Masculinity and the Long Shadow of Joshua
What does it mean to be a man? What is masculinity? Does the gospel of Jesus Christ have anything to say about masculinity? I want to spend my next few posts on this subject. Kate will address our views of femininity in future posts. First, we must have the diagnosis. I have just returned from a two-week mission trip to East Africa where I was asked to speak at a men’s conference as well as a couple of youth conferences, and I had the chance to tackle these questions. The world’s answer regarding masculinity is generally one of projecting strength, as opposed to weakness…invulnerability. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but this is the general perspective as I will attempt to show. It doesn’t matter where you are from. This view of masculinity is evident across cultures. Spending many days in Uganda and Kenya respectively, I saw and heard that the emphasis on authority, strength, power, and invulnerability was as prevalent, if not more so, in East Africa as it is here in the United States. The men are supposed to be the providers for their families. They are supposed to work hard, keep order, be respected, etc., etc. Some of this was even evident in the way the men were not supposed to help with meal preparation and serving. I was reminded of this when I began offering to pour coffee at a home in Kenya. I was told this is not done by a man let alone an honored guest. That was the role of the women in the home and beyond. The men were supposed to do the work of farming the land and raising the livestock in order to provide the food to be prepared and served. You may chalk this up to the fact that much of Africa is still largely agriculturally based and has not yet fully moved to the same post-agrarian lifestyle like much of the West. But I think the perspective is much more universal and pervasive than that.
Consider the fact that I witnessed the same kind of thing on my many mission trips to Central America as a younger man. The concept of machismo in Latin American cultures mirrored that of the East Africans. In Mexico and Guatemala masculinity had to do with strength and invulnerability. Simply the unspoken clothing code of men-don’t-wear-shorts-unless-they-are-playing-an-organized-sport betrayed this. As I sweated profusely through my jeans it was explained to me that it is a sign of weakness to wear shorts. It means you can’t stand the heat. The machismo culture dictated that men wear long pants no matter how hot it gets.
What about Asia? There’s the long tradition of the Samurai in Japan and the Bushido code, or the “way of the warrior,” that emphasized sincerity, loyalty and honor until death. The concept of the noble death – that it was a great honor to die in battle rather than to be defeated or surrender or be taken captive…aka to suffer the shame of being a loser or weak. This led to the practice of Seppuku where the Samurai would commit suicide by cutting themselves across the stomach with a short sword. This practice lasted for centuries all the way through World War II and was reflected in the Kamikaze pilots in Pearl Harbor and the battle of the Pacific.
And then there’s the United States. We like to think we’re so progressive as a culture, that these stereotypes don’t apply to us anymore, but it doesn’t take much research to still see it all over our world. The American ideal of the cowboy, the Marlboro man…rugged, independent, able to handle whatever the wild west throws at him. The popularity of shows like Yellowstone testify we still like this view of masculinity. And, of course, there is our obsession with superheroes in our movies from The Fast and the Furious franchise to James Bond to Marvel and DC Comics. We love depictions of impossibly ripped men beating up all the bad guys and getting the girl in end.
If I haven’t convinced you yet that this view of masculinity is still everywhere the final arena to consider is politics. The strong man leader has never gone away and, in many ways, seems even more popular than ever. Consider Russia with Putin, China with Xi Jinping, North Korea with Kim Jong Un, Rwanda with Kagame (along with many others in Africa), and of course the United States with Donald Trump. And just so you don’t think I am only picking on the Republicans here, it’s important to note how hard the Democrats try to project Biden as completely capable and without weakness too. They work hard to debunk any notion that he is slipping in any way mentally or is too old for the most stressful job in the world. The basic message is: we don’t like weakness. We are still attracted to the supposed tough, no-nonsense, trust-your-gut kind of leader that projects strength and errs on the side of assertive power as opposed to ever coming off as weak. It is a pattern seen throughout human history from the Pharaoh’s of Egypt and the Caesars of Rome all the way up to our leaders today…even, dare I say it, in our sports. My beloved Steelers pride themselves on being one of the tough, old-school, hard-nosed teams in the NFL, and we eat it up! Strength and power and independence is usually the language of masculinity…and frankly humanity in general.
The flipside of this picture of masculinity is great insecurity. In a word, shame. One of our default ways to cope with our shame is to project strength…project strength to cover up fear. The stronger the projection usually the greater the fear in the person. We see this in the bully phenomenon. Use aggression and strength to deflect and distract from the fact that you’re terrified. Keep the focus on the weaknesses of others so that no one looks at you. This manifests in control and paranoia. Notorious examples from the 20th century are obviously Hitler and his attempted extermination of the Jews, but then there was also the brutal despotic rule of Idi Amin in Uganda in the 1970s. As well as Josef Stalin killing millions of his fellow Russians in a paranoid attempt to maintain his rule. Just to name a few.
We see the same thing repeatedly in scripture. As we mentioned, the Pharaohs’ fear of losing control often drove them to genocide to control people groups – this is how Ramses responded to the Jews becoming too numerous, they were a potential threat to his power, which triggered the events of Exodus. This happens again with Herod at the birth of Jesus. He was terrified to be unseated by the Messiah so he had every boy under the age of 2 killed to try to snuff out Jesus. Then the Caesars of Rome were infamous for how their power drove many of them to paranoid insanity. Their persecution of the Church is a good example and the way they repeatedly managed threats by enslaving and putting down potential rebellion with military force and capital punishment. Jesus’ own death is a perfect example – the Jewish religious leaders appealed to Pilate’s and Caesar’s ultimate fear of being unseated by saying Jesus was positioning himself as a king. Their response was to make him a public display of what happens to people who threaten their Roman order of power.
It’s not just the obvious enemies or bad guys like Pharaoh and Caesar who exhibit this negative side to our view of masculinity. There’s King Saul, God’s chosen king, whose fear of losing power drove him mad with paranoia towards David. AND there’s David himself! David in many ways seems like the perfect example of security in his own strength, but as we know he becomes the quintessential bully by going after the wife of one of his subjects. He impregnates her, tries to cover it up by bringing Uriah, her husband, home from the battle front. He tries to force Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba to make it seem like the baby was Uriah’s. All of that was to save face – to protect his reputation of being God’s chosen king – the good guy who doesn’t commit such sins. But when David’s plan doesn’t work he goes even further to cover up this scandal and has Uriah killed.
SO, this is the repeated picture of what being a man is, what masculinity is – strong, invulnerable, without weakness – this is what we must project, and we see it in Scripture too because the Bible is always honest about the true state of humanity.
How does the church play into this? Well, when I was in Africa one of the most common phrases I saw in many of the churches we visited was the phrase “strong and courageous.” “Be strong and courageous” more accurately. It seemed everywhere I turned there was a poster or a sign exhorting Christians, men and women by the way, to “be strong and courageous.” It was the theme for the men’s conference at which I spoke in Uganda sponsored by the Men of Valor Ministry. Both phrases, “strong and courageous” and “men of valor,” come from the story of Joshua. If you remember Joshua was Moses’ successor. Exodus tells us of all of Moses amazing exploits. He led God’s people out of Egypt and out of over 400 years of enslavement. He led them right through the Red Sea…and they walked on dry land. And for 40 years, he was their leader in the wilderness, during which time God gave him the 10 commandments and reiterated the promise he had given to Abraham that he would make them into a great nation and give them a land flowing with milk and honey. That Moses. Moses was THE great man as far as the Israelites were concerned. Can you imagine being the person that has to fill his shoes? The person that has to step into his role and lead where he left off? Even the most confident among us would probably be feeling insecure and doubtful about our ability to be the next leader of Israel after Moses of all people. You can almost hear Joshua’s internal voice – Who do you think you are? Do you think you can take Moses’ place? You must be joking. You’re never going to be good enough. The people aren’t going to follow you. Besides the people you’re going up against are huge…there’s no way you’re going to beat them. And when have you ever led anyone in battle? You’re going to fail. We know Joshua was feeling this because of how God addresses him, but we’ll get to that in a minute. I wonder if you’ve ever heard a similar sounding voice when you have had to do something new or have been faced with a big problem in your life. You just feel attacked, beaten down in your heart and mind, completely sapped of strength and courage. This is shame.
Shame is the primary way we experience our sin playing out on a daily basis. It is the voice of our sin and the sermon of Satan. It’s important to know that Satan does preach at you and he is a very effective preacher – he wants to fill your ears with accusation and doubt. Shame is one of the main reasons all those worldly examples of leaders I gave earlier misuse their position of leadership – why they use their strength and power to abuse, exploit, and suppress others. It’s that voice of insecurity and fear that makes us suspicious, to lose trust, to think everyone has it out for us, that we are alone. Satan wants us to live in a place where we always think it is up to us. He wants us to believe that we are the subject in the sentence – that we have to act, to do something, to make God respond one way or the other toward us. It’s that original lie from the garden of Eden that we can be like God and have power to be good in our own strength, through our own effort. The Enemy wants us to continue to buy into that lie, to believe his words, and then he wants to twist that around and beat us up with it. In one breath he whispers “It’s all up to you. God is just waiting for you to do the right thing, to finally get your act together, then he would bless you. It’s in your power. The choice is yours.” Then in the next breath he turns on you and says, “All your efforts aren’t good enough. You call that trying…? That’s pathetic. What’s wrong with you? God doesn’t have time for such a loser. Everyone knows you’re weak. You need to do more than that. You need to work harder!” And the hardest and most insidious part for us is that Satan uses the law to do it – the Enemy is well versed in the law and he loves to use it to make us think it can give us something that it can’t. More accurately, I should say, the Enemy wants to make us think we have a power that we do not have…the power to do the law and to save ourselves through our own effort, but we do not. As Paul says, “Now whatever the law says it speaks…so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in God’s sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:19-20).
Shame is merciless. And it doesn’t stop until we hear another word, another sermon that drowns out the voice of Satan, sin, and the accusation of the law. That’s what we see the Lord do for Joshua – he gives him a promise. The way God addresses Joshua so emphatically shows us that Joshua was being beaten up by shame. At the beginning of the book of Joshua after Moses had died, the Lord himself spoke these words to Joshua three times in the first paragraph of chapter one. Three times! “Be strong and courageous Joshua, for I am with you” – I am the one leading you, I am keeping my promise to give my people this land. Be strong and very courageous. “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Three times God says this. Any time anything is repeated in Scripture, especially if it’s three times, it is God getting our attention and saying this is incredibly important! God is reassuring Joshua that He is faithful, that He keeps his promises, and that He will never leave Joshua. It is only this word of promise, this word of gospel, that drowns out and silences Satan’s sermon of shame. When you read Scripture always be looking out for the word of promise.
The exhortation to be strong and courageous is too often ripped out of the context of the promise. Without the promise all it adds up to is more pressure. Be the guy that displays courage, that projects strength! This sadly is often the way Joshua is presented to us…a fearless guy who went out and did what God told him to do and you should be like him. Be strong and courageous! It’s the long shadow of Joshua. The end of that road is only going to be some kind of self-destructive acting out or burn-out. Your fear and insecurity under that pressure will drive you to lose your temper on the people you’ve been called to care for. Or you’ll turn to some kind of unhealthy coping mechanism to release the pressure. We’re not creative in our brokenness so it usually looks the same: unwanted sexual behavior, food, tv, gambling, etc. And if you don’t have a very public melt-down, then the enemy will win by simply having you grow so exhausted that you just can’t continue and you quietly fade away out of whatever the Lord called you to…whether that be leaving the ministry, or your job, or being an absentee husband, or father, or friend.
You must have the promise! The truth is that Joshua was just like you and me. He stood in the long shadow of Moses. He was desperate for a reassuring word to silence the voice of shame in his heart and mind. The promise that the Lord will never leave us nor forsake us, that he will go with us wherever we go, the promise that sustained Joshua in one of the most impossible job descriptions ever in human history is the promise for you and me. It is the true picture of masculinity…one of dependence. Depending on God’s grace in Jesus Christ for us. Needing him. Needing his forgiveness. Recognizing your limitations, knowing your weakness…not trying to hide it or manage other people’s perceptions of you. Rather, by God’s grace having the courage to actually admit where you really are, what your real fears are and clinging to his word of promise. His word will create something new in you. He will give you the faith for where you are, to take the next step whatever it may be. We do not live in spite of our weaknesses, rather we live in light of them. His promises give us the grace to live by faith in him and not in ourselves. Amen.
Next time we’ll look at Jesus’ parable of the Two Sons to see how our shame infects us and how Jesus approaches us in our false projections of strength. Stay tuned.
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