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Michelle Rader's avatar

Lots to think about here. I agree that humans are memetic creatures and need a model to imitate.

This brings to mind Paul’s call to imitate Christ and also frequently his call to imitate himself (as he imitates Christ). But it does seem that this call is clearly extended to both men and women - and Paul seems to be calling both to imitate Christ and Paul - as humans first - not a particular gender.

And while I agree that our biological sex is part of the gift of a body that God has given us, it’s also interesting how little there is in scripture that prescribes a certain model of masculinity or femininity for imitation. It seems perhaps the goal is to be asking first “am I becoming the kind of human that Christ modeled” rather than am I becoming a certain model of male or female.

Gender performance differs so radically in different contexts and I wonder if scripture is more concerned to call us all together to model Christ and then gives us the freedom to contextualize what that looks like at the gender level.

Rather than having an ideal man or an ideal woman to model after, if both men and women are living in Christ and growing in the fruits of the spirit, it seems that they would have the wisdom to exhibit those fruits in creative and diverse gender specific way - without having other humans tell them there is some platonic form of masculinity or femininity that they are failing at.

Seems to me that the boat is missed when we lament that men don’t know how to be men or women don’t know how to be women, when the problem is we all don’t know how to be the humans God created us to be unless we are in Christ.

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Luke Martinez's avatar

Doesn't Christ model the perfect masculinity for us? One that uplifts male colleagues, respects and values women and their voices, resolves problems with wisdom, not violence, and endures difficulty for the good of others? He explicitly asks people to be accountable for their desires instead of gendering their gaze. I mean, after all, he's a grown man who is still close with his mother.

As a teacher and coach of high school students, I see young men looking for older models, and I absolutely agree with you that they will find someone to fill the vacuum (a la Peterson or Tate). Definitely the complementarian stuff and Piper stuff makes Christianity a bastion of problematic masculinity, especially when alloyed with the hypermasculine Western macho stuff a la Trump.

The solution, as Christians, is we need to point back to Christ as the model.

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