On Christian Manhood

I never thought about Christian manhood until I came to college, but in a way that makes sense because the focus on the topic of Christian manhood didn't really evolve until recent decades. It's like parenting that way -- for centuries, parenting was something that people just did, and raising children was just a part of their lives, but if you asked, "Who are you? What is your identity?", nobody would say, "A father" or "a mother." They'd just tell you who they were, what they did, what they believed, what their passions were. It's only in recent decades that parenting and the art of child-rearing became the subject of countless books and curricula and methodologies, and there are two sides to this coin: a lot of good, sound wisdom has been shared and a lot of fluff has been generated over something that isn't as complicated or all-important as it's been made to seem. Parenting is important, but it shouldn't consume what you live for or who you are. I feel the same way about today's Christian idea of manhood.

There is a definite need for real men in the kingdom of God. There are a lot of boys out there who haven't yet begun to act like men. There is a lot of passivity and a lot of spectatorship -- we inherited it from Adam, the first man, who was passive enough to let Eve do the negotiating with the serpent, who was passive enough to let Eve take and eat the fruit, and who was passive enough to eat it himself when she gave it to him. There are men who passively let sin creep up on their doorstep and don't have the zeal or the courage to chase it away -- these are the men who know they have a problem with sexual purity and yet let themselves come to a place where they're alone in a room with the Internet and a closed door. There are men who blame other people for their shortcomings -- like Adam who tried to toss the blame to his wife Eve, or like a lot of angry men who credit their own absent fathers for their struggles to love their families. There are men who pursue the hearts of women until they are married, and then lack the passion and the initiative to pursue the hearts of their wives. There are men who sit at home while they should be out in the fields sowing, watering, reaping the harvest.

In God's image, men are meant to be leaders -- and leaders purport a vision -- and where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). Without men to catch God's vision and follow hard after it to guide others towards it, the church stumbles, communities are directionless, families are broken.

So it's a good thing that there is a lot of good literature out there -- there's a definite margin for improvement. Some of it is better than others.

I'm not a big enthusiast about Wild at Heart because I think in a lot of ways, it effectively replaces solid biblical teaching with quotations from Braveheart. If doing the work of a man were as easy as getting fired up about heroic movies, I don't think any of us would have a problem getting the job done. There are even conferences for men these days where men spend a weekend watching movie clips and powerpoints and receive an all-included Scottish claymore sword at the end as a shiny reminder that they're the warrior protectors of their families. A little ridiculous. This weekend, however, Charleston Southern University did a men's retreat and went through two pretty solid curricula: one from The Quest for Authentic Manhood about Five Wounds men must face (1. The Absent Father Wound, 2. The Overly Bonded with Mother Wound, 3. The All Alone Wound, 4. The Lack of Manhood Vision Wound, and 5. The Heart Wound), and the other concerned the Four Pillars of a R.E.A.L. man (Rejecting passivity, Expecting God's greater reward, Accepting responsibility, Leading courageously).

My first reaction to lists and steps is pretty dismissive -- I usually don't really buy that there are Four Steps to anything authentic or Eight Keys to a powerful prayer life, but once you get over the numbers and acronyms game, there is some real wisdom to be found in some of the teaching. In a way, it's like the Scout Oath and Scout Law that I grew up with -- sure, they're not comprehensive, watertight paradigms of morality, but if you follow them consistently, you'll probably be headed in a good direction. Likewise, while it's probably not a complete list, a Christian guy who rejects passivity, expects God's best, accepts responsibility, and leads courageously will probably do great things in the kingdom of God. If it's arrogant of syllabus-writers to try to distill God's wisdom and direction into 8 convenient steps, it's also arrogant of me to dismiss blanketly what's been written because it's been formatted in a "pre-packaged" way.

But Don Miller also made a really good point about the whole tamale in his book about fatherhood and manhood, To Own a Dragon. In one of his chapters, he recounts speaking to a group of 900 high school boys, and telling them to take out a pen and write down that God's definition of a real man...is...someone...who has...a penis.

“God’s definition of a real man is a person with a penis!...And as much fun as I was having, I was also being serious. It had been a long journey for me, a journey filled with doubt and fear, and the only answer I could come up with is that all the commercials, all the sales tactics that said I wasn’t a real man unless I bought some book, or wore some aftershave, or slept with some cheerleader, were complete lies. If you have a penis, I told the group of guys, God has spoken… You are men. Some of you have never heard this before, but I want to tell you, you are men. You are not boys, you are not children, you are not women, you are men. God has spoken, and when God speaks, the majority has spoken. You are a man.”

Don has hit on a really good point here. The world has put so many false requirements on manhood -- that you need to have muscles, that you need to have a deep voice and grunt a lot, that you need to be good at sports -- and in some senses, Christianity sometimes does the same thing, creating hoops for Christian men to jump through to see if they are men, and at the same time, creating tests that can be failed, that can tell men that they are not men in God's eyes. But if you pee standing up, then that's all the validation you need. You've been given all the right equipment -- all that remains is that by His grace, you can act and live like the man that God made you to be.

Three Steps or Four Pillars to Authentic Manhood can do a lot, but it's all worthless if it's not rooted in our redeemed, restored identity of manhood, given to us by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

We keep calling for men to take a stand, and it should be refreshing to know that real men can do just that -- even while peeing.