The glory of young men is their strength,
but the splendor of old men is their gray hair.
Proverbs 20:29
I was looking forward to a nice, long weekend with my family as Labor Day approached. We talked about sleeping in, going to the zoo, hanging by the pool, or whatever else we wanted to do with our short holiday from work.
But then, on Saturday evening, the water wouldn't drain after the kids' bathtime. Then the toilets wouldn't flush. Uh-oh.
This actually wasn't the first time this had happened since we moved last summer into the house owned by my mother-in-law. Just a month and a half earlier, we had a team of plumbers working virtually all day to fix the persistent plumbing issue.
They discovered that the big beautiful tree in our front yard—the same tree that was slowly destroying our driveway from underneath—had roots that were digging into the pipes deep beneath the yard. With this latest round of plumbing headaches, we knew it was time to face the problem head-on. And that meant hard work on Labor Day.
As a child, I thought what many children think: The world runs on magic.
When I flushed my toilet, the contents within magically disappeared. When I took a shower, the soap suds mysteriously vanished into the unknown. When I turned on the tap, water just came out. I didn't know how it worked; all I knew is that it did.
Perhaps the benefits of living in our modern, mostly comfortable world allowed this mentality to follow me into the beginnings of my adulthood. But I fear some people never grow out of this. Nothing demonstrates this better than the modern feminist proclivity to assume that the world “don’t need no men."
When the toilet wouldn’t flush, the water wouldn’t drain, and no baths or showers could be had, what did my family need? Well, we needed it fixed. But how? First, we had to access the drains under our front yard and driveway to figure out what the problem was. This required renting a snake from Home Depot. The snake was very heavy, the coil was difficult to wrangle, and—once we found the problem—we had to fight a bit to get the clog out. Once we realized that the clog was caused by roots, what did we do next? Well, we dug out the pipes. But how do you do that? Well, that requires moving the obstacles between you and the pipes. In this case, that means a cement driveway and lots and lots of earth.
This is difficult work.
Even with how amazing modern machines are when it comes to smashing and digging up the ground, there’s still a good amount of it that has to be done by hand. This involved taking a pickaxe and cracking through compacted gravel, hoisting up scoop after scoop of 3-inch rock and clay with a shovel, and trying to figure out how to use maximum force without potentially hitting a pipe or one of the many wires or gas lines that run through the ground as well.
When we told our mother-in-law about the plumbing problem, she immediately asked her husband to help lead this project. There’s a reason why her husband called his friends to help. There’s a reason why it took five men to get the job done.
We didn’t call the wives of those men. We didn’t look for a team of women to go out there and do it. Nor should we have! For all the amazing things God created women to do, they were not designed for this type of labor. Even if they struggled through, it would take them much longer and they would encounter far greater difficulty throughout the process.
Can you imagine how backward it would be for a group of men to sit inside while their wives spent hours busting up concrete, throwing that concrete into a bucket, and lifting the bucket into a dump truck? If the men played with the kids while their wives took pickaxes and dug into the earth, cutting through tree roots, gravel, and thick clay? Can you imagine a group of women shoveling dirt 6 or 7 feet underground while their husbands worked inside? Of course not!
The only people who could imagine that are the people who, whether they realize it or not, believe the world runs on magic. People who think that things get fixed or problems get solved simply because they would like for them to be solved. But no email, PowerPoint, or idea can fix a major plumbing issue under a house. It takes hard labor. Specifically, it takes the type of hard labor that only men can effectively do.
And lest I be misunderstood, let me be clear: the point of this isn’t to belittle women. While all this was happening outside, my wife was busy at work inside, embodying the ideal picture of feminine aid. She helped in a perfectly womanly way. And it was beautiful.
She made muffins for everyone to eat if they got hungry (which were amazing). She brought out water and made sure it was always on hand. She brewed sweet tea for us to drink with our lunch after going out and picking up food for everyone. She labored all day to make lemon, banana, and pumpkin bread loaves to send home with the guys to thank them for working so hard on Labor Day to help us (which were even more amazing). She took care of the children because, if the children were running around outside in a construction zone, they could have gotten hurt, and we wouldn’t have been able to do our work very well.
It’s amazing to me that even some Christians today have adopted the feminist notion that attributing feminine qualities to domestic life and children is somehow belittling. This bewilders me.
The Bible has an incredibly high view of domesticity. The beauty and value of women shine the brightest in those places.
It doesn’t undermine my wife for me to say that she could not keep up with the men working outside. Why would that insult her? The only reason my statement would insult someone is if someone thought that the only difference between men and women was our anatomy. But men and women are beautifully different.
God designed men to be strong and to use their strength to subdue the earth and provide for others, particularly women and children. God created women to nurture, cultivate, and bless the home by filling it with children, order, and beauty. Both of these things are essential if society is going to function the way it needs to.
Christians have to be careful not only to reject the misandry of modern feminism but also the demonic idea of androgyny: The idea that men and women are fundamentally the same, that we can do all the same things. Anything a woman can do, a man can do, and vice versa. This is false. This is laughably false.
Can a man produce breastmilk? Absolutely not. In no circumstances can man ever do that. Now, which is more incredible? Taking a pickax to gravel for several hours, or producing the most nutrient-dense substance on earth and using it to nourish a child you formed in your body? Clearly, one of those things is more amazing than the other. But it doesn’t belittle me to say that I could never produce breastmilk or grow a child in my body. So why would it be an insult to my wife for me to say that she is not as strong as me and can therefore not do certain things that I can do?
When society adopts this mindset, in seeking to “elevate women," it actually belittles men. And belittling men will lead to the collapse of your civilization.
Our world needs men. Desperately.
Gas doesn’t get to our pumps magically. Our cars didn’t magically assemble themselves. Our plumbing did not spontaneously appear underneath our homes. And when those things go wrong, we all know who to call: Men - who can use their strength and endurance to build up and edify our society.
So what's the point of all this?
It is merely to say that we live in a culture that, unfortunately, despises men. It belittles, undermines, and demonizes men. It portrays dads as incompetent idiots on TV. It views men as broken and in need of a woman to fix them (I'm reminded of the time I went to the doctor with my wife and I looked away from the scale out of respect for her when they weighed her, and the nurse joked "you've trained him well").
But our world needs men. It relies on the strength, power, and leadership of men.
As much of a buzzword as patriarchy is these days, the problem isn't patriarchy. It's bad patriarchs. No one can deny that many, many men have used their strength to tear down, terrorize, and threaten other people. That's wicked - and those men will have to answer to the perfect Patriarch for how they abused others.
But the world needs good, godly men of integrity and compassion to take the lead and use their strength to build up a real civilization that will benefit real people. To lead us toward a better future, informed by the ethics and design found in God's Word. We need men who will be brave and confront the chaos of our age with clarity, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to truth.
If you're a man reading this, this is the noble task God has appointed to us. This is what you were designed to be.
We have to begin training boys at young ages to hone their masculine instincts rather than subdue them.
Teach them to be aggressive. Teach them to be courageous. Teach them to be assertive and powerful. These are natural to boys and should be directed toward righteous ends rather than squashed by the effeminate proclivity to "play nice."
Good men don't lack aggression and power - they direct their aggression and power toward noble goals. As I say to my son: "Boys use our strength to love and serve, especially our girls."
Men are valuable. Men are called to lead. They are called to protect and provide for their families. They are designed to be strong and to use that strength to benefit everyone, especially women and children. When men are healthy, the rest of society will be healthy. When men are godly, the rest of society will sleep better at night.
So let's encourage men, rather than tear them down. Let's pray for husbands, fathers, brothers, and friends to be the men of integrity God has called them to be. And let's remember that the magic that brought food to our plates, climate control to our buildings, toilets in the bathrooms, and the roads we take to drive home came from the strength of thousands of men who will remain nameless, faceless, and thankless - but did the job anyway.
For more on this, check out Anthony Esolen's wonderful book, No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men.