The Lie of Servant Leadership
Christianity and masculinity
Someone referenced me over to a video about Doug Wilson and Aaron Renn have a sit down chat on the lie of servant leadership. Dalrock covered some stuff on Doug Wilson before where he was in error on a couple topics, but overall it appears that Doug is on the same team he is still in error in some areas (h/t/ FMP). He seems to have come around on some of the particular topics that Dalrock talked about as well which is a good sign.
Here’s the summary:
Defining concepts
Wilson monologues about how the words that Christian use today such as “leadership” are watered down words of other authority words in the Scriptures such as “lord” (1 Peter 2), ruler (when Jesus addresses his disciples), and so on. This is intentional and a bad thing
Renn and Wilson start by discussing how “servant leadership” is only conservative Christians and not used by egalitarians (for good reason as egalitarians don’t believe in leadership). They go into talking about how complementarianism was coined in the late 1980s by CBMW in response to the shifting culture and feminism.
Wilson makes the astute statement that egalitarians are “paying tribute to the spirit of the age” while complementarians are “paying secret tribute to the spirit of the age.”
Elspeth discovered the vid on youtube on Wilson’s monologue, so I’m adding it here.
Analyzing the culture and the Bible
Masculinity generally defined via Piper and Art of Manliness (analysis of various cultures throughout time) generally defined as protect, provide, procreate. In other words, masculinity is defined in relation to women and civilization. Contrast this to the Bible we see that Mission (Jesus, Paul, Adam, etc.) including being strong, preaching Christ, etc.
In the respect of the above points, a “Servant Leader” defines a man’s masculinity and mission to be serving his wife (e.g. idolize his wife).
Servant leadership is also a prosperity-like gospel vision. If a man does X, Y, and Z, then he’ll have a happy wife and happy life. Vending machine guarantee which is wrong.
Attraction traits and comfort/godly/relational traits
Attraction model is wrong in the vein of ‘godliness is sexy’ versus PSALM-type traits. Renn uses similar analogies I’ve used – are women more likely to be attracted to Church worship leader vs the Church janitor or equally yoked (don’t have to worry about that if godliness was sexy).
Church leaders push godliness is sexy versus someone like Jordan Peterson who says women like men who win status competitions with other men. Which one is closer to the truth?
Need to distinguish between reality, what we want to happen, and what we wish to happen. Godliness is sexy tries to push what we wish to happen to be true but is not true.
Generally nothing wrong with cultivating attractive traits.
Women will support a woman if she wants to lose weight, but if she wants to lose weight to be more marriageable that will probably get push back in the Church. Ouch.
Culture and how it impacts Christians
Most self help gurus that are successful are positive advice or recommendations. Not just critiquing everything and being negative about things. Important now that masculinity is demonized, and there’s not many positive examples.
Church is unsuccessful reaching men. Difference between knocking men down to build them back up and just destroying men without building them up. Similar to iron sharpens iron not just smashes them down. Examples of promise keepers and purity culture imploding — “men can’t do anything right” is not the way.
Implosion of purity culture conflating Biblical teaching with life coaching. Friends first model and platonic issues. Lots of ways to fail but no way for redemption. Teenage and college years awkward and putting a ton of pressure on people for purity expectations contributed to destroying purity culture.
1950s culture seems to be idealized by conservative Christians, especially in terms of family roles.
“Marketplace” dynamics make things much harder, especially with the rise of dating apps
Headship
Distinguish between responsibility and blame.
Things may not necessarily be the fault of a man, but he would still need to lead.
Is the ‘servant’ the problem in the servant leadership, or is the ‘leader’ the problem? Most Christians would probably say servant, but Wilson contends it’s the leader. It’s been sanitized.
Renn says a lot of questions are swept under the rug such as who determines what the leadership and help are. It’s implicitly understood that the wife and children are judging what the man does rather than the head.
Instead with Jesus and the feet washing Peter actually did not want his feet washed and Jesus said if I don’t do it then you have no part of me. In this case, it was Jesus determining how He served His disciples (e.g. they didn’t want Him to wash their feet or die for them either).
Dating
Some general wisdom for dating: “What’s my mission? How do I want to live my life? Then seek out a wife who wants to be a part of that.”
Marriage markets – would be nice if they went by assortive mating, but typically function in regard to hypergamy throughout many cultures.
Bad choices: “She’s my better half” and “she’s the boss” very counterproductive as you’re putting yourself down and it can be self fulfilling if she starts to believe that. Top of the pecking order whether pastors or heads of state can self deprecate and get away with it.
“Servant leadership” plays into that in that it tends to emphasize having the man in a lower status position
One of the biggest thing is persuasion is social proof. Women interest in a man then more women will be interested. Focus on someone raises their importance in the mind of others.
Everything in the Bible is True, but it’s wrong thinking to come to the conclusion that not everything outside the Bible is cultural and thus untrue. There are all kinds of sources in truth that are not in the Bible such as the majority of science. Youtube examples of plumbing, electrical, cars, etc. The implication is that we should be wise about other true things such as how attraction is versus trying to make it about how it should be.
Overall, a fairly solid analysis of why things have gone wrong in Christianity. Very much along the lines of my previous two posts on pre-marriage headship and submission and Authority is positional, but effective leadership is by example and action.
The word seems to getting out better these days, so hopefully there will be a renaissance in the Church communities as it continues to grow grassroots.
