Highlight: Nancy Pearcey - Masculinity and the Cultural Mandate

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how does Christianity reconcile the sexes? How does it bring peace and the kind of glorious flourishing that God originally created us to have as men and women together in light of the cultural mandate in Genesis?

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Yeah, so about half of my students have never heard the term cultural mandate, so it might be good to start with that.

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So Genesis talks about, you know, God's created the universe, he's created the earth, he's created the animals and plants, and then he finally creates the first human couple.

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And what does he say to them? The first thing he says to them is, he gives them their job description, we might say, you know, is the purpose for which

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I created you. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue the earth. So in the streamlined language of Genesis 1, we can unpack whole layers of meaning there.

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So be fruitful and multiply starts with the family, but all the social institutions actually historically grow out of the family.

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You know, first you have the extended family, and the tribe, and the clan, and the village, and then the city, the nation.

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And then also social institutions form for certain purposes, like you need a school, you need a church, you need a marketplace, you need a state.

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And so it means really to develop all of the social institutions that make society work, including the laws and treaties and constitutions that govern them.

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So it's really a very rich understanding of what it means to be a social creature. The second one, subdue the earth means harness the natural resources.

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So of course, most cultures start with agriculture, but it includes mining, it includes inventing technology, it includes, you know, creating computers, it includes composing music.

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One of my students said, Oh, come on, composing music. And I play the violin. So I said, what's the violin made out of?

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Wood? What's the bow made out of? Horsehair? So all of the transcendent beauty we associate with music starts with harnessing the raw materials of nature.

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I love that. Beautiful. So the it's called the cultural mandate, because what it says is before the fall, when

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God was giving his job description, why did I create you? What's your purpose? It is the cultural mandate to be deeply involved in the social world, deeply involved in creative and socially useful work.

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And one reason I come back to this, by the way, several times in the book, is that the secular script for men today often focuses on getting away.

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You're a true man if you go out mountain climbing and white water, white water rafting and elk hunting.

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And there's nothing wrong with those things, of course, but it's just how you measure your masculinity. And I say, no, you measure your masculinity by going back to the cultural mandate, not by escaping from your family, not escaping from civilization.

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If it's done with that kind of escape mentality, I'm going to find my true self out there. And you mentioned the literature, the literature of the 19th century was full of stories about men who find their true self by getting away, getting out, being a mountain man, an adventurer, a scout, a cowboy.

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The Boy Scouts, right? I think that you referred to the Boy Scouts and even cultural examples that we see in depictions of men on screen, such as Western movies, right?

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The real man is that rough and tumble, Western hat wearing gunslinger who finds his identity by being isolated, not using his masculine strength and channeling it into serving a wife and children, right?

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These are the things that we've just imbibed without even knowing it. Exactly. I'm thinking, for example, of Shane, which was one of the earlier

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Western movies. And who's the hero? Who's the good guy? You know, it's not the farmer who's raising a child and supporting his family, you know, doing the tough work.

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It's the stranger who drives into town long enough to shoot up the bad guys, and then it's just as quickly disappears.

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And in the in this introduction to the book, it says, you know, he came from nowhere and went off to nowhere, rootless, solitary.

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And that's held up as, you know, some kind of ideal. And I that's why I keep coming back to know, you know, the cultural mandate says you find your true masculinity by rolling up your sleeves, being deeply embedded in your family, in your community, and in creative and productive work.

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I love it. Yeah. And you just gave me a fantastic excuse, Nancy, because I've always hated camping and the woods and all of that.

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And so now I have a reason to say I'm resisting all that lonesomeness and detaching myself.

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I'm all about the cultural mandate. Now you have a biblical excuse. I ain't camping. I'm not into that. I like true masculinity.

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I'm just kidding. I do have to be careful, though, because I love camping. No, I know. I'm teasing.

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Yeah. I grew up in the woods. But I do get that pushback sometimes by readers who don't quite understand.

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And so I have to be careful. No, I fully understand you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just trying to find every excuse

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I can not to turn down camping when I'm asked to go camping. By the way, don't ever ask me to go camping because the answer will always be no.

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Now you can use the cultural mandate as your excuse. It'll be good. No, I really appreciate that, Nancy.

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I think just, I mean, ending on that note, how do we help men find the truest sense of who

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God created them to be? And it's in there, and I think your book accords with this 100%, taking responsibility, taking responsibility for yourself, taking responsibility for those around you that God has entrusted to your care.

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And really, prayerfully, that's what will recover the moral vision and sanity of our nation, is men who fear

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God, who keep his commandments. One of the passages that you reference in your book is from King David, giving his son

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Solomon the charge in the book of Kings, be strong, show yourself a man, and how that is so vastly different than the secular script that we've been given as men.

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This is a father charging his son with a moral vision saying, build, reclaim, take responsibility for yourself and for those around you.

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And that is how you find your truest sense of self. This is who God made you to be.