Purpose Is No Substitute for Public Respect
Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, and dozens of others like Ryan Michler with smaller but still large audiences.
Why are these alternative influencers attracting huge audiences of young men while traditional institutions and authorities like churches and schools struggle to get a hearing?
It’s in part because the masculinity message of traditional institutions is off in important ways.
I want to illustrate an example of this in the form of a recent column by David French in the New York Times. I have my differences with French, but his writing on masculinity and men’s issues is above average. He’s correctly been interested in this topic for a long time.
This particular column gets a lot of the pieces right. In particular, French notes that a lack of purpose or mission in a man’s life is often debilitating. He highlights how veterans are often given large amounts of respect, yet can severely struggle after leaving the service due to a loss of a sense of purpose.
The true challenge to American masculinity is far upstream from politics and ideology. It’s not fundamentally about what ideological combatants say about men—that they have become “toxic” on the one hand, or “feminized” on the other. Rather the challenge is much more about a man finding his purpose.
A man needs to have a mission.
He also has a point when he says that the problem with treating respect as our ultimate driver then puts our feelings of satisfaction at the mercy of how other people treat us.
Yet there is a danger in the quest for respect. Finding happiness in another person’s regard is elusive and contingent. After all, we have little true control over how others perceive or treat us, yet when we’re denied what we demand, we’re often filled with helpless rage.
He correctly asks, “How much should a man’s self-worth depend on the respect or gratitude of others?”
At the same time, he does note that there’s some merit to the idea that men aren’t respected:
The demand for respect is a hallmark of much right-wing discourse about masculinity. In this narrative, too many women don’t respect their husbands and the culture more broadly devalues men. Parts of this argument have merit.
And, he correctly notes that there’s an aspect to service to mission.
To put it more simply still: What men need is not for others to do things for them. They need to do things for others: for spouses, for children, for family and friends and colleagues.
And
There are few better purposes than helping the people you love walk through life. Virtuous purpose is worth more than any other person’s conditional and unreliable respect. It is rooted in service and sacrifice, not entitlement. And those qualities bring a degree of meaning and joy far more important than the gifts that others—the “grateful” spouse who cooks dinner, the implausibly reverential children—can ever offer. What we do for others is infinitely more rewarding than what we ask them to do for us.
I don’t want to read too much into this, but the general pattern of rhetoric we see in this piece is that men a) should seek to find life satisfaction through purpose b) which consists in acts of “retail” service to other individuals such as their wife, children, or peers, and c) they shouldn’t necessarily expect any external respect, affirmation, or reward for doing this.
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What the Doctors Missed: My Experience of Depression and Spiritual Disconnection
Depression tempts us to curve inward rather than reaching out to God. We easily succumb to this temptation because, after all, it is the ordinary human condition is to curve in on ourselves. In my experience, during the later stages of my depression, I became tired of calling out to God and soon became skeptical about the benefits of waiting on God. Eventually I gave up on “spiritual warfare” and chose merely to survive each day.
The first therapeutic assessment in my record, from July 2021, reads: “47 y.o. M with history of trauma and anxiety, with symptoms of PTSD, GAD, and depression.” In other words, some of this and some of that: post-traumatic stress disorder, general anxiety disorder, and depression. With a tip of the hat to my recent crisis, I am “prone to catastrophic thinking, presenting loss of interest, and exhibiting racing mind and heightened nerves.” There’s also a visual: “He is dressed casually in T-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. He makes good eye contact, is pleasant and cooperative, and communicates calmly, though sporadically tearful.”
Indeed, anxiety and depression slept together in my bed. But toward the end of my recent two-year struggle, depression eventually moved to the center, pushed anxiety to the side, and stole the covers.
I experienced depression as a dark cloud hanging over my life, sometimes emitting thunder, other times pouring down rain, still other times merely darkening everything in sight. It seemed to me that the cloud would never dissipate. The more I prayed, the worse things got. Or so it felt.
For me, as for many others who experience prolonged depressive symptoms, depression is a form of acute suffering. It affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. After all, we are psychosomatic beings. Whenever one “part” of us is negatively affected, the other “parts” of us feel the pain in one way or another.
Turning to God as Revealed in Scripture
For the first eighteen months or so of my two-year depression, I struggled daily to find spiritual reinforcement. I read through the Psalms twice, journaling my way through a devotional Psalter (Crossway). The Psalms gave me some hope. I especially resonated with the Psalmist when he wrestled God to the mat, when he expressed his feelings to God in a raw and vulnerable manner, when he cried out for the Lord to deliver him in the here-and-now.
I read through Hebrews 11 slowly. I gained some strength from heroes of the faith God delivered from immense challenges and trials (11:1-35). I tried to gain strength from the stories of faithful men and women who God never delivered in the here-and-now, who managed to be faithful even though God never gave them visible victory (11:35-40).
Turning away from God and toward a False Savior
Eventually, somehow and for some reason, I gave up. Though I am not aware of having made any such decision consciously, in effect I threw my hands up. If God would not lessen the nearly-unmitigated onslaught of negative circumstances, if the Great Physician wouldn’t provide any peace for my racing mind or balm for my frayed nerves, I would have to seek help elsewhere.
I turned to alcohol. I knew exactly what alcohol would give me. One drink would give a bit of relief to (what I now know as) my PTSD symptoms.
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“Anti-racism” vs. Opposing Racism
“Anti-racism” intentionally perpetuates discrimination–against the white “race,” in favor of the black “race”–even though doing so brings back judging people on racial grounds and keeps alive discrimination on that basis.
Most people agree that hating, mistreating, or discriminating against people because of their race is morally wrong. But some progressives are trying to co-opt the moral consensus against racism to serve their own ideology, and, in doing so, are distorting it beyond recognition.
So says Ryan Bangert in a piece he has written for RealClearReligion entitled Racism is Wrong, But ‘Anti-Racism’ Does Not Belong in Schools.
Schools disingenuously deny that they teach “Critical Race Theory,” insisting that what they are really teaching is “anti-racism.” “The problem is that ‘anti-racism’ is a linguistic trick,” says Bangert. “Instead of condemning all forms of racism, it seeks to combat one form of racism with another. By doing so, it only perpetuates racial division and strife, harming everyone.” He then cites two different understandings:
In 2007, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts authored an opinion in a case that addressed the legality of plans used by two public school districts to assign students to specific schools. Both schools employed racial quotas to make the assignments. In striking down the quotas, Roberts memorably stated, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Contrast that to another memorable line, this time from author Ibram X. Kendi. In his 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist,” Kendi, a well-known scholar and proponent of anti-racism ideology, opined, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
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The Authority of Scripture: Theme #2 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism
Written by Andrew J. Miller |
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
In this life, many guides are full of errors and mistakes and will lead you astray. God’s Word will never fail us. It is completely trustworthy and reliable, it is inerrant and inspired by God himself.Every day millions of people follow directions given to them by GPS. We are guided to our desired destinations by electronic maps. We input searches into these maps to know where to go for food and lodging and many other things. Without maps to guide us, or someone to give us directions, we would be lost.
However, Google maps cannot take you to God. This is why we need the Bible, God’s Word, the Scriptures. It is “the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy” God (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 2). We do have an authoritative and accurate guide to direct us how we should live. “The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man” (Q&A 3).
God not only made us, but he gave us a magnificent purpose in life: to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Where the world portrays Christianity as dull, the Bible presents true religion as joyful, delighting in the Lord! “Rejoice in the LORD, O you righteous! For praise from the upright is beautiful” (Ps. 33:1). The Artist who created the beauty of our world invites us to seek his face and gaze on his beauty (Ps. 27). How can we do this? The Bible directs us! It is our authoritative, necessary, and clear guide, showing us what to do and how to live.
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). If you can imagine hiking in the dark, a lamp for your feet allows you to see what is directly ahead of you, so you do not trip on a root or step on a snake. A light for your path allows you to see what is down the road. The Bible guides us in both the long and short term.
Speaking of a path, the Scriptures are called our “canon,” our rule of faith and practice. We “walk by this rule” (Gal. 6:16). In the Greek athletic games (think of the Olympics), each runner had a lane marked out for them by a line—a canon (Greek: κανών). God marks out a path for us in his Word—he shows us how to know, glorify, enjoy, obey, serve, and praise Him.
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