I mean, come on ...

  • He ordered war after war with countless nations throughout the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.

  • He ordered women, children, and even animals to be put to death. 1 Samuel 15:3-4.

  • He sent 2 bears to maul 42 kids for calling Elisha "baldy." 2 Kings 2:23-25

  • He won't let handicapped or ugly people go near his altar. Leviticus 21:16-23

  • He struck a man dead for trying to keep his Ark safe when the ox stumbled. 2 Samuel 6:1-7

  • He asks people to follow him, knowing that it's going to get them beaten and killed in horrible ways.

You get the idea. God is a jerk to a lot of people.

But he's good.


Good God and Nice Men

Goodness sometimes includes choices that make you look like a jerk. God does these things for the benefit of the people he loves - even when he does these things TO the people he loves. Hebrews 12:6 and all. God doesn't play nice when he does any of these things, but he's still good through all of them.

Being a strong man doesn't mean never being nice. It means being strategically nice. Sometimes there's advantage to playing nice in order to reap a greater reward later. Joining a new job? Don't be a jerk right off the bat. Figure out the social dynamic before swinging your big assertive dick around. Trying to sell some widgets? Figure out who your customer is before you start laying on the pressure.

Guys usually need to be told to stop being nice because they're so used to being nice all the time by default. But playing nice is actually a wise strategy for most social interactions until you can devise a better way to get your intended result from a person. The one exception is dating, where playing nice will get you blown off from the get-go. I'd say marriage, but hopefully you're not marrying someone you just met.

The key in knowing when to play nice is in understanding how relational dynamics work so that you're not creating false expectations about what will happen for you if you play nice. That is, the underlying motive for most guys in playing nice is because they believe they will get love, affection, or even sex in response, or that people will somehow respect them for being such a nice guy. These are rarely the outcome. But being nice can produce cordiality, keep you under a harsh authority's radar, help in social politics at times, and generate a host of other reactions that can benefit a man's mission. In short, it can help a man become socially acceptable in situations where social acceptability actually matters. Just remember that social acceptability rarely actually matters.


Socially Acceptable

One guy recently told me: "I don't want to be controlling." I ask: Why not?

We're indoctrinated to believe that characteristics like "controlling" and "manipulative" and "aggressive" are negative attributes that should be avoided. Take a look at this article from the American Psychological Association, which goes into the history of male psychology, saying of today, "The main thrust of subsequent research is that traditional masculinity - marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression - is, on the whole, harmful." Their rationale? Because men with these traits are less likely to go to a doctor or psychologist. I kid you not. "Men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were more negative about seeking mental health services." Hysterical. They're not making money on masculine guys, so they feminize us to get us in the door.

But here's the real point: whenever you're concerned about living up to a societal norm, ask yourself: "How's that working out for society?"

Is living the "socially acceptable" life working out for the world today?

  • Is "socially acceptable" getting wives to sleep with their husbands or ramping up the divorce rate to almost 60%?

  • Is "socially acceptable" keeping families together or sending 28 million kids into single-family homes?

  • Is "socially acceptable" encouraging people toward healthy lifestyles or teaching America to accept, love, and embrace its 40% of people who are obese? Relevant.

    • Ironically, the same "scientists" who ding masculine behaviors for being unhealthy are usually evolutionists who should also be thinking about increased reproduction capacity for the continuation of the species. But that's a much longer conversation not worth getting into here.

The fact is: being socially acceptable has not reaped good results for the rest of the world, so why would you assume it should for you? A common cliche is that one type of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result."

Interestingly, NMMNG talks about the way Nice Guys believe that if "being nice" doesn't solve all their problems, then it must be because they're not nice enough. Similarly, as the world compels everyone to be nicer to everyone and be more and more "socially acceptable," and yet we get negative results ... they blame it on the fact that there are still people who won't conform to social standards. The increase in social acceptability results in a decrease in social life standards, and somehow this translates to: "We just need EVEN MORE socially acceptable people" instead of recognizing that the current mode of social acceptability isn't working.

Social acceptability is not a goal to pursue. For a long time, my wife's life-goal was to be socially acceptable. She still has that compulsion. If you want to be a woman, you can have the goal of social acceptability too. Otherwise, recognize that socially acceptable behaviors are a tool in your pocket, not a standard to meet. Make wise use of that tool, but don't use a hammer to pound in screws. In fact, with nail guns, staple guns, screws and drills, hammers are far less necessary today than you'd think. There are better tools to get the job done.


Benevolence

The same guy from above also asked, "How do I balance assertive, strong 'alpha' behavior, while being loving and respectful in relationships? I don't want to be an insensitive jerk."

That's like saying, "How do I eat ice cream while also tasting something sweet in my mouth?" The ice cream IS what causes the sweet taste. Being assertive and strong IS what causes people to love and respect you, if they're going to love and respect you at all. Some people just won't and you have to deal with that.

The answer to his question should be obvious: be a benevolent leader - the kind of person who does what's best for the people he cares about, even if they disagree with him about what's best for them. We sometimes call this the "oak" - the man who can make the tough calls, but comfort his people through the difficulty when it comes.

The reason most people never reach this conclusion is that they're more interested in getting people to perceive them as good rather than actually being good. This is validation-seeking. God doesn't care if you see him as good. He's just good. If people hate him along the way for the good things he does, he takes it and continues being good all the same.

I used to spend months at a time researching all the things people complained about God for - some of which were on the list at the beginning of this post. I wanted to rationalize ways that God could do these things and still be called "good." At one point I realized I was wasting my time. I found that "good" wasn't some metaphysical, super-divine concept that transcended God as a judge over him. When people challenged these parts of they Bible, saying God wasn't "good," they just meant that God didn't meet their standard of "socially acceptable." Once I got past that hurdle, the rest of the Bible - and every vicious thing God ever did - suddenly made sense.

God is a jerk. But he's also good. He works all things for the good of those who love him, even if it's in ways they don't want him to work. God is not socially acceptable - and society today is making that clearer and clearer. But "socially acceptable" was never his goal. Weeding out the wheat from the chaff has always been his goal, and a day of reckoning is on its way. His mission matters more to him than his people's perception of him. Learn from that example.