True Manhood: Holiness, Worldliness, MMA and Fight Club

Who gets to define true manliness for us, God or the world?  To hear some younger and more cutting-edge evangelical leaders speak, true manhood is seen in the ring of Mixed Martial Arts, and the ultimate guide to manliness is the movie Fight Club. 

Twenty years ago, if you had said that evangelical pastors who claim to preach God's word would encourage Godly manliness by sprinkling their sermons with positive references to Mixed Martial Arts and Fight Club, no one would have believed it.  While I very much support the need for the church to recapture a robust vision of manliness, I think we need to look to the Bible, and especially to Jesus, for guidance in true God-honoring manliness. 

For those of you who are not as familiar with what I'm talking about, Fight Club is a movie in which young men gather in secret to pound on each other in bare-knuckles, no-holds-barred brawling.  The young men who fight in the Fight Club are mostly college-educated professionals.  Just to give you more of a sense of the movie's flavor, here's what PluggedIn Online says about it - "For nearly two and a half hours, Fight Club pummels audiences with brutal violence. There's explicit, callous sexuality. Nudity. Alcohol. Obscene language (over 60 f-words). But the greatest threat to young viewers may be its portrayal of self-inflicted pain as a worthy high. Teen idol Pitt fights, blows things up, brands a man with acid and crashes into another car ... for thrills. Even putting a gun in one's mouth and pulling the trigger adopts a glamorous veneer."

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church loves Fight Club.  The "cussing pastor," as he used to be known in some circles (that's actually an old label from 10 years ago; Mark Driscoll does not curse any more), likes to preach about oral sex and has suggested that married couples install stripper poles in their bedrooms.  In a New York Times profile piece from 2009, the Times said, "At Mars Hill, members say their favorite movie isn’t “Amazing Grace” or “The Chronicles of Narnia” — it’s “Fight Club.”  Now, I've seen both Amazing Grace and The Chronicles of Narnia and I find William Wilberforce, John Newton and Peter the High King to all be admirable models of manliness.  I have not seen Fight Club, nor do I wish to.  It does not sound like the kind of movie I need to spend time watching once, much less again and again.  (Good friends of mine have tried to convince me that Fight Club has an insightful critique of our materialistic culture, but other movies do, too, without so much dung in them.)

Mixed Martial Arts is quickly becoming one of the most popular sports among men in America, replacing boxing for those men who look to sports to fill their need for bloody violence.  MMA is a "full contact combat sport" in which men fight each other, usually to a bloody conclusion in which one fighter submits to the other or is rendered unconscious by the hitting or choking of his opponent.  Many of the new wave of "manly evangelicals" love MMA.  I don't.  I think it' a barbaric step backward for our civilization.  I don't derive entertainment value from watching men beat the snot out of each other.  Mark Driscoll says, "I don't think there's anything purer than two men in a cage . . . seeing which one is better." (see video here)

Driscoll and those of his ilk think that MMA and Fight Club are what make men men, that they are legitimate and healthy expressions of creational masculinity.  But as I said already, I think we need to let Jesus and the Bible define masculinity for us and not the world. 

Jesus was the truest and best man that ever walked the face of the earth and he didn't get in a cage match to beat some guy into a bloody pulp to prove it.  He healed and taught us love and to heal.  His disciples did not train to be the best gladiators, though I'm sure that if Mark Driscoll were an early church leader, he would've led the procession to the Coliseum each afternoon.  Nothing more pure than two men beating the stuffing out of each other, right?

These are just cheap and immature definitions of manliness.  Real men stand for truth when it is not popular.  Real men fight against their lusts and passions to protect the purity of women and honor their wives.  Real men defend the weak and innocent. (There's nothing more manly than being pro-life, defending the unprotected unborn.)  Real men fight for justice against human trafficking and the oppression of women and girls.  (Gary Haugen - There's a real man!)

Fighting may provide a powerful metaphor for the Christian life.  We are engaged in a struggle, but not against flesh and blood. (Eph. 6:12)  We are in a fight and we do need to engage in full contact combat, but not to injure and incapacitate another human being made in God's image.


This is not intended as a sweeping condemnation of Mark Driscoll. I am just afraid that some of his followers, as well as many others in the young evangelical community with no connection to Driscoll, think the vitality of the Godly man is found in sex (with his wife), beer and watching MMA fights and violent movies.  

The feminization of the church is a problem.  If our Christianity is weak and feminine, then it is not authentic, Biblical Christianity.  But the solution to feminization is not to embrace a worldly machismo attitude of senseless violence.  Real manhood is not found in sex and violence.  Jesus was a virgin who did not fight those who came to arrest Him, yet no one was ever more manly.  Let's let the Bible define manliness for us, please.  The world is not our model for Christ-like living, not in this or in any other area of life.      


(On a much better note, here is Mark Driscoll criticizing Avatar and the worldliness of Christianity today.  Mark Driscoll does have much good to say.  Several of my friends enjoy and benefit from his sermons.)