You Won’t Find Manhood in the Shadows

From Jordan Peterson’s viral “Message to the Christian Churches” to Nancy Pearcey’s book The Toxic War on Masculinity, the consensus is that something is broken with manhood. Even comedian Michael Ian Black acknowledges “the boys are not all right.” He concludes,

To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms, and expressions. Boys, though, have been left behind. No commensurate movement has emerged to help them navigate toward a full expression of their gender. It’s no longer enough to “be a man”—we no longer even know what that means.

So Christian publishers keep releasing new books for men, but none seems to gain the popularity of past bestsellers. At my local Christian bookstore, the women’s section has a steady stream of new releases filling several shelves. At the bottom of one bookcase, the men’s section still promotes paperback copies of Wild at Heart (2001) and Every Man’s Battle (2000).

As a result, many conversations about masculinity take place in the shadows. Young men increasingly turn to social media to explore manhood. An occasional sermon or youth group lesson has to compete with endless hours of late-night scrolling. Influencers such as Andrew Tate, the third-most googled person in 2023, are reshaping conversations about masculinity. In the shadows, men find a legion of answers. Many are neither biblical nor constructive. The world in which men live is far more complicated than it once was. We’re going to have to meet them in those dark places.

In Fighting Shadows: Overcoming 7 Lies That Keep Men from Becoming Fully Alive, Jon Tyson (senior pastor at Church of the City, New York) and Jefferson Bethke (a speaker and author) identify several deceptions—shadows—that harm men. With hope firmly rooted in the light and revelation of Jesus Christ, they aim to illuminate the dark shadows of the culture’s lies about masculinity.

Pursuing Clarity

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when talking about masculinity in public became controversial, but I think it coincides with the 2019 American Psychological Association report on masculinity and the Gillette Super Bowl commercial from the same year. Since then, a near-constant debate about toxic masculinity and a steady stream of new books, podcasts, and articles have sought to redefine what it means to be a man. Yet, after half a decade of cultural debate, many men are even more in the dark about manhood.

After half a decade of cultural debate, many men are even more in the dark about manhood.

Bethke and Tyson understand the complexity of the challenges men face. Their passion for helping men find hope through the light of divine truth is obvious, and the clarity of their writing is appealing. As someone who finds C. S. Lewis’s imagery in The Abolition of Man of “men without chests” compelling, I appreciate how metaphors like “fighting shadows” and being “shadow men” imaginatively convey the confusion about modern masculinity.

We rarely pay much attention to these dark places even though, like shadows, they’re always present. Tyson and Bethke highlight the usual issues like lust and worldly ambition. But they also address topics more particular to our day like loneliness, shame, apathy, and despair. This is a book suited to the complexities of men today.

Overall, their mix of diagnoses, practical recommendations, and spiritual truths effectively illuminate these personal shadows. They offer several creative suggestions like keeping a “hope log” to encourage reflection on God’s past goodness (27). They urge their readers, “Make sure you are involved in spiritual warfare, not just cultural warfare” (173). Thus, they prescribe a masculinity much more conformed to personal faith and biblical patterns than to the culture’s lies.

Defining Accurately

The shadow metaphor has other implications for how the authors see the problem. The book looks primarily for external explanations for the crisis of masculinity. Men face problems because they believe cultural lies. Just like the moon can cause an eclipse though it’s 400 times smaller than the sun, so these lies often eclipse God’s immeasurable glory if men keep them near their hearts and minds.

The authors rightly blame these shadowy lies on sin and Satan, but they also charge the church with being complicit. “Unfortunately, much of what is taught at church about masculinity is so theoretical that it doesn’t seem to work in real life,” they argue. “In the absence of effective mentors and models, not to mention the lack of margin to really work on ourselves, we just drift to the edge—out of the light” (xix).

There’s certainly a place for critiquing how many churches have responded to men. But the book’s focus on fighting external shadows draws attention from the man himself. It’s too easy to place the blame on others. I’m sympathetic to this temptation as someone who writes and ministers to men. Many men feel beaten down by a hostile culture. We want to offer them affirmation, not more critique. However, the greatest problem facing men today isn’t our culture or the church; it’s our need for repentance and submission to Christ. What’s wrong with the world is also what’s wrong inside each of us.

Digging Deeper

Fighting Shadows effectively describes problems men face and offers practical solutions. However, some of the answers suffer from a lack of depth and insufficient biblical engagement. For example, the chapter on shame, while offering a couple of allusions, never quotes or directly engages a single Scripture passage. The Bible has so much to offer on these topics, and the primary source for biblical masculinity should be Scripture.

Just like the moon can cause an eclipse though it’s 400 times smaller than the sun, so these lies often eclipse God’s immeasurable glory if men keep them near their hearts and minds.

Despite this weakness, there’s much to commend about Tyson and Bethke’s work and their compassion for men. Their book is unlikely to be the next big thing in men’s ministry. But I don’t think that’s what we need anyway. The questions are too complicated. No single book can address all of masculinity. In reality, we need lots of new books to encourage men toward holiness.

There’s still plenty of room left in the men’s section at my local bookstore. Fighting Shadows deserves a place on that shelf to help identify many of the challenges men face today, but those challenges will require more depth to truly heal men’s souls.

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