Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to ask you, what in the world is an incel? I-N-C-E-L, an incel. Now, when I first heard this term, I thought it must be some kind of intelligence operative who works within a secretive group, or cell, on behalf of our country's defense interests.

Silly me. Quite to the contrary of a James Bond-type figure, so skilled and deft with the ladies. An incel is the 180-degree opposite. He is involuntarily celibate. In-cell.

Involuntarily celibate. Oh, my. Now, as a close student of church history, I'm quite familiar with the church's long tradition of the celibate monastic. A voluntary celibate. A vol-cel, if you will.

A voluntary celibate. But an incel? Oh, my. Do not dismiss the voluntary celibate out of hand. No.

The monastery grew out of a cultural stew of sexual promiscuity, where sex was easy and available, and all around a young man, much like our own day. The Roman Empire had decayed into such a cultural state that anything goes was the operative principle sexually. But the consequences of free sex were severe in Rome. Disease, the destruction of family life and alienation and loneliness brought about by selfish pursuits of intimacy. Oh, the more the Roman pursued happiness and closeness through free sex, the farther and farther he drifted from it, ironically.

This corruption and debauchery coincided with the rise of a new religion, however. Christianity held to a strict moral code. And the monk stood radically opposed to his licentious Roman culture. Instead of a fleeting momentary thrill of the flesh, the celibate monk pursued an enduring full fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. He took a threefold vow of poverty, celibacy, and obedience.

Each of these disciplines ran counter to Roman culture. Money, sex, and power were the golden rings that every man grasped after, right? For example, greed obsessed Pompey and destroyed him in his adventures in Egypt. But the Christian monk chose poverty instead. Power consumed Caesar, and ambition for it prompted his assassination.

But the Christian monk embraced obedience to higher spiritual authority instead. And sexual perversion ate away at Nero, for example, and drove him insane at the end of the day. But the Christian monk chose sexual sanity instead. So, voluntary celibacy differs from involuntary celibacy in that it is an objection to immoral living and the desire to indulge in sexual behavior outside of the bounds of marriage. Incels desperately desire to indulge in unrestricted sex, but find no opportunity.

The monk has every opportunity to indulge in unrestricted sexual behavior, but chose not to. And he did so as a dedication of himself and his energies unto God. Well, what are we talking about then when we consider the incel? First of all, let me describe for you the involuntary celibate, the self-described involuntary celibate for that matter, number one. Now, I used to think that this kind of guy, the incel, was a little more than a self-pitying version of the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger, who opined, I can't get no satisfaction.

I can't get no satisfaction. Now, this song came out when I was a young, hormone-fueled teenage boy in the 60s, and I, too, couldn't get no satisfaction. But unlike the modern incel, I followed Jagger's advice, and that is, but I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try.

Now, of course, in reality, Mick Jagger was famous or infamous, if you will, for getting all the girls he wanted, and he proved to be an inspiring model for us sex-deprived boys of the 1960s, who were frustrated at not finding girls who would give us sexual satisfaction. Now, no one in my day ever thought about identifying as an involuntary celibate. Oh, our solution to celibacy was, I'm going to try. I'm going to try. And we tried until we scored, if you will.

But alas, that's not the situation for the modern male in 21st century America. Instead of knowing that if he followed the prompting of his raging hormones and learned the art of wooing women, according to ancient ways, he would eventually find someone with whom he could find satisfaction, if you will. Today, he despairs of ever finding any woman with whom he can share intimacy and sex, and one another's bodies, even a sincere conversation. Can't find it. Oh, incels feel very oftentimes like this.

In a 2001 study published in the Journal of Sex Research, the Journal of Sex Research, Georgia State sociologist Denise Donnelly identified the sense of being sexually off time as central to the experience of self-described involuntary celibates being off time. It makes me feel like everyone else, one incel male opined, that is, he said, it makes me feel like everyone else is going through some mythical gates into grown-up land while I sit out in the courtyard with the children, unquote. Or the Austin American statesman reports this on forums like 4chan's R9K or Reddit's Forever Alone and the old-timer loveshy.com.

Incels gather to swap stories and debate the causes of their situations. Some have physical handicaps or psychological disorders that have prevented them from meeting women. Some just have bad luck. Some are cripplingly introverted, hence loveshy or anxious, unquote. Oh, my, my.

One author for Elle magazine describes the typical incel, the involuntarily celibate, the typical incel who visits this website loveshy.com, says, and I quote, many of the sites' users have gone years, decades, or even their entire lives without romance. Some identify themselves as suffering from loveshyness, a condition, though not recognized by any mental health authority, that is characterized by extreme anxiety over any romantic or sexual interaction. Other users call themselves incels, meaning involuntarily celibate or forever alone, which requires no explanation.

They use the site as an advice depot or confessional and water cooler, complaining frequently about the impossibility of making themselves understood by normies or non-cells, unquote, from Elle magazine on what is an incel, right? Well, dear listener, what a pathetic, humiliating travesty of masculine culture. No society survives to the next generation without the male drive to procreate and be one physically with a female. Now, there's something critically amiss with our cultural orientation in this matter. American males have been subjected to a relentless assault upon what it means to be a man now for over 70 years.

Is it any wonder that the modern male is confused, impotent, and angry at his society and the women who comprise it? Well, there are a number of forces at work that have brought us to this existential past, dear listener. First of all, number two, point number two, whatever happened to sexual liberation? My, my, my, with the modern morality, whatever happened to sexual liberation? Shouldn't the Gen Z male be having frequent gratifying sex to his utter satisfaction after having inherited the fruits of the liberation movement of the 60s.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s, when I was hormone-fueled, if you will, as a young man? Well, that revolution was supposed to have made sex freer, more frequent, and more pleasurable than under the uptight cultural straight jacket of the 1950s. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. That was the mantra of my generation. From the male perspective, could anything have been more advantageous to our sexual gratification than this?

We thought heaven on earth was about to dawn. Reluctant girls were turning into compliant girls before our eyes, as rock and roll especially unleashed previously suppressed passions in the hearts of teenage girls. Oh, I can't get no satisfaction, as the Rolling Stones sang, was quickly turning into I'm getting all the satisfaction I want. Sex only within marriage was seen as old-fashioned and uptight. Who could believe in a morality that was hopelessly stuck in the past and in what was seen by us, at least, as hypocrisy?

The sexual act itself gradually became divorced from its prime directive as the means of perpetuating the species to one of mere personal pleasure and individual enjoyment. Was it good for you? Became the prime question rather than is this good for the species? There was a profound confusion introduced to American culture that is as ancient as the Garden of Eden, and that is sexual pleasure and enjoyment as an end in itself versus a means to a wider goal, that is the propagation of the species. It is now given an assumption in a relationship that after a discrete period of introduction, getting to know the person, they become a partner.

The person becomes a partner in bed as well as perhaps board, bed and board, that is living together if they hit it off well. Delaying sex until after marriage is seen as silly and unwise. You don't buy a car without test driving it, do you? I heard someone say this the other day for the countless hundredth time. Then why would you marry someone without seeing if you get along in bed?

Oh boy. Moving from person to partner in no time is now a cultural ritual in America. It only seems logical that if that is the cultural norm for each succeeding generation. Well then, this generation would be living it up at the Hotel California, as the song goes, right? With lots of free gratifying sex.

Oh, but au contraire. For some reason, there is a growing pool of young men who aren't getting it, can't get it, or have stopped trying to get it, and are rather living it down in the basement, not the bedroom of the Hotel California. Oh, as one incel, one involuntarily celibate on loveshy.com, he puts it this way. He says, and I quote, I'm tired because it's hard to look directly at the fact that some people, for all kinds of reasons, end up desperately alone, feeling frozen out of the joys of love and sex, joys that our culture is forever celebrating, unquote. Oh, how sad, how sad, dear listener.

Well, how can this be? Well, let me move on to point three. Whatever happened to the feminist movement? Ah, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yes, here we are.

The feminist movement. It is difficult to decide whether the feminist movement has made women more accessible to men or less so. Or is it really that hard to decide? Feminism has sent mixed signals to men for generations now. For most men, it's like plucking petals from the daisy.

She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not. Ah, there have been so many forces at work over the decades that it makes one's head swim.

For example, birth control and the widespread availability of abortion services have liberated, quote unquote, women from their wombs. But that has not necessarily translated into a widespread availability of women's bodies for men's enjoyment, however. Also, feminist philosophy and theory has plotted a whole spectrum of practice and behaviors that leaves many men bewildered and confused and in the dust. Remember Gloria Steinem's maxim. I remember this from the 70s.

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Oh, that would bring chuckles all around. Now, many men over those generations since have experienced that sense of rejection and obsolescence, feeling like an unused rusting bicycle at the bottom of the sea. Also, feminism has transformed our institutions that have left men behind. More women now attend college than men.

More women than men are pursuing white-collar jobs. Men are increasingly finding that their bosses, their doctors, and their political authorities, as in many other institutions, are now women. Oh, and the social context? Oh, dear listener, the social context is now fraught with danger for most men. For social and emotional and psychological danger for a lot of men now, that social context, right?

Oh, yeah. A lot of men are asking, they're saying, my boss seems to like me. Should I ask her out? Or will I get fired? Right?

Should I hold this door open for this approaching girl? Or will she scorn me as a male chauvinist pig? Or, this is our third date? Should I invite her to spend the night tonight? Or, wow, she makes more money than I do.

If she says yes when I ask her out for a date, will she pick up the tab? Oh, and then, of course, the last three women have said no. Should I bother asking a fourth to the party? On and on we could go. The social context for men now is fraught with emotional and psychological danger for most men.

There seems to be no reliable rules to this game anymore. I feel like I'm trying to pick my way through a field laced with bear traps all around me, and I'm barefoot. Oh, what's the point, right? To the incel, there is no point in playing the game any longer. The price is too great for his self-esteem.

He's better off in his mother's basement, surfing the net. Oh, and there is also a darker side to this game, if you will, that has sealed the fate for the incel. For example, feminists have created a dilemma, a false dilemma for men. That is a dilemma intended to confuse and frustrate and control them. Feminists have pitted the toxic male versus the beta male.

There is now no choice. You're either one or the other to the radical feminist. They have pitted the toxic male versus the beta male. You're either one in this game of binary choices. You are rejected if you're a toxic male.

Oh, yeah. Displaying all of the classic toxic male traits. Aggressive, patriarchal, competitive, dominant, suppressing emotions, manspreading, if you will, and just generally being a rude, insensitive pig that only wants to talk about sports and food. You're rejected if you're a toxic male. Oh, but wait a minute.

You're also rejected if you're a beta male. Passive, emotionally sensitive, non-competitive, empathetic, choosing compromise and cooperation over domination, often having low self-confidence and harboring resentment and anger too. Many beta males do. Well, if that's the case, you are too low on the genetic totem pole for most women then. Many men feel this damned if you do, damned if you don't pincer movement that can engulf them in despair and loneliness.

Oh, you may say, do I get my inner toxins flowing as a male, my toxic male, inner toxic male, and show myself bold and successful? Oh, snap. There goes a bear trap. With Susie, she's done with you. Well, then, perhaps I let my inner beta male surface, and I show myself sensitive and caring.

Maybe playing a little Mozart in the evening and making a steak du poivre for dinner that night. Snap. There goes another bear trap. With Gretchen, she finds you entirely too passive for her taste. So, in the end, for the incel, at least, the game is too complex and too risky for his self-esteem.

Too many bear traps. Not worth it. I'll stay in my mother's basement. Thank you. Well, the incel is the ultimate irony of our age, I submit to you.

In the day of sexual freedom and license, oh, when all of these vistas are opening up for the male, right? He is bound, nevertheless, the incel by loneliness and emptiness and despair. Oh, and in the day of women being as free and available as ever before, oh, the incel is alienated and confused by the whiplash of expectations from those very same women. Dear listener, is there a solution? Oh, is there a solution?

Fourthly, I submit to you, indeed, it is time to return to the covenantally active male role model. It is time to return to the covenantally active male and his role model that we have portrayed for us in the scriptures. Yes, under the biblical model, dear listener, there are no involuntary celibate men. They are rather quarters of biblically prepared, biblically raised women. Yes, vital to have both of these on the scales.

That is a biblically prepared and biblically raised woman with no involuntarily celibate men. That is rather men who are looking to be active in raising a family. Men need to be reminded of their prime directive, which is given to us in Genesis by our creator. And I quote now from Genesis chapter one, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So, God created man in his own image.

In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Unquote.

How beautiful. We need to return to this original cultural mandate, dear listener. We were designed to labor together, man and woman, in the bonds of marriage to fulfill our destiny as image bearers of the God who created us. And it is time to return to that model, dear listener, all of us. One man, one woman, one marital covenant that binds the two.

And there is an order to this covenant as well that will guarantee sweet and good relations between man and woman. No more involuntary celibate men. For example, the Apostle Paul tells husbands and wives, he says, first of all, wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

This infuriates the feminist, of course, and goes counter to all that is transpiring in our culture. Well, he also tells husbands, though, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

Therefore, it is written, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, Paul says, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. So, dear listener, in the holy bonds of matrimony, we are to live together. The husband loving his wife as Christ loved the church, and the wife submitting to her husband as the church submits to Christ. This has been the operative model in the life of the church for millennia now.

And when it's running on all eight cylinders, it is a beautiful machine to behold. And it has also then helped us to fulfill our mandate to indeed take the earth and subdue it and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the entire creation. We were meant to do this, and we've stalled, if you will, in our day and time in our culture. We've stalled in that cultural mandate. In fact, we're declining.

We're not even replacing at birth rates those we have now, and that's because of the free sex feminist model that we've adopted, and we will continue to deteriorate and decline as a culture and a society as long as we do that until we return to the biblical model, indeed, of family, where we have the husband and wife and children looking forward not only to their generation but to the next generation as well. When we do this, we will indeed find ourselves thriving and prospering again, and no more incels, involuntarily celibate men that are desperate and roaming the earth and even turning to violence from time to time.

All of this we will see indeed go away as we return to the biblical model of marriage, the biblical model of true male leadership. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard, and there you'll find a lot of strong biblical males and strong biblical women, for that matter as well, at New Geneva. Come and join us across our threshold. You'll find a warm reception and perhaps a place for you at our church as well.

We meet once again for holy worship at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard, and you can call us for more information or perhaps to give us some feedback. Maybe you're infuriated by what you've heard today. Maybe you've found that there is some wisdom in it after all, but go ahead and give us a call for more feedback at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.