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More traits of a real man, according to the Bible

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In response to a list of biblical rules for a real man, let’s scour the Bible for more rules (part 1). If the original conservative agenda can guide a selection of rules, then anyone can play the game. This is the conclusion of our list of 10 More Biblical Traits of Real Men.

5. Real men can personally perform miracles

Jesus made clear that his miracles were just the beginning.

Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these (John 14:12).

We see something similar with the Great Commission. It’s pretty clear that Jesus wasn’t giving it to ordinary Christians today but rather the apostles, but for Christians who imagine that Jesus was talking to them, they should expect to get “authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness” (Matthew 10:1) and the authority to decide which sins can be forgiven (John 20:23).

6a. Real men insist that their sassy children be stoned to death

The Bible says that there’s nothing wrong with a good thrashing (“Blows and wounds cleanse away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being,” Proverbs 20:30), but it gets a lot worse than that.

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town…. Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. (Deuteronomy 21:18–21).

That’s effective! I can’t imagine the son misbehaves after that.

6b. Real men stone non-virgins, too

And by “virgin,” of course, we’re talking about virgin women. Virginal purity isn’t a thing for men—and how fortunate for you gentlemen out there! The Bible has a kind of honesty-in-advertising guideline for women. Fathers, if you offer your daughter as a virgin and she isn’t as advertised, you’ll have to take her back:

[If] the tokens of virginity be not found for the bride, then they shall bring her to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die (Deuteronomy 22:20–21).

That is, you’ll have to take her back dead. The good news is that the problem of feeding another mouth has been addressed.

7. Real men take sex slaves

Israelite forces were successful in battle against Midian. They killed all the men, destroyed all their towns, and returned with women, children, livestock, and other plunder, but Moses greeted them with anger. He said, in effect, “What part of ‘kill everyone’ did you not understand?!” His resolution of the problem:

[Now] kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man (Numbers 31:17–18).

How about that—biblical conquest comes with sex slaves as a bonus.

8. Real men never sin

We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them (1 John 5:18; see also 1 John 3:6, 3:9).

So if you’re still sinning, you must not be saved. Save a place for me in hell.

9. Real men abandon reason and evidence

The Bible is supposed to be confusing, didn’t you know? Here’s Jesus praying to God:

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children (Matthew 11:25).

It’s best to check your brains at the door and just have faith:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5–6).

10. Real men keep slaves

But, of course, real men conduct slavery in a godly way, and the Bible is a helpful resource. For example, can you keep slaves for life?

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life (Leviticus 25:44–6).

Slaves need to know their place, but how much punishment is too much?

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property (Exodus 21:20–21).

We find support in the New Testament as well:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh (1 Peter 1:18).

Hallelujah! How thoughtful of God to clarify. 

See also: Yes, Biblical Slavery Was the Same as American Slavery

And, of course, there’s more. A real man doesn’t mix things like wool and linen or two different crops in a field, and he doesn’t yoke together different animals like an ox with a donkey (Deuteronomy 22:9–11). A real man doesn’t put up with mixed-race marriages (Deut. 7:3, 23:3). And so on.

Admittedly, I’m picking verses following a let’s-make-the-Bible-look-foolish agenda, but that’s no less honest than the original article’s conservative Christian agenda. The Bible’s wisdom doesn’t look so timeless when you imagine it applied today.

To any Christians annoyed at my list, I have a suggestion: stop having such a hateful holy book.

So far as I can remember,
there is not one word in the Gospels
in praise of intelligence.
— Bertrand Russell

What is a ‘real man,’ according to the Bible?

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What makes a “real man”? We’ve all seen light-hearted rules like real men don’t cry, real men don’t eat quiche, real men don’t let other men eat quiche, and so on. James Dobson’s Family Talk site has a page that claims to have God’s rules for how to be a true man of God. The author summarizes the goal this way: “My wife and kids need a real man, not some wimpy guy that rides the ever-changing cultural tides of our times.”

Here’s that list, built on the rock of the Bible.

God’s Real Man List

  1. Real men don’t leave their wives. See Ephesians 5:25-32, Mark 10:9, Job 31:1
  2. Real men honor their wives as co-heirs. See 1 Peter 3:7
  3. Real men teach their children God’s ways (both in word and in action). See Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Ephesians 6:4, Psalm 78:5-7
  4. Real men build into the lives of other men. See Proverbs 27:17
  5. Real men don’t use their words to demean others. See Ephesians 4:29
  6. Real men don’t let their anger get away from them. See James 1:19-20
  7. Real men lead best when they love most. See Ephesians 5:1-2; John 13:34-35
  8. Real men are sacrificial for the sake of their Lord, family, and others. See John 15:13
  9. Real men are servants. See Mark 10:45
  10. Real men can show their emotions (this includes crying). See John 11:35, Matthew 21:12, Matthew 9:36

But why this list? Don’t forget that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). You really can’t go wrong when pulling Iron Age biblical examples into the 21st century, amirite, Dr. Dobson?

So, with that wind of certitude filling our sails, let’s look deeper in the Bible to see what else it says and make a new list, 10 More Traits of Real Men.

1. Real men don’t get married

The list above has at least two rules about men’s relationship with their wives, but Paul had no use for marriage:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry (1 Corinthians 7:8–9).

You can rationalize this one away by saying that Paul wrongly thought that the End was coming soon, but what’s left of your faith when you must say that the books of the New Testament are seriously wrong?

2. Real men listen to God over common-sense morality

God made some crazy demands in the Bible. Christians, what would it take for God to convince you to accept a modern equivalent of these demands?

  • Abraham accepted God’s demand that he sacrifice his son Isaac.
  • After discovering the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf, Moses commanded the Levites to punish fellow Israelites: “Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor,” and 3000 were killed (Exodus 32:26–29).
  • God demanded human sacrifice: “The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal” (Exodus 13:2). 
  • God demanded that Babylon be punished, with the Israelites as executioners: “Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished” (Isaiah 13:15–16).
  • God demanded genocide. He said that within the tribes that must be destroyed, “you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16–18) and that, for the Amalekites, Israel should “put to death men and women, children and infants” (1 Samuel 15:2–3). More here, here, and here.

I realize that we’re made in God’s image and that our sense of morality should line up with God’s, but forget that. A real man does what God says, regardless of how immoral it seems.

3. Real men know that daughters can be sacrificed

In his younger days, God wasn’t omniscient, so he had to send scouts to Sodom to verify the rumors he’d heard. Lot protected these angels from the angry mob eager to teach these strangers who’s boss by raping them. Lot is portrayed as a godly man, though he doesn’t look very godly after he offered his two virgin daughters to the mob as a rape substitute. 

4. Real men throw the first stone if their friend or relative strays

Suppose a friend suggests that you worship another god. Now imagine that it’s your best friend, or that it’s a family member, maybe a child or your wife. How should you respond?

Forget that freedom of religion is protected by the U.S. Constitution—real men do things differently in the Bible’s little world.

Do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 13:6–11; see also Deut. 32:41–2, Exodus 22:20).

Concluded next in part 2.

There have been nearly 3000 gods so far
but only yours actually exists.
The others are silly made up nonsense.
But not yours. Yours is real.
— Ricky Gervais

Language and morality—does either have objective grounding?

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Christianity would be clearer with subtitles. We’ve seen how interestingly messy English can be (part 1), but thing really get weird when we let Christians explain their religion. Christianity is quick to redefine words if the traditional definitions are inconvenient.

  • Does faith mean a belief well-grounded with evidence (and which would change, if necessary, based on new evidence)? Or does it mean belief not based on evidence? Christians use both definitions.
  • The pro-life movement has redefined person to include a microscopic human zygote. (To sidestep this ploy, ask the pro-life person what the newborn baby is that the single cell nine months prior was not. This can help acknowledge the vast gulf of development that turns that single celled zygote into a trillion-cell baby.)
  • The word truth is often capitalized when referring to the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Commenter RichardSRussell clarifies the matter, “They’ve doused the word in piety sauce by capitalizing it, so you won’t mistake it for the meaning you’ll find in the dictionary.”
  • Some words are redefined as their opposite. For example, “Jesus died on the cross.” But if Jesus is alive and well now and was only pretend-dead for a day and a half, then he didn’t die.
  • “I know that God exists.” Really? In a demonstrable way, like “water dissolves sugar” or “the sun is a star”?
  • “Prayer works.” Really? Like “my computer works” or “the light switch works”?
  • Michael Newdow attacked the phrase “under God” in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” as the national motto. Christian defenders of the status quo replied that these phrases had withered to become mere expressions of “ceremonial deism.” That’s right: the atheist thought that the word God had power, while the Christians didn’t.

I wonder how Christianity would look if we called them on their word games and returned to words’ actual definitions. Prayer would kinda work. A Christian would feel very strongly that God exists. Jesus had a painful day for our sins. Faith would be belief based on feelings or customs, not anything verifiable.

What kind of morality says today that birth control is legal and “Whites only” signs aren’t but said the reverse, in parts of the same country, seventy years before? Obviously not an objective morality.

Language and morality

Let’s highlight the similarities between language and morality.

1. Dictionaries. Languages can have dictionaries, and those dictionaries are usually descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, they simply document how words are used rather than say how they ought to be used. Dictionaries are rarely consulted, because native speakers absorbed the definitions informally since birth.

Moral rules can be documented, but these are also rarely consulted because natives pick them up from the environment as they do with the rules of language.

2. Guides. Usage and style guides are the prescriptive sources, which tell you what you should do. These tell you when to use whom rather than who (grammar), when to use continuously rather than continually (definitions of confusing words), or the rules that are mandatory at a workplace (style).

In the moral domain, Emily Post’s Etiquette is a venerable example of the rules that constrain polite people. A broader example is Confucius, who prescribed proper behavior with his teachings.

3. Crowd sourcing. Change in language doesn’t come from some authority but from the ground up, from the users themselves.

Similarly, morality comes from us. Fundamental moral tenets are taken for granted (about slavery or child work laws), and we debate ones that are in contention (abortion, capital punishment).

4. Change over time and place. Words and their definitions change with time. They’re also an attribute of society, and the language spoken in one country might be different than that in its neighbor. In the U.S. the predominant language is Modern English, but other societies do fine with other languages.

Morals also change by time and place. In the Old Testament, we find God ordering genocide, demanding human sacrifice, and defining the rules for slavery (both temporary indentured servitude and slavery for life). Modern Westerners reject these unconditionally. Morals also vary by society, and we find different rules for capital punishment, abortion, and eating meat across the globe. There is no objective set of morals just like there is no universal language.

Differences between language and morality

But this language/morality analogue isn’t perfect. Morality isn’t arbitrary in the way language is. In English, we could get along just fine if we replaced the word head with the word some other language uses—Kopf or tête or holova. And while etiquette rules are largely arbitrary (Does a gentleman need to remove his hat indoors? How do you introduce two people of unequal social rank?), some moral beliefs are part of our programming. Evolution has made our inclinations toward compassion and trust (but also jealousy and lust) more or less innate in all of us.

There was no pre-Babel common language that we all share, but we do share human morality.

What about objective morality?

Christians will say that some things are “really wrong,” but how is really wrong different from regular wrong? It’s different in degree, not kind. The wrongness due to a breach of etiquette is different in degree from that of a murder, not different in kind.

“Really” wrong is usually intended to mean objectively wrong. William Lane Craig defines objective morality as “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.” But look up morality in a dictionary and you’ll find nothing about an objective grounding. Those who handwave about an objective morality admit that morality doesn’t mean that, because if it did, they wouldn’t have to add the qualifier objective!

To view this charitably, they’re making a distinction between morality from society and morality from evolution—that is, morality as changeable vs. morality as hardwired. But they fail to provide evidence that any part of morality is grounded outside the human mind or comes from God.

What kind of morality says today that birth control is legal and “Whites only” signs aren’t but said the reverse, in parts of the same country, seventy years before? Obviously not an objective morality.

Changes in morality are like changes in language. Language is not immutable, it’s not objectively correct, and it doesn’t come from God. The same is true for morality.

Some women approached Dr. Johnson
after he had published his famous dictionary
to thank him for not putting in any vulgar words.
He said, “And I congratulate you ladies
for looking them up.”

“On accident” or “by accident”? Word choice and objective morality.

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Which sounds better: “I took your book by accident” or “I took your book on accident”?

We may want an objectively correct final arbiter that can define words and settle questions of usage with authority. This authority would always be correct and would be above human messiness, but this ultimate arbiter doesn’t exist. New words come into popular usage and definitions of old words change through a crowd-sourced negotiation.

It’s like morality. There is no final moral arbiter—not a Being, and not a book. The buck stops with us.

Oddities of English

To explore this parallel between words we define and morality we define, let’s first poke around some of the oddities of English.

What does peruse mean? Does it mean to look over in a cursory manner? Or does it mean the opposite: to study carefully? Yes, it does—both definitions are valid (go look it up; I’ll wait). If you get cranky seeing new definitions given to old words, note that “look over in a cursory manner” is the new definition.

Speaking of words that have two opposite meanings, there are lots of these contranyms. The Devil’s Dictionary (first published in 1906) defines infidel, “In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.” Here are a few more words that have two contradicting definitions:

  • Dust: dust a cake with powdered sugar vs. dust the furniture
  • Off: turn a light off vs. the bomb went off
  • Screen: screen from view vs. screen a movie

Is the change in words and language usage hopelessly messy and confusing? I think the opposite is true.

Word stories

So then what does peruse mean?! It means what we say it means, acknowledging that “we” don’t speak with a single voice. We can consult a dictionary, but in the case of peruse, it’ll just verify that these two opposite definitions are both valid, leaving to us the choice of one definition over the other or to find a synonym without this ambiguity.

Let’s peek under the couch cushions of English to find more interesting word stories.

  • Does decimate mean to destroy a tenth? Or to destroy almost all?
  • Do you get as annoyed as I do when “beg the question” is used to mean “encourage or invite the question”? It actually means “assume the issue we’re talking about”—in other words, to use circular logic. I hear it used in the first way almost exclusively … but of course that means that the public has spoken and I’ve lost, and this upstart new definition is the primary definition in the dictionary.
  • Regionalisms are words that vary based on location. For example, what do you call a soft drink? In the U.S., soda, pop, and coke dominate in different parts of the country. Is mayonnaise two syllables or three? Is it y’all or you guys? Is it puh-JAH-muz or puh-JAM-uz? Maps illustrate this tug of war.
  • Esquivalence is an invented word added to the 2001 New Oxford American Dictionary as a copyright trap. Here’s its invented definition: “Deliberate shirking of one’s official duties.” We could ask if esquivalence is a real word, but what more is a word than its spelling and definition? That’s enough to communicate, and it’s even in a dictionary.
  • Speaking of invented words, have you heard of this word origin? The story goes that in the late 1700s in Dublin, one man bet another that he could have a completely new word on everyone’s lips within 24 hours. That night, the man who’d made the boast enlisted street urchins to paint the word all over Dublin—on curbs, walls, sidewalks, and more. The word that everyone was talking about within 24 hours? Quiz.
  • William Shakespeare invented many words and was the first to put many more on paper. Some credit him with almost 2000 novel words, including accommodation, critic, fitful, lapse, obscene, and pious.
  • The new St. Paul’s cathedral, rebuilt after the 1666 Great Fire of London, was called by the king, “amusing, awful, and artificial.” That sounds odd until you realize that those words meant amazing, awe-inspiring, and artistic. Definitions drift.

Is the change in words and language usage hopelessly messy and confusing? I think the opposite is true. It’s crowd sourced, which means that the people who create the change are the consumers of that change.

On accident vs. by accident

Let’s return to on accident and by accident. The logic of on accident is that it parallels its opposite, on purpose. It’s also more popular among young people, which suggests that it will eventually win out. On the other hand, it is rarely used outside the U.S. (Of course, you can sidestep the confusion and just use accidentally.)

Where does meaning come from?

Imagine someone creates an upstart word and starts using it. The purpose of words is to communicate, and that happens when we share definitions. If they use their new word so that others can infer the meaning (or they take pains to define it), it might catch on like a meme.

In an extreme, someone can make up whatever words or definitions they please, as Humpty Dumpty did in Through the Looking Glass, but they’ll communicate better if they use well-known words and definitions.

This is how language works. It sounds haphazard, and yet we communicate easily. No natural language has an absolute source.

Concluded with a look at how Christianity plays with words and the logic of objective morality.

“When I use a word,”
Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean—
neither more nor less.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass