Men of my generation will recall an ad, found in the back of most comic books when we were young. It featured the standard comic book format of a story told in successive cartoon panels. The opening scene was of a scrawny man having sand kicked in his face by a muscular dude running past. In the second panel, the wiry man complains and is picked up by the bully, who, threatening him with a clenched fist, says, “Listen here, I’d smash your face…only you’re so skinny you might dry up and blow away.” And all of this, while his girlfriend sits on a beach towel, embarrassed for her beau. The presence of the girl in the cartoon ensures that every male reader feels the shame of this wimpy little man. It was a Charles Atlas ad, promoting his home body-building program. The right side of the page featured Atlas, sporting a speedo and showing off his oiled, hairless and stocky body. As you probably guessed, the cartoon goes on to show the little guy bulking up, Atlas’s book in hand, and confronting the bully in the end with a punch to the face, while a beach-full of admirers look on, both male and female. The popularity of this ad was testimony to the fact that men everywhere once knew they are supposed to be strong.
In my last post, I presented the argument that women’s beauty has eschatological significance, in that it points to the consummation of all things, the beautiful and glorious Bride of Christ coming down from heaven. If that is true, then I believe the corollary in men is their strength. Just as so many of those Disney/Princess stories I referenced before include a rescuing Prince, so I believe Redemption and Salvation are testified to in the might of men. In other words, I believe salvation, as taught in Scripture, is distinctly masculine. And again, I do not believe this is from some cultural construct, a vestige of a more patriarchal time, but rather from the very heart of God, whose Son is now and will ever be the only Savior of the world. From the very beginning, the promised salvation of the world rested on the future bruised heel of a male seed (Gen. 3:15). Progressing from there, we find the sign of the covenant of grace – circumcision – wasn’t so much about ethnicity as it was a distinctly male procedure (Gen. 17:10). Moreover, we find the divinely appointed priesthood, which established atonement for the sinner, exclusive to Aaron and his sons. (Ex. 28:10) All of this culminating, of course, in the advent of the Son of Man, the Last Adam, the Second Man, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And the Bible is replete with other images of mighty men of valor, holding their own against impossible odds, of Davids and Gideons, of Joshuas and Samsons, and a sweaty host of other unnamed men. Even outside of Scripture, the tales are countless and universal which tell of knights and soldiers, of warriors and fighters, risking their lives and often losing them for the sake of something bigger than themselves. While men and women are both called to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:29), men, in particular, are meant to show us what that strength should look like (1 Cor. 16:13). They are given their rough and tumble tendencies to defend, protect and fight for what is good, true, and beautiful. If women represent refinement, men represent the force we need to keep it. So the anti-type of the mighty, male warrior who slays the dragon and gets the girl lives on in our most beloved stories because it has been placed there by the Almighty God Himself and is the yearning expectation of all creation, still resonating in the souls of men and women around the world…mostly.
I say mostly because this “sense” of how things ought to be among the sexes has been under sustained attack since the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Indeed, some of the comments I made in the previous paragraph (or my last post) may have struck some of you as purely misogynistic. I assure you, they are not. Even as every form of evil is an attack on our God, the agenda of the sexual revolution is a direct attack on the very image of God in mankind. The indoctrinating androgenization of our race that we have all been subjected to for the last several decades has been a full-frontal attack on the Imago Dei, making it hard for us to understand why He who “in the image of God created him; male and female…” (Gen.1:27) ever bothered with such a redundancy. Effeminate men and tomboyish women have blurred the lovely lines their distinctions were meant to declare. Psalm 96:6 says, “Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.” What I’m trying to say is, these dual characteristics – strength, and beauty – so associated with male and female, respectively, must be fought for and preserved, lest we lose something of the glorious testimony they were meant to communicate. And in my opinion, the greater crime goes to the men, who have allowed themselves to be emasculated and have thus deprived the world of just a little more light of what a loving Savior ought to look like.
Why are men generally bigger than women and made with more muscle mass? (No, it’s not to compete in women’s sports!) Well, we know from the very beginning, he was placed alone into the garden of Eden to “tend” and “keep” it (Gen. 2:15). And we know that gardening can be a rather strenuous activity, what with tilling of earth and weeding and so on, but that’s after the fall. This garden was planted by the Lord Himself and had no weeds or thorns in it. But it did have a dragon. At some point before Eve’s fateful stroll among the trees, the serpent had slithered into those branches. Might not his muscles and frame have been for that “work?” The word translated “tend” in this verse could also be “serve,” and the word translated “keep” could also be “guard.” Could it not be that part of his service was to guard the garden and his wife from that wretched, fallen seraph? Instead, he seems to stand quietly by as she chats with the tempter when he should have used his strength and size to rip that snake from the tree and stomp on his head. I’m suggesting here that the masculinity of redemption is because the need for redemption was due to a masculine failure. Mankind could be ransomed in no other way. “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.” (Rom. 5:18) Oh, how we need these strong Gospel markers once again!
