One of the great tragedies of our times has been the demise of morality and consequently the demise of manhood. When these important principles die, the remaining estate of morality and manhood throughout the world lies in complete ruin.
There are several approaches that could be taken concerning the demise of morality, but we want to carefully and honorably approach this burden from the standpoint of its effect on manhood. America has been tampering with the biblical governing ethics of morality for such a long time that we have descended into an estate filled with debauchery and “strange flesh.” America’s moral legacy is bankrupt. The moral chart and compass has been destroyed, and we are found drifting from one fleshly novelty to another, taking us deeper and deeper into a cesspool of filth and stench.
Christ warned us that His coming would be a time like the days of Noah and Lot. In both situations their generation’s deep immorality had become the norm. In days of Noah the immorality abounded between the genders of male and female where all conceivable sins were explored. The mind and thought of humanity was drawn to the physical rather than to the spiritual or mystical. Christ calls attention particularly to the cities with which Lot had become identified, where the master sin was male with male, the sin of sodomy (or the more contemporary term homosexuality). The apostle Paul addresses this evil sin in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 5 and 6. Jude in his epistle calls it “strange flesh” (verse 7). How will these powerful sins of the flesh come into play in the End Time? In all of these paradigm shifts, we are witnessing the demise of the morals of young men that inherently are destroying in them the reality of true manhood.
The Redefining of Morality
Perhaps we need to define the word morality both in its definitive context and what it has come to mean in the postmodern context. The Father of American Education, Noah Webster, defined morality in his dictionary published in 1828:
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; conformity implies that the act must be performed by a free agent, and from a motive of obedience to the divine law. Virtuously, honest according to the rules of the divine law.
In contrast, also note the definition of morality in the World Book Dictionary by Thorndike-Barnhart (1980):
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.
It is evident that this last entry offers a change to the definition of morality based upon the present society, which has become the definer of right and wrong. As society degenerates, so does its definition of morality.
One of the great problems concerning morality and moral behavior in various contexts is its influence upon our ethics. Does who or what one believes determine the principles of right and wrong? According to the Christian worldview, morality is exclusively based upon God’s absolute and unchanging moral nature; 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 upon which a completely unambiguous ethic must be built for man to live by. Therefore, ethical relativism will always lead to destruction:
Christian ethics is inseparable from the theology of Scripture for the simple reason that Christian ethics is grounded in the character of God. Therefore, the Word of God must be the absolute standard of both our ethics and worldview. Rather than believing in some ethical scheme that is 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 (Rom. 1) and special revelation of the Bible, which includes the person of Jesus Christ. This standard must never change; our standards of living are not found within ourselves but in the objective Word of the lawgiver, God Himself.
The demise of morality in our present age is a direct consequence of our global society’s common consensus of boldly denouncing God and His Word. Men have chosen to partake of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for themselves. They have unashamedly and intelligently entered into the belief that they are God and have a right to become their own fountain of judgment; they alone declare the authority to choose what is right and wrong. The lawgiver is no longer God in heaven (with the gift of His written Word); man has taken the place of God in the judgment of right and wrong. The world has brought the demise of God as the judge of morality; in His place they have set a new estate of so-called morality. This estate has become one of no right or wrong, no true or false, and no good or evil. Although the world now believes there is no such thing as absolute truth, they do not hesitate to denounce anyone who would use any authority to define truth or impose upon others his idea of what is morally right and wrong. Dare we wonder why the world is being forced into accepting the voice of naturalism and evolution rather than God and creation? They have created in their thinking that this will be a world of the natural man without God. They have crowded God out of the thinking of their minds.
Flowing out of this self-appointed Godhood by man is the growing belief that intimate relationships can be in any realm where man desires to pursue his pleasure. And mutating out of this is that man has the right to destroy everything that goes back to God. For man has the right to create his own reality. And if God does exist (he or she, or a non-gender god), He certainly has nothing to say about what we should believe or how we should live. All principles that are expressed are preferences and only preferences.
Out of the multitude of denunciations against God found in the End Time, mankind is still either male or female in the moral realm of the genders. However, more and more the insanity of man declares that each individual has the right to believe what he wants to believe about himself/herself rather than how he or she was born. In a postmodern, existential world, an individual can believe what he wants to believe; that thought becomes truth to him, her, or “it.” Therefore, the Bible must not only be condemned but also eradicated. Its male or female premise is decidedly absolute. Such insanity declares that all have a right to choose a transgender humanity despite every child being born with only xx or xy chromosomes. This has now become the battleground. The sexual appearance may be one thing, but the individual may be the opposite. It is the responsibility of the medical world to accommodate and correlate the outward appearance to the inward existential belief of the individual.
The Bible Christian believes that God created male and female, and physiologically and scientifically, there can be no other genders. Human chromosomes are either xx (female) or xy (male). There is no other natural identity of gender; there is no transgender existence. Whatever the medical world may do to change body functions and appearances, the genetic reality of an individual can never be altered; the physical body still cries out at birth—male or female.
The Folly of Changing God’s Appointment
Transgenderism is a mind-manipulated, existential world of existence and irrationality being forced upon us to not only accept but also to believe. The theory of evolution gives credence to an immense abundance of time, random choice by chance, and adaptation to environment that collectively brings about all that is in nature, including man. Now man believes he has come to a season in these 4.6 billion years of existence whereby he can enable himself to be his own creator. Man now thinks he can slip into the driver’s seat of evolution and through technology, science, and medicine create and make the choice of what he wants to be, even on the other side of his birth. What end-time giants will rise as the product of this obsession of man to make himself whatever he wants to be without the interference of God? Anything outside of God and His providence will be personal suicide. To dare denounce what God has made and to cut off God from the reality of that person will be the demise of an estate that will end in grotesque and destructive darkness. Transgenderism is a purely cultural construction, and it will be the sealing of the demise of humanity. For the sheer survival of the human race, this is why the coming of the Lord will be an absolute necessity. Mankind is now capable of destroying his existence.
It is evident that the demise we have witnessed has gone beyond individual preference; there is an aversion to the truth of gender that is being forced upon the world to not only accept but also to agree with. In 1987, American philosopher Allan Bloom (1930–1992) wrote a book entitled The Closing of the American Mind. In this work he 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 fifty 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.
Mr. Bloom in his book argued that universities no longer taught students how to think. It is evident he believed the schools were advocating the presupposition that students should be unconcerned about the lessons of the past or about examining ideas in a historical context.
Man has moved away from the conviction that everyone has a right to his own opinions to the belief that every opinion is equally right and true. With all this floating mass of modern thinking ing, there has been for the past fifty years a growing hatred and myth in America about boys, mainly through the agenda of the feminists who seek to destroy the hope of boys growing up to be men and girls growing up to be young ladies. Truly in America today, amidst its fragmented islands of thought and resultant life being lived, we have come to an illusory world that believes girls would make better men and robust boys should be sedated to feminine qualities. Christina Hoff Sommers (who views herself as a philosopher and author) declared in her book The War Against Boys that the feminist movement has brought harm to our young men in America:
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.
She continues in her book to uncover the distortion and the burying of truth concerning manhood versus womanhood. False statistics (so often concocted by liberals) are suggesting that girls are diminishing in so many areas; therefore, boys need to be taken “down a notch” and reduced in importance. But this presupposition is not true, for Ms. Sommers reveals that the US Department of Education proves girls make higher grades than boys, and girls now outnumber boys in student government, honor societies, and many other areas. It is only in sports that the boys are still ahead. It is evident that more boys than girls are involved in crime, alcohol, and drugs; but surprisingly girls attempt suicide more than boys; yet, more often it is boys who succeed in taking their lives.
Needless to say, we are not in a girl-crisis climate as we are being told by the politically correct; we are actually in a boy-crisis climate that is being covered up by the woke and feminist movements. We tend to believe that this is simply because boys are boys, and that we should not push them to do better. But we must remember that it is both the moral and political climate in which we live. Boys are becoming more ignorant, and this is what the feminists want. We have not pushed boys in discipline as we have girls. And until boys’ problems are acknowledged, they will never be addressed in our homes.
The so-called gender theorists are telling us that boys and men are dangerous to society, unless they are socialized away from what history has taught as “conventional maleness.” While it may be too late (they say) to change adult men, boys need to be reconstructed to be more like girls. Or as the prominent feminist leader Gloria Steinem declared, “We badly need to raise boys more like we raise girls.”
Oh, dear Christian, do we see the powers of the age pushing for transgenderism: for boys to become girls and girls to become boys? We certainly may be against the medical involvement in both drugs and surgery, but how are we raising our boys at home? Do we expect more out of the girls than we do the boys? Do we cover up for the girls, or even have the sisters to cover up for the weaknesses of their brothers? Does the mother tend to cover up for the husband, or deceptively deal with him? We are witnessing a reversal of roles being pressed in schools, with teachers encouraging boys to dress up as girls in the classroom without telling the parents. The powers of lesbianism are radically becoming the personality authorities in every context of leadership from Washington to corporations, school teachers, media personalities, the movie industry, and even the leadership of denominational Christianity. Men are looking more effeminate while women are seeking a more masculine appearance. Body piercings have brought manhood down, promoting more and more the seduction of homosexuality among men. Sad to say, these powers of influence are marking boys at younger and younger ages. All of this has affected the genre of music and church leadership; even preaching in churches today has become effeminate or watered down into simply “teaching.” It is now rare to hear a strong-voiced preacher behind a pulpit. The world is wanting a “softer” voice in preaching and singing, and what they would call “non-offensive,” “non-authoritative.” As the men become “nice and sweet,” the women behind the scenes are becoming the more aggressive voices even in the pulpits and pastorates. The move for co-pastors of husband and wife has been the religious vogue for several years now.
Where Are the Men?
Yes, where are the men? Where are biblical husbands and biblical wives in the biblically portrayed, appointed roles? Where are the young men who are heads of their homes, strong in their character, and masculine in their living? We cry out, “Let our boys be boys and our girls be girls, yet without sinning!” The next generation will be lost if our boys do not become men in leadership and our girls do not become adornments in modesty and submissiveness. We are at the hour of the role reversals both of genders and of what God intended in the home and in the church.
Note the words of David to young Solomon in 1 Kings 2:1:
One wonders in the life of Solomon if he was a young man who tended to be under his mother while his brothers were naturally more masculine though away from God. Solomon finally succumbed to women and never regained his manliness.
In days of the demise of morality and manhood, “How should we then live?” How does a boy become a man? Perhaps there are several areas that are needed for a boy to become a man.
The first area is spiritual. This burden is seen in Hebrews 5:11–14. The young Christian man must become strong in faith and character. He must come to full age by reason of use in discerning both good and evil. He must come to strength for life and living for his home and leadership. Many who are men in years have not come to this mature faith in manhood. They are given to pleasure and fun and enjoyment rather than responsibilities in life.
The second area is mental. One of the reasons young boys and young girls do not grow up is that they have never come to sound thinking. First Corinthians 13:11 reads, “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 our thought process must grow in order to become a man. What a young man thinks about himself, about his body, and about his accountability to God, his parents, and his honorable teachers is vitally important. The young man must increase in speech, which is the outflow of thought and reason. In this generation it is rare to meet a young man in his twenties who is manly in his conversation, his thought life, and in the way he carries himself. Thoughts bring forth actions, actions develop habits, habits bring forth character, and character becomes one’s destiny.
The third area is emotional. The words of Proverbs 16:32 declare, “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. How does a young man or a young lady honorably express emotion? These expressions will be evidence of either immaturity or maturity.
The fourth area is physical, the stature of man. The Bible reveals in 1 Timothy 4:8 that “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.” We certainly observe today that sports and physique are thrown upon us as markings of being manly and womanly. But the sports’ personalities of our contemporary are so immature in the living of life; they cannot communicate, and their lives tend to be a failure, especially in their marriages. It should be noted that physical activity is part of the young man’s growing; however, it is not the most important concern. Boys and girls are bodily maturing beyond their mind and emotions at this time in history. One of the main reasons for these unbalanced maturations is the deluge of sights and sounds of a sexual world that tends to cause the body to mature faster than the mind. For the Christian youth, all of these areas must be brought under the “mind of Christ,” for their lives to fall out for good, and to the glory of God.
Conclusion
Perhaps four other areas will help to answer the question “How should we then live?” For in these days of radical paradigm shifts taking place in the early grades of the primary schooling, the most impressionable years of a child must be carefully protected and constantly guarded as our little ones grow up in the worst of times.
A first area needed in becoming a man or woman is that we must learn to make right decisions. Making right decisions will strengthen the youth for later years. Always do right!
A second area needed in becoming a man or woman is to ponder often upon what one will sow into his life? Note what Galatians 6:7–9 makes clear:
What is the child establishing in his speech, behavior, desires, moods, spirit, attitudes, and thoughts?
A third area needed for consideration is who are the men or women influencing their youthful lives? A young person should have goals to become a certain kind of man or woman. The youth should admire and revere those who have already achieved that goal. They should make sure their heroes have lives worthy of that honor. Examples are important in a child’s life. We are to be warned by those who failed and encouraged by those who succeeded in a most honorable way in life. The Bible is replete with such examples in both areas. And, the greatest life is the life of our Saviour.
The final area is to pray for God to make the boy a man, and the girl a woman. Learn to talk like a man, work like a man, think like a man, and dress like a man. Be a manly boy and become a manly man. And the young girl should be trained and taught to become a feminine woman, a womanly woman.
Again, in days of the demise of morality and manhood, “How should we then live?” If we are male, let us live as a man—a man of God! And if we are female, live as a feminine woman, a woman of God!
The day will come when God will call us home to heaven with a final charge. Note David’s declaration in 1 Chronicles 29:1:
And in Proverbs 31:10 and 11,
It will take the wholeness of life as a man or as a woman in the light of these scriptural contexts. The “palace” (our life) is not for us, it is for the Lord God! May God bless spiritually our children that they may grow up to be a holy seed for God in their generation.