Over the last thirty years, there’s something all American Christian men have been programmed to believe. The lie goes something like this: Every man is looking for a dragon to slay. Or maybe it’s couched as men need a battle to fight. But the problem with seeing ourselves as hammers is that we’re constantly looking for nails to pound.
This is not a healthy identity trait, but it’s often what the warrior Christian mindset is seeped in.
That reality has caused a lot of mixture in the Church, resulting in atrocities (historical and current) which have never squared with being a man who follows Jesus.
[Note: In this article I will mostly be addressing men since many of these issues are predominantly male-centric. However, the underlying argument is applicable to both sexes equally.]
I know that may be jarring for guys who were (are) taught from day one that being on Team Jesus means we are supposed to be men with chests, fierce, aggressive “Alpha males” who desire peace but train for war, summoning righteous anger to deal with the cultural rot around our camps, with violence if necessary.1
And don’t get me wrong: Sometimes, contextually, those things can be great. The world needs Jesus-loving warriors to fight in both the natural and supernatural. But there is a perversion that easily sets in when The Fight (whatever it is we’re fighting for) causes us to violate immutable principles Jesus demands of His followers. Pretty soon we’re justifying lying and deceit, or bombing a hundred schoolgirls, or slandering and dehumanizing people online in order to win The Fight.
These are hallmarks of the warrior Christian ethic, which coincidentally isn’t new; historically it has often adopted the Knights Templar imagery, which, if you know the history, ought to raise some eyebrows…but that’s another post.
Does this warrior ethic draw people into the postures that Jesus and the Church taught for thousands of years, such as dying to self, surrender, and renewing our minds?
Jesus The Tattooed Biker
If we spend any amount of time reading our Bibles it should be clear, foundational even, that the overemphasis on a Christian warrior mentality is contra-Gospel.
Yet the last thirty years of teachings on the subject of “Biblical Manhood,”—a phrase I’ve unfortunately used in the past and which desperately needs retired until it actually reflects what the Bible says —places a premium on a wild-hearted2 mindset that lives in the yellow 24/7.
That myopic headspace doesn’t square with the teachings and character of Jesus. “One-dimensional warriors looking for a dragon to slay” was never intended to formulate our identity as men—not for Adam, nor Abraham, and not even for David.3
The ethic that says we are to be Warriors First leaves little room for things Jesus did require of those seeking to follow Him, like surrender, meekness, cross-carrying, honesty and faithfulness, charity, gentleness and restraint, empathy, and compassion.
And let’s not forget self-control.
At the risk of making you read nonsense to prove a point, here’s megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll perfectly exemplifying the problem with the warrior Christian persona; this is sadly emblematic of many church going men, all over social media:4
“In Revelation, Jesus is a pride-fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is the guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.”
—Mark Driscoll
That’s not only scripturally incorrect,5 eschatologically ignorant, and insane, it’s the very opposite of the Gospel. Jesus got the greatest beat down in history.
“Just as there were many who were astonished at him
—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals—
so he shall startle many nations”
— Isaiah 52:14
His followers have endured likewise ever since.
They were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and often killed…and they still are in many locations across the globe, sometimes at the hands of those claiming Biblical authority for ethnic cleansing. This isn’t a modern phenomenon you can lay at the feet of current leaders; innocent people have always been in the crosshairs of wild men who strayed from following the Lord.6
The truth is that the rowdy, confrontational Jesus was only directed to the religious charlatans of His day who were embracing the things God despises and mocking holiness along the way. With everyone else, Jesus was compassionate, kind, and counter-culturally provocative, especially in how He elevated women.
That’s not to say we need to go full-pacifist to follow Jesus. At least, I’m not there yet, but perhaps that’s something I/we need to consider a little more closely in our study of Scripture. We’re all wresting with traditons and programming in one form or another.
Biblical Manhood
If we examine the record of what many famous men in the Bible were like, a lot of them were pretty vicious and habitually rejected instructions of the Lord:
- Of the 43 kings of Israel and Judah, only 7 refrained from doing “evil in the eyes of the Lord,” and even they were far from perfect.
- Men in the Bible had multiple wives and concubines.7
- Abraham lied and subjected his wife to potential sexual violation…twice.
- David raped Bathsheba, then tried to hide his tracks by getting her husband to sleep with her ASAP (thus tainting the evidence of his crime), and failing that, made sure he was killed.
- Solomon likely sacrificed his own children to demons.
- Moses, Abimelech, Lamech, Samson and many others were murderers.
Is that what we mean when we say Biblical Manhood? Of course not, but that’s what the scriptural record shows men were often like. Thousands of fallen pastors and church leaders only pad the shameful record of men turning from Jesus and following their worst instincts to their own destruction. In the absence of some transcendent moral ethic and a surrendered heart, that is what all people have potential to do.
People who shrug at genocide, slander other cultures or faiths, lie, or religiously defend violence and war are following a morality that has nothing to do with Jesus.
Those who feed the political spirit, religiously doing whatever it takes to “win” routinely make ethical compromises in the process.
Jesus matters so much more than we realize because He flipped the script on what manhood had become, and restored the definition to what it was always supposed to be. The ethos8 mattered then and it matters now.
An ethic that embraces and glorifies warrior mentality at the cost of kindness and self-control will quickly become a breeding ground for hammers just waiting for a nail to pop up. They’ll even defend and justify the pounding of thousands…or hundreds of thousands…of men, women, and children into the ground.
Our history is littered with this. Even men celebrated as the epitome of American Christian warriors like George Washington or Stonewall Jackson are guilty of authorizing heinous acts against flesh and blood innocents. We need to recognize that history, learn from its mistakes, and refrain from doing likewise in our time.
The Wild Man
Fair or not, we can lay some of the blame for the current confusion at the feet of author and pastor, John Eldredge:
A man needs a battle to fight; he needs a place for the warrior in him to come alive and be honed, trained, seasoned. If we can reawaken that fierce quality in a man, hook it up to a higher purpose, release the warrior within, then the boy can grow up and become truly masculine.
— John Eldridge, Wild at Heart
Eldredge’s book Wild At Heart was a clarion call for guys like me in the early 2000s. Here we had a pastor preaching to our wives that they needed to encourage us to go out and do warpaint stuff while a woman’s role in the Christian marriage arrangement was Damsel in Distress.9
The premise went, therefore, that wives should send us off to jujitsu class or the gun range as often as we need it to placate our primal instincts.10
It’s one reason why my old church started a hockey team, and funded it. The teaching no doubt played into my wife’s willingness to shiver in the stands at 10:00pm while wrestling a toddler and nursing a baby.
Of course the team captain and I tried to facilitate a pre-game Bible study in the locker room, but nobody was very interested in that. They came for the action, Jesus was just the justification. It was fun. It provided physical exercise. But as much as we wanted it to be, it wasn’t really ministry.
It created friendship and fellowship—both good things—but there needs to be a balance. Is that balance working for you and your family, relationally and spiritually? Have you checked in with each other about it?
Prioritizing the aggressive guy stuff takes valuable time away from our wives, who themselves are often wrestling with false identity claims about what it meant to be a “Biblical Wife” in a “Biblical Marriage” often at a time when what they really need most in life is a guy who can take the baby and let her sleep.
Don’t misread me here. Guys need to spend leisure time doing guy stuff every bit as much as women need girl time, but we need to be sure nobody is getting burnt out.
Jesus is perfectly fine with you hitting the range or the gym several times a week if that’s your thing. But is your spouse suffering for it? Ask them.
Taking your son into the woods and having him hunt is an awesome skill that’s valuable in many ways. But it doesn’t make him a man; it merely makes him a hunter.
And if he doesn’t want to do to that, it doesn’t make him any less of a man.
Turning that meat into dinner isn’t more manly than raising a field full of crops, or bringing home a store-bought pizza. Manliness isn’t about how well you shoot, how many trophies are on your wall, or how you handle yourself in a fight; manliness is measured in how well you mirror Jesus, in both action and restraint.
Following Jesus might mean standing up in a restaurant and defending a woman being harassed by slimy, inebriated men. Violence (maybe even getting your a** kicked, or kicking someone else’s) may ensue.
It might mean hugging a person in despair.
It could require testifying against frat bros who violated a woman on the edge of consciousness.
It could mean leaving a room where compromising Christians are crossing lines Jesus never would.
And yes, it might mean standing in front of a guy with a gun in your church sanctuary.
But what’s far more likely to play out is the need to love people well with kindness, honor, and self-control. These are the character traits Jesus cared about most, and so should we.
Bad theology and ear candy sermons catering to rough and tumble men might get butts in seats and keep them there. But when we know Jesus a little better, we understand that all of that scripture about flipping over tables, robes dipped in blood, and fighting our enemies aren’t prescriptions for a modern, high-octane Warrior Christian ethic. He’s already defeated the dragon.
And yet, most of the world’s most devastating tragedies have stemmed from the perversion that Jesus is waiting for us to kill and destroy His enemies, and that He’s on our side when we do.
That lie continues still.
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[Post image is a real photograph by an actual photographer, Evija Martina on Unsplash, not AI.]
If you enjoyed this article, you might check out these as well:
4 Lessons for the Church from Death of a Pastor’s Wife
Rules of Engagement: Just War Theory in the Modern Era
David & Bathsheba: A Bible Story Elephant In The Room
1 In part 2 I will address the matter of church security.
2 This is in reference to John Eldredge’s book Wild At Heart, which was culturally significant in the mid-2000s. It pertains to many of the themes discussed in this article and you could argue it was the most influential book in creating the Christian warrior culture. I haven’t reread the book recently, and therefore can neither endorse nor criticize it fairly here. It may be noteworthy that Eldredge himself still promotes it wholeheartedly.
3 For those who cling to the scriptures describing David as a man after God’s own heart, consider which of David’s character traits lined up with those of Jesus, and which (like rape and murder) were opposites.
4 You can find a disproportionate number of them on Gab, for some reason.
5 The sword is not in Jesus’ hand, but in His mouth, which represents something entirely different from what Driscoll and others teach: “In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force” (Revelation 1:16); “Repent, then. If not, I will come to you soon and wage war against them with the sword of my mouth” (Rev 2:16); “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a scepter of iron; he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty” (Rev 19:15).
6 If the names Godfrey of Bouillon, Tancred, Raymond of Aguilers, Raymond IV of Toulouse, Bohemond of Taranto, or Robert II of Flanders are new to you, I suggest doing a history study on the Crusades. A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden is a great book to begin with.
7 This was never the design for man and woman in the Edenic plan, nor were polygamy or non-married sexual activity endorsed anywhere in scripture.
8 You’ll notice I tend to use the terms “ethos” (a Greek word meaning, character) or “ethics” instead of the terms “moral” or “morals.” This is because ethics denotes a standard of right and wrong, established and accepted by a group or culture, whereas morals or morality is generally applied as personal, and subjective to individual beliefs. For example, murder is ethically wrong and universally condemned, whereas even those who accept that ethic may hold a moral belief that allows for killing civilians in war…or the womb.
9 I’m aware that this should naturally flow into a much lengthier but equally important discussion on the fallacy of male “headship” in marriage. That will be a post for another time but you might want to start here for now.
10 The implications this has on marriage bedrooms is a related topic that I and others have written on considerably, and which the entire church needs to begin dealing with in earnest.