Is "It's Good to be a Man" any good? A Review.
Although Foster and Tennant may have been attempting something noble, the result of their work ends up undercutting true masculinity. The “masculinity” displayed in "It’s Good to be a Man" looks more like the sinful, self-obsessed manhood of the world than the sacrificial manhood of Christ’s kingdom. The humble, compassionate masculinity of Jesus is scarcely to be found, replaced instead by far too much of the brash, self-exalting masculinity of Barabbas. Strong Biblical Manhood is wonderful, and I agree with Foster and Tennant that it is indeed nearly forgotten today, but I fear that there is little of it to be found in this book.
Perhaps I am being so hard on them because we share so much common ground; I also have high expectations for authentic Christian masculinity. All in all, I probably agreed with 60-70% of the book. As a reformed complementarian, I sympathize with the impetus behind this book. I too am alarmed by the number of listless young men in my life who turn to secular life coaches like Jordan Peterson for purpose and guidance instead of Christianity. But the answers we give cannot just be what they want to hear. Instead, we are to give them the difficult, but Biblical truth.
Far too much of "It’s Good To Be a Man" was a display of self-pitying rhetoric about how terribly society has abused men and how if men were just allowed to act out their true selves, things would be better. The authors frequently fling about Incel internet subculture slang (E.G. Red, Blue and Black pills; Alphas and Betas… etc) and refer to their presumed readers as “Functional Bastards.” Even though these sections are sometimes followed up by a call to action, they fail to take into account that society is not singling them out. In our modern era, every group is sabotaged by the fallen world. Rather than resentfully wallowing in conspiracies and blame, we should man up and simply acknowledge the fallen nature of our society, move on and look to where we can help others.
"It’s Good To Be a Man" could have achieved far more if it spent more time pointing to the cross and less time belittling women. For a book about the blessings of manhood, it spends an astonishingly high number of pages complaining about women. Women “always descend in emotional, mystical chaos” (pg. 92) and strong women are “butch and unnatural”(148). Women are portrayed as crafty manipulators wanting to use men for their own success and are only put into check by man’s domination (See 145 and much of Church Effeminate). Foster and Tennant describe in far too much detail how women are immodest without even acknowledging the sin of those leering at them.
However, by far the greatest danger of this book is its faulty theology. This is a real pity because I did especially enjoy their focus on the danger of androgenizing the soul. To reiterate, on paper, Foster, Tennant and I are nearly identical theologically, which is why I was astonished to discover some of their wild leaps. Most of the theology of the book is fairly solid, but in this case, a wee bit of poison ruins the whole meal. They write: “male and female are an image of the creator and creation…the principle of male and female doesn’t originate in Adam and Eve, but in God and creation”(61). Such a position rings of the “Mother Earth/Father Sky” cosmology and not at all of biblical anthropology. Male and female are biological concepts alien to God prior to the incarnation. To hold what they propose would require one to suppose that God is to creation what Adam is to Eve. There is an infinite divide between creator and creation. If what they say is true, all women ought to worship all men for eternity. The truth however is that maleness and femaleness are rooted in the physical reality of our bodies both of which are completely and equally Imago Dei (Gen 1:27). The other major flaw in their premise is the supposed existence of uniquely masculine sins and virtue and uniquely feminine sins and virtues (In fact they go so far as to claim that Christianity itself is fundamentally masculine). Sin is sin. Holiness is Holiness. They will manifest in different ways in different people.
Where is the masculinity of Jesus in all this? They say that the church has overemphasized servant leadership, but if we look around us today, I would say we are in more need than ever of men willing to humble themselves and act like they are in the kingdom of God where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. They are right to point out that Christ will also be a conquering king as well as a sacrificial lamb, but they forget when we live. Until Christ comes again we are to imitate the example of Stephen, not the zealots of 70AD. Their ideal Christian man would sneer at the martyrs of old. They seemed to have missed the memo about the upside-down kingdom of God. If the goal is to be self-controlled wise men, the book spends little of its time exemplifying that. Crude language and uncharitable attitudes abound through the pages. Their opponents are made into straw men and called names. I trust that It’s Good To Be a Man is a bad example of the real-life manhood of its authors. I am sure they respect their wives and cherish their children and encourage their congregations to live lives in imitation of Christ, but this book has far too little of that.
The good motive that spurred Foster and Tennant to write this book cannot make up for its failure to exemplify the gospel. I am sorely disappointed with this book. I had high hopes it would be a winsome theologically sound work I could recommend to some of my listless friends to point them to Christ-like masculinity, but unfortunately, it is not. I believe God has a high calling for the men of the church in all their occupations. We are to be strongly courageous and kindly humble. Men are to be heads of their households, but only insofar as they are willing to submit to serve them as Christ served the church. It is not easy to be the type of man God calls us to be, but it is good!
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