blocked from taking part in ministry, or prejudged simply because they were women. To live in a world full of abuse and oppression of women, they have to be much braver than us lest they face the undue consequences of toxic men who either fear losing control or never had control to begin with.
If bravery is not relegated to one gender, why as men do we belittle each other when we are different rather than encourage each other toward bravery in our differences? In a world wherein supremacy and oppression is the norm for men, is it not even braver to stand together with those who do not meet every minor expectation of what it means to be a man? Why do we question their manhood rather than encouraging one another to be brave, and why should that be an insult in a world full of women braver than us? Is encouragement to be brave without being berated a respect reserved only for daughters? Are sons, both in family and in faith, undeserving of the same dignity? Instead, we destroy ourselves, and in destroying ourselves, we destroy everyone else, men and women alike. Instead, why are we not forging friendships and trying to learn from men who are not the same as us? If bravery is masculine, then why are we so afraid of our own diversity as men?
And if we men are all so afraid, how do you deal with the often-derogatory expectation to “man up” when the reality of fear is never going to go away?
There is only one way. Be brave, in love, together. Be afraid, but confess it, keep going, and hold on to one another because you are not alone. Take the first step to bridge the gaps.
You don’t have to be in control when you know someone has your back.
You don’t have to oppress others who are different than you when you know they understand your fear, maybe even better than you.
You can be brave because your life, your understanding of the world, your preferences and tendencies, are part of a wider spectrum of what it means both to be a man and to be human; and everyone wants to thrive just as much as you do.
If God’s love for us is what empowers us to be brave, how can loving one another do anything but amplify the bravery God gives us? How else can we become who we were truly made to be?
Anything healthy can be made toxic, no matter who you are or what traits you possess, and it’s time for me and the rest of us to own our mess and do better.
God told Job to “tighten his belt like a man” when Job questioned why God allowed him to suffer so greatly (Job 38:3, 40:7). He was challenging Job to step up and compare his wisdom and power to God’s. I have to imagine a tinge of sarcasm in God’s voice. He whose wisdom surpasses that of every man created in his wisdom men of diversity among human beings of diversity, all holding value surpassing our understanding. As compassionate as God is, Job needed a gut check in that moment. He needed to be reminded of the humble position he truly occupied.
If there is ever a way we can “man up,” it is not by undermining each other’s masculinity, forcing absurd levels of conformity, or perpetuating norms that are actually harmful. It’s by remembering that we are no different than Job—made from dust and returning to it. It’s by being honest about our pride, the ways our sense of masculinity has been warped, and looking to God to heal and restore us. It’s by considering one another as more important than ourselves and our preconceived notions of what life should be like (Philippians 2:1-3).
We don’t need power over each other because our good God has the power. We don’t need to debase our brothers whose lives and attributes aren’t carbon copies of our own. We don’t need to lord it over women who are coheirs with us in Christ, equal participants in the kingdom of God in which there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:26-28). We don’t need to intimidate our children for not living up to vain ideas of masculinity, perpetuating the cycle of fear for more generations than have already passed and have yet to pass. We don’t need to torment ourselves by sucking it up and bottling every feeling, or letting them all out in a burst of rage and destruction on those close to us and those who pass us by.
If you’re struggling to fit in, stop. We all need community, but it is not worth the cost of our authenticity. Your uniqueness among men is not a mistake. We don’t need to pretend to be something we’re not just so we will be accepted by other men. They are not our archetype. We were not made to resemble one another. We are made to resemble our maker.
There is a reason why Jesus, who took on the form of a man, said that the greatest commandment, second only to loving God with everything in us, is to love our neighbors—all of them—as ourselves. I think he was right.
Michael William Nichols 