Toxic Masculinity? | Doug Wilson

doug somebody writes in to ask is there such a thing as toxic masculinity um yes there is there's this is a fallen world and there is a toxic everything right so you could there's no gift that you can't misuse there's no gift you can't misuse you can buy a case of water and drink enough bottles of it that you will die okay right and you know and people periodically you know i remember years and years ago uh i think it was dr pepper uh somebody fed you know there was a certain sweetener in dr pepper that was alleged to be carcinogenic or maybe all soft drinks but in order to get that result they had fed the equivalent of multiple cases of dr pepper to a rat okay and i think okay um yeah i think that if you take too much of anything then you're gonna get sick and die so there is such a so every good gift is um can be made toxic by ignoring the boundaries that god's established for it there's toxic masculinity there's toxic uh femininity uh when has masculinity been become toxic what is what does it look like when it actually becomes toxic yeah so when when a husband is um let's say he is a blustering angry man right let's say it's the sort of situation around the home where everybody's walking on eggs he punches holes in the sheetrock he gets his way by yelling um by gaslighting everybody um he is a foot taller than everyone he's got a deep voice he is he throws his weight around that way either with uh violence expressed or implied or hinted at i would i would describe that as toxic okay masculinity uh because what he's doing is he's being hard he's he masculinity is hard and so what he's doing and the toxic nature of this is he's taking that hardness and he's using it on his family instead of using it for his family so what a man needs to do he needs to be hard if he's not hard he can't protect his family if he's not hard he can't go out and do hard things to provide for his family but when he's hard the right way when he's being masculine the right way and he takes responsibility and he be he puts himself as a wall between the mean old world and his small children he takes the hit he takes the buffer he he does the he does these things he's being hard for his family um but a certain kind of person takes all of those gifts and is hard on his family and what he's doing is he's um he's punching down he's he's taking the people who needed protection they were defenseless or they were vulnerable in a certain respect and because they were vulnerable he went after them um so what you want to do is to teach your boys for example uh if you've got a little boy who starts picking on his little sister you need to take your son aside and say listen your sister needs to be protected from the dragon and you need to be saint george yeah right this morning you've been being the dragon right and you don't want to be the dragon who comes after your sister you want to be saint george who gets in between the dragon and your sister seems like that's that's a parenting um that's a major parenting flag when you have a son who enjoys cruelty that's something that has to be really addressed and mortified that's that's right if i so basically uh and and the issue is not whether um the issue is not whether you think the the um recipient of the cruelty even noticed or knows so if if a father finds his son pulling wings off of flies that boy ought to get a spanking and there shouldn't be there shouldn't be any discussion about whether flies have a nervous system and could feel anything because the the point that the boy was exhibiting was i like being cruel uh-huh i like being destructive um so you could take something that has no nervous system at all maybe you say sister's doll and he's and he's torturing the doll or pulling the doll apart again spanking because that is not what your strength is for so what is the what is the masculinity that is good um that is considered by many to be toxic like because that's that's that phrase is flung around very haphazardly so what is the masculinity that is good that is that is um called toxic and why do they want to call that toxic so um godly masculinity i i define godly masculinity as uh the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility okay that's what godly masculinity is the glad assumption of uh sacrificial responsibility but in order to assume that responsibility the man in the family has to be the head right so it's an authority issue so when a woman complains that just simply the fact that he's the head right simply the fact that he's assumed responsibility for the whole family is she not an individual with her own hopes dreams and aspirations doesn't she get an equal say and what do you mean he's the head what that that's the voice of toxic femininity right there's there's toxicity there but it's a rebellion against the way god made the world so god made the world in such a way that the husband is the head the wife is to look up to her husband as the as her head calling him lord as sarah did and so that honor that subservience that submission that spirit of submission which the bible commends in repeated places over and over and over again if there's anything that's clear in the new testament it's that husbands are the head and wives are to submit to their husbands if if the bible doesn't reveal that to us the bible has revealed nothing right and so people who want to say well let's do a greek word study and cafale the word for head means like the source of a river it doesn't necessarily mean authority or all kinds of complicated games um what is happening there is in the grip of egalitarianism and envy a person in a subordinate position has envied a person in a position of authority and and wants to take it or get equal with it or strive with it and i think i think that that's actually what's going on in genesis your desire shall be for your husband and he should rule over you uh that's the that's the perennial tension between the sexes um the only other time that construction happens in genesis 3 is in genesis 4 where where cain is warned that sin is crouching at the door and um and wants to has a desire for you and you must master it and so i i think that women have a propensity to challenge their husband's authority and when they submit to that temptation when they when they give way to that temptation that's toxic femininity not toxic masculinity seems like to connect us to one of the earlier questions uh the six day creation that ability to just look at the text and say here's what it says and to not be affected by the cool shaming um that's going on all around i mean it seems like it's one of the fundamental um skills necessary for good exegesis oh absolutely and i've said this a number of times and i'll say it again here because this is really important many times liberal commentators unbelieving commentators and feminist commentators are more to be trusted with what the text actually says because that's an evangelical that's right an evangelical pass because an evangelical after he's done his exege exegesis he's stuck with whatever he came up with yeah right whatever he said paul said here he has to affirm also yeah a feminist scholar can say something like look let's be frank the bible is patriarchal well that's true right and so the feminist scholar is more to be trusted on representing what the bible actually teaches to us than an a soft evangelical complementarian who wants to waffle and noodle and backfill until he's said yes um yes you know there's a fog that comes from the pulpit at the end of which time nobody knows exactly what you're supposed to do but paul's very clear uh wives submit to your husbands in everything there you go thank you yeah thanks for watching if you'd like more of this kind of content be sure to check out canon plus that's where you can find all of my audiobooks and a huge collection of resources to help you engage with culture and live faithfully by subscribing to canon plus 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Channel: Canon Press

Views: 20,320

Keywords: canon press, christian response, advice for christians, mablog, christian reaction, advice for christians in the coming decade, blog, doug reacts, christian politics, reformed theology, advice, biblical worldview, ask doug, ask, doug, pastor, toxic masculinity, masculinity, toxic, masculine, preacher

Id: 4-9pWErBbyw

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022