Kevin DeYoung spricht mir einmal mehr aus dem Herzen. Er warnt vor einseitigen Männerclichés, die angesichts gewisser Verweiblichungstendenzen der westlichen Gesellschaft nur zu gerne als absolutes (biblisches) Ideal hingestellt werden:
We need to be careful we don’t equate our preferred type of masculinity with biblical manhood. I know conservatives want to push back the tide of feminism and fight against the emasculation of men in our culture, but offering stereotypes is not the way to do it. It’s not fair to say, without qualification, that “Real men hunt and fish. Real men like football. Real men watch ultimate fighting. Real men love Braveheart. Real men change the oil and chop firewood.” It’s one thing for pastors to give men permission to be like this. It’s another to prescribethat they must. You simply can’t prove from the Bible that manliness must look like William Wallace. If you insist on one way to be a man, you’re in danger of two things: 1) Hurting godly men who are manly but don’t do things with sports, cars, or the outdoors. 2) Making your particular expression manhood the standard for everyone else. And when complementarians overreach with their definition of manhood they play into the hands of those who say there is no definition of manhood at all.
On the other hand, a different set of Christians needs to be careful they don’t make Jesus—as the quintessential man—into a progressive beatnik. Some Christians reject the stereotype in the previous paragraph, only to replace it with another. So Jesus—and therefore, every real man—hates all violence, protests social inequality, and probably painted with watercolors. Not only does this ignore Jesus the avenger (Revelation 6 and 19) or Jesus the friend of rich people (Zacchaeus), it flattens the biblical narrative into another predictably anachronistic tale of how Jesus was a man exactly like me. So yes, Ted Nugent is not the only way to be a man. But that doesn’t mean Sting is the alternative.
