How can we say that man has inherent dignity (the image of God) and yet at the same time he is a terrible sinner—worthless (total depravity)? Isn’t he either the former or the latter? The answer to this false dilemma is simply “yes.” We are both. Man is far above all other creatures (Ps. 8:5); he is “wonderful” (Ps. 139:14) and “beautiful” (Prov. 20:29). No other creature has the honor of being created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). But he has also fallen very far. 

I was sitting in a college history class many years ago. My professor asked for a show of hands: “How many of you believe man is basically good?” Most people raised their hands. “How many of you believe man is basically bad?” Two or three people raised their hands, including me. I looked around somewhat perplexed; my Calvinist upbringing put me at odds with almost everyone. Yet when I look back, something was wrong.
More recently, a young man who attended a Bible study I was leading asked me a question. During one study, I mentioned that God considered human beings valuable enough to save; otherwise, He wouldn’t have sent His Son to die for people. I said we have inherent dignity; there’s a worthwhileness about us. This young man came up to me after the study, confused. He quoted Romans 3:12:
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;no one does good,not even one.
He respectfully asked how I could say that humans are worthwhile if the Bible tells us we’re worthless. I was thrown off guard, because I could see how I appeared to be directly contradicting Scripture. A plain, surface-level reading of Romans 3:12 led him to believe that men and women are worthless. God saved dirty rags (Isa. 64:6), trash (1 Sam. 2:8), worms (Job 25:6; Ps. 22:6). Who are we to think of ourselves as worthwhile at all?
I realized in reflecting afterward that I had found myself caught on the horns of a false dilemma, but to understand the dilemma, we need to think about our historical context.
Total Depravity
It’s our inheritance as Protestants to think of ourselves as sinners, incapable of willing spiritual good. This was the underlying logic of Martin Luther’s despair as he went through the repetitious cycle of the Roman Catholic sacramental system. He realized he would never measure up; he would never stop sinning in this life; his sin went so deep that he could never confess or do enough to merit salvation. He had a sober understanding of who he was before God, and this led him to be awed by the grace made apparent in the revelation of God’s righteousness (Rom. 1:17). He realized that God’s saving righteousness was Jesus Christ, and God stoops to save sinners. Therefore, when we throw ourselves on the mercy of God exhibited in the infinite grace freely given to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, then we experience the joy of salvation—by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It’s no wonder that Protestants sing “Amazing Grace” with gusto.
Luther, however, lived in an age permeated by Christian thought. Protestants and Roman Catholics didn’t argue that we were made in the image of God. That was a given; the question was: How far did we fall? Did we simply lose a certain grace that was divinely imparted to us so that we now stand in a somewhat neutral position before God (as Roman Catholic doctrine asserts)? Or did we fall so far that now we’re unable to will true spiritual good apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (as classical Protestantism asserts)?
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When Jesus judges the fig tree, he foretells judgment not on all Israelites but on those who, like the luxuriantly leafy but fruitless tree, appear to be alive but are barren (Matt. 13:22). Jesus has just inspected the temple and found it wanting. The spectacle of worship—the priests, the music, the sacrifices, the gleaming buildings—is grand but fruitless. Its leaders bar Gentiles from worship and plot the murder of their king. Truly, it has become a cave of rebels against God, their show of religion notwithstanding.

18In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. 20When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” 21And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” Matthew 21:18–22
Jesus as Lord and Judge
Passover is days away, and pilgrims stream into Jerusalem. Many have traveled from Galilee; they spontaneously hail Jesus as prophet and Son of David as they enter Jerusalem with him. After entering, Jesus visits the temple. As so often, Mark offers details that Matthew omits. Mark 11:11 notes how Jesus “looked around at everything” and then left the city with the Twelve, “as it was already late.” Whether “looking around” signifies a quick look or a thorough examination, Mark gives Jesus an evening to meditate before he purges the temple. If Mark suggests contemplation, Matthew describes direct action: Jesus enters, drives out the merchants, overturns their tables, and then explains himself: they have made God’s house into a “den of robbers” or, it could be translated, a “cave of insurrectionists” (Matt. 21:12–13).
Explanations are in order. First, currency exchange is not immoral. Travelers would seek to purchase animals for their sacrifices and feasts, and they had to convert their currency into the temple’s. The problem is not commerce per se but commerce in the temple precincts, as Jesus explains by quoting Isaiah and Jeremiah: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
“Prayer” is synecdoche for public worship: the prayers, songs, teachings, and offerings of the temple. It is possible that the merchants overcharge, but Jesus drives out buyers and sellers, so malfeasance cannot be the sole issue. The problem is corruption of the temple’s purpose: the noise of commerce and animals prevents the silence that is the context for prayer, worship, and instruction. If rabbinic comments are accurate, Caiaphas the high priest had recently moved the sale of sacrificial animals from the valley near Jerusalem into the temple court reserved for Gentiles. This might account for the additional phrase in Mark 11:17: the temple is to be a “house of prayer for all the nations.”
The context of Jesus’ OT citations is essential. Isaiah 56 declares that no one— neither eunuch nor Gentile—should say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people” (Isa. 56:3). No, to those who hold to the covenant, the Lord says, “I will . . . make them joyful in my house of prayer; . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:7). Whatever the logic of the temple commerce, it makes worship difficult for Gentiles and neglects Isaiah’s word. By citing Isaiah, Jesus implicitly claims that his action brings the messianic blessing predicted by the prophet. Further, Jesus’ “disruptive action” is necessary if the temple is to regain “its God-ordained purpose.”1
While the temple has ceased to be a house of prayer for the nations, it has become a “den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13). Scholars doubt that the problem is corruption among the money-changers, since (again) Jesus opposes both selling and buying, and there is no record of complaints against them.2 The merchants, with the priests’ approval, are certainly depriving Gentiles of their right to worship God. The phrase “den of robbers,” from Jeremiah 7, is instructive too.
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The new free documentary Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood spotlights five young men who have decided to tell their stories. Alex, Brian, Njada, Ritchie, and Torren come from a variety of backgrounds. No two of their stories are exactly the same. Each is like a fingerprint, unique to the storyteller. But all five men have something in common: courage.

I would definitely like to have been a woman, because I feel, whether rightly or wrongly, that then everything would have fallen into place. The way I speak, the way I walk, the way I move, and the thoughts in my head would not any longer have been remarkable. They would have been acceptable. What I’m so bad at is being a man. — Quentin Crisp
When transgenderism was a budding fad, some people looked into their crystal balls and shrewdly predicted that a reckoning was coming. It wouldn’t be immediate, of course. It would take time for young people to realize they’d been screwed over. And it would take courage. Lots and lots of courage.
Over the past few years, a number of women have displayed that courage, coming forward to tell their stories and sue the medical professionals who harmed them. A few men have as well. But many more women than men.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Statistically, men are also more reluctant than women to report sexual assault, which also requires a great deal of courage for both sexes. But for men, it carries an extra weight of shame. The same is true when it comes to identifying as a victim of transgender “medicine.” Like telling one’s rape story, it’s not easy for anyone. But it will always be easier for a woman to stand up and say, “I thought I was a bro” than it is for a man to stand up and say, “I thought I was a sissy.”
The new free documentary Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood spotlights five young men who have decided to tell their stories. Alex, Brian, Njada, Ritchie, and Torren come from a variety of backgrounds. No two of their stories are exactly the same. Each is like a fingerprint, unique to the storyteller. But all five men have something in common: courage.
Their stories are interwoven with reflections from two therapists, Joe Burgo and Az Hakeem, and Irish writer-activist Graham Linehan (who lost his reputation, family, and career after publicly opposing trans ideology). Linehan doesn’t have very much screentime, but his presence is a sad reminder that we’re dealing with a top-down cultural contagion, enforced by people with enough power to completely demolish someone’s social capital.
There is also a sixth young man whom we never see. Instead, we see his father, Steven. Steven tells us how the boy “came out” transgender in his senior year of high school, walked away, and has never come back. He remains “lost.” “The last thing I think about in a day is my son,” Steven says, “and first when I wake up, before I’m even out of bed.”
Although each story is unique, there are certain recurring patterns. One running theme is that the men in these boys’ lives often seemed to be either absent, predatory, or weak. This is not a grand unifying theory. There’s Steven, after all, apparently a loving and present father who reports that he and his wife were “blindsided.” But it ties several stories together. Ritchie Herron, a young Englishman, only ever talks about his “mum” showing up to appointments with him and being pressured to make decisions. But he found plenty of men willing to enfold him into a “community” online. These men, of course, were predatory.
Meanwhile, Torren grew up in a blue-collar American subculture where the men occupied themselves with a narrow range of “manly” interests (cars, beer, hunting), while the women, in his words, “ran the show.” Similarly, Njada’s father tried to push his son towards “manly” interests and tasks, but when Njada drifted into gender confusion, he ironically failed to “man up” to his own wife. Njada recalls how she instantly took the driver’s seat and began to insist, “You better use the pronouns.” Like the women in Torren’s world, she was definitely running the show. These two stories are particularly interesting, because they complicate simplistic narratives of “toxic masculinity.” If anything, they evoke a world in which men become absorbed in “manly” pursuits while simultaneously failing to embody masculine leadership in the home. Thus lacking immediate models of how to be their own distinct selves while still being healthy men, these boys sought guidance from the broader culture. But as they discovered, that broader culture of teachers, therapists, and influencers was not going to help them become healthy men. Quite the opposite.
In the film, Joe Burgo proposes a nuanced third way for how men can properly lead and nurture misfit boys—neither by questioning their manhood if they diverge from rigid norms of masculinity, nor by “problematizing” all distinctly masculine traits, a trend which he believes has increased male depression. If boys do in fact like distinctly “boyish” things, that should be fine. If they don’t, that should also be fine.
I once discussed this in person with Burgo at a cocktail party in Washington. When I asked him what he thought of Richard Reeves’ book Of Boys and Men, which is generally sympathetic to the plight of boys, he said he still disagreed with Reeves’ idea of nudging boys towards more “feminine” trades—teaching, nursing, etc. As a disclaimer, I still need to read Reeves for myself, but I agree that particular idea isn’t going to solve the masculinity crisis. As I put it to Joe, it’s less urgent to mix up more statistically feminine trades and more urgent to re-dignify masculine trades. Here Joe looked up with a little smile, very taken with this, and said, “One thousand per cent.”
The other featured therapist, Az Hakeem, is also very concerned about the masculinity crisis, and he makes a further connection to the co-factor of autism. He’s consistently observed that young male patients on the spectrum followed a certain rigid chain of logical reasoning, based on their tendency to create rigid categories: “To be male, you have to be like this, this, and this. I’m not like this, therefore I’m non-male. Therefore I must be female.” Burgo adds the observation that autistic young people will struggle more than average with the changes their body undergoes in puberty, more likely to feel disgust or a desire to disassociate from who they’re physically becoming.
Several of the young men in this film are themselves either on the autism spectrum or, relatedly, on the OCD spectrum. Depression and anxiety are also recurring themes, as is p*rnography addiction. Yet the “professionals” who should have cared for them bypassed all these cofactors and glibly promised that everything would be “solved” not by treating their mental health, not by quitting p*rn, but by female hormones. All of them took estrogen, though Brian, Njada, and Torren seem to have reversed their process before pursuing surgery. Njada recalls how the therapist he sought out in college informed him that “transition is the typical treatment that makes people feel satisfied with their life.”
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