Real Good Men

I read this last paragraph to a trusted advisor who suggested that I replace “love toward her neighbor” because it might not elicit the response I had intended. 

“I think a lot of people will feel like it’s kind of namby-pamby,” he said.  “Even if they might not admit it, it’ll make them kind of feel like the racer is the real winner.  I think it might make the example lose some of its impact.”

“Perfect,” I replied.

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Was that you?  Did it seem a little strange to you—a little “namby-pamby”—to talk about loving thy neighbor?  Perfect.  This response is not at all uncommon, and very nicely highlights one of the most powerful reasons why football has been able to entrance our population, and why it’s so incredibly spiritually damaging to so many millions of people: football presents to Americans—particularly American males—a warped perspective on masculinity.  It preaches an insecure and compensatory masculinity, and it presents it to a population in which the real men are fast becoming extinct.

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I once read a study on perceptions of masculinity.  They presented subjects with a host of adjectives and asked them to identify them as them as masculine or feminine.  Adjectives like “nurturing”, not surprisingly, were classified as more feminine; although men can certainly be nurturing, it is an attribute our culture more typically associates with femininity.  Conversely, “brawny” would be an example of something more typically associated with masculinity.  These adjectives included a great range of concepts, some of which were difficult to classify. 

The most interesting part of the experiment was a list of adjectives that were all classified as quite strongly feminine: loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled.

Those of you familiar with Christian doctrine might recognize this list: they are called “the fruits of the spirit”; they are ways in which the Holy Spirit is supposed to manifest itself in the lives of believers.  To the Christian, they come awfully close to defining “good” behavior.

And today in America, what our Christian heritage has historically defined as “good” has also been redefined as “un-masculine”.