A Review: Cultural Manliness

I haven’t written about cultural manliness in a while, so I thought I’d review it.  Cultural manliness, for those unfamiliar with the term (which I coined a few years ago) is the idea that “the more power, money, sex and stuff a male has, the more manly he is.”  This idea is propagated in our culture virtually non-stop, whether on the television, on the internet, in movies, throughout magazines and newspapers, on billboards, in songs, in advertising and just about anywhere those areas don’t cover.  The idea is propagated for a few reasons: 1. men buy into this lie.  2. women buy into this lie.  3. children buy into this lie.  4. people make money off of this lie.  5. the devil wins souls through this lie.

Cultural manliness – being in pursuit of the things of this world – will kill a man.  Power, money, sex and stuff doesn’t win our salvation, but it certainly can keep us from it.  Cultural manliness easily gets in the way of a relationship with Christ.  Why does this matter?  Because Christ is the true example of manliness!  He is THE TrueMan.  He is the reason this site exists.  He is the reason why the site is called what it is called.  “Blessed be Jesus Christ, True God and TrueMan.”  Anything other than pursuing Christ is futile and unmanly.

The world wants to tell a man that he will be ‘happy’ if he has more power, more sex, more money and more stuff.  This things, in and of themselves are not bad, but they don’t bring happiness.  They may bring emotional counterfeits that men believe to be happiness, but they aren’t happiness.

What then makes a man, if it’s not power, money, sex and stuff?  Virtue!  Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance – Faith, Hope and Love.  Learn them, live them, be a TrueMan!  (Read the “TrueManhood Guide to Virtue” here.)

If you’d like to read more on the topic, do a search (in the white box on the upper right portion of each page of this site) for “cultural manliness”.  You’ll have plenty of reading material.  Or, go to the blog page and click the “cultural manliness” tab.  I’d like to know your thoughts on this topic – leave a comment.

TrueMan up!

Sweet Spot Between the Sacred and the Secular

“God, Sex and the Universal Longing”…

An incredible event is happening in my hometown in just about one month. It’s already happened in a few cities around the country, and will most likely be coming to a city near you in the coming months. The event is called Fill These Hearts (FTH). FTH is a four hour long info-concert, centered around beauty, art, music, philosophical teachings on the “Theology of the Body” and an all around incredible night that will open eyes and win hearts.  Christopher West and Mike Mangione & The Union Band will present an awesome night that is sure to please.

I don’t promote every event that comes along, but want to promote this event for a few reasons:

1. Everyone needs to hear, learn and live the Church’s beliefs found in Theology of the Body.  (Christopher West makes these teachings/principles livable, relevant and understandable.)
2. Men, especially, enjoy visually stimulating images.  This event has that.  This event is great for men of all ages and for men at every stage along a faith journey. 
3. Beauty, in our society, has been so distorted.  Christopher and the rest of the FTH team are diligently working to win back beauty.   Beauty raises our hearts and our minds to God, the source of all true beauty.
4. Theology of the Body has converted hearts, won over marriages, encouraged births, saved men from pornography and many other wonderful things.  Theology of the Body is not just a set of teachings but is a way of life. 

I highly encourage everyone to get to the next Fill These Hearts event that is in your area.  For more info, or to buy tickets, go to the FTH website at http://fillthesehearts.com/.  (Check out the trailer on the TrueManhood.com Home page.)

TrueMan up!

Outraged, and Rightly So

People in Helena, Montana (as well as all around the country) are outraged at a proposed health and sex-ed curriculum that the district wants to implement into the public school system.  The curriculum is a Kindergarten-12th Grade program, teaching children various information on both health and sexuality.  The outrage comes, most specifically, from the topics on sex, sexual orientation, sex positions, intercourse and so on.  (Do a Google search of the topic and you will get plenty of articles, video, opinions and information.)  Here’s a brief 0:45 second video depicting what the children will learn at various ages along the way.

If you can’t view the video, click HERE.

The outrage that I have is against the logic of the school board, superintendent and the, so-called, professionals that wrote this curriculum over the past two years.  They believe that you need to teach kids about sex so that they can make more informed decisions about it – yes, that includes 5-year old kindergarteners.  What faulty logic!  This is similar  to the faulty argument (typically about third-world countries in Africa) that HIV-AIDS will decrease with the distribution of condoms.  Or the faulty argument that abortions will decrease with more-effective (oxymoron) birth control.  One way to prevent adolescent sexual behavior (and to get rid of HIV and abortion, and so on) is not to mask it, or try to skirt the issue.  The truth is that abstinence must be taught, as opposed to shunned.  Just because someone hasn’t had sex before marriage doesn’t mean that they’re any less human than anyone who has.  The truth of sexuality must be taught, embraced, lived and then we’ll start to see the changes. 

In one report I saw, the reporter mentioned that high schoolers will view and discuss “erotic art”.  WHAT?!  They’re going to give children pornography and water it down by calling it art.  Absolutely disgusting.  They have no idea how detrimental this curriculum will be if implemented.  And why do 10-year olds need to know about sexual positions?

The proper logic is to teach children about the sanctity of human sexuality and to do it in the home.  This means that the education is up to the parents, to not only teach verbally, but to live out, through chastity, the proper, intended and ordered gift of the marital act.  Sex-ed can’t be about depravity, about making sex ‘dirty’ or about preventing adolescents from knowing about sex… but too much info will destroy their innocence and distort their understanding.  Sex-ed in the model proposed by the Helena School District lacks truth and will only continue to distort the proper orientation of sex in the world.  Sex is reserved for a married man and his wife; any other definition of human sexuality is disordered.

I’ve heard other stories about kindergarten sex-ed programs in public schools teaching about homosexual sex, but never in this much detail.  It’s quite disturbing and unnerving.  If you live in Helena, please speak up and do something about this.  If you don’t, but still care to see changes for good take place, check out the local curriculum in your neighborhood’s public schools – you might be surprised what you find.

TrueMan up!

Celebrity Infidelity Scandals Linked to Pornography?

Here’s my latest article from iibloom.com…

There has been a great deal of drama in the tabloid news lately about celebrities engaging in infidelity. Almost every show, whether it be on cable, radio or online, has at least mentioned these stories, namely the Tiger Woods saga and the Jesse James saga. Society is caught up in the drama, wanting to know each and every piece to the puzzle. Society is enamored by the infidelity of these men, men who have an incredible scope of influence. 

The interesting aspect to these stories is that these men seemed to “have it all,” yet they show us that they are incredibly empty inside. These men had power, influence, riches, everything and anything money could buy, respected corporate endorsements, celebrity status, beautiful children and incredible wives; what was missing that they had to act out in sexual infidelity? I will venture a possible scenario: could it be that these men have/had an addiction to pornography? This assertion may seem off-base and farfetched at first glance, so please allow me to explain.

When a man has an addiction to pornography, his body becomes programmed to search out the next sexual-fix, similar to someone who is addicted to a chemical drug. As this man continues to ascertain more and more fixes, he becomes desensitized to “the little things” and desires more and more, lowering his guard and accepting acts, thoughts and/or fantasies that he may once have been opposed to. The only way to fulfill these desires is to act on them, which may lead to promiscuity, secrecy, infidelity and increased sexual behavior. At the heart of an addiction to pornography is selfishness, a selfishness that disregards responsibility, relationships and ultimately, God. Could it be, then, that Tiger and Jesse were involved in the use of pornography leading up to and during their marriages, which includes their sexual exploits?

It’s not the same for every man…

Simply being a celebrity does not mean that someone is a good role model. So often in society, the media portrays men and women of celebrity stature to be role models. The portrayal seemingly stems from their time in the limelight. If people are interested in you, then obviously you are qualified to be a role model. (Wrong.) The more someone is discussed on TMZ, Extra or YouTube, the more their proverbial stock rises. A celebrity’s stock may rise because they just won an award for a great role in a movie, or because they were just awarded MVP of their sport, or possibly because of a charity event they sponsored that raised money for a worthy cause. However, a celebrity’s stock may also rise if they’ve been arrested, are getting a divorce or have just entered “rehab.”

The scope of influence that a celebrity has, especially celebrities like Tiger Woods and Jesse James, is astronomical. Young children, and even grown men, alter their lifestyles to be more like these kinds of guys, all because their lifestyles look glamorous. When the glamour fades away, and the truth is exposed, we see clearly the emptiness and hurt that remains.

The Female Version of Cultural Manliness

Have you seen the trailer for the upcoming [atrocity] “Sex and the City 2”?  I’ve unfortunately seen the trailer 3 or 4 times now andhave been more and more disgusted by it every time.  I can proudly say that I haven’t seen the first movie (although I know it did really well at the box office) and I never intend to watch it.  The trailer, as well as the name of the movie/show, tells me plenty.  What it tells me is that the characters in the movie are out for, what I’m going to refer to as, “Cultural Femininity”.  For those who may not know, I use a term coined “Cultural Manliness” to describe the world’s view of manliness… that the more power, money, sex and stuff a male has, the more manly he is.  On all levels, I tear this idea down, showing that it is riddled with emptiness, loneliness, despair and sorrow.  The same goes for “Cultural Femininity”.

The trailer depicts the characters in the movie gallivanting around the world, searching for meaningless sex, pleasure and anything else that seems ‘fun’.  The trailer attempts to glorify promiscuity, drunkenness, infidelity, homosexuality and the glamor and allure of money.  A tag line used in the trailer says “Discover how much fun forbidden can be.”  The trailer tells me that many people (women and men) will have their view of marriage ‘shaken up’ a bit… which is most definitely not needed in our culture.  The four women in the movie are female versions of “cultural manliness”.  In the same way that “cultural manliness” ends in emptiness, loneliness, despair and sorrow, so too does “cultural femininity.”

Movies like this make this behavior seem ‘normal’, as if ‘everyone is doing it’, and in fact, many people live like this.  Movies like this degrade women, encourage all the poor behavior mentioned above and highly encourage men to be “culturally manly”.  It really is a shame.

TrueMan up!

Fighting Cultural Manliness

Society makes suggestions to us, either directly or indirectly, about what’s manly and what’s not.  Typically, society paints a picture that “cultural manliness” stems from all or part of the following: POWER, MONEY, SEX and STUFF.  Society calls a man who possesses these things a “real man”.  Separately, and in the right context, these attributes are wonderful, and add nicely to life.  When used out of context, they can become disastrous.  If a male possesses one (or more) of these attributes, than he automatically racks up points on an invisible ‘man scale’.  A given amount of points on the cultural manliness scale doesn’t necessarily gain a guy anything, and it’s not like he can cash those points in for anything tangible.  Nor is this something that guys sit around and discuss, it just sort of “is”.  It comes from movies and music, tv and the internet.  It’s the machismo mindset.  However, because of the picture that is painted, a man with lots of points is (for whatever reason) elevated to a higher level than a regular Joe.  As this happens, men being elevated and esteemed for what they possess and/or what they have done, other men desire to emulate these “real men” and therefore, “get what he has and do what he’s done.”  Other men begin to shoot for power, money, sex and stuff, instead of what really determines what manliness is.

What is real manliness???  Or, in our case, TrueManhood??? If real manliness isn’t power, money, sex and stuff, what is it?  Where can we find out?  What can we do to become really manly?  Well, we’re given lots of great examples throughout history of what NOT to do and what’s NOT really manly.  Where do we go to find good examples?  I’d like to point to a few perfect examples of what manliness is using three Biblical characters.

1. After a storied youth, this man fell away from God and screwed up royally.  He engaged in sins of the flesh which led to men dying and problems for others around him.  However, instead of remaining lazy and indifferent, he heeded the words of his dear friend and decided to better himself and devoted his life to serving, honoring and praising God.  He became faithful, prayerful and humble.  He set an example of great virtue for others to see.  He, like us, sinned – but repented, asking for forgiveness and continue to grow in holiness.

2. This man was wronged at an early age.  After spending many years in confinement for crimes he hadn’t committed, he rose in the ranks and eventually became the king’s trusted advisor.  Instead of taking vengeance on the men who wronged him, he chose love, honor and service.  This man was a humble and faithful servant to God, never losing his foundation of prayer, trust and faith.  An incredible witness of how to work through hardships.

3. This man was given, quite possibly, the hardest task a human father could be given.  He was asked to take on a role that no other father had ever been asked to do, but he readily accepted and because he was a virtuous man, he succeeded in this difficult task.  Because he trusted God (and His messenger), this man remained faithful and obedient.  Due to his successful job-well-done, all men have a perfect example of what it means to be a chaste husband, a loving father and a hard worker.

What is TrueManhood?  From these three examples, we see a theme: these three men were virtuous.  Their virtue (especially their theological virtue of faith) allowed them to persevere and to continue to serve God.

The idea of cultural manliness is that, as you accumulate more wealth, as you sleep with more women, as you buy more stuff and as your power “ranking” goes up, the more manly you are.  Cultural manliness never takes into account your virtue, your faith, your relationship with God and/or others, how you treat your wife, children, family, friends, strangers, etc.  Cultural manliness is a facade, a lie, a demeaning and empty way of living.  The glamour of being a “culturally manly” man will wear off in time.  How many people will a culturally manly man hurt along the way?

I call this cultural manliness for a reason, a simple reason.  The culture is expressing the thought that everyone, man or woman, is in this world on their own, free to make up their own truth, free to generate their own spirituality from within.  A man simply goes after what he wants, and his list of wants comes from what gives him pleasure.  Seeking pleasure is what drives his actions and pleasure is often the only motive behind actions.

The Biblical characters described above are, in order: King David, Joseph of the Old Testament and St. Joseph, Patron Saint of Fathers and Workers.

Examples Are All Around

There are examples of what not to do all around us.  The idea of cultural manliness (this ideology that the more money, power, sex and stuff I have, the more manly I’ll be) is completely absurd.  This idea is rampant, yet many times, we’re so desensitized to its ugly face, that we hardly even notice it.  I noticed it today…  I snagged this post from Facebook today.  It’s quite simple, and best explained directly from the picture.  Please note, my red circular marks direct your attention to the parts that are most important, and quite honestly, most appalling.

I’m not sure if this guy just wants to fit in or what, but his comment is ridiculous and the words written in the description are horrible too.  See for yourself.

Man up!

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