Christ warned us that the time of His coming would be as the days of Noah and Lot—both their generations abounded in immorality. Although the days of Noah abounded with immorality between male and female, the days of Lot were noted for the rise of immoralities between male and male. Particularly, Christ called attention to the sodomite cities with which Lot had become identified. Paul deals strongly with this great sin in Romans 1 and in 1 Corinthians 6; the epistle by Jude calls this sin “strange flesh.” In the demise of morals of the End Time, how will these powerful sins of the flesh affect the consciousness of our young men becoming true men of God?
The Concept of Morality
It is important that we define morality in both its traditional and postmodern views. In his first printed dictionary (1828), Noah Webster defined morality as follows:
The doctrine or system of moral duties, or the duties of men in the social character; their ethics. The system of morality to be gathered from the writings of ancient sages, falls very short of that delivered in the gospel. The quality of an action which renders it good; the conformity of an act to the divine law, or to the principles of rectitude; this conformity implies that the act must be performed by a free agent, and from a motive of obedience to the divine law. Virtuous, honest according to the rules of the divine law.
The World Book Encyclopedia’s companion two-volume dictionary by Thorndike-Barnhart also defines morality:
The relative right or wrong of an action. Good in character or conduct; virtuous according to civilized standards of right and wrong; proper in sexual relations, not lewd, but virtuous; principles or habits or behavior with respect to right or wrong conduct. Moral refers to the customary rules and accepted standards of society.
In the field of ethics, one of the great problems regarding morality and moral behavior concerns who or what we believe determines the principles respecting right and wrong? According to the Christian worldview, morality is exclusively based upon God’s moral nature that is absolute and unchanging; God always hates evil and loves good. Though God is the fountain of the principles of morality and ethics, the Bible (the revelation from God) is of supreme importance because it tells us the difference between good and evil. The Bible is the framework on which a completely unambiguous standard of ethics must be built for man to live by.
In contrast, ethical relativism leads to destruction. Matthew 7:13 declares,
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.
Christian ethics is inseparable from the Christian theology of Scripture for the simple reason that Christian ethics is grounded in the character of God. Rather than believing in some ethical scheme bound to society’s ever-changing whims, the Christian worldview has a specific moral order revealed to man through both the general revelation of nature (Romans 1) as well as the special revelation of the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ.
There is no moral law without a moral lawgiver. Christians do not find their ethics in the standards of Christians; we derive our ethics from the one standard, the Bible. Our global society has entered into a corporate denouncing of God and His Word, and has chosen to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. According to man, the lawgiver is no longer God, but man himself.
The world has rejected God as the Judge Who declares what is right and wrong. This demise of God in ethics has taken morality into the possession of another estate. Now there is neither right nor wrong, true nor false, good nor evil. The world now believes there is no such thing as absolute truth. Yet, they believe the world outside of themselves is in error; for no one has the authority to define truth or impose upon others his idea of moral right and wrong. Therefore, the world is being forced to accept the voice of naturalism and evolution rather than God and Creationism.
Coming out of man’s self-appointed deification is the belief that intimate relationships can be in any realm that one desires to have his pleasure. And mutating out of this is that man has the right to destroy everything that goes back to God. Man has the right to create his own reality; and if God does exist, He certainly has no contribution to what we should believe or how we should behave. All principles are preferences, and only preferences.
Out of the multitude of man’s denunciations of God, the End Time has brought to the forefront the moral realm of the genders of male and female. Man now believes an individual has a right to believe what he wants to believe about himself/herself/itself rather than what his or her gender at birth might have been. Male and Female are decidedly absolute, but man believes he has a right to form a transgender humanity. God created male and female; physiologically and scientifically, there can be no other genders. Human chromosomes are either XX or XY; there is no other natural identity of gender, and there is no transgender existence. Whatever the medical world may do to change bodily functions and appearances, the genetic reality of an individual can never be altered. Genetics still cry out at birth that it is male or female. Transgenderism is personal suicide. It denounces God’s creation and attempts to separate man from any consciousness of the reality of God.
Beyond individual preference, there is an aversion to the truth of gender that is being forced upon the world for acceptance and agreement. Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind, stated the following:
The danger is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness, and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than 50 years has dedicated itself to teaching. Openness, and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and the various ways of life and kinds of human beings, is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. We are now being told that the study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past. Men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia [a hatred or fear of foreign persons or things], racism and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think that you are right at all.
The Destruction of the Male Gender
We have moved from the conviction that everyone has a right to his own opinions, to the notion that every opinion is an equal right. For the past twenty-five years there has been both a growing hatred and myth in America about boys through the influential agenda of the feminists to destroy the hope of boys growing up to be men. The word chauvinism came from a French word going back to the days of Napoleon. It referred to any soldier who professed an idolatrous admiration for Napoleon or an unreasonable enthusiasm for patriotism. Eventually the term became attached to the word male, whereby male Chauvinism declared that men are superior to women, an idea greatly reprehensible today.
The American educational climate is especially unfriendly for boys. Christina Hoff Sommers in The War Against Boys declared the following concerning the harm the feminist movement is bringing on our young men:
There is a war against boys in America; and as in all wars, the first casualty is truth. In the USA the truth about boys has been both distorted and buried.
Part of this distortion and burying of truth concerns manhood versus womanhood. We are continually led to believe that girls are diminishing in so many areas. To remedy this situation, the boys need to be “taken down a notch” and reduced in importance. But according to the general data from the US Department of Education in university studies, girls receive better grades, have higher educational aspirations, follow a more rigorous academic program, and participate more in the prestigious Advanced Placement (AP) programs (offering college-level courses and credits to high school students). More female than male students enroll in high-level math and science courses. Girls now outnumber boys in student government, in honor societies, on school newspapers, and even in debating clubs. Only in sports are the boys still ahead; yet, women’s groups are targeting the sports gap with a vengeance. Girls read more books; they outperform males on tests of artistic and musical ability; fewer girls than boys are suspended from school; fewer girls are held back and drop out. By the 12th grade males are four times as likely as females not to do homework. Boys are three times as likely as girls to be enrolled in special education programs, and four times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). More boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs. Girls attempt suicide more than boys, but it is boys who succeed in taking their lives more often.
In reality, we are not in a girl-crisis climate as we are being told by the politically correct. America is in a boy-crisis climate; and it is clearly evident that this crisis is being covered up. We tend to believe that this is simply because they are boys and we should not push them to do better. But it is the climate of our times; boys are becoming more ignorant and that is the way the feminists want it. We have not pushed the boys in discipline as we have the girls. Until boys’ problems are acknowledged, they cannot be addressed in our homes.
The political correctness of our times gives the false alarm through gender theorists and activists that boys and especially men are dangerous to society. It is assumed they can be made harmless if they can be socialized away from the conventional concept of “maleness.” They declare with great intensity of words that it may be too late to change adult men, but boys can be “reconstructed” to be more like girls. The atheistic feminist Gloria Steinem summarized her feminist view by saying, “We badly need to raise boys more like we raise girls.”
This concept of the need of overhauling the image of boys has been well underway for years in our country. Feminizing boys has become the solution in our country to hinder the boy from becoming a man. Reverse roles are now becoming the norm in our society. Stay-at-home dads and the rapid increase in homosexuality in the past two decades have contributed to effeminacy in men. In contrast to the re-socializing of our boys, women in lesbianism become increasingly masculine. The feminists who bring about such a role reversal of the genders believe that masculine women and effeminate men will all contribute to a safer society.
The trendsetters are forcing our sons to play with dolls, to dress and look more effeminate, become less aggressive in society. They want men to become softer, gentler, as they force the women to become the leader of the home, the community, and ultimately the nation. Body piercing and tattooing have also brought manhood down. We are even witnessing church leaders coming across softer, effeminate in their singing, and softer in their preaching. As the men become “nice” and sweet,” the women behind the scenes are becoming the more aggressive voices even in the pulpits and pastorates. For several years now the move has been to have co-pastorates of husband and wife.
Where Are the Men?
Where are the men? Where are the young men who are heads of their homes, strong in their character, and masculine in their living? Let our boys be boys, yet without sinning, and our girls be girls without sinning! But we must pray that our boys will become men for the next generation.
Note 1 Kings 2:1, 2:
Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die; and he charged Solomon his son, saying, I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man.
In 1 Chronicles 29:1 David declared,
Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great.
One wonders if Solomon was a young man who tended to be under his mother while his brothers in stature and masculinity manifested manhood. Could this have contributed to his finally succumbing to women and not retaining his manliness?
In days of the demise of morality and manhood, “How shall we then live?” How does a boy become a man? There are several areas involved in his becoming a man.
The first area is spiritual (Hebrews 5:11–14). There is the great, imperative need of our boys becoming strong in faith and character. They need to come to full age “by reason of use” in discerning good and evil. Inward strength will be imperative for life and living, for a home and leadership. Sad to say, many who are men in years have never come to this truth in manhood because they are given to pleasure, fun, and enjoyment rather than responsibility in life.
The second area is mental. One of the reasons why young boys do not grow up is because they have never come to sound thinking. Note 1 Corinthians 13:11:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Mentality and thought process must increase to become a man. What does the young man himself think about? The young man must increase in speech, the outflow of thought and reason. It is a rare thing to meet a young man in his twenties who is manly in his conversation and thought. Thoughts bring forth actions, actions develop habits, habits become your character, and character, your destiny.
The third area is emotional. We are told in Proverbs 16:32:
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.
Emotions unharnessed are a sign of immaturity, and yet one who can express his emotions with stability shows a sign of maturity.
The fourth area is the physical. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:8:
For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
Sports and body building are being thrown upon us today as “manly” or “womanly.” But many of the sports personalities today are so immature in life. They cannot communicate when interviewed, their life in the natural is a failure; most of their marriages are in shambles. The physical is certainly a part of the young man’s maturity in the natural man, but this is not all important. Boys and girls today are maturing early in body because of the emphasis on the physical; such maturity is beyond their mind and emotions. The mind must control the body.
Conclusion
But we must plead for four other areas that will have a profound effect upon a young man’s coming to manhood.
(1) Becoming a man necessitates right decisions; making right decisions now will strengthen him for later. A Christian young man must always do right, thus making the right decisions consistently.
(2) What a young man decides to sow into his life is most important. The law of Galatians 6:7, 8 is unalterable. What is the young man planting in speech, behavior, desires, attitudes, ambitions for his life?
(3) Who are the exemplary men in a young man’s life? If a young man has goals to become a certain kind of man, he will admire and revere those who have already achieved that goal.
(4) If you are a boy or young man, pray for God to make you a man. Learn to talk like a man, work like a man, think like a man, and dress like a man. Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold!
The Devil is out to destroy our sons! He knows what a young man could do for God in his living, in his prayer life, and in his preaching if God ever lays hold of his life as a layman or in a call to preach. If the Devil cannot keep a young man from coming to Christ in the New Birth, then he will endeavor to keep that young man in a lukewarm spiritual state, one of mediocrity and apathy. We must pray that God will raise up men for the next generation who will give their all to God and who will know an anointed and consecrated life to His glory.
In days of the demise of morality and manhood, “How should we then live?” Let us live as a man—a man of God.