JE has just started going off on one about kids playing with toy guns and how that belies their masculinity - already befuddled by the whole debate and feeling slightly out of my depth I was jumping in with both feet at something I knew I could argue against but then he hit me with this:Oh. He didnt go where I thought he was going to. I thought he was being small minded because what do boys do who don't have spiderman costumes or "crackers to bite into the shape of guns" to be masculine? What do men who don't have any mountains at all to retreat to - or just aren't in any way athletic do? What do people in slums with no possessions at all do for boyishness?
"If we believe Man is made in the image of God then we would do well to remember that 'the LORD is a warrior, the LORD is his name' Exodus 15:3
Of course it's not toys or geography or pasttimes - or even being an Israelite warrior or a modern soldier that marks us as a man - it has to do with aggression and ambition and pride and loyalty. God doesn't mean by this verse - and all the ones similar to it that he loves killing people - he is just using the cultural understanding of the time to speak to the Israelites about his energy and aggression and even 'jealousy for our affection' - all channelled in the right way - God doesn't do anything in the wrong way. Aggression isn't wrong - just the excess and abuse of it. Jesus got angry in the Temple right?
Unfortunately the church oftentimes saps all competitiveness out of us; encouraging us to be only meek and mild. That's why football competitions [at Christian Bible weeks...?] tend to often be more vicious than Sunday League - and with worse language! - it's the one chance Christian men get to lay out pent up aggression and it all just overspills out in a negative way!
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