Scott Tibbs
Andrew Tate and the masculinity deficit
By Scott Tibbs, January 9, 2023
Men and boys in the West are hungering for masculinity: They want masculine role models and they want to be masculine themselves. Men have been derided by feminists and Western culture for decades, and men are turning to truly toxic figures like Andrew Tate as a backlash against that. Tate not only does not care about angering people, he revels in making people angry. People love the fact that he does not apologize. This hunger for masculinity is an opportunity for the Church to spread the Gospel - both as an antidote to toxic feminism and to prevent young men from being corrupted by the pagan logic of men like Tate. (Back to that last point in a bit.)
Men naturally want to be protectors and providers. They want to conquer, and they want to compete. There is a reason that most NBA and NFL fans are men, and why the video game industry's most lucrative customer base is the "red ocean" of 18-35 year old males. Video games offer virtual "conquest" while sports offer a more real-world conquest. Tate seeks to teach men the skills needed for "conquest" in a completely pagan and hedonistic manner.
Andrew Tate is a louder and more obnoxious version of Donald Trump. It is amazing how similar Tate is to Trump in their appeal: Both are wealthy, both boast of their material possessions and sexual conquests, and both boast of their physical fitness and intellectual capacity. In their minds, Tate and Trump are both always the smartest men in the room. So the appeal that Trump has to disaffected young men is the same appeal that Tate has.
What the Church (and by that I mean all denominations, the universal church) has failed to do is direct masculinity in a Biblical way. When masculinity is unmoored from morality, it becomes toxic: Tate boasts of hundreds of sexual conquests, millions of dollars in the bank, loads of material possessions (especially sports cars) and his physical fitness. But the man who constantly brags about being a "Top G" is ultimately an insecure man. Someone who is actually a "Top G" does not need to constantly tell everyone about it, because the results show it.
Tate lives his pagan lifestyle because he is afraid of taking a real risk: Loving one woman, giving her children, and protecting and providing for them. Committing to and loving one woman and your children with her carries a risk Tate fears: She could leave and take the children, she could die, or your children could die. Tate's life is preening and posing and bragging, chasing hedonistic pleasure. He is not interested in being a man in any sort of Biblical sense. Even with his "conversion" to Islam, he has not given up a lifestyle that is completely hedonistic and pagan.
This is where the Church needs to step in, and in rare cases has. My church ran a men's program called "David's Mighty Men" to teach masculinity to young men. Pastor Michael Foster of East River Church in Ohio has gained some level of Internet fame running
"It's good to be a man." We live in a time when millions of young men see nothing of value in church, and churches love to browbeat men about "doing the dishes" or "growing up." But the browbeating is too often performative, not pastoral. Virtue signaling will not open up this mission field, but teaching will. Teach men to be men according to the Bible, and lovingly encourage them in that effort, and that mission field will produce fruit for God's glory.
If the Church fails, we risk losing a generation of men to the pagan, hedonistic and truly misogynistic theology of men like Tate and Trump.
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