The problem is not that men can’t fight or wear pink neckties. Popular preachers might like to highlight those things because they get a laugh, but such things don’t identify the real source of a young man’s failure. The real problem is a failure to grow up, to take initiative and be leaders. And while some theologians want to root this failure in abandoned gender roles, it seems more likely that it is rooted in a culture that coddles teens and expects them to be selfish...
Because we struggle to identify masculinity in concrete terms, we end up evaluating young men based on their clothing, hobbies and hands (“Are they calloused from manual labor?” and so on). What many popular preachers end up doing is adopting the cultural norms for masculinity, which may or may not reflect the biblical expectations. Masculinity is very hard to define in concrete terms. I might speak of man’s function as head of his home, provider and protector, but how that plays out in any specific context can’t be nailed down by quoting a few Bible verses. Men come in all shapes and sizes, even in the Bible. David is sometimes a warrior and sometimes a poet. Solomon is never a warrior. Jeremiah the “weeping prophet” and Shamgaur, the “Dude” who killed a bunch a people with an ox goad, are clearly different men. Because of personality, skills and context, being a man may look very different from person to person. The failure of so many critics is that they assume there is a one-size-fits-all “man” and that anyone outside those boundaries is in sin. In asking young men to lead, however, we are not calling into question their gender; rather, we are calling them to grow up.