We consider our past not as our present identity but as a means of celebrating what Christ has done in and for us, a means of understanding ourselves to aid in our sanctification, and a reminder to keep our focus on Christ not ourselves. 

Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts, the richest of the people. All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. In place of your fathers shall be your sons; you will make them princes in all the earth. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations; therefore nations will praise you forever and ever. – Psalm 45:10-17, ESV

We have been examining the theme of identity in Christ and how that affects our judgment.  Job’s wife showed us that we should look for patterns of faithfulness rather than fixating on failures.  The woman who anointed Jesusshowed us that the identity of a saint as forgiven by Christ far supersedes even the most checkered past, so we should look for the fruit of genuine faith and repentance: love for Christ and the saints.  But perhaps the strongest statement in Scripture exhorting us to focus on our identity in Christ was said nearly a millennium before Christ came: the bride in Psalm 45. We like her are called to forget the past, submit to the lordship of Christ, and focus on the future to build His Kingdom.
An Ancient Royal Wedding
Psalm 45 was written by the sons of Korah to celebrate a royal wedding: “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe” (Psalm 45:1).  That king was most likely Solomon.[1]  The psalmist praises the king before addressing the bride: a foreign princess, perhaps Pharoah’s daughter.[2]  He then describes the wedding procession and ends by addressing the king again focusing on future generations.  So while this psalm is poetic, it describes a wedding of real people that actually occurred.[3]
What does this have to do with us?  First, every marriage reflects Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:31-32).  Second, the psalmist alludes to the eternality of the kingdom, thus referencing the Davidic covenant ultimately fulfilled by Christ.  Third and most important, this psalm ultimately refers to Christ because Hebrews says so when quoting it: “But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions” (Hebrews 1:8-9 citing Psalm 45:6-7).  So while the bridegroom in the psalm was likely Solomon, he foreshadowed the ultimate Bridegroom: Jesus Christ.  And since Christ has only one Bride, Solomon’s bride foreshadows the Church.[4]
Portrait of the Bridegroom
With this perspective, look at the description of the king: “You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever” (Psalms 45:2).  Jesus was without any majesty or beauty and marred beyond recognition during His suffering (Isaiah 52:14, 53:2), but afterward He was exalted, which is how He is described here.  Next, the psalmist exhorts the king: “Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty! In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; let your right hand teach you awesome deeds! Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; the peoples fall under you” (Psalms 45:3-5).  To many modern Christians this would seem unfitting for Jesus or a wedding, but we see similar statements in other psalms (eg. Psalm 2, 110), and the Wedding Supper of the Lamb is closely connected to Christ’s conquest (Revelation 19).  As we have previously seen, the harmless and effeminate “boyfriend Jesus” worshipped in many churches is a false god with little resemblance to the mighty conquering King seen here. The psalmist then describes the king’s righteous reign, with His scepter of uprightness, love of righteousness, and hatred of wickedness, which can only be perfectly said of Christ.  And just like Psalm 110, the psalmist calls the king God but then speaks of God: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions” (Psalm 45:7b).
The focus then shifts to wedding preparation, starting with the king’s robe that is so saturated with expensive perfume that it might as well be made of it.[5]  This fits his extravagant ivory palace filled with music.  The entire atmosphere looks, sounds, and smells beautiful and opulent.  The king’s abundance is also seen in the court: “daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir” (Psalm 45:9).  In this way he does not foreshadow Christ.  With any exegesis, we must understand the audience.  The psalmist describes this king as gloriously as possible for his ancient near-eastern audience, which included the splendor of his harem (Ecclesiastes 2:8)—despite the fact that God explicitly commanded Israel’s kings to refrain from this (Deuteronomy 17:17).  When discussing the Law, we noted how polygamy was a gross distortion of God’s design that was allowed but regulated until Christ made it obsolete.  Solomon exercised no restraint in sexual self-indulgence, which was ultimately his downfall (1 Kings 11).  Contrary to this, Christ has only one Bride and commands that every leader in His Church to likewise be “husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2,12, Titus 1:6).  So while the psalmist was describing this wedding as gloriously as possible, we have the advantage of looking beyond it to a Bridegroom infinitely better than Solomon.
The Exhortation: Forget, Submit, Focus on the Future
The focus then shifts to the bride.  Here, the psalmist essentially speaks like a father giving one last piece of advice, starting with a threefold preamble: “Hear, O daughter and consider, and incline your ear” (Psalm 45:10a).  This repetition means that what will follow is infinitely important.  He tells her to forget her heritage (Psalm 45:10b) and bow to her husband as lord (Psalm 45:11b).  This complements Genesis 2:24 which calls on the husband to leave his parents to be united to his wife.[6]  Here, the bride is leaving her parents to be united to her husband.  This is the Gospel: Jesus Christ left the Father to earth and win His Bride (the Church).  He then ascended back to heaven to prepare a place for His Bride, whom He calls to leave Her sinful past in order to be united to Him.  Therefore we must heed these instructions and their accompanying blessings just like this bride.
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He blames the media for much of the damage insofar as they “see through the spectacles of a finally relativistic set of ethical personal social standards” (56). He calls out public television for refusing to broadcast Whatever Happened to the Human Race? while using tax money to deploy the Hard Choices series, which platformed a materialistic view of the universe, one that relegated biblical teachings to the realm of “fairy tales.” He also mentions PBS’s broadcast of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, which touted a thoroughly mechanistic universe.

In 1981, the year Francis Schaeffer published A Christian Manifesto, I was a philosophy professor at Wheaton. He had just spoken in an April chapel, and I asked him if he’d mind coming directly to my bioethics class to engage the students. From the first time I would read his Escape from Reason (1968) up through How Should We Then Live? (1976) and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979), I had admired his willingness to take on the idols of the age, and the 1979 video series primed him for extemporaneous contribution to my class.
Though he’d been diagnosed with lymphoma in 1978 (a malady which would take his life in 1984), he was still going as strong as he could, and he was kind enough to agree to the impromptu presentation, with Edith by his side. (She was not thrilled that he would tax himself for this extra hour of speaking, but he was willing, and she relented.)
The Religion of Humanism amidst the Reach of Television
Versed in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and the two Humanist Manifestos (1933 and 1973), Schaeffer picks up the gauntlet in his Christian Manifesto, responding particularly in chapter four to these humanist documents. He also cites Supreme Court decisions to make his case that humanism is, indeed, religious. From there, he argues that the religion of humanism not only exists, but that it increasingly prevails, supplanting our nation’s Judeo-Christian consensus and greasing the skids toward authoritarianism.
He blames the media for much of the damage insofar as they “see through the spectacles of a finally relativistic set of ethical personal social standards” (56). He calls out public television for refusing to broadcast Whatever Happened to the Human Race? while using tax money to deploy the Hard Choices series, which platformed a materialistic view of the universe, one that relegated biblical teachings to the realm of “fairy tales.” He also mentions PBS’s broadcast of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, which touted a thoroughly mechanistic universe.
The problem of partisan overreach extended to the legacy media, where “reporters” sought to be players—case in point, CBS, where the avuncular Walter Cronkite (who later expressed doubts over the long-term viability of democracy) was pressuring Ronald Reagan to pick Gerald Ford rather than George Bush as his running mate, a maneuver chronicled by Tom Shales in the Washington Post. Schaeffer concludes that the “solution is to limit somehow television’s power to use its bias in ‘the editorial’ reporting of events, and most specifically to keep it from shaping the political process” (61).
That observation jumps off the page, provoking the reader to ask what sort of limiting procedure he has in mind. Surely, we do not want a government watchdog such as the one established (and disestablished within a month) by the Department of Homeland Security—the Disinformation Governance Board. Critics quickly and correctly pointed out that Secretary Mayorkas’s brainchild was reminiscent of various “ministries of truth” portrayed in Orwell’s 1984 and instantiated under Axis and Iron Curtain tyrants in the twentieth century.
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Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Thursday, August 22, 2024
For many of us, we can spend so much time focusing on the problems of men in society, or complaining about the latest attack on toxic masculinity in the media, that we forget how good our own opportunities are. Just because there’s so much bad in the world doesn’t mean you can’t personally succeed. And the more that you succeed, the more you are able to do to help other people and be a positive influence in society. 

Two things can be true at the same time:

Men in general are underperforming in society relative to women, and have a large numbers of struggles in education, employment, with finding purpose in life, substance abuse, etc.
It’s never been a better time to be a man who has his act together.

So much of the discussion of men today talks about their problems. The problems they have, as with Richard Reeves book Of Boys and Men. Or the problems they cause, as with the endless complaints about “toxic masculinity.”
But you shouldn’t just look at the world through the lens of averages, but through the lens of yourself.
What opportunities and challenges does this world provide you personally?
The truth is, for a man who has it together, there’s a ton of opportunity out there. In many ways, it’s a golden age.
Just consider the availability of knowledge. Think about all of the facts and insights that just I myself have provided in this newsletter. The information I’ve posted on attraction, on how relative attractiveness shifts as we age, and on the dynamics of online dating is knowledge people of my generation never had access to. We had no choice but to listen to official messages that sent out a lot of false information, including the equivalent of claiming that women are attracted to servant leaders (hint: not true).
Or think about the vast amount of information available about health and fitness. Yet, there’s a ton of conflicting info, and plenty of “misinformation and disinformation.” You really do have to “do the research.” But at least there’s actual availability of information, something you didn’t have back when the USDA’s food pyramid was telling you to load up on carbs.
Then there’s the products we can get, such as for actually eating healthy. When I grew up, we had delicious vegetables from our garden, but for the most part, everybody was forced to eat mass market, highly processed food because that was all that was available. The 1970s and 80s were a low point for consumption amenities. Today, farmers markets are everywhere. They are all sorts of options for buying fresh, healthy, ethically sourced food. Yes, it’s often expensive. But it’s available. When I was a kid, you couldn’t get a lot of this stuff no matter how much money you had.
Want to start a business? The barriers are lower than ever. Prior to the Internet, I would never have been able to get my message out unless a miracle occurred and some newspaper hired me as a columnist. Until five to ten years ago, making a living from online writing was essentially impossible.
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