The RenewaNation Review 2020 Volume 12 Issue 1 | Page 29
R
TIONSHIPS
LA
LGBT ideology is taken by the authors of the report as
gospel. “It’s no longer just [a] male-female binary,” says one.
The report criticizes “individuals with religious affiliations
and conservative social and political views, who may equate
masculinity with heterosexuality.” These folks, hints the
APA, need to be cured of their errant views.
The game here is painfully obvious. This isn’t science; it’s
a worldview that sees masculinity as anyone would have
defined it just a generation ago as a problem needing to be
solved. But as David French writes at the National Review,
the APA has it all backward. 4 The real plight of boys and
men today coincides with our culture’s rejection of tradi-
tional masculinity, not the embrace of it! To say that the
answer is to further deconstruct what it means to be a man
is ludicrous.
Our society has no fixed categories of what it means to
be a man, much less any resources for catechizing the next
generation of men.
To be a man doesn’t always mean being a tough guy,
though that can come in handy. But it does mean protect-
ing, loving, leading, fellowshipping with God, and cultivat-
ing our garden as Adam was to cultivate his. Masculinity
reaches its pinnacle in Christ, who far from being a man of
violence, laid down His life for His beloved, and invites all
men to do the same.
Our culture’s rejection of these created truths is at the root
of much of the real turmoil that the APA documents. But
the solution isn’t to caricature and then reject masculinity
like a disorder. It is to rediscover and embrace real mascu-
linity, which God declared to be “very good.” Thankfully, the
traits and roles of real masculinity aren’t socially construct-
ed. They’re innate—created by God as an expression of His
image complemented by and working in concert with femi-
ninity. Unless we recognize this, it won’t be socially-con-
structed concepts of masculinity we’ll be pathologizing. It
will be men themselves. ■
UNDS
F
E
RENEWANATION DONOR
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OCTOBER 1-3, 2020
MANDERLEY CHRISTIAN CAMP – PIKEVILLE, TN
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Ben Schettler, Founder and President of The Center for Truth in Love
John Stonestreet is president of The Chuck Colson Center and a BreakPoint radio co-host.
Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian
perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. BreakPoint
commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than
1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people.
ENDNOTES
1. APA GUIDELINES for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, https://www.apa.org/
about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf.
2. Stephanie Pappas, “APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys,”
American Psychological Association, 2019, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/
ce-corner.
3. “Suicide in the United States,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_
United_States.
4. David French, “Grown Men Are the Solution, Not the Problem,” National Review, January
7, 2019, https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/psychologists-criticize-tradition-
al-masculinity.
Copyright © 2019 The Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.
org with permission.
If your school or ministry is God-ordained, then God has
prepared the hearts of many people in your community to join
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[email protected]
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