How Rejecting Biblical Masculinity Turns Men From Protectors To Predators

Recently, a report of a mass shooting in a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, emerged, and it was not just any crime news story. It was a tale of two young men.

The suspect, Ian David Long, was a 28-year-old former Marine who was divorced, unemployed, and lived with his mother. The other young man, Matt Wennerstrom, was a 20-year-old college student who emerged as the hero of the hour. When Long entered the bar to commit the heinous crime, Wennerstrom and about seven other young men pushed people under a pool table for cover and piled their bodies over them to shield them from the bullets. One of the women who survived the ordeal thanked these brave men for taking bullets for them.

Masculinity is a topic of discussion in the American Psychological Association’s (APA) guidelines for counseling men and boys,