Atheism may be the biggest destroyer of men and manhood in our society. What goodness and flourishing does atheism offer a man? If there is no God, then what is a man again? If there is no God, does a man of value even exist?
This is perhaps one of the greater of the soul-crushing elements of atheism. As far as atheism is concerned, there is no soul. There is no heart. There are no values
Those things we think are thoughts, and loves, and personality, and persons, it’s all just electrical signals in the brain, and the rest of the body. There is no human person; just a sack of cells. Every man is an accident—not existing (because it’s all just signals and cells), not wanted (because there are no persons to want him), bound (because chemicals are not free), unvalued and purposeless. Lacking any dignity or place, and anything worth doing (because such are spiritual values).
Given his acts have no value—as there is no morality really, and nothing too unpleasant as long as he can get away with it, as there is no final judgement or life after death—why wouldn’t he live his life selfishly?
I’m not sure there is a greater killer of manhood than telling a man, from his first waking moment, that he has no place, no goals, no value and nothing of value to do. I’m not sure there is a more terrible thing to do to a man. And yet meaninglessness—which is what atheism is—is meant to have been the life-generating, selfless, gutsy and freedom-defending vibrancy of Western societies. How’s that going?
Hang on Father. Atheism is not really like that. Atheism passionately believes in and defends human dignity, freedom, love, beauty, the uniqueness of each person, even (usually) that each person’s spirit has not been annihilated but goes on…
Okay—but that’s no longer atheism. That is clinging onto fundamental elements of Christianity. Which, despite society’s adolescent protestations of being able to be totally free and independent of its parents, is very obviously still irrigating and grounding Western culture’s every move, as it scrabbles for a non-Christian foothold in an atheism within which it is finding… nothing.
Because the moment we are dealing with persons, who are real, and exist, and who have value, and who are unique, and (as virtually everyone seems to think at funerals) whose spirit goes on in some way, we are now dealing with the supernatural. Because a person who can be annihilated is not a person. Their dignity and reality is relative, not absolute, and can be treated as such.
This is not recognising or being a person at all, as the Holy See recently reminded everyone in arguably the best broadside of the current pontificate, Dignitas Infinita—a document that should be studied, thought about, and debated by every Year 11 student in every Catholic school.
Jesus Christ offers a totally different view about men. Just one example can be found in some conclusions we can draw about being a man in the readings for the feast of St Joseph the Worker—a man.
The first point Jesus makes in these readings is that being a man is good: “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). God does not waste his time on moronic things. And God does not make mistakes. If he’s going to do something, it’s always something wonderful, good and beautiful.
Clearly then, being a man, being male, is good. Not first of all because of what we’ve done, or what we have, but because being a man is good, of itself, of himself. God even says exactly this a few sentences later: “God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen 1:31). Being a man is very good. Wonderfully good. For himself. For men. For women. For families. For children. For every single aspect of human life and activity and existence—being a man is good. Being a man is always good.
A second point Jesus makes in these readings is about how a man can and should live his masculinity. He lives it for others. Not merely for his family, but for all persons and things. “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth…” (Gen 1:26-27).
God has entrusted all creation to men and women. To be a man is to be for others in all that we do, say, or think. It doesn’t mean we can’t rest and recreate, but this too helps us be a man for others, and glorify God in whose image we are. This is the sense of our energy and health and creativity and action: love. Authentic masculinity is love. It is gift of self. The total opposite to a life of atheistic survival. As the word of God tells us in the second reading: “Over all these clothes, to keep them together and complete them, put on love.”
One last secret Jesus gives us to being an authentic man: that not only are we about others—but that, above all, we are about him. “Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son, surely?” (Mt 13:54-55). If there is one characteristic of St Joseph—a man who even to atheists must be a model man—it is that his whole life revolved not around himself, or the many sacrifices and courageous decisions he made, but around Jesus. It sounds pretty partisan. Of course that’s what a Catholic priest is going to push.
Well, if atheism is unreasonable, and God exists, it makes a lot of sense for a human being to base his life around God; around total goodness, truth, beauty, being and life. A human being who does, can flourish, can in fact fly completely beyond his own limits and become, not merely a sharer in divinity, but above all can become himself.
Free. Happy. Strong. Utterly content. Sounds a lot better than the nothing of atheism. Sounds like, in fact, the desire of any human heart. And the answer of the profound desires of every male heart.
