Quit You Like Men

Quit You Like Men I. Paul told the church at Corinth, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1CO 16:13). A. This is paralleled in the charge that the Philistines were given in advance of battle. 1SAM 4:9. B. Christian living is described in terms of struggle. 1. Consider the work of Christ's ministers. a. They are to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ in warfare. 2TI 2:3-4. b. They are to fight the good fight of faith. 1TI 6:12. c. They are to raze opposition to the truth. 2CO 10:4-5. d. They also are to defend the truth. PHIL 1:17. e. They wield the sword of the executioner. ROM 13:4. f. They are to be contestants who strive for mastery. 2TI 2:5. 2. Believers in general are to be engaged spiritual warriors. EPH 6:10-18. a. We are to strive against sin. HEB 12:4. b. We are to strive for the faith of the gospel. PHIL 1:27. c. We are to earnestly contend for the faith. JUDE 1:3. 3. The kingdom is seized by a healthy violence. MAT 11:12. a. violent: adj. Of things: Having some quality or qualities in such a degree as to a very marked or powerful effect....intense, vehement, very strong or severe. b. The kingdom of Christ is not a grant from bloodline, nation or an outward mark but by repentance through mortifying the flesh. MAT 5:28-29; COL 3:5; GAL 5:24. c. Thus the publicans and harlots seized the kingdom away from the scribes and Pharisees. LUK 7:28-30. d. Those who genuinely want the blessing will wrestle for it. GEN 32:26. (1) They will get to it at all costs. MAR 2:1-5. (2) They will not be dissuaded. MAT 15:22-28. C. Paul's order in 1CO 16:13 would make no sense if there were not some significance to manhood. 1. Joab encouraged Israel's army before battle, “Be of good courage, and let us play the men for our people...” (2SAM 10:12). Compare “play the men” with 1SAM 21:15. 2. The parallel account is worded, “Be of good courage, and let us behave ourselves valiantly for our people...” (1CH 19:13). 3. Such calls as “Quit you like men” are similarly calls to behave as men in the face of trouble. They are calls to manliness, courage, valour, etc. 4. manliness: The state or quality of being manly; the possession of manly vigour, or of those virtues characteristic of a man. 5. manly: Possessing the virtues proper to a man as distinguished from a woman or child; chiefly, courageous, independent in spirit, frank, upright. 6. effeminate: Of persons: That has become like a woman: Womanish, unmanly, enervated, feeble; self-indulgent, voluptuous; unbecomingly delicate or over- refined. See 1CO 6:9. 7. enervated: That is deprived of nerve and strength; lit. and fig.; effeminate, weakly. Quit You Like Men 3-2-14 Page 1  See ISA 19:16; JER 51:30. II. Our culture has gone through seasons when manliness has been the order of life. A. Explorers, homesteaders and pioneers were considered noble. B. Men who ruled their homes and enforced obedience in children were expected to do so. C. Male assertiveness and decisiveness were not considered chauvinistic, but normal. D. Great men were the likes of Charles Spurgeon, Sergeant York, Winston Churchill or George Patton, not Richard Simmons or Joel Osteen. III. Our culture has been at war with masculinity and manliness for at least two generations. A. The Feminist movement and Women's Liberation movement are opposed to manliness in general, but especially to male authority and a Father-God deity. 1. A few years ago, the cover of NOW (National Organization for Women) Magazine declared: “NOW is the time to take back control of our lives, NOW is the time to make reproductive freedom for wimmin of all classes, cultures, ages, and sexual orientations a reality. . . . NOW is the time to drop a boot heel in the groin of patriarchy. NOW IS THE TIME TO FIGHT BACK. NO GOD, NO MASTER, NO LAWS.” 2. As an affront to the God of the Bible, there is a rise in neopagan feminist spirituality which advocates the abandonment of “archaic and artificial” morality which a father-god patriarchal system needs in order to dominate women. a. A return to ancient goddess-worship with its moral code is deemed to be the hope of saving earth and humanity from aggressive, belligerent males who are empowered by a father-god patriarchy. b. “Stone concludes that the mature Goddess cultures saw ceremonial sex as an especially potent way to celebrate and share in the life-giving powers of the Goddess. In addition, promiscuous sexual activity was encouraged for the specific reason of confusing the lines of paternity, and thus reinforcing matrilineal inheritance of property and power---fathers could not bequeath power and property to their sons if they did not know who their sons were. Patrilineal monogamy, she says, is just another aspect of the later oppression of women, and hence sexual liberation today is an essential component of the liberation of women.” (Goddess Unmasked, Philip G. Davis, p. 45, speaking of Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman). 3. Another force in this macabre play are the manipulative tactics of men with anti- Christian political/philosophical agendas who pretend to empower women as nothing more than a means to an end. a. Marxist and Communist ideals depend on the overthrow of Biblical models for society and so have orchestrated cultural movements like women's liberation and feminism. b. In an 1868 letter, Karl Marx wrote, “Major social transformations are impossible without ferment among the women.” c. Vladimir Lenin stated, “Unless millions of women are with us, we cannot exercise the proletarian dictatorship, cannot construct on communist lines. We must find our way to them, we must study and try to find that way....There can be no real mass movement without women....women grow worn out in petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time Quit You Like Men 3-2-14 Page 2 dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened!....freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man, [which] enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations.” (Lenin on the Women's Question; From My Memorandum Book, by Clara Zetkin, publ. 1925) d. Getting the woman out of the home was key to making the state the de facto mother and trainer of the children to bring up the children in the nurture and admonition of the State. 4. Over against the Marxist/Leninist designs for women, consider the words of Alexis de Tocqueville from his eminent 1830's study on America and its people. He was struck by the courage and feminine strength of character of the young women: “The strength of purpose which the young wives of America display, in bending themselves at once and without repining to the austere duties of their new condition [marriage] is no less manifest in all the great trials of their lives. In no country in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the United States. It is not uncommon for the same man, in the course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the grades which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support these vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy: it would seem that their desires contract as easily as they expand with their fortunes. I have often met, even on the verge of the wilderness, with young women who, after being brought up amidst all the comforts of the large towns of New England, had passed, almost without any intermediate stage, from the wealthy abode of their parents to a comfortless hovel in a forest. Fever, solitude, and a tedious life had not broken the springs of their courage....I do not doubt that these young American women had amassed, in the education of their early years, that inward strength which they displayed under these circumstances. ...Hence it is, that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance, and always retain the manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men.” (Democracy In America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, pp. 237, 244) 5. Mind that this was the condition of a culture which had been for 200-300 years pronouncedly affected by the Holy Bible, an affection which has been diminished by a flood of phony Bibles, feminized Christianity and alternative religions. 6. Scripture describes such inversion of order as times of woe to a nation. ISA 3:12. 7. In all fairness, this inversion of order is as much due to men abandoning their Bibles and their godly responsibilities as to women aggressively taking the reins out of men's hands. B. Men are frequently portrayed in the media as bumbling twits who are ruled by animal instincts and can't feed or clothe themselves without female supervision. Or, worse yet, manly men are depicted as tyrants and predators. C. Real men, we are told, are supposed to be defined by their sensitivity and being in touch with their “feminine side.” This even carried over into Christianity. 1. In fact, much of the responsibility for this can be laid directly at the feet of Christianity. 1PE 4:17. 2. The soft, tender, doe-eyed Jesus image of Catholic fame who still can't do things without his mother is typical of the problem. Quit You Like Men 3-2-14 Page 3  a. The Jesus of the Bible is not an acceptable Jesus because He is potent. b. This world will accept a Jesus as long as he is a baby in a manger or hanging on a stick, i.e., a powerless Jesus. c. It is the Biblical Jesus Who condemns sin, orders repentance and is the Judge of all men according to His own standards that the world cannot accept. The true Jesus has power! 3. Christianity has morphed into a religion of sentiment and influence rather than reason. a. “Ours has been described as a 'culture of feelings.' Simply put, people are dominated by 'affections' rather than 'thoughts.' So what we have is a sentimentalized culture. Theology of intellect has given way to a theology of feeling....Men are not governed by reason, but by emotion. Intellect is sacrificed for good intentions. The relational supersedes the propositional. Conversion is no longer man’s acceptance of God, but man’s acceptance of himself. Countless ministers have mastered the technique of maternal influence. Emphasizing 'nurture' and 'unconscious growth' has eliminated the need for a sudden, painful, and violent religious awakening. Conversion amounts to little more than an ever evolving mutual assimilation of two similar beings.” (The Feminization of Christianity, by Harold Vaughan) b. “The Religion of Influence has a wrong view of God. Those who espouse sentimental religion have shifted from a paternal, authoritarian God to a god that is fundamentally maternal and affective. God is no longer expressing hatred for sin in the sacrifice of His Son, but His love of man. God ceases to govern by the imposition of His will and begins to sway by the influence of example. However, wrongheadedness about God and Christ’s sacrifice are not trivial concerns! This imaginary Christ of Influence meets men on mortal terrain by shaping himself to human needs. He offers himself only as a model, not as a governor. He courts those he favors instead of overwhelming them. Sensitized and feminized in image, the liberal Jesus is interested in tapping the unconscious. He prefers to prove his power of infiltration rather than test his capacity for onslaught. The feminized Christ is not dependent on his followers’ ability to perceive objective truth, but on their capacities for subjective impression.” (Ibid.) c. “Some years back the psychological community announced the amazing discovery of left-brain, right-brain differences. Under this theory the left hemisphere of the brain contains and controls the ability to think, reason, analyze, and make logical deductions. The right hemisphere of the brain, on the other hand, holds the capacity for emotion and feeling. The astute researchers remarked how that men tended toward left brain-dominance and women to right-brain dominance. This research was distorted to advance the radical left-wing agenda. Then came the push to reverse the natural and normal differences between men and women. The liberals wanted 'women in combat' and desired that men get in touch with their feminine side. The left-brain, right-brain paradigm gave the neutering of America a strong push, and the rest is history. Feminine religion is fiercely anti-intellectual, and that out of Quit You Like Men 3-2-14 Page 4 necessity. That which is masculine smacks of domination, decisiveness, and demarcation. Feminine is characterized by absorption, affection, and assimilation. The devotional had to overtake the doctrinal. The demise of theology was inevitable because right-brain religion cannot undergo the scrutiny of serious examination and analysis. The demise of theology was imperative. Emotion triumphed over the intellect.” (Ibid.) d. “Sentimental religion over-emphasizes camaraderie, connection, and involvement. It conveys its instinct for inclusion, rather than separation. This is critical to the New Church world view. All standards must be collapsed if this new-found sense of one global Church is to be maintained. Tocqueville writes, 'One of the most ordinary weaknesses of human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.' This is the only explanation for the Evangelical/Catholic/Charismatic axis. You have to leave your brain (at least leave the left-side!) at the door to enter into the spirit of ecumania.” (Ibid.) Quit You Like Men 3-2-14 Page 5