False Masculinity

If you have yet to watch the clip of Will Smith slapping Christ Rock at last night’s Academy Awards, I suggest you take a moment and watch the clip I have attached to this article.

Unless it is a hoax, Will Smith jumped up on the stage at last night’s Oscar ceremony and slapped Chris Rock across the face after Rock made a J.I.Jane joke referencing Jada Pinkett Smith’s (Smith’s wife) bald head. Will followed the action with some explicative toward Rock concerning speaking about his wife.  The whole mess was unprofessional, chaotic, and unrestrained. Once again, I call out the outrageous behavior of Hollywood morality and how no God-fearing faithful men should turn to pop culture for moral relativism.

Here is the irony in this whole thing; Will Smith and Jada Pinkett have an open marriage. This all came out in 2020 on their YouTube channel show Red Table Talk. During the chat show, the couple discussed one of the grimmest periods of their marriage, thereby illuminating a past affair’ of Jada with R&B singer August Alsina. This logically concludes that according to Will Smith, you can bed his wife, but you just cannot make a joke about her. How does this comport with masculinity?

This is what feminism and the progressive left want from men in the modern age. They want open sexuality amongst all people and promiscuity in all people, both the youth and the married. They disguise their eradication of sin with distractions such as this as false masculinity. Physically assaulting another man for making a joke about your wife while you go on television and cry over your wife sleeping with another man is the opposite of masculine. This is what liberal theology leads to, men are submissive to the emotional whims of women.

There is certainly nothing wrong with defending the honor of your wife but where are the priorities of Will Smith? Biblical manhood has one major component: Self-control. “Modern translations’ term for several Greek words indicating a sober, temperate, calm, and dispassionate approach to life, having mastered personal desires and passions. Biblical admonitions expect God’s people to exercise self-control (Prov. 25:28; 1 Cor. 7:5; 1 Thess. 5:6; 1 Tim. 3:2; 2 Tim. 3:3; Gal. 5:23; 2 Tim. 1:7; Titus 1:8; 2 Pet. 1:6). Freedom in Christ does not give believers liberty to cast off all moral restraint as some members in Galatia and other churches apparently believed. Nor does it call for a withdrawal from life and its temptations. It calls for a self-disciplined life following Christ’s example of being in the world but not of the world.”^[1] Anger, argument, and defense are all biblically sound and appropriate emotions to have for Christians. The issue at hand is where and when to have these emotions and whether or not one allows himself to be controlled by them. Will Smith obviously has allowed feminist ideology to corrupt his marriage and motivate his public behavior.

I want to close with one of the greatest passages for Christian men:

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you” (Titus 2:1-15 ESV).

Footnote:

^[1] Chad Brand et al., eds., “Self-Control,” Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 1460.