False masculinity and violence
We in the Christian community, especially clergy (and in my case, Orthodox Christian clergy), need to have a long and deep conversation about masculinity, what it should be and what it is not.
There are Christian writers who suggest that males growing up in America are somehow neglected, somehow repressed in their masculinity. Somehow they suffer because their "boyhood" is not celebrated enough, because they haven't been encouraged to go out and play in the dirt, play cowboys and indians with popguns and later, discouraged from wielding and shooting their weapons of choice.
There are some Christian writers who insist that men possess a divine right to dominate their relationships, especially with women and their families and institutions -- a domination that others like me who recognize as oppression and tyranny.
And there are Christian writers who encourage this mythical arc of grievance, these narratives of self-pity, and identify the "enemy" of masculinity as the liberal secular order of egalitarianism -- an order that displaces the male with "others." And since the male-dominant order is said to be divinely-established, the liberal secular order should be resisted and replaced.
Such writings, which may be putatively "Christian" and are merchandised by Christian publishers and websites, are not actually Christian.
Christian masculinity is not defined by oppression and domination -- even in its own New Testament setting. If headship is discussed, it is immediately re-defined and radicalized as complete self-sacrifice and denial of ego. At no moment is the Christian male ever permitted to demand his own position of power or his own "rights."
Simply put: there is no such thing as "Christian male libertarianism."
The masculinity that is thrown around in discussions of "complementarianism" and "headship" is most often a complete distortion of the simplest meaning of discipleship, of following Jesus Christ and bearing His Cross.
In this culture of grievance and extremism and the weekly tragedy of mass shootings, in which young adult males fester and languish in Discord and 4Chan sites, where they gather into fascist cults and willingly commune with cults of nihilistic violence,
We clergy need to step up to our moral responsibility.
We need to tell young adult males that they are replacing the Gospel with a religion of grievance and nihilism.
We need to redefine Christian masculinity in terms of meekness, servanthood, and the kenosis of bearing one's cross.
We need to preach against the cult of domination and violence and extremism as the "new pornography" -- because that is exactly what those themes are.
We need to foster a culture of peace and true righteousness -- a righteousness defined not by the simplistic notions of the culture wars, but a righteousness defined by the Sermon on the Mount.
Why, why have so many of us in the pulpit on Sunday mornings spent so much time railing against liberalism and secularism, CRT and BLM, and not nearly enough time teaching about the Beatitudes?
I think we preachers, all of us, are guilty of allowing a corrupt definition of righteousness to fester and rise, a definition that contradicts the Gospel and is mostly a libertarian promotion of self -- self-identity, self-pity, self-costuming, self-arming, self-defending, self-vengeance-taking.
Righteousness (and its counterfeits)
Righteousness.
Now there's a term that conjures up, all too often, images of judgementalism and legalism. A litany of "Thou shalt not's." The infamous "Church Lady" on SNL. Ragged apocalyptic echoes of Michael York acting out John the Baptist in the desert.
These are, it can be argued, very "Old Testament" images of righteousness, and they don't even do the Old Testament justice.
Not only is the term "righteousness" misinterpreted, so is the Old Testament in general. For Christians, the event of the Incarnation changed everything. The LXX and the Masoretic text, from that moment onward, were to be interpreted Christologically. "Enemies" in the Psalms could no longer be interpreted as human, but only as the spiritual oppression of the demonic (without any attempt at ontological definition). Genesis could no longer be confined to the human materialistic conventions of science and history. There could no longer be a "literal" interpretation of the genocidal accounts in the Pentateuch, Judges (especially), and I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, I & II Chronicles.
Everything had to be subjected to a deeper, higher, more spiritual interpretation, only in terms of the Godman, Jesus Christ, the Ascended Lord.
And this Lordship is of a radically different governance. It is not the power of coercion and death-wielding. And it is the revelation of what "Judge" (i.e., "shaphat") really means -- not how it was almost always reduced to in history, like Gideon and Ehud, and especially its worst reduction of all, the "king."
"Judge" means "establisher of righteousness" and "restorer of justice." The meaning of that term is a far, far larger concept than the weak Western courtroom image of a black-robed figure, wielding a gavel, handing down impartial (hopefully) decisions of guilt or innocence.
The righteousness of the Old Testament is also a concept that is far larger than the cartoonish images that we associate with legalism and fundamentalism (of all religious stripes).
Righteousness, of course, is climactically defined by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount. But it should have come as no surprise as it grew in meaning, depth, and scope through the ages of the Old Testament, as can be seen here.
The righteousness proclaimed by the Prophets is a far more humanistic theme than what is usually depicted. And it is only an assumption (and I think a very wrong one) that we depict John the Baptist as a half-crazed wailer in the desert, shrieking like an amalgam of Savanorola and a hellfire-and-brimstone camp meeting preacher.
Are we that sure that the Forerunner, the Friend of the Bridegroom is not meek as the One Who said “Blessed are the meek”?
And here is the exact point at which we clergy have not stepped up to our moral responsibility.
We have preached a "righteousness" that is too individualistic, too subjective, too confined to what many call the "mystical."
We have modeled a "righteousness" that is too much on display as an outward, costumed antagonism against "society," at the expense of the winsome persuasion, in love and servanthood, as "salt and light" in the neighborhood of our world.
We have reveled in dark utterances like "death to the world," wrongly-interpreted apocalyptic texts and feasted on schadenfreude-laden eschatologies.
How is it possible that out of the same mouth can proceed “Death to the world” on one side, and “Beauty will save the world” on the other? Not to mention “For God so loved the world.”
We have told the world that since it's going to hell, and that we are the ark of salvation, then it doesn't matter how high we perched the door of the ark and how steep we've made the ramp up to it. We compass sea and land to make one convert, and when he is made, we've made him twofold more the child of hell than ourselves.
What is the righteousness that the prophets (and their successors, the Apostles, and the Fathers and Mothers of the Church) prophesied upon and called society toward?
The standard of judgment is and always has been the Personality of the Holy Trinity itself.
And that Personality is full kenotic love, of self-donation without reserve. A servanthood, feet-washing love.
And the Creator desires that this Personality be reflected, mirror-like, in Creation and especially in His Image.
So real, true Righteousness must be the objective of our preaching. Righteousness is the peace that passes understanding. Righteousness is mercy and forgiveness. Righteousness is the establishment and restoration of justice. Righteousness is the stewardship -- not consumption -- of the Six Days of Creation, the land and sea and the air and everything that is situated therein.
Righteousness rejects violence. It will never bless guns or tanks or submarines. It rejects the sword -- and everything that this sign of death symbolizes.
Righteousness is a spirituality that knows no clear divide between the individual and the social. Righteousness rejects any materialistic economy.
Righteousness admits only the hierarchy of servanthood, the first being last, just as it is so in the celestial hierarchy. There can be no Christian imposition or coercion from above.
Righteousness is hopeful of human endeavor and work in the world.
We are horribly wrong in condemning any progress in civilization as hopeless or meaningless. We have no God-given warrant for saying that peace is hopeless until the Second Coming: Jesus is present with us, and He said "Blessed are the peacemakers" for the here and now. We default on the Great Commission when we do not try and hope for peace at every level -- in our personal relations, in our neighborhoods, in the nation and the world.
"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness" is an imperative that extends far beyond and above the stereotypes of the culture wars.
Expedient politics can never be the object of true righteousness (even under the rubric of “the common good”). True righteousness can never participate in “single-issue” or extremist politics: we teachers and preachers and authorities will have to answer for each and every earnest soul who has been earnestly wrong, and marched down the evil road to violence.
But it is indeed and always has been the "substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen."
It is indeed the city that we long for, the New Jerusalem descending.
It's high time we all preach that way.
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