“To be a Christian, a man must pick up his masculinity—not lay it down,” according to the book, It’s Good to be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity. “The real dilemma is not between spirit and body, but between sin’s corruption of our sexuality and God’s original design.”
“Our sexuality is an essential part of our nature, so much so that a man can be masculine without being virtuous, but he cannot be virtuous without being masculine,” so says co-author Michael Foster, the pastor of East River Church in Batavia, Ohio.
“The Christian man embraces his sexuality as a good gift from God, and rejects the corruption of this gift by sin,” the book reveals. “But the only way to embrace any gift from God is through Jesus Christ.”
“The only way to receive good things from Him is through the power of His gospel.
Regaining true manhood is therefore something only possible through the gospel of God’s free grace.
As Herman Bavinck put it, ‘Grace serves, not to take up humans into a supernatural order, but to free them from sin. Grace is opposed not to nature, only to sin. . . . Grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle.’”
• Virtuous masculinity is rising.
• Men are submitting to God.
• They’re taking responsibility for themselves.
•They’re pursuing skills, building habits, & being productive.
• They’re getting married & having children.
• They are leading their homes with boldness & grace.
“How did churches get so overly feminized (remember churches are for men and women)? A big part of it is that they got overran by “white knights” or “nice guys,” Foster asks and explains.
“What do I mean by these descriptors (they aren’t intended to be mere pejoratives)?” he goes on. “We explained here…”
A “white knight” is a kind of “nice guy”—one who derives his value specifically from defending damsels in distress from dragons. White knights are willing to engage in a fantasy to achieve this—imagining evil women to be damsels, and good men to be dragons.
As secular psychologist Robert Glover puts it in No More Mr. Nice Guy, “Just about everything a Nice Guy does is consciously or unconsciously calculated to gain someone’s approval or to avoid disapproval.”
For a white knight, that someone is usually a woman. His desire for female validation is often pursued irrespective of a woman’s character, because he assumes that women are of a higher and purer spiritual nature than men.
If you ask him in what ways women especially sin that men don’t, he will seldom have an answer—but often be scandalized by the question.
The effect that white-knight pastors have on “men’s men” has been ably summarized by Spurgeon above—they will not talk like men, and so they will not win men.”
“The future of the church is inseparably tied up with the spiritual well-being of young men,” Foster said. “Alienating them is foolish.”
“You must win their hearts without pandering to the lusts and flourishes of youth,” he added. “I’m so thankful for the older men who poured into me when I was young and wild.”
☆☆☆☆☆
IN GOD WE TRUST
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CINDY LEAL MASSEY, TEXAS AUTHOR
Clever Journeys 
Oh yes!! Really good. And that white knight syndrome is precisely why so many in the church have a problem with Donald Trump. He’s definitely had his wild times, but in God’s hands, the man is turning into a true man of God. A lion who won’t back down. We can’t do without real men; we need you guys.
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What a great article. My 2 top mentors as a man are John Wayne and George Patton. They are true scholars of Gods masculinity!
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Could not have picked two better representatives than those two.
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