We're Headed to America's Manliest City

This weekend, I am traveling to “America’s Manliest City” – Nashville - where manliness is defined as having a high “number of professional major league sports teams, popularity of tools and frequency of monster truck rallies.” The cities who lost had   "emasculating" characteristics like the abundance of home furnishing stores, high minivan sales and subscription rates to beauty magazines.”

This worldly curveball on manliness is a far cry from biblical manliness where love for the church is the standard.  I’d like to see the city where love the church runs highest – that’s where manhood is.  The manliness of Christ is characterized, not by sports, fast cars and Bar B Q Ribs, but by self sacrifice to the death, covenantal husbandry, protection of women, communicative fatherhood, love for children and love for the church.

I  have a book in my library published in 1880 called, "The Manliness of Christ" where the author's introduction includes these words on the manliness of Christ,

"In that strife, then, the first requisite is courage or manfulness, gained through conflict there can be no perfection of character, the end for which Christ says we were sent into this world. But was Christ's own character perfect in this respect, - not only in charity, meekness, purity, long suffering, but in courage?"