In Search Of A Holy Man

In the year of our Lord 2023, where can a man look to find a holy man?

In recent conversations with my friend Dr. John Seel, we tend to keep circling back to a singular topic: the problem of men.

More specifically, the absence of male identity.

In a sense, we are all acting as first responders to the scene of a masculinity crisis. 

Boys and men are in trouble. There is mounting research that shows they are struggling in almost every important measure – school grades are plummeting, college admissions are dwindling, they are falling behind in the labor market and increasingly losing touch with their own children. 

On top of that, there is a widespread cultural narrative that masculinity is intrinsically toxic— a ticking time bomb of abuse, violence, and lust. Masculine virtues were once celebrated and honored, they are now met with resistance, suspicion, and fear.

And while there is certainly a small portion of men who are indeed toxic, a culture promoting masculinity itself as toxic is extremely problematic and destructive.

Every culture has always had the responsibility to define what a man is and is not throughout human history. When you both remove definitions, specifically definitions rooted in history and the scriptures, as well as paint the very essence of masculinity as toxic, what you get are men who are grappling with what Richard Reeves calls "ontological insecurity.”

This is just a fancy way of saying that men, specifically young men, have neither a profound sense of knowing their place in the world or whether they are needed by anyone or anything. 

It is in these cultural conditions that the fragility of masculinity either withers and dies – or, more likely, finds extreme alternatives.

Richard Reeves warns,

When positive masculine energy is not modeled from father to son, it creates a vacuum in the souls of men, and into that vacuum demons pour.¹

Is it surprising that under these social conditions men between the ages of 15 and 24 have a four times higher suicide rate than anyone else?

Or that being male is the biggest risk factor for suicide.²

A society full of aimless men navigating this new world – especially those detached from the guidance of traditional role models like fathers – is a society on the brink. 

What we as men need, perhaps more than almost anything else, is exemplars.

Who are the men we should model our life after?

Where are those men whose lives we could only hope for?

What is the ideal man we should aspire to become?

I have personally and professionally been wrestling with these questions.

To be a man, you need to see a man… and I, along with many of my peers, are looking, wondering and hoping to see some.

As for the ideal man, I have been really interested in the concept of a “Holy Man.” Below is a portion from a paper that John and I brainstormed, he wrote and I edited.

Holy Man roaming the streets.

Before (if) you read it, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments or in an email about what you think the characteristics of a Holy Man would be in 2023. We put together 18 characteristics - some good, some we’ll delete later.

The ultimate goal is to establish correct parameters of a Holy Man target. Highlighting the target might be a great first step for a generation of men who are experiencing ontological insecurity.

Here’s a bit of our paper, let me know your thoughts below:

When all is said and done, it appears that the greatest challenge facing men is addressing the basic question, "Who am I?" It is both a question of being and a question of doing. What does it mean to be male? And how do I ideally behave has a male? The answers being given by male influencers resort to an ancient evolutionary primitive mindset such as anonymous Twitter [now X] user known only as the Bronze Age Pervert. These purveyors of ancient paganism promote a nostalgic, anti-modern, evolutionary animalistic masculinity. They appeal to traditionalism, authoritarianism, and established gender roles. They are wary of the progressive woke left, suspicious of those who place feelings and ideology over facts as they see them. Their heroes are warriors of the past and superheroes of the Marvel and DC gaming universe. It is no wonder that these popular trends among young men create a vocal worried fury among young modern women. More mainstream than Bronze Age Pervert nude weightlifting, is various expression of a "Trad" style and lifestyle that might feature a bowtie, vest, and tweed jacket reflecting a loose throwback approximation of an Ivy League or Oxford style in the 1950s. Here visible expressions of traditionalism in clothing become a personal lifestyle expression protesting contemporary values. What is significant in this aspect of the men's movement is that it is simply an expression of personal consumerist choice made without any ontological grounding or fixed basis for gender. It provides a faux appearance of traditionalism built on the amorphous foundation of expressive individualism.

As it turns out much of the crisis of identity evident in the men's movement stems from the widespread acceptance and grounding premises of expressive individualism. It is the foundational concept surrounding identity in the current social imaginary. Whether adopted by the left or the right, the underlying assumptions are the same. On the left it assumes that identity is a consumer choice, gender a fluid reality, and sexuality a variable of emotional attraction. On the right it asserts a gender binary, reinforced with politicized rhetoric (i.e., see Vivek Ramaswamy's Ten Commandments), champions traditional styles, ancient warriors based on Jungian archetypes. Market forces, technological and medical breakthroughs, philosophical ideas, and political realities all conspired in the early decades of the twenty-first century to makes expressive individualistic assumptions the taken-for-granted assumptions of public life, demarked by the full weight of cultural stigma if rejected. In the modern world, identity is a product of your personal design. Marketing guru Tom Peters championed creating the brand called "You."

It’s time for me—and you—to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.³

The rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s and the general acceptance of a disembodied cyberspace served to reinforce a generalized notion that reality itself is a social creation, that everything is amiable to the autonomous whims of consumer choice and technological innovation.⁴ As a consequence, expressive individualism became how we think about ourselves and our relationships to others. Rather than dealing with superficial culture war conflicts, we'd be far wiser to explore, understand, and address the deeper framing assumptions behind expressive individualism. Grove City College theologian Carl Trueman has written widely on this topic and The Gospel Coalition has a useful series on it as well.⁵ It is my consideration that identity formation is the single greatest challenge of the men's movement, and that expressive individualism is the biggest single roadblock to establishing a biblical understanding of identity. This is the nub of the cultural crisis as it bears on men and as such the triage priority.

Carl Trueman who has done the most recent and accessible writing diagnosing the problem of expressive individualism. He writes,

A society's understanding of the notion of "self" has broad implications for the cultural, moral, and political spheres. The modern notion of self, which can be called "expressive individualism," to use Robert Bellah's term, lies at the heart of current cultural conflicts, including abortion, pornography, the ethics of life and death, radical racial politics, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Expressive individualism holds that human beings are defined by their individual psychological core, and that the purpose of life is allowing that core to find social expression in relationships. Anything that challenges it is deemed oppressive. Building a society based on a true understanding of the human person begins with an acknowledgement of the situation in which we find ourselves.⁶

 Expressive individualism assumes that the ultimate authority in life is an individual's subjective feelings and that the primary mission in life is to find authentic expression of these feelings in one's relations to other people. This is Philip Rieff's "triumph of the therapeutic" in its most extreme and consistent form.⁷ This is also the basis for the various forms of identity politics whether race, sex, or gender. Expressive individualism atomizes society creating the social conditions of isolation and loneliness, increases the potential for social conflict, and elevates autonomy and self-determination above all else, strengthening the plausibility that we can fundamentally choose who we are.

It is not difficult to see how the bias toward and acceptance of the virtual as being on par with real life reinforces the acceptance of expressive individualism. (I was once asked seriously by an evangelical seminary student whether a water baptism of an avatar in the online game Sims City counted for eternity.) Almost all our social conflicts stem from the framing of reality according to the bias to the virtual and the acceptance of expressive individualism. There can be no meaningful discipleship done in church with our children that doesn't celebrate objective embodied reality while addressing a biblical understanding of identity that stands squarely against the premises of expressive individualism.

There are historically three sources of identity: designed, discovered, or derived. Expressive individualism (and postmodernism) assumes it is designed, modernism assumed it is discovered (i.e., Myers-Briggs and Enneagram), while biblically identity is derived through an ongoing dependent relationship with Jesus. The biblical truth about who we are and our relationship to others is the explicit opposite of expressive individualism. And yet, the general understanding of selfhood accepted by most Christians and certainly by most of our children is not the result of conscious reflection on biblical truth and an ongoing dependent relationship on Jesus but on the taken-for-granted intuitions that society cultivates for us, namely expressive individualism. Such is the ubiquitous power of culture in shaping the stories we tell about the nature of reality and the good life. Dallas Willard warns us,

Ideas and images are the primary focus of Satan's efforts to defeat God's purposes with and for humankind. When we are subject to his chosen ideas and images, he can take a nap or a holiday.⁸

Men are in trouble. Because of this society is in trouble. The root of this trouble is the question of identity. The dominant assumption about identity in the modern world, expressive individualism, is the root of the problem of men's crisis of identity.  Consequently, everything in our power must be done to understand and counter the assumptions of expressive individualism. It is at this point that we must reframe the debate. This is triage ground zero in the crisis of masculinity.

Identity and identity formation needs to be a central theme of our discipleship with men. Expressive individualism undermines all forms of external authority for our children including basic biology. We can spend our time battling public policy issues about school bathrooms, policies of fairness in women's sports, and parental notification of pronoun choice in schools and miss the root religious and cultural cause of all these political crises. It is an example of playing the game on the wrong field and not beginning by reframing the entire issue. To continue to play the game as we have been playing it, to fail to tell a better story is to guarantee failure and to perpetuate the crisis of masculinity for our children and for their children to the third and fourth generations.

Three steps are required to address the pivotal issue of identity and identity formation. First, we must positively demonstrate in and through our lives an emotionally healthy and divinely secured spiritual male identity. Public exemplars are going to be key.

Second, we must challenge the assumptions of expressive individualism by telling a better story. We must expose the fact that this is not how reality works. Put bluntly, it is a lie. This necessitates our capturing the public's imagination. Four-hundred-page theological/historical diatribes such as Carl Truman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and even his more popular retelling in Strange New Worlds: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution are not going to be adequate—as timely and useful as both books are. We will have to explore the issue of identity creatively through film, novel, and story. In this Tara Isabella Burton is beginning to show us how in her recent book Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians.⁹  Here too diagnosis of the cultural problem does not provide a prescription of the biblical solution that men can use practically.

Third, we must explain how a biblically derived, relationally grounded identity can be formed with Jesus despite our families of origin, past relational woundedness, and embodied doubts and insecurities. It is probable that like overcoming the addiction of alcohol, this is a process that needs an ongoing conversation with other men. We will need to create safe places where these often-uncomfortable conversations can be fostered among men.

Finally, we must begin to detail the specific characteristics in terms of virtues and habits that men need to begin developing to counter the tendencies of male toxicity to better reflect the indwelling life of Jesus.

A Holy Man Exemplar

Men need to be given specific guidelines to debate, wrestle with, and emulate. This is an ongoing process best developed in community because we are not dealing here with a private consumer choice or a subjective expression of personal authenticity but rather an objective alignment with our created and now re-created identity as seen in the life and person of Jesus. It is his person that is being spiritually recreated in each of our lives. C.S. Lewis write,

Every person is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

Lest we think of this in abstract spiritualized terms, Lewis unpacks exactly what this means,

And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them," this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts—that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.¹⁰

This is the repeated message of the Bible,

We can all draw close to him with the veil removed from our faces. And with no veil we all become like mirrors who brightly reflect the glory of the Lord Jesus.

Be supernaturally infused with strength through your union with the Lord Jesus. Stand victorious with the force of his explosive power flowing in and through you."¹¹

Our emerging identity is the fruit or outgrowth of the indwelling Christ within us. Lewis adds,

Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam—he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts."¹²

If we abide in Christ, depend on him in all things, our lives will begin to look like a Holy Man. So, what does that look like?

1. A Holy Man possesses wild eyes.

He is not satisfied with the status quo but takes initiative as a difference maker. There is in his spirit an entrepreneurial drive that sees what can be, beyond what is. There is something unsettled by a Holy Man as he knows that instinctively that he is a citizen of and called to another world.

2. A Holy Man moves mysteriously.

There is something about his life that is clearly from beyond this world. He counts on more than what the eye can see and is off-putting because of this pervasive supernatural dependence and orientation. It was said of Dallas Willard that "he lived in another time zone." Such is the life of a practical mystic.

3. A Holy Man reveres the sacred everywhere.

He is an everyday mystic. For him all of life is a spiritual adventure. Rather than living a fragmented and compartmentalized life, his life is holistically centered on what in the spirit of Søren Kierkegaard is the purity of heart to will one thing.

4. A Holy Man establishes rituals, disciplines, and traditions.

He is self-conscious about the routines and habits of his life. He recognizes that it is the little things done daily that give a life its shape and character. As such he is self-aware and conscious of the daily habits and routines of his life. Novelist Annie Dillard writes, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Her point? If you want to know what you will be like in twenty years, take a good look at yourself today. Your life is sum of your days and habits. Tomorrow never comes. Consequently, attention to the daily routines and details of one's life are critical to a Holy Man.

5. A Holy Man walks a spiritual pilgrimage.

For him life is a growing relational process to which one never arrives. He doesn't see his life in static snap shots, but as an ongoing developing film. And most importantly, it is an unfolding that is primarily in God's hands. He truly believes that his life has become God's poetry, a re-created person that will fulfill the destiny that God has given to him as he is joined to Jesus. Life for him is a spiritual adventure of God's sovereign unfolding of his destiny.

6. A Holy Man abides in God.

In the school of life, the Holy Man learns to live in a constant and transforming friendship with a loving God who will never go away and provides the needed resources for the activities of daily life. The Holy Man lives in the dynamic of an ongoing spiritual flow.

7. A Holy Man seeks a spiritual father.

A Holy Man knows that he needs a spiritual mentor, what the Celtic spiritual tradition called an anam cara or "soul friend." Saint Brigid said, "A person without a soul friend is like a body without a head." A Holy Man lives a life framed by dependence on God's presence and this presence is often wisely mediate through a spiritual father, mentor, or soul friend. The deepest priorities of a life and the overarching direction of a life are both best illustrated by the choice of one's closest four or five friends. As goes your friends, so goes your life. A Holy Man knows this and has one friend to whom the secrets of his life are open so that he can live life without a mask or pretension.

8. A Holy Man fulfills a life mission.

His life is an ongoing answering to God's call, direction, and authority over him. He makes it his life mission to uncover the mystical sense of God's calling and faithfully walking in it. "A vocation or calling," Puritan William Perkins writes, "is a certain kind of life ordained and imposed on man by God for the common good." There are no exceptions to this kind of life. "Every person of every degree, state, sex, or condition, without exception, must have some personal and particular calling to walk in," continues Perkins.¹³

9. A Holy Man leaves a legacy.

This means that he is living his life in such a manner that it serves others and invests time, talent, and treasure in and for others. It also means that a Holy Man has a sense of history and is prepared to place his life within it to further advance it for the kingdom of God.

10. A Holy Man seeks kindred spirits.

He seeks to find those who share in the burden, responsibility, and opportunity poise by his calling. He also seeks to surround himself with those who will collectively call him to be his best self. The measure of a man is the measure of his closest friends.

11. A Holy Man catalyzes a tribe.

Because he is seeking to make a difference with his life, he does not assume that he can do it alone and therefore seeks to create a dense network who share in the causes that animate his life.

12. A Holy Man is a savage servant.

As a measure to how he exerts his leadership over others, he does so in the manner that puts others first and seeks to serve rather than being served. A Holy Man is deeply committed to the team concept of leadership, organization, and mission.

13. A Holy Man fosters emotional intelligence.

He learns the skills needed to work effectively with others through self-awareness, empathy, and interpersonal sensitivity. Emotional Intelligence is not innate but can be learned. A Holy Man makes it a point to grow in emotional intelligence.

14. A Holy Man burns with the fire of a poet and walks with a limp.

This means that he must be capable of leading with the right hemisphere of his brain, be aware of his own failings, and have empathy toward others. Elder Porphyrios wrote, "Whoever wants to become a Christian must first become a poet. That's what it is! You must suffer. You must love and suffer—suffer for the one you love."¹⁴ A Holy Man has the sensibility of a poet because he has lived a life that knows suffering personally. Holy Men walk with a limp.

15. A Holy Man is a perpetual student.

He is committed to a life of reading and study not only of the Bible, but also of old books from the past that shape his perception of the present. A life of holiness is a literary and academic adventure that is constantly expanding the mind and heart.

16. A Holy Man takes his body seriously.

He appreciates his body and is comfortable in his own skin. He has a clear understanding of sexuality and is consciously developing the virtue of chastity. In this regard, he can comfortably treat women without objectification. He also takes care of his body in a manner that maximizes its performance for the kingdom of God as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

17. A Holy Man is consciously countercultural.

He not only appreciates God's good creation but is also aware of how sin has distorted it. He is not afraid to examine the patterns of sin and idolatry so that he can be sensitive to avoiding them in his own life. He has the strength of character not to follow the crowd but to assume that in many instances of life he will have to take a lonely courageous stand for truth, goodness, and beauty.

18. A Holy Man becomes a saint.

He is committed to a life-long process of growth, formation, and development, being consciously set apart for God as a poet, warrior, and monk. He has a vision of becoming like Jesus by being an apprentice of Jesus to be able to do what he did and love as he loves.

These steps to being a Holy Man are not easy. Each requires more thought and reflection to be able to apply them well. But they also provide a spiritual, psychological, and physical recipe of growth in godliness. There are steps to be taken. We can learn to live out of the resources of Jesus in the school of life to better emulate in our life his character and love.

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1. Richard V. Reeves, "Into the Vacuum Demons Pour," Substack, March 29, 2023: https://ofboysandmen.substack.com/p/into-the-vacuum-demons-pour/.

2. Richard V. Reeves, "Some News I Can't Wait to Share, Substack, June 30, 2023.

3. Tom Peters, "The Brand Called You: You Can't Move Up If You Don't Stand Out!" Fast Company, August 31, 1987: https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you/. See also Harry Beckwith and Christine K. Clifford, You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself (Business Plus, 2007).

4. Mark Dery, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (Grove Press, 1997)

5. Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2020), Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2022) [emphasis added], "How Expressive Individualism Threatens Civil Society, The Heritage Society, May 27, 2021: https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/how-expressive-individualism-threatens-civil-society; Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Harvard University Press, 1989); Trevin Wax, Rethink Your Self: The Power of Looking Up Before Looking In (B&H Publishing Group, 2020), "Expressive Individualism Series," The Gospel Coalition: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/expressive-individualism-series/.

6. Carl R. Trueman, "How Expressive Individualism Threatens Civil Society, The Heritage Society, May 27, 2021: https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/how-expressive-individualism-threatens-civil-society.

7. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (Harper & Row, 1966).

8. Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (NavPress, 2002), p. 100.

9. Tara Isabella Burton, Self-Made:  Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians (PublicAffairs, 2023).

10. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Macmillan, 1952), p. 64-65.

11. 2 Corinthians 3:14 and Ephesians 6:10 (The Passion Translation).

12. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 64.

13. William Perkins, "A Treatise of the Vocations or Callings of Men, with the Sorts and Kinds of Them, and the Right Use Thereof," The Works of William Perkins (Abingdon, 1970), p. 446, 455. See also Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (W Publishing Group, 2003).

14. Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios (Denise Harvey, 2005), p. 107.