In a culture that refuses to accept mortal limits, Christians must not succumb to fear-filled, denial-ridden attempts to eliminate or control mortality in their own strength. While we can and should work to improve ourselves, including our physical health and wellbeing, we can face our mortality with humility and courage and, especially, hope. After all, we know the One who conquered death. 

Earlier this month, tech multi-millionaire and anti-aging obsessionist Bryan Johnson invited 2,500 people to apply for a spot in his latest endeavor. “Project Blueprint” is a 90-day, watered-down version of Johnson’s extreme $2-million-per-year anti-aging regimen. The project’s goal is simply, “Don’t die.” 
In addition to a $999 entry fee, those accepted will spend $333 per month on food products that make up about 400 calories of a daily diet. Those interested in tracking their progress more closely can purchase “more advanced biomarker measurements” for an additional $800 or $1,600, depending on the desired tier.  
Spending at least $2,000 on a three-month “self-experimentation study” that does not include daily groceries is a heavy lift. However, in less than 50 hours, 8,000 people had applied. 
In addition to his celebrity status, one factor that makes Johnson’s immortality experiment so compelling is the myth of “progress” that still holds significant sway over the modern world. With that myth comes the illusion that eventually, somehow, we will gain mastery over our mortality. After all, thanks to modern medicine, deadly diseases like measles, mumps, and polio—diseases that once devastated mankind—are now largely preventable. Others, like smallpox, have even been declared eradicated. Add in modern innovations such as public sewage, running water, and increased agricultural production, and in under 200 years, the average human lifespan has nearly doubled.  
Scientific discoveries and medical advancements are gifts of God. And yet, for all the benefits brought to the common good, a common side effect has been an inflated sense of control. It’s not difficult to see why so many people remain convinced that death can be defeated with ever newer and more impressive technologies. 
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There is no glory apart from sacrifice. That is what your strength is for. That is what you were made for. You were made for the glory of sacrifice, and when that sacrifice is obedient to the King, you can be sure that you are following your King into the very same grave He once went down into, and He is there waiting for you, to lead you out into a glory that will never fade. 

The glory of men is their strength. God made men to be strong in order to provide, protect, build, discover, explore, and lead in taking dominion of this world. But never forget that it is a bleeding, sacrificial strength to be spent gladly on the altar of our King, trusting Him to raise us up.
The Glory of Men
“The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair” (Prov. 20:29). And just in case somebody wants to object that strength is clearly only the glory of young men, say under the age of 30, I would simply point out that 40 is the new 30, and gray hair is the result of all that strength being spent. But the same thing is clear in Paul’s charge to the Corinthian church: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). When we say that something is your glory, we mean it makes you shine. We mean that it highlights what you are for, what you were made for. Men were created to shine through the use of their physical, emotional, and spiritual strength.
This glory is evidenced in the creation of the first man. And the New Testament repeatedly points back to this fact: that man was made first (1 Cor. 11:8, 1 Tim. 2:13). And why was man made first? Man was made first in order to be cut first, in order to bleed first, in order to lay his life down first. And so he did, and God put him into a deep sleep, cut him open, broke out one of his ribs, and closed the wound back up. And from that bloody rib, God formed the first woman and brought her to the man (Gen. 2:22). Before sin entered the world, before there was any curse, any death, God showed Adam that the way to glory was through obedient suffering and sacrifice. There was no glory-bride apart from Adam’s pierced side. And many centuries later, when Jesus came as the new Adam, He was crucified for His bride, and the Christian Church was formed from His bloody side: “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30).
Sacrificial Strength
So, putting these things together, we insist that the glory of man is his strength, but it is particularly the glory of using his strength sacrificially. It is not his glory merely to look strong, to feel strong, but to actually work, to labor, to bleed, to suffer, to struggle, to fight, to endure many hardships in obedience to his Lord.
One modern evangelical heresy is to deny the goodness of male strength. This heresy says that men must effectively castrate themselves. They must destroy their strength, deny their strength, and directly embrace weakness. While this primarily attracts beta males who can’t stand the thought of actually working or fighting or breaking a sweat (or someone not liking them), there’s also a surface level plausibility to the claims, since some Bible verses do speak of how God uses weakness.
The incarnation certainly was a comparative weakness for God to become a mere human being, and Paul says that he came and preached in weakness and God uses the weak things of this world to confound the strong (1 Cor. 1:27). But we are Christians and this means that we must interpret all of Scripture together and not camp out on our favorite verses. The same Paul who says that God confounds the mighty things of this world with His weakness is the one who urged the Corinthians to act like men and be strong. In fact, he does it in the very same letter. So which is it, Paul?
And of course, the answer is yes and both. But we must be mature in our thinking, not childish, not simplistic.
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While following Jesus does bring meaning and purpose that nothing else can bring, life can still feel mundane. So, what’s the answer? Stewart takes us to a surprising passage of the Bible, where the apostle Paul writes about God’s power working in the lives of believers, so that they might have…great endurance and patience (Col 1:11). At first blush that sounds so…ordinary. God’s mighty work in someone to give them something so ordinary as endurance and patience? What about miracles? Healings? Converting thousands? But there is enormous power in just turning up. In enduring. In being patient. 

I never thought I’d cry reading a book on masculinity.
But that’s what happened as I read The Manual – Getting Masculinity Right, by author Al Stewart. I don’t think he intended for men to cry as they read that book (at least he didn’t say so in the introduction). But I felt strong emotions as I read a chapter that, for me, touched on the challenges of being a man in today’s world.
In other words, it was my male ‘Barbie’ moment.
Many females will tell you they had such a moment in the recent movie Barbie, where they resonated with the frustrations expressed by the character Gloria (played by America Ferrera), who spills her heart to the main character Barbie (Margot Robbie) about the pressures of being a female in today’s world:
Like, we [women] have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin…You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining…You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!
So, what hit me so hard in Stewart’s book that I couldn’t help welling up with emotion?
For me, it was the chapter on ‘Endurance: The Power of Turning Up’. Here’s what he has to say – and if you’re a bloke, especially if you’re a bloke in the thick of mid-life, with responsibilities growing on you like barnacles – see if it resonates with you:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. So said American author Henry David Thoreau. He’s right. There are many different reasons for this desperation. For some of us, our dreams may be dying. I don’t mean the dreams we had as kids, where we realise we won’t represent our country at the Olympics, but those deeply private things we’d hoped for. Those dreams that we didn’t share with anyone else. Eventually we realise these things are not going to happen…and that sense of quiet desperation lives with us.
He continues:
Or maybe the quiet desperation comes from heartache – just the wear and tear of life. I don’t know anyone who’s reached middle age without major heartache of some kind, be that from a failed marriage, or wayward children, or lack of children, or wider family, or failure at work, or health issues for themselves or for someone they love. Heartache is inevitable.’
While I wouldn’t have thought of my life as one of quiet desperation – on so many levels I feel blessed – these words about the pain and frustration of life hit a nerve, as I’m sure they do for many other men.
For other men, they’re frustrated by the everyday ‘Groundhog Day’ nature of life: ‘It’s easy for us to feel like we’re living the same day again, and again and again. Boredom is just a fact of life…For many men, the repetitive, mind-numbing routine of life is what they dread.’
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