How ‘Inside the Manosphere’ exposes our need for the absolute truth of the gospel

One of the influencers featured is Harry Sullivan, known as HS, a content creator who promotes wealth building. As Theroux draws back the curtain on his ​‘business model’ it is revealed that he also promotes OnlyFans creators and takes a financial cut from their earnings. Yet Sullivan expresses his deep disdain for OnlyFans and pornography, saying, ​“I know it’s not good…I say to people, ​“Don’t watch porn. It’s sad.”” When pushed on the dissonance between his beliefs and his actions, Sullivan defines his role as a businessman, explaining that his behaviour is ultimately dictated by the goal of making money, rather than anything else. He goes on to criticise women in the adult industry such as Bonnie Blue as ​“despicable” but fails, when challenged by Theroux, to see his role as complicit in the porn industry. Whilst the incongruity of his beliefs and his actions are glaringly obvious to Theroux and the viewers of the documentary, it is reminiscent of other ways in which our culture holds contradictory worldviews.

This is reflected in an episode of the Modern Wisdom podcast, hosted by Chris Williamson. The episode features Bonnie Blue and Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and they discuss sex work. Perry highlights the incongruence in criticism Bonnie Blue faces from the public, saying that she is a ​“natural result” of the culture we live in; a culture that values sexual liberation and whose morality is based upon consent. Even Williamson raises the glaring contradiction in our cultural narrative, which sees sex as purely physical and meaningless but also acknowledges that when misused it can be the most traumatic event of one’s life. Yet our culture often finds these contradictions harder to spot. This got me thinking about how incredible it is that Christianity offers the only consistent and cohesive explanation of the world around us, and why it is vital that we proclaim it with clarity, conviction and courage.

Sponsored

Our culture is full of contradictory beliefs and narratives, which often highlight the tension between what we instinctively know as good and evil, and our culture’s moral framework of consent. Whilst we can look at these examples and know that we have a hope amid the conflicting and confusing narratives around us, we must be careful that we are not internalising the same self-contradictory nature of our culture. For me, it took years to realise that I had internalised our culture’s view on individual choice and autonomy as the highest good, meaning I held unbiblical beliefs on topics such as abortion and assisted dying. 

I came to Christ when I was a teenager and was baptised at 16. I knew Christianity was true, but that truth didn’t extend beyond my personal salvation. My worldview wasn’t shaped by Christ. I was constantly trying to fit Him into my pre-existing worldview. We can often form a ​‘secular/​sacred’ divide, where Christianity shapes our spiritual lives and the way we treat individuals, but it does not shape the way we approach the world around us, the way we view politics, work, culture, philosophy. We may be striving to be Christlike yet aligning our time and efforts towards an un-Christlike cause. 

At a Christian worldview conference for young adults when I was 20, I was faced with the inconsistency of my beliefs, realising I had let culture dictate truth instead of Christ. This began my own journey of re-evaluating my worldview. My own story highlights the importance of the church in reshaping worldviews and conforming them to absolute truth. As we see people coming to Christ and entering our churches, we need to be helping those who have come in with completely different beliefs build a biblical worldview.

Whilst it may be easy to see the inconsistency that Theroux highlights in Harry Sullivan, if we as Christians are to offer an alternative – a hope in our confused culture – we need to first be sure that we haven’t absorbed the very same cultural narratives that we are trying to refute. Christianity does offer a cohesive worldview, one which is based upon absolute, unchanging truth, one which doesn’t contradict itself, because we have an unchanging God who doesn’t contradict Himself. In the midst of conversations about the manosphere, our confused cultural messaging and the contradictions we see in our society, let’s not be afraid to offer an alternative account; one that makes sense of our longings and desires, the pain and suffering we see, and our inherent sense of right and wrong – these all point to the Bible’s account of humanity. And if we feel as though we don’t have a solid alternative, let’s go back to the word of God.