My friend Dina is extremely wise, about men, women and relationships. She gave me a definition of masculinity a while back that stuck with me. She says that masculinity is when a man refuses to compromise his moral values and duties in order to get favor from a woman. Knowing her background, she’s probably seen a lot of men make fools of themselves for young and pretty women. She hates it.
So, with that in mind, take a look at this news story. I’ll only quote a little because I have a lot to say about it below.
This is from the far-left ABC News:
Samuel Forrest says his life turned upside down last year after he was faced with the devastating choice of giving up his wife or his newborn son with Down syndrome.
[…]Forrest, 37, told ABC News last February that the day Leo was born in Yerevan, Armenia, on Jan. 21, 2015, he was told, unexpectedly, that Leo had Down syndrome.
After the news sank in, Forrest held Leo for the very first time: “They took me in to see him and I looked at this guy and I said, ‘He’s beautiful — he’s perfect and I’m absolutely keeping him,’” he said last year.
Forrest was living in his Armenian wife’s home country where she presented him with an ultimatum: Put the child in an orphanage, or she would leave.
He chose Leo and decided he would return to his native New Zealand, where he said they’d receive support from loved ones. Ruzan Forrest filed for divorce.
So, that’s the story. Armenia has an epidemic of abortion. And that attitude has spilled over into a general disrespect for children’s rights. Armenia has a huge problem with sex-selection abortions. Many men cannot find women to marry. And if they are killing their unborn girls, what chance does a Down syndrome child have?
So in this story, the man is resilient to the woman’s youth, beauty, and offer of sex. Nothing that she can do sways him away from his moral obligation to protect the weak little one from her superior strength. This is the essence of masculinity. It takes a strong man to stand up to a panicking woman and tell her that her happiness is less important than doing the right thing for the children. The children are weaker. They did not ask to be made. It is up to the adults to give up their selfishness, and give the children what they need.
The challenge to atheist concepts of morality
Anyway, I had another point to make about this. And that point is – how do atheists handle this? According to atheism, moral behaviors are just the common behaviors of a species that allow it to survive. But the first rule of survival is for the strong to live, and the weak to die. That’s why Richard Dawkins is so in favor of aborting unborn children with special needs. They are unfit. They have to die. It would be terrible for the grown-ups to be burdened by them. So, on the Darwinian view of morals, what this man did was wrong.
Another view of morality on atheism is utilitarianism. This is the view that what is right for an individual is what makes the majority of the people in his society happier. Well, in Armenia, the majority of the people want this child dead. If not dead, then throw the baby into an orphanage and give him no contact with his mother. The majority decides what’s right. So, on the utilitarian view of morals, what this man did was wrong.
Another view of morality on atheism is moral relativism. This is the view that what is moral is what the majority of the people in a society says is moral, is moral in that society. So, widow-burning was moral in India when the majority of the people there believed in it. And in Armenia, aborting this unwanted child, or throwing him into an orphanage, is moral. A majority of people believe that there. So, on the relativistic view of morality, what this man did was wrong.
Another view of morality is that objective moral values do exist on atheism. But this is not possible, since if there were an objective design for how humans should act, that applies in all times and places, then there would have to be a moral lawgiver with the authority to say what his creatures ought to do. That’s the only way to say that anything is really right or wrong, but it’s off limits to atheists. Atheists claiming objective morality are really trying to steal something from theism. But there is no rational grounding for morality in an atheist worldview.
Does anyone really think that what this man did is wrong though, other than atheists? His action is a disproof of their systems of morality.
Restoring masculinity
It seems to me that we’re living in a time where male leadership has been so attacked that it has eroded into nothing. It’s been attacked from the feminist left, and from the traditional conservative right. The good men need to refuse to let women break their integrity. Even if it means that women will continue to pass over the good men for bad boys who let them do what they want. Obligations to God and little children and animals are more important than sex. Tell them no, and maintain integrity.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
You probably know this but one possible additional explanation for the explosive growth of the early Church was that Christians did not abort their children, nor did they leave them to die in the streets after they were born, which was common in the pagan cultures in which they lived. In fact, Christians rescued those abandoned babies and raised them as their own.
The rulers of the surrounding culture mocked the Christians. They believed that leaving born children to die in the streets (we allow that in abortion mills) was actually a virtue because it was what was “best” for the child. Consequently they simply could not believe that Christians did not do the same thing and thought them incredibly foolish for not doing so. There is a famous quote by one of the leaders in which he expresses astonishment that Christians do not kill their newborns!
I think that a lot of atheists nowadays would at least secretly agree with those pagans.
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Great post.
I work with a man who has Down’s Syndrome and attend his functions and sports games with others who have a variety of special needs. He has changed my life and “they” are the ones who understand life. They are the best kind of friends and the most genuine people.
It breaks my heart that people do not see their value and it’s only because they do not have God. God created us all with a purpose. People always talk about the world needing more compassion and empathy, but want to get rid of the very ones who provide it.
I can’t even begin to describe how my guy changed my life, but I don’t remember life before it. He’s the sunshine and helps you look at perspective and enjoy the simple things in life.
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I think people today, even the ones who claim to he religious, are most concerned with happiness here and now.
I run into a lot of Christians who kind of filter out the parts of the Bible that affirm their desires. And praying is mostly about getting confirmation of whatever they want to do to be happy. Weird.
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Oh yeah, WK! I run into a lot of “prayers” that contradict the Bible directly. They always start with “God told me to…” divorce my husband, change my gender, go off on a two week “missionary” trip overseas, get an abortion, etc. I tell them that it is not God speaking to them, but the other guy – God doesn’t contradict Himself.
I see it a lot with catholics who seem to have a personal relationship with their church but not with Jesus Christ Himself. They are also notoriously bad about reading the Bible, although there are some efforts to do so now, so long as it is through a catholic church prism. But, it happens a lot with “spirit-filled” and more mystical non-catholics also.
It’s not just the Bible that they are contradicting but early Church history too. I’ll never understand it, because pursuing my happiness was just what I did as an atheist. This seems to be atheism with a churchy wrapper. I think that some aspects of it are moralistic therapeutic deism too.
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That’s because they’re choosing religion instead of the true God.😄
Yes, Christianity now is more prosperity teachings and enjoying life now. If you don’t have more God doesn’t love you.
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Not sure that the proper delineation here is masculinity/femininity. Although, doing the right thing for the right reasons could certainly fall within those two categories.
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My older brother was born with Downs Syndrome in 1966. Four holes in his heart, born without an esophagus…..my parents of course kept him, he would have died without immediate surgery. In those days insurance would not cover unless he lived five days. My parents had to pay…..all of it. It took over twenty years. He also had profound mental retardation. The best he could do was maybe a preschool level of capability. He didn’t learn to fully use the bathroom until he was nineteen or twenty. They never took “government” or “county” or “state” help. My parents believed he was their responsibility.
Throughout the decades always in hospitals, always sick, always some other complication…..I was born in 1970 and I had to help take care of him growing up. As soon as I turned 18. I went to college and bolted.
I suffered for it. Never could have friends over (he was always sick, getting over something, just got home from the hospital…always requiring care and help)
He moved into a group / care home when he was 35…my parents worked to death since 1966 of keeping him clean, safe and cared for.
He continued to be in and out of hospitals….put into a nursing care facility at the age of 45. He died at the age of 50. I was not there, neither were my parents……they had both already died. They aged rapidly because the non-stop care he required.
I flew back to my native New York State after I got the “call” that he had died. I was his only family member (parents gone). I had no other siblings and I didn’t have a wife, or children. Other cousins and the like not really close with….barely knew.
I met with the staff of his nursing home. Thanked them for al the helps and good work over the years. I had him cremated. The last time I viewed his cold….dead body……right before he was taken out of the county morgue….
Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Should he have just died after birth? You know “hey, all these complications….” what was the lesson? Was there one?
I looked at my own life…socially stunted / shunted until I was 18……messed up, watching my parents never get a break, nor taking one……and my own life now? It never really started til I was 18, and I was so behind……didn’t really have any sort of meaning until I hit my thirties……all that sickness, the doctors, all the operations, for a life to be spent mostly in bed he faced and lived. Was it worth it?
I squeezed his cold hand. Held back a tear, probably wiped one away and he was taken away. That was it. This was almost five years ago. I still wonder about his life…..and I still ponder and wonder about mine
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That’s sad that your family never had any good times together and that you never could leave your brother’s side or make friends at school and your parents could never go out and your brother never smiled and your family never had any joy in very difficult circumstances. I know many families with Down Syndrome and profoundly disabled children and they even go out for meals sometimes as a family but I imagine that they have great Faith too.
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Fortitude has no gender.
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Hi Mike!
Thank you for your response to the accusations against Christians.
However, you did not respond to the original post. Do you think it demonstrates masculinity to protect a defenceless infant or child? Is a woman behaving like a man if she does the same thing? Or is it Godliness? What is your view on this, please?
Dinos
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Scroll up and you’ll see my original comment. I don’t see doing the right thing as being primarily masculine or feminine.
I’m not afraid to defend masculinity when it’s called for.
Defending the widow and orphan was traditionally a masculine, societal role in the Old Testament. Protecting the helpless is more a reflection of the Image of God created within us than our gender or sexual characteristics, IMHO.
Small caveat: I think what I just wrote says what I think it does, but I’ve been somewhat sleep deprived of late, so if you have questions we can revisit it later.
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Thank you for your response, Mike.
I’m sorry I missed your earlier post but I’ve read it now and this one too. I’m also sorry to hear that you’ve been sleep-deprived lately but I assure you you’re still writing cogently and I’m in Complete agreement with you.
Dinos
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Former atheist here. Please don’t speak of morality as if it is objective on the atheist view. You are just an accidental ant in an accidental universe that is going to die a slow cold heartless death and nobody will be around to even know that you ever existed much less how you behaved. Anything goes on your view which is why atheists murdered hundreds of millions of innocents in the last century and continue to do so in atheistic paradises of communist China and North Korea. Or at abortion mills which are overwhelmingly supported by atheists.
My God hates abortion so much that He entered the world as a Zygote, Embryo, and Fetus – thus elevating the Sanctity of Life for the preborn. Never confuse God wiping out baby killers like the Canaanites and the people before the Flood with murder: that is precisely the same Judgment that will await all pro-aborts in this life or the next.
You simply can’t be more moral than anybody else when objective morality does not exist on your worldview. Atheistic hypocrites are really little better than religious ones.
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Today is Mother’s day, and it seems the Interwebs are full of videos showing Mama birds protecting their babies.
I thought of an example that might be more fitting in the discussion of whether or not defending the weak is an attribute of masculinity:
Consider the old adage about coming between a Mama bear and her cubs. If she sees a potential threat to her cubs (maternal instinct), she will fiercely attack the potential threat , with massive upper body strength, (typically associated with masculinity).
Papa Bear, even stronger, is not as concerned for the cubs…he can always have others! Sure, he could rip your arm off and beat you to death with it, but doesn’t really see the need to get involved!
Mama bear puts the lie to the idea that defending the weak and helpless is a mere matter of physiology. Her physiology may be masculine – by comparison, but it is more a matter of heart and will, than physiology.
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Let’s not forget the heroic efforts of Anne Sullivan who was the only advocate of Helen Keller when she was a child blighted by deafness and blindness.
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