Having a Beard Doesn't Make You a Man

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Having a Beard Doesn't Make You a Man

April 16, 2023

The title speaks for itself. Sometimes we get attached to aesthetics without the presuppositions that undergird them. Let us not be hypocrites in this sense. We hope you enjoy this episode and take something away from it!

Key Text:

* 2 Timothy 3:5-7

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Transcript

(music) Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow and tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron.

(music) And I will not apologize for this God of the Bible.

(music) 2 Timothy 3, verses 5-7. Holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power, avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Thank you for tuning into the For the King podcast. On this podcast we proclaim the edicts of the king, namely and chiefly, that Yahweh reigns. As always on these Sunday episodes I'm joined with Bryce.

What's up Bryce? How you feeling right now? What is happening? I'm feeling great. The sun's out, the gun's out. What about you? That's good.

Yeah, I would say something similar dude. Sun's out. Did you say guns are out? Oh yeah, guns are out.

AK-47, you know, nothing crazy. Is that what you call your right bicep? Yeah. That's funny.

So welcome and thanks Bryce for being with me this morning. We're going to be discussing, per the title, right? Just having a beard doesn't mean you're a man. Okay, but that's just our little gotcha or grab you a clickbait title.

We're going to go a little more in depth, falling on the key principle in that statement. That just because you have what's associated with masculinity doesn't necessarily mean you're a man. Okay, so that's going to be tough for, I mean, even Bryce and I, right? I mean, Bryce and I do some of this stuff in terms of being inconsistent, right? Maybe having the appearance of something, but not actually practicing it.

That's always something a man needs to be growing in. But there are some men that are just completely taken over by this kind of living, this kind of ungodly way of life that men have. So, you know, to give some preface here of what we're going at, in 2 Timothy 3, the verse I just read to start us out, "You have some men that hold to a form of godliness, although they deny its power." And they were to avoid men like that.

What do these men do? They're leading people astray, specifically weak women that want to be led by a strong man, right? Strong, godly man. There are men like this in the world that, you know, can captivate a weak woman that's weighed down with her sins, but he does nothing actually to watch his wife with the word, to love his wife. Or he's always learning, and he's never actually coming to a knowledge of the truth.

He's a seeker, right? So there's a ton of men like this. Even I know I've fallen into stuff like this often where I'm always wanting to learn, but I never actually place my feet anywhere. I never actually stand into something and believe it fullheartedly by faith and live my life according to that.

So when we think about something like a beard, having a beard doesn't mean you're a man. There might be a form of masculinity, a form of godliness, godly masculine living, where, "Oh, if you want to be a masculine man, you need to grow out a beard, right, and have big muscles." Well, that's not necessarily true. It may be, you may have a physique like that, or the way you look and appear, but you may inconsistently be living according.

Like your beard, honestly, your beard might testify against you. Your muscles might testify against you because you might be physically strong, but mentally and emotionally and spiritually, you may be a weakling, you know? Or you might have a beard, you might have a beard which is a symbol of masculinity and wisdom, but you may inwardly not be masculine. You may be effeminate and unwise, and your beard may testify against you.

So I guess those are some of my initial thoughts. What do you think, Bryce? Yeah, I mean, some people, them wearing, they wear a beard for the same reason that somebody open carries a huge revolver. It's overcompensating for something that they don't have.

Yeah. So just because you might have more of a natural ability to grow a bigger beard does not mean that you have the spiritual mental fortitude and maturity that actually ought to correspond with having such a beard. And just to be clear, like Rocky and I definitely hold, just like Spurgeon did, to a position that men ought to grow beards.

It's good for men to have beards. Exactly. It corresponds to masculinity, but it doesn't always have such a strict correlation.

Exactly. Any men who have great big beards who are actually just very effeminate. Yeah.

I just had a job interview. I'm kind of on the job hunt right now. The dude that I interviewed, he was bald.

He had a big old beard. He looked like a man. Come to find out.

He's got LGBTQ kids. He doesn't believe in formalized institutional religion. He's just kind of like a hippy-dippy kind of Christian, just spiritual nonsense, right? So again, I had, at first, I was like, "Okay, cool.

This guy's going to be a masculine dude. If I work with this company, he'll be my mentor and I'll have some masculine dude over me." That wasn't the case, right? So that's, again, it's a correlation and it ought to be the case that if you have a beard, your beard ought to support, ought to, I guess, confirm your masculinity and be a symbol of it rather than a testament against you. Right.

Yeah. It's like being baptized. Your baptism ought to testify that you are a godly Christian and that you're a reprobate.

It shouldn't testify that you're a reprobate. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. So same thing with your muscles. And then I think the worst thing for circles that Bryce and I would run in, the more like reform circles, verse 7, I think is, I mean, if you're a guy in that kind of circle, you're going to struggle with this and this should hit you hard.

It's something you should wake up every day and try to put to death because we can fall into this. But verse 7, "Always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." There are so many dudes that want to, I know I've been all up in this too, so don't, it's something we can repent of and put to death, but you like the label. You like holding a position.

You like to, you learn a position and you hold to it. Now, there's nothing wrong with the position if it's corresponding to some truth of doctrine in the scriptures. That's good, right? It's okay to have like a doctrinal position and to say, I'm this, I'm a Calvinist, I'm this, right? But some dudes just get caught up in the doctrine and wanting to have the title per se or like, oh, I'm a reform Baptist or I'm a, you know, reform Presbyterian or, you know, I'm a Theonomist, I'm post-mill, I'm this, that, right? Without actually like letting those truths hit you.

You're not actually ever coming to a knowledge of the truth. You're just always learning about things and never actually doing them, having them confirm through your actions. So you know, I've heard this before.

I think this is a good statement, but this is, this is a good truth. Orthodoxy ought to lead to orthopraxy. Orthopraxy is your doing, it's your Orthodox living and then Orthodoxy is your Orthodox beliefs.

So your Orthodox beliefs ought to lead to an Orthodox Christian life. Yeah. Don't.

Well, what do you think of Bryce? Yeah. Like for example, if you are convinced of Presbyterianism and yet you don't go to church, you are a feminine. Even if you have a beard, you're a feminine.

If you're not going to church, you're not assembling with the saints, you're not getting on your knees and worshiping the Lord, you're a feminine. Yeah. Like that's a good example of holding fast to a position and yet not actually doing anything applicable that would say that you believe that.

Here's another example. It's saying that you're a patriarch and I believe in patriarchy and yet somehow you cannot get your butt about to go to work and also to work your butt off all day long, produce a good product, do well, work well for those who are above you and then come home and you're too lazy to actually get down on your knees and serve your wife and to love her well. Yeah.

To help her out, to kiss your baby and play with them. Like if you can't do those things, if instead when you get home from work and you say, "Oh honey, I just, I have to go read Calvin's Institutes," you're a feminine, you're a faggot, you're not doing anything that corresponds to masculinity. I don't care if you call yourself, if you say to yourself that you hold the patriarchy.

And maybe here's another example. If you say that you hold the patriarchy and yet your wife works outside the home with obvious exceptions, your wife works outside the home and yet you are homeschooling your kids. Maybe you're in the ministry.

Maybe you have a beard. Maybe you, I don't know, whatever you're doing, that's just blatant effeminacy. With men who say that they hold the patriarchy and yet their wives are working outside the home and they're able to have all the benefits of a house husband.

I literally, I know a person like this who his wife worked outside the home for eight years while he was able to stay at home and play with him. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, that's crazy. This person is an effeminate man. Yeah.

Well, it's tough because that hits really hard to me right now because right now we're in the process of transitioning my wife out of working. It's been tough because we wouldn't have been able to save any money, but she's leaving work now. But it was an inconsistent, what I should have done is been the kind of man that prepared well for marriage so my wife didn't have to work when that happened.

But I wasn't that kind of man and I tried to repent of that. Now I'm doing better in terms of saving my money and being wise with my money and stuff, but I was a fool with my money. I should have been in a place where my wife didn't have to work right when I got married, but that's just not what happened.

So something I need to repent of, something I have repented of and she's about done working. She's transitioning out right now of that. I think it's like four more months.

But yeah, that was inconsistent of me and I hope to teach my sons to not make the mistake I did where hey, when you get married, son, you need to be in a place where you can provide for your wife right up front. And if you guys are going to be unable to do that, then you need to figure out if you want to get married, you need to figure out how to do that because that's a responsibility of being married. You need to take care of your wife.

Yeah, I actually wasn't talking about you to see you're aware. Thank you. Thank you.

But it's like it definitely does weigh on me though because my wife, I mean, I mean women just let they just be honest, women are not, they do not thrive in the workplace. My wife is, there is a lot like I go to work. I mean, just since we're on this topic, I go to work, you know, for eight to 10 hour days or whatever, and I come home and I'm ready to get rocking and rolling.

Let's go on a walk. Let's go hang out, sweetie. Let's go do something together.

Let's read a book together. Let's, you know, I'm good. But my wife gets home.

She's anxious. She's stressed. She doesn't know what to do.

Oh no, I got to work here here in the next few days and because she's part time. So she works every like three or four days. She's part time and she's really stressed about it the whole time.

She's thinking about it. She can't get it off her mind. It messes her up for like a day afterwards, but guys are just made to work so we can go to work, come home.

Oh yeah. What's, you know, I worked all day, but that's no big deal. Like I'm done.

You know what I mean? But women don't operate like that. They're worried about it. They're stressed.

It's, it impacts their life at home. Yeah. So I don't know.

Just some commentary there on that. It's a tough situation, but it's just, you know, it's tough. And yeah, if you're the kind of, if you're a patriarch and you believe that it is actually better for society when women actually raise their own children rather than having the daycare raise them or someone else raise them, then you need to do everything you can as a man to yeah, not just have a beard and play the part, but to actually like figure out how to make enough money for your family to thrive with your wife at home.

So your kids can thrive because kids thrive when mom's out raising them. Right. So I don't know.

That's a lot. Any thoughts that arise? Yeah. I mean, just maybe moving on a little bit from that.

I mean, I think that's, I mean, absolutely right. Being able to like, that's why I said with obvious exceptions, you know, you have to work towards it. You can't just, and that's like kind of what we're talking about.

You can't just have the facade of holding to these positions and then willy nilly, all your problems are done away with. Guess what you've had like, you know, for men growing up, you have years of porn addiction. Right.

And then all of a sudden, okay, boom, the Lord regenerates you, you're saved. God's converted you. And now you know that this is a wicked heinous thing that you're upsetting your Lord, your master and your friend, but you have years of such an addiction behind you.

You know, you have to deal with the consequences of your own sin. Yeah. That's why I love what Mr. Foster says and him and Nontan on, it's good to be a man, the book.

It's not necessarily some of the things that we have to deal with. It's not necessarily our fault, but it's our responsibility. We have to.

Yeah. And, you know, where our fathers may be failed, where our mothers failed in teaching us. It's like, yeah, it's not our fault, but it's our responsibility.

We can't play the victim mentality. You know, we need to be building. We need to be working.

This is maybe another, uh, a sin of the masculine culture that we need to come against is we need to be people who build. We can't have these great grand, um, unrealistic ideas of what we need to do. Like sometimes, you know, think about the man when Jesus came to that, uh, I can't remember what town it was, but there was the man who has chained for seven years, right? And the man comes up to him and then Jesus ends up casting the demon out of him.

And then he says, Lord, let me follow you. Like he wants to go with Jesus. He wants to get back in the boat with him.

He wants to follow Jesus wherever he goes. And what does Jesus say to him? He says, no, go back into the town and tell them what you have seen. You know, it is not for everybody to be an apostle of Christ.

There were only 12 of them. It's not for everybody to be a Martin Luther or John Calvin, but it is for every single man to get up every morning, to go to work, to provide and protect for your family, to go home, to love your wife, help her. It doesn't matter how tired you are to help her, to love her well, to say to hell with reading my theology books, I'm going to focus on loving my wife well, to have dinner with your family, laugh with your kids, play with your kids.

When family, when, uh, when dinner's done to actually break open the Bible, to read the Bible to them, to not try to make it some theological lecture where they have to have right perfect doctrine, but to just teach them the words of God, to pray with them, to pray for them, to sing with them. You know, that's what it means to be an osculant. That's the godly family man.

Abraham doesn't have Calvin's institutes, and yet he's the father of our faith. Yeah. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. That kind of stuff will make a grown man cry because every man, when they hear stuff like that, they know I'm called the more that I'm doing, you know, uh, technically, yeah, you're never doing enough. It's like, you know, people break records all the time at the Olympic level, right? So there's, there's a, there's a standard that's created when somebody breaks the world record in something, right? Oh, no one's ever going to beat that.

It's the world record. It's the fastest a human has ever went on this. And then guess what? In like five, 10 years, somebody breaks that record.

So there's always more you can be doing as a man. There's always more than God's calling you to. We look at some men and we're like, they're extraordinary, but it's like, that's just life for them because they've worked themselves up to that.

So we got to start small and start working and get to a point where we are Godly men that can bear the weight of that stuff. There's always more that God's calling us to and responsibilities like miracle grow for a man. You know, I know it's done wonders for me to have more responsibility.

It's made me a better man. So get some responsibility, take, take some responsibility where you can and start growing and start working towards the things that Bryce is talking about there. And it's, it's powerful.

It'll make a grown man cry because we get comfortable, but we know there's more we could be doing, you know? And then when you hear somebody calling you to that, it's like, man, it's like, it's powerful, you know? And think about Jesus's words. If you're faithful with a little, you'll be faithful with a lot. Like I, like, you know, Jordan Peterson, you know, he's, he's liberal.

He's not an actual conservative. We shouldn't be getting everything from him, but he does make a good point when he says, you know, pick up your room, make your bed. You know, we should be people who are responsible for the things that we do have.

Yeah. You know, and if we're faithful with the little that God's given us, you know, there's two kinds of men. You can either sit there and contemplate about what great things God's going to do for your life or instead of wasting your time contemplating about that, you can go ahead and start doing the responsibilities that you have.

Exactly. We have a lot of people who think and a lot of not doing like if you come up like if, you know, I'm in construction, if you come across a problem, you can sit there and think about it for an hour on how to, how to overcome this obstacle, or you can go ahead and start doing something and see what works. Yeah.

You know, that's the, that's the attitude that men are supposed to have. We shouldn't be sitting there thinking and theorizing about all these grand things. We need to be getting to work and doing the basic things.

Like that's why, you know, what, what are the disciples do? There's two of them, they were arguing about which one of them is the greatest. You know, they were sitting there theorizing and Jesus says, you need to stop theorizing and recognize he who is the greatest is he who is the least. That is what Jesus did.

He didn't sit in the garden of Gethsemane thinking, Oh Lord, what great things are you going to do for me? But instead he had the mindset of preparing his heart to go and suffer and die on the cross. Jesus was the one who became the least. Yeah.

The path to glory and honor is actually through becoming the least and servant of all. Yeah. Amen.

That's what Jesus did. So that's what we need to do is men. That's what it means to be masculine.

Yeah. Amen. I guess here's two points of here.

There's two kinds of, I guess, thoughts off that. That's honestly why I stopped listening to the dividing line podcast with James white. Great example of, I mean, yes, he does a lot.

He debates and things like that. I'm not saying what he does, but there are so many dudes that listen to his podcast. That just kind of talk the talk, you know, it's just like all heady stuff, but I never hear James white talking about like practical issues that men face and how to make, you know, the men that listen to his podcast better.

It's just kind of like titilizing to make you think that you have an appearance of godliness that you're talking about such high lofty theology, but he never actually, I'm just saying not nothing against, you know, Dr. White, you know, but at the end of the day, there are some frustrating things. I think he kind of misses on the dividing line. And then my second point of application, just thinking about something, something really mundane like investing, you know, sometimes we're like always researching and trying to do this, but you just sometimes do that kind of like in depth research.

But sometimes you miss out on a big capital gain because you just didn't invest in something that you know, it's going to go up. I mean, I've had that happen a lot where I saw something go up a ton and I just never invested a little bit of money in it and I missed out, you know, so it's just, you just, you need to be active in doing things and taking risks because, because I mean, honestly, if you never take a risk, you're never going to have a reward. That's the point of living the Christian life.

It's a life full of risks, you know, so I don't know what you thought about Bryce, if any of that resounded with you, but it's very good. Just some thoughts. Okay.

Well, uh, so, you know, I guess as we wrap up here, main point when we look at second Timothy three, five through seven, don't be the kind of man that has a form of godliness that's always learning and never able to come to any knowledge of the truth. Don't just, um, you know, neglect your duties for what you think seems like a more spiritual experience like sitting down and reading all these theology books and, uh, you know, having these discussions, but with other men that are good, but neglecting your wife and your kids, you know, um, we have, we have, yeah, certain obligations that we need to do. So, uh, let's make sure that we're doing them as men.

So we appreciate you guys for, uh, for listening. Um, thank you, Bryce, for joining me. Appreciate you brother.

I'm going to close with the doxology and first Timothy one 17 to the king of the ages of the world is the only god, the honor of glory forever and ever. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

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