Answer Like a Man
Stop Letting the Feminists Write“How to be a Real Man” Books.
Job 38:1-3
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:
“Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.
There is a lucrative industry of books purporting to teach young men “how to be a real man.” This is, of course, a conservative response to decades of feminist corruption, an attempt to counteract the moral and cultural collapse that has left so many young men adrift. It also fills the need left empty by absentee fathers and grandfathers. Young men must be taught how to do things and led by example—by mature men of skill and faith.
And yet, my perusal of these books suggests that they largely miss the mark. They fail in three key ways: They allow feminists to choose the battlefield by reducing the question to “gender.” They repeat feminist caricatures of masculinity and then try to defend those. They fail to identify and cultivate what actually distinguishes a man as a man as the basis for human dignity.
This is true whether the book comes from a self-styled conservative like Jordan Peterson or a well-meaning Christian pastor. The common theme is that a man should be able to work with his hands, provide for his family, and protect those he loves. None of these things are wrong. In fact, they are good and necessary. But they are also insufficient. If we are not careful, this kind of manhood—one centered on mere competence and provision—becomes a rehashed version of the very thing that feminists rebelled against in the first place.
After all, mid-century men also worked with their hands, built homes, provided for their families, and fought wars. But those things alone did not prevent the feminist revolt. The problem wasn’t that men failed to lift heavy objects or master the art of grilling a steak—it was that they lost sight of the one thing that truly distinguishes a man from an animal.
The Feminist Revolt as a Judgment
Feminism, for all its destructiveness, is a reaction to something real: the meaninglessness of a life reduced to fideism, skill, and toil without purpose. A life of fideism—that is, one that touts hard work and virtue while failing to provide a compelling reason for why these things matter—is an empty life. Animals can be skillful. Working with one’s hands is not essentially human. Even tradition, when passed down mechanically, can become a hollow ritual rather than a source of wisdom.
Feminism, at its core, issued a challenge: Prove it. Prove that this life of labor and virtue has meaning. Prove that it is worth embracing. Because, to many women, it looked miserable. And when the response was merely “It just is,” or worse, “Because the Bible says so, therefore just do it,” this was not only a fallacious answer but also a dehumanizing one.
Following up by saying, “If you don’t do this, things will get even worse,” and then pointing to collapse and saying, “See, I told you,” doesn’t prove anything. If it had no meaning, then it is worth letting it collapse. The collapse itself proves nothing. Women, as half of mankind, share the need for meaning, purpose, and a life that makes sense.
The feminist challenge persists because the failure to provide a compelling, uniquely human answer persists. R.C. Sproul once illustrated this problem in an exchange with an elementary school principal. The principal proudly explained that students were learning many skills. Sproul asked, “What is the purpose of learning these skills?” The principal responded, “To prepare them for higher-level skills.” Sproul pressed further: “And what is the purpose of learning those skills?” “To get a job,” the principal answered. And what is the purpose of getting a job? The empty answers continued, and the principal never got it.
At no point was there an answer beyond that because that’s what we do for the next step. The same question that Sproul asked of education, feminism has asked of traditional gender roles. Why? Why should a man work hard, protect, and provide? Why should a woman embrace motherhood, nurture, and assist? If the only answer is “because tradition” or “because the Bible says so,” it is no wonder that many rejected it. The problem wasn’t necessarily that men were failing at provision or protection; it was that they had lost the ability to articulate why those things matter in the first place in order to provide meaning to their families.
The True Distinction: Understanding
What distinguishes a man and gives him human dignity is his ability to understand. You will notice that I am using “man” in the universal sense–the universal man of Adam. This is what separated Adam from the animals. The animals, however skillful, cannot know their Creator. Adam, however, was given dominion—not simply in the sense of physical rule over creation but in the capacity to understand creation and what it reveals about its Creator.
Adam’s role cannot be reduced to physical rule but was primarily to understand and find the meaning in creation. He was to instruct his wife in the truth of God’s command. But when Eve repeated the prohibition about the tree of knowledge, she added something that was not part of the original command—and in doing so, got it wrong. Was this because Adam failed to teach her properly? The first responsibility of being a man, in the true and full sense, is to understand the basics of reality and to communicate that understanding so that his family and society find meaning in life.
This is why, when God challenges Job to “be a man,” He does not tell him to build something, fight something, or protect something. He tells him to answer. “Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall make it known to me” (Job 38:3). This is a uniquely human ability—to respond, to give an account, to recognize what is eternal and what is not. And God’s questioning of Job begins here: Who is eternal? Who has existed from the beginning? Job should have known and been able to demonstrate that only God is eternal, that everything else is created by God to reveal his glory.
From there, God presses Job further—does he understand the creation? Has he comprehended the order of the world? In the end, Job repents, confessing that although he had heard of God, he had not truly seen Him as he should have. His failure was not one of insufficient toil, strength, or provision—it was a failure to know God as he ought. That means he had also failed to teach this to his wife and children.
Not one of today’s books on masculinity begins here. Nor do many men, when responding to feminism, begin at this point. And yet, if there is any true answer to the feminist challenge—if there is any real restoration of masculinity—it must start with the knowledge of God.
I am not suggesting that if a feminist were given a sound argument about the purpose of life in knowing God, she would immediately convert. But it would be enough to silence her objections. God permitted feminism as a challenge that has exposed the failures of men to seek and know him for their meaning.
The only real answer to the crisis of masculinity is not in recovering some vague ideal of “manhood” focusing on the will and strength but emptied of cognitive meaning. It must be in recovering the knowledge of our Creator. That is our chief end. And it is about time for men to be real men by demonstrating it. Men must do this for their own meaning and to be able to teach their families thus protecting them from the unbelief of the world.
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