Tag Archives: The Bible

Toxic Masculinity: Treating Women Well

A couple days ago, I began a series about an article I read by Jaclyn Friedman about how the misunderstanding of what “masculine” means is a big factor behind rape. I began by detailing where I believe she is right, and where I feel she is wrong. Yesterday, I laid out a working definition of Biblical manhood, focusing on the characteristics rather than activities. Today, we’ll look at how those characteristics should affect our interaction with women.
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Toxic Masculinity: Defining Manhood

Yesterday, I wrote about what Jaclyn Friedman calls “toxic masculinity.” I covered my thoughts on where I believe she was right, as well as where I feel her solution to this problem is ineffective and will cause more problems in the future. Today we’ll look at a working definition of Biblical manhood. It is by no means the final verdict, or even a complete definition, but if you haven’t read yesterday’s post yet, you’ll want to do that now.
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Toxic Masculinity : The Wrong Approach

Today, I read an article by Jaclyn Friedman about how the misunderstanding of what “masculine” means is a big factor behind rape. The catalyst for this article is an incident that happened last summer when “…two young football players in the Ohio town of Steubenville carried the unconscious body of a local girl from party to party, violating her in ways you’d probably prefer not to think about.”

Friedman then identifies the core issue as one of “toxic masculinity” and supports her statement by using events surrounding the investigation into this horrible tragedy. And, you know what? I agree with her on that. For the most part, we have the idea of “masculine” very wrong. But her approach to correcting the issue is either dead wrong at worst, or incomplete at best.

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Dying In The Middle

One of the most challenging concepts of life in general, Christianity as a whole, and Reformed Theology in particular, is understanding, embracing, and enjoying the fact that life isn’t about us. Or, at least not completely about us. We’re born into this world not functionally aware that the cosmos has existed for thousands of years before us, and many of us never grow out of that phase. Sure, we may acknowledge that life isn’t about “me” necessarily, but it’s certainly about “us” as a whole. And even as the core of the gospel screams “No, it’s not!” we hustle about desperately holding on to our childhood sense of supreme importance, trying to remain “blissfully” ignorant of the deeper story, of which we only play a small role. It’s hard to communicate this truth in ways that are compelling, loving, and accurate. Which is why I am absolutely astonished and grateful for three new bloggers…ok, writers I’ve come across recently who have captured this truth so eloquently. They may or may not be Reformed, but their work of communicating this message is pure gold.
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Sharing the Wealth

In my seemingly never-ending quest for new (and good!) blogs to read, I came across some posts lately that I thought were really good, and felt like I should share them with you.
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