“You’re so insecure that you have to compare yourself to an ape to show what a great leader you are” I remember thinking about a certain man in my life.
The term “Alpha Male” I thought was just a man-made term and also a trigger for me and I should dismiss it. Why? Two men in my life who were interested in me and knew about the other one both told me they were Alpha males and that the other guy was not. So my take away was not “Oh this is an interesting concept of science.” It was what many women think on occasion: “Men are stupid.”
However, after 2 years of thought, the reality is the concept of the “Alpha Male” still bothers me. At the time I was clearly interested in science and the world because I was dating this guy who wasn’t a believer and he fascinated me. Since then the separation in the Bible between the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God has become so clear to me. This is for another blog but, interestingly, I found that the wisdom of man without the wisdom of God is associated with pride, which leads to all on ungodliness.
For my problem with the term “Alpha Male” I will start with Romans 1. I’ll quote a section: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles” (vs. 22-23, italics added).
You have all these men who are studying creatures that are successful in their coalitions and so they are looking at these creatures, studying them and saying creating 5 steps to becoming the man on top.
I do think part of that isn’t evil. It’s in the way men are built. Men do love to strategize more than women I think. They are thinkers primarily and they want to solve the world’s issues through 5 step programs.
The Bible also teaches us that we should want to influence others. We were created to rule and reign! And I get it, all of us are insecure about what were created to do. We follow 5 step or 10 step programs because we feel like we don’t know what the heck we are doing. We were born into a broken world and we feel like we need to fix it and the surest way is to learn from example.
Yet the intention behind this Alpha Male concept always bothered me. I felt men were somehow manipulating “the system”. A man shouldn’t just comfort a girl because he wants to sleep with her. He should comfort her because that is who he was created to be. No hidden agenda. Women trust men who love without agenda.
I think it’s about the intention of the heart. We were built to reign in partnership with God. Jesus was the image of the invisible God and we were created in his image. He is the ultimate influencer.
The audacity that we think we can be successful influencers if we follow the pattern of apes is what I think is leading our generation astray. By God and for God all things were created. We can learn some things from his creation. But if we create entire methodologies of influence out of our observation of apes, what does that say about us as a culture? We think of ourselves as no more than apes? From an evolutionary perspective that doesn’t even make sense (and I’m not even an evolutionist!) because we should have massively evolved since the time that sex was more important to man than anything else.
This is one of the reasons I have a really hard time talking to pre-believers about the gospel. Without the Holy Spirit, it doesn’t make sense. You can say the same thing about the world we live in. Without the Holy Spirit, it doesn’t make sense.
This other verse keeps coming to mind as I think about this: “But the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our God.” God already gave us the 5 step guidebook to being a man and it wasn’t patterned after apes. He has no hidden agenda. He’s not a man that he should lie. You want to be Alpha? “Seek first his kingdom.”
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