They Are Humans, Not Heroes
Ancient societies were prolific in producing heroes for their men to follow. Those ancient heroes articulated who society needed men to be. Proper masculine role models created men, so the ancient world offered a pantheon of masculine ideals. They did not tell the story of actual men but of aspirations. They told heroic tales of men like Odysseus, Hercules, and Achilles.
It’s easy to imagine ancient Greek boys growing up with images of these men in their minds. Look like them. Act like them. Become a man like them. Possibly even die like them, but by so doing acquire their honor and glory. That is what any Greek boy could aspire to become. Heroic stories became the foundation of Greek and Roman culture, their identity as a people, their aspirations as adolescents.
We naturally think that the Bible offers similar but distinctly Christian alternatives to those heroic lives to inspire us and show us our own path toward proper manhood. After all, the Bible is full of men. We slap these biblical figures on flannel boards, imagining them as our own pantheon of greats. We hope they can serve as our own masculine role models. They had Hercules; we have Samson. They had Hector; we have David. They had Odysseus; we have Abraham. But as we spend time in these biblical stories, we soon find that the Bible isn’t very good at meeting our expectations for heroes. Sure, you can imagine men like Moses as a hero, standing toe to toe against the most powerful ruler in the world. David fearless before giants. Or Abraham, who set out on the adventure of a lifetime and fathered a nation.
But those are only selective memories of their lives. Their full stories are filled with fear, insecurity, anger, misdirection, disappointments, and devastating sins. Moses was constantly afraid and frustrated. David was prone to malicious cover-ups. Abraham lost his patience and splintered the family tree into generations of hostility. Would we even welcome these men to our stages? Would we call their lives heroic if they lived today? The Bible, as it turns out, tells the story of humans, not heroes. Complicated and compromised humans. That’s good news for us as men.
Literary scholar Erich Auerbach points out just how unique the ancient Israelites were in their approach to storytelling. “The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—they seek to subject us. . . . Far from seeking, like Homer, merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, it seeks to overcome our reality: we are to fit our own life into its world.” The biblical stories are not there to inspire us but to expose us.
The Israelite storytellers weren’t interested in creating stock role models or masculine ideals; they were interested in waking Israel to what was going on around them and in them. These biblical lives are far more like us than most of us want to admit.
It is the complexity of the biblical lives and instincts that invite each of us into a deeper reading of their stories and our own. That is their power and their gift to us. There are no easy applications or moral platitudes, but if you keep their stories alive—in all their complexity—you will find them to be remarkable companions and fellow travelers on this path toward God.
I’m fond of the word “companion.” It reminds me of the men walking together on the road to Emmaus: walking, discussing, and trying to figure out the meaning of Jesus’ life and death. They were together in their doubts, in their discoveries, and in their culminating recognition of Christ resurrected. The men of the Bible are with us on that journey too—beside us, not ahead of us. As Jesus put it, they were longing to see his day, straining by faith to be in on it (Matt. 13:17). We are in it with them. Our aim is not to be like Moses or to become more like David. They are not the end at which we aim our lives. They point us to something better. They point us to Christ.
Our goal is not just to be men, but to be men becoming more like Christ. He is our aim. If there is a hero in this story, it is Him alone. There is no biblical manhood that does not ultimately lift our eyes toward Him. That pursuit unites us and binds us with those men and women of Scripture. We are all aiming at Christlikeness.
Excerpted from The 5 Masculine Instincts: A Guide to Becoming a Better Man by Chase Replogle (© 2022). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
Chase Replogle is the pastor of Bent Oak Church in Springfield, Missouri, the host of The Pastor Writer podcast, and the author of The 5 Masculine Instincts. He holds a degree in Biblical Studies and an M.A. in New Testament from The Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. He is currently a D.Min. student in The Sacred Art of Writing at Western Theological Seminary. His work draws from history, psychology, literature, and a rich narrative approach to Scripture to help readers think more deeply about faith and life. He has written for Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Ekstatis, Bible Engagement Project, and Influence Magazine. A native of the Ozark woods, he enjoys being outdoors with his wife and two kids, sailing, playing the mandolin (badly), and quail hunting with his bird dog Millie.