Masculinity And Mental Health
Yeah well, it is a huge joy for me to be here. Thanks so much for coming out and for thinking about this really crucial topic. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to engage with mental health? And how does the grace of God connect with us in that space?
As important as this topic is, I think you’d also agree with me that, in some ways, it can be quite vague. What are we really talking about when we use some of these terms? What does it really mean to be a man? What does mental health actually mean? I mean, we hear it a lot, but what does it actually mean? And how does that connect with the Bible and with God and what God says? Sometimes, it seems like those things are in different worlds.
You might hear about mental health at school, at varsity, or online, or at work. But if you open up the Bible, you won’t find the term “mental health.” So, how does it actually connect with Scripture?
I actually think there is huge potential in every local church— inherent in how we have a relationship with God and what local churches do to help men with their mental health. But one of the goals today is to figure out what we mean by that.
So, one of the things we’re going to do with each session is look at a Psalm and think a little bit about how those Psalms connect with this topic. Because one of my big goals today is to try and help you build connections between some of these topics that we hear about and the Word of God.
So, if you have a Bible, would you please turn to Psalm 8? That’s the first one we’ll look at. In this first talk, we’ll be thinking about masculinity, mental health, and grace, at an overview level. And then we’ll have a discussion about toxic masculinity, then we’ll have tea after that. Then after that, we’ll reflect on how to pray when we feel like giving up. We’ll end the day with some Q&A and how local churches can help us.
But before we begin, it would be good to start with God’s word. I’ll read Psalm 8 and pray, and then we’ll jump in. I’m using the NIV.
Psalm 8 (NIV)
For the director of music. According to Gittith. A psalm of David.
“Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants,
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim in the paths of the seas.
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1-9)
This is the word of God.
Let me pray quickly.
Heavenly Father, as we come to you and as we sit under your word, we pray that you would help us understand what it means to be men, what it means to engage with our hearts, and how our relationship with you and the grace you give us in Christ enable us to persevere in the challenges we face. Amen.
South African Statistics
Let me begin by just, uh, highlighting some of the statistics in South Africa that show us the kind of situation we’re currently in. I think it would be fair to say that men in South Africa are struggling. Men are not doing well—we are struggling.
For example, the suicide rate in South Africa is the 10th highest in the world. Men are more likely to die from suicide than women, with a ratio of 3 to 1. We’ve got a very high suicide rate for men. We have high substance abuse rates—men are more likely than women to engage in substance abuse. That often co-occurs with mental health issues, and tragically, what often happens when men start struggling with their mental health is that, instead of accessing help, we turn to substances to cope. And of course, that makes everything worse, typically.
We’ve got a high level of trauma in our country. Men are very likely, in South Africa, to suffer from violent trauma. And just like substance abuse, when you experience trauma, there is a higher chance of experiencing mental health issues. Additionally, in South Africa, we’ve got—how can we put it—maybe confused masculinity norms. We don’t know, as men, what to do with our internal struggles. We don’t know how to talk about them, and we don’t know who to talk to. That makes it less likely to access help.
Again, when we don’t find help that way, we try to find help in our own way—and that tends to be less productive and less helpful in the end. So, the situation is not great.
And even for men who are looking to find help, who are able to talk about it, and who want to talk about it, accessing help is difficult. It can be very expensive to find any kind of private mental health services. Public mental health services can be hard to find as well. And so that makes it hard—even when you want to get help – sometimes it can be difficult to.
Finally, I’d say what makes it difficult is that I think that, although churches have huge potential to help, often, because the language of mental health is very different from the language of Scripture, we don’t know how to make those connections. Sometimes, churches, I think, aren’t always reaching their full potential in offering the kind of help that we can.
So, what I want to do in this talk is try to bring some clarity into that space—because I think clarity will help us move forward and get the help we need.
I’m going to ask and answer three questions:
What does it mean to be a man?
What is mental health? What do we mean by mental health?
How does God’s grace help us? How does God’s grace actually help us?
What Does It Mean To Be A Man?
Firstly then, let’s think about what it means to be a man. We’ll begin with some of the models we see in our culture, and we’ll have a chat about this after the talk.
I think, basically, if I had to sum it up—this is a gross simplification—but in our culture, we’ve probably got two models. I think of them as the warrior and, maybe, the poet. Right?
So, the warrior is perhaps your classic strongman model of masculinity. He is tough. He can fix a broken car. He’s, you know, he’s your classic kind of South African man in that sense. That might look different in some of our various cultural groups in South Africa, but there can be a lot of overlap. You know—”Cowboys don’t cry”—that kind of thing. This is a tough kind of man.
I think, more and more, as the years have gone by, we’ve noticed some problems with that model because, you know, men do struggle. Perhaps, particularly in the last few years, there’s been a push toward being a much more sensitive man—a man much more in touch with his feelings. Again, that can go to an extreme that a lot of ordinary guys just can’t relate to. They know they have emotions, but they don’t always know what they are. There might be a willingness to go there, but it’s just—you know—those two extremes make it quite difficult to know what’s what, to know how to actually live as an ordinary guy.
So, there’s confusion around masculinity. That’s where Scripture is so helpful and where Psalm 8, I think, can provide some particular help
In Psalm 8, one of the things we learn about being a human being—a man—is that we’re made in the image of God. We’ve got strength and dignity, which is more that first model. There’s legitimacy to that. Yet, there’s also humility and weakness in being a man.
All right, if you have a Bible open, just take a look again at verse 4. You see that sense of humility and weakness in the question being asked of verse 4, hey?
“When he looks at creation, he considers the heavens and the stars. David asks, ‘What is mankind, or man, that you are mindful of him? Human beings, that you care for them?’”
He recognizes how small he is, how weak he is. How is it that the God of creation would care about me? I’m so small. I’m so weak.
And yet—verse 5—yet despite this, God has made us “a little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:4)
When you read the creation accounts in Genesis, after each day, God declares, “It is good.” After He creates man and woman, “It is very good.” There’s something special about humanity. We’re made in the image of God—made to have dominion, made to rule.
You see that in verse 6:
“You have made them rulers over the works of your hands; you have put everything under their feet.”
I think one of the things this reminds us of is that when you have a desire to be competent—when you have a desire to be strong, to order your world, to care for your family, to work, and to provide—that’s a God-given desire.
When people govern the earth, and they govern it in righteousness and with efficiency, it’s a good thing. It’s a beautiful thing. A well-run family, a well-run organization, a well-run church—when they are well-managed, led, and governed—it’s a beautiful thing.
If we’re honest, though, we don’t always see that happening, hey? We don’t always—I mean, we know this very well in South Africa—there are various challenges, both past and present. Leaders not leading well, not leading with the welfare of others in mind, exploiting, being selfish, being unjust. Although we were created for that, it’s not often how we live. We’re not often very good at being that.
But at this point, the thing I really want to—the points I’m really trying to make here—when it comes to thinking about masculinity, can you see how the biblical worldview actually has both of these elements in it? Men have this strength, and there’s a goodness to…
