How Times Have Changed

No, this isn't one of those "When I was young" complaints. Think farther back.

Scripture describes a beautiful friendship back in 1st Samuel. There we read of David and Jonathan. Jonathan was the son of the king, Saul, who would become the sworn enemy of David. Still, After David killed Goliath, we read, "The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." (1 Sam 18:1) Their friendship lasted until Jonathan's death (and beyond) despite the hatred of Jonathan's father. They served as a prototype for male-bonding.

Oh, but times have changed. Today there are voices that assure us that David and Jonathan had a homosexual relationship. Why? Because the only possible understanding of "loved him" is "had sex with him" under today's standards. Now, mind you, it has not always been the case. Other cultures routinely have men hugging and kissing men without the slightest hint of sexual attraction. The shift away, I would argue, is a blatant result of an oversexualized society that finds sex as its apex predator and everything about it is sex. How else could you explain the woman who wrote about a relationship with God as sexual because, after all, even Jonathan Edwards wrote about "intercourse with God." It is myopic.Things now are not how things have always been in all times for all people. Indeed, the life and times in which we live are foreign to everything that has come before, it seems.

We complain that gender is a social construct. We complain that what constitutes "masculine" and "feminine" is purely societal. While it's certainly not necessarily the case, at the same time we have certainly defined certain behaviors as purely and only sexual. You can't hug without intending sex (which is really sick if you hug your mother). You can't kiss if you aren't planning a night of passion (even though Paul commanded them to "greet one another with a holy kiss" (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26)). In other words, we have allowed a God-hating (Rom 8:7), sinful world to define relationships by their sinful standards.

The cost, I think, is too high. We've redefined male friendship as tough and stoic and certainly at a distance. Real men don't love real men. We've been social distancing before COVID made it cool. At more of a distance, then, we're expected to "bear one anothers burdens" (Gal 6:2), but that's not really happening because, hey, we don't want to get too close and be thought of as effeminate. Men showing men love and tenderness and kindness is all wrong in our society not because it is homosexual, but because they say it is.

I think it's part of a battle plan. I think it's part of the assault on men that we see in society and in churches. I don't think it's a female conspiracy; I think it's a satanic one. And we men are taking the knee to it because that's about as "tender" as we can get and not be "gay."