Thoughts for a new year

Whenever we trade one calendar for another many of us think about straightening up our act, getting our act together, starting fresh for the new year. Some of us make “new year’s resolutions,” others of us clean out the garage or organize our workspace, or decide to lose weight and exercise more.

Reflection and deciding to take on change is a good thing. It helps us to continually renew, to occasionally monitor what we are doing in light of our goals and values, and to adjust course and change habits.

Let me point you into a direction as you consider new year changes you’d like to make. Think in terms of how you can more clearly differentiate who you are. Are you influenced too much by others? Do you give in on important things to keep peace? Do you “go along to get along” and compromise core values and principles?

And speaking of values, it may be a good time to sit down and carefully think through what you believe and what is important, and write something down on paper. It could be a lengthy narrative or a bullet-list. What could you do more fully live into and be guided by what is really important?

Evaluate your commitment to patriarchy. How can you show devoted love to your wife? How can you be more respect-worthy in her eyes? How can you encourage her unshakable trust in you? How can you make her feel emotionally secure?

What about the children? Spend time thinking deeply about their future, and what you can do now to send those arrows toward the right target. How can you better instill the values, belief patterns, and behaviors that will ensure a good life, pleasing to the Lord? How can you encourage their curiosity and sense of discovery, so that they will know how to learn and discover and recognize truth all their lives?

Most important, what about your relationship with God? Have a reasonable prayer life? Attend church functions that actually challenge you and help you grow in faith and character? Have spiritual mentor to talk to and learn from? Working on reading and understanding the Bible better?

I can’t tell you how important it is for us to get away, remove hindrances and distractions, and think deeply about things like this from time to time. The coming of a new year, and the change of a calendar, can be a good discipline to help us do just that. I’m going to take a day or two to do that. Maybe you can work it out to do that, too.

Patriarch Joseph

As we come into the week of Christmas our minds will inevitably turn to the Christmas story. A love story that turns complicated with the intrusion of an unplanned pregnancy, and a turn of events Hollywood could never make up.

We admire a brave young woman, barely marriageable age, and recently betrothed, for accepting the word of the Lord and agreeing to carry and give birth to the Messiah, despite the severe social consequences she will endure. We have to admire her courage. We have to applaud her willingness to give up everything to be obedient to God. She reminds us that when God blesses us he turns our world upside down.

As with many birth stories the focus most often is on the mother. I’d like to think today about the Christ Child’s adoptive father, Joseph the true patriarch.

He is a hard working carpenter, meaning he could be a wood-joiner and maker of furniture and other products from wood, or a stone mason, or both. He also has social connections. In fact, if it had not been for the Jewish captivity and the turn of history he would be king, a direct descendant of David himself. Prestigious among those who regard those things as important in his world, but not doing him much good in the Roman regime.

Now let’s consider his character. We are told he is a righteous man, and when he discovers Mary is pregnant during a time when she should be chaste, he decides to extend grace, and part ways privately and without allegation or charges. When the angel visits him in a dream to encourage him, he agrees to take her as his wife.

By taking Mary on Joseph willingly compromises his own reputation in the close-knit society of Nazareth. He publicly accepts responsibility (and the stigma) for what everyone assumes is immoral behavior and claims the unborn child as his own. The babe is thereby adopted and for all legal and practical purposes as the child of Joseph. He brings Mary and child under his roof, and accepts full responsibility for their care and protection. He also defers his own gratification until the child is born.

When taxation and registration force Joseph to travel to the home of his fathers, he takes Mary, “great with child,” with him. He assures her safety and makes sure she has somewhere to rest and give birth. After her purification, he presents the child in the temple and offers prescribed sacrifices for his “firstborn.” The Lord warns him of danger from Herod’s paranoia, and he takes mother and child away to Egypt to ensure safety.

We catch a glimpse of Joseph twelve years later, as the family travels with others home from the Passover observance at Jerusalem. When they miss young Jesus after a day of travel, Joseph returns to Jerusalem and searches frantically for three days before finding him in the temple, doing “his father’s business”.

We don’t see Joseph in person after that. But we do see the lasting impression he made on his Son, who at age 30 walked away from the carpenter shop to accept the call to be the savior of the world. We see Joseph’s willingness to obey at great personal sacrifice. We see Joseph’s ability to hear the Lord and to see beyond the immediate circumstance and to live for the greater good. We see Joseph’s ability to defer personal gratification. The mark of a true patriarch is to be able to recognize him in his children.

Joseph is a patriarch because he uses his masculine strength to protect, provide, and make a way for a brighter future. Not just for his family, but for all mankind.

Advent masculinity

The liturgical season of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is filled with masculine themes. Sure there is the annunciation, and anticipation of the birth of the Christ Child (fourth Sunday). But Advent itself is very masculine in the lessons it teaches us and the disciplines it offers. In fact, in the early church Advent had nothing to do with Christmas and the birth of the Christ Child, and everything to do with masculinity.

How’s that, you say? Advent is primarily an observance of the second coming of Christ, not the first. It anticipates the time when Jesus will come again in great glory and victory to judge. Judgment is a masculine concept. It means separating and distinguishing. Matthew tells us that the coming King will separate sheep from goats, wheat from tares, true followers from trouble-makers. In the 4th century a full six weeks was devoted to repentance and anticipation of Christ’s glorious return to set up the kingdom of God on earth.

These days two Sundays of Advent (the second and third) are devoted to the forerunner, John the Baptist. Now there is a differentiated man if there ever was one. The son of Zechariah the priest, he stood to inherit a prestigious and well-paying job as priest in the temple. Living in upscale temple apartments. Wearing the best linen robes. Eating the finest food. He walked away from it all to wander about in the wilderness wearing rough sewn camel-skin garments and eating locusts and wild honey. He wanted nothing to do with the corrupt and idolatrous religious establishment of his day, and he left it at great personal cost. A man’s man indeed.

His mission? Isaiah and Malachi furnish that. He was the voice crying in the wilderness, the one preparing the way of the Lord. That Hebrew metaphor suggests a massive highway construction project, where mountains are leveled and valleys filled in to make a level and straight road-bed for the soon-to-visit king. Make it easy for Messiah to come. It is God-breathed masculinity that makes us want to carve something out of this earth, to make life and access better. John carved the way of the Lord into the hearts of a bewildered and oppressed and increasingly secular generation.

His message? Repent. Judgment is coming. Repentance means a total rethinking of the way we live life now, with a resulting fundamental change in the manner of living. It is radical transformation. Judgment, is, as we have observed, separation and making distinction. It is the way God uses his two-edged sword to cut deep into our hearts to distinguish good motives from bad. It is when he moves upon us with sovereign grace and prevails upon us to clean up our act.

The Church, when it was still masculine, gave us Advent, as a guide to continual repentance and renewal. It was intended to be a discipline to help us stay on the straight and narrow.

Incidentally, Christmas in the early church went by almost unnoticed. There was a mass on that day, just like there was a mass for other saints days. But there was no major celebration, no holiday shopping season, no Santa Claus, none of that. The big celebration was reserved for the resurrection of Jesus in the spring. The victorious defeat of sin and death was the preeminent theme. Another very masculine theme.

In fact, Christmas was no big deal until the 19th century, when we began to significantly feminize the Church. When we began to think in feminine terms the observance of birth of a baby rose to prominence in our thought. One of the Sundays in Advent, the fourth, gave way to the announcement of the birth of a Child.

Now, sadly, Advent is almost lost and almost impossible to keep. The commercial Christmas season, which begins in August, has encroached and pressed into the church. We don’t think much about repentance and judgment and the hard work necessary to make it easy for Jesus to come. We are too busy partying and staging reenactments of the nativity and indulging children. Liturgical churches are at best weak on Advent, and the non-liturgical (the ones who threw away the traditions of the fathers) have scrapped it altogether and march to the tune of the commercial marketplace and the civil calendar. We do a lot of cute things with kids, but we don’t do much to shape our hearts and lives for the coming of Jesus. In fact, I think we are better shaped to accommodate the culture around us.

The tragic thing about that is that it needs to be the other way around. We need to be impacting the culture. We need to be differentiated enough, like John the Baptist, to walk away from the accepted way of doing things and all the fringe benefits associated with it, to be the voice in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. We do not serve a baby in a manger. We serve a victorious Jesus who put death to death and returns to rule and reign as sovereign God.

A praying man

A couple of weeks ago our family watched “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 movie about George Bailey, the giving, thoughtful man who gets into trouble at Christmastime when his absent-minded uncle misplaces an $8,000 deposit. In one scene he is sitting in Martini’s Bar, at his wit’s end, and begins to pray. “God, I am not a praying man,” he says, “but if you are up there and can hear me . . .”

That line caught my attention, because I’ve heard it many times before: “I am not a praying man.” I have thought about it a lot because as a pastor I notice that men find it difficult to pray, both in private and in public. It is usually the women who pray. And when men do pray it is usually a last-ditch, when all else has failed, awkward effort. When all else fails, pray.

Why? Is it because resorting to prayer is seen as weakness? Failure of strength? I guess that might be the case for some. We think we need to be able to solve our own problems. We don’t ask for help, or whine, or cry, even to God. I do notice that in some men, but we don’t find that attitude in Scripture. The Bible is full of examples of men who pray.

But I’m wondering if most men don’t find it easy to pray (including me, and I’m a pastor!) because somehow our culture has made it difficult to pray. We have been conditioned for a feminized church culture where the women do the praying. And because women are more vocal, prayer has been modeled to us as wordy, flowery, and lengthy. For a long time they had to be offered in perfect Elizabethan English! Prayers we are accustomed to hearing are not the kinds of things we would actually say.

The problem is ironic, when you consider that Christianity stems from Judaism, a very masculine religion. Christianity itself was at its beginning very masculine. Jesus called men -- rough, hard-working blue-collar men -- to follow him in self-sacrificing discipleship. Their custom was to go to synagogue everyday, three times a day, to pray. They prayed, every day, three times a day, 19 fixed, simple, to-the-point blessings and requests for God’s watchcare and intervention. Together these are called the Amidah, and you can find them here. They were memorized for reciting every single day, three times a day.

When the disciples encountered Jesus in prayer they interrupted with the request, “Lord, teach us to pray” (emphasis added, but I think present in their conversation). He taught them a modified form of the Amidah. We call it the Lord’s Prayer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with reciting the Lord’s prayer every day. I make sure it is recited at every worship service in my churches, sometimes twice.

Jewish men also recited blessings throughout the day for ordinary things they would do or encounter. They usually began with, “Blessed is he who . . . ” Again, simple, memorized prayers recited at certain triggers. When the apostle Paul reminds us to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) he is referring to this practice.

The early church gave us fixed prayers to recite based on this Jewish practice. The printing press and increased literacy made possible prayer books (like the Book of Common Prayer) which gave us a language and an expanded repertoire of prayers and collects for many occasions.

The point is that fixed prayers, memorized or read, can help us find the words to express what is on our heart. They were designed for men to use in a very masculine religion.

Another point to make is one that many miss. And that is, prayer is also listening and meditating. Men need times of solitude to get a way and think, meditate, or listen for God to speak. Jesus took lengthy periods of time (sometimes 40 days at a time) to get alone to pray. I think much of that praying was being silent before the Lord. I would find it hard to believe that Jesus would be in non-stop one-way verbal communication for 40 days. I personally think we would improve our prayer lives if we would stop the frazzled, roller-coaster life we have once in a while and go away for inactivity and silence before the Lord.

How can I be a praying man? Using fixed prayers I find in Scripture and long-time prayer books. Getting away and shutting up so that God can speak to me. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Sanctified testosterone

I have mentioned before the presence of testosterone in men that gives us our masculine characteristics. Testosterone is the steroid hormone in men which influences sex drive, physical strength, body hair, deeper voice, and mental function. While it occurs in women in much smaller amounts, it is the characteristic that influences most who we are as men.

It was my friend and protege in ministry, Eric Johnson, a chemist by profession, who put me on to thinking in terms of “sanctified testosterone.” We were visiting one day when he began talking about his discovery that masculinity means separation. “You read that in my blog!” I proudly noted. “No, I discovered it by studying testosterone,” he replied, deflating my balloon.

Eric went on to tell me that humans are conceived essentially female, with sex organs that will develop as female unless something happens to change that. Six weeks after conception, the Y-chromosome induces a testosterone release that washes the embryo and triggers its development into a male. If the testosterone release does not occur the embryo becomes a female. Chemically speaking the testosterone wash separates male from female through the process of masculinization. The release affects the embryonic brain and growth of male sex organs.

I am intrigued with the concept of separation and differentiation in Eric’s work. We have already noted from psychological and cultural perspectives that masculinity means separation. But now we hear it from the bio-chemical perspective. We not only experience continual separation and differentiation throughout our lives, beginning in childhood, but now it seems that differentiation actually begins in the womb not long after conception.

But in a sense I think this separation occurs before conception. When God called Jeremiah to be the prophet to the nations he resisted, citing his young age. Listen to what God told him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5). I note that Jeremiah had identity before conception, and was set apart during gestation. Sanctified testosterone, indeed.

We are created to have deep voices to declare God’s word; and strong bodies to do fight his fight and do his work. We are given testosterone-induced passion to have dreams and visions that motivate us to sacrifice self for the sake of something greater. We are created to take wives and beget children and direct their lives into the service of our king.

Men, go for it! Be strong and passionate. Fight for what is right. Follow the God-given calling given to you as you were set apart in the womb. Be bold and courageous, and don’t be let down whent he culture tries to tame your passion and belittle your strength. Rise up and be men of God, sanctified by the very testosterone that makes you who you are!

Speak the truth

I ran across this quote from Martin Luther. I thought it very self-differentiating and visionary. It inspires me to do what God has called me to do.

I was born to fight devils and factions.
It is my business to remove obstructions,
to cut down thorns,
to fill up quagmires, and
to open and make straight paths.
But if I must have some failing
let me rather speak the truth
with too great severity
than once to act the hypocrite
and conceal the truth.

I can relate to this.

Male, masculine, man

These three words are often used synonymously to describe the state of being a man. However, as I ruminate over these words and think about the various ways we men live our lives, I believe we can discover helpful distinctions that mark and inform our growth in maturity as a man.

“Male,” of course, refers to gender. We are born of the male gender, with certain characteristics that come with the package. A generous supply of testosterone makes us strong and wild. Sometimes we do not know our own strength. Testosterone also directs a very strong sex drive, fueled by visual images that catch our attention. Male means action, force, and sex. Male also means passion to conquer and create, and strong feelings. Male means irresponsibility and acting on impulse. If patriarchy fails to harness the raw energy of maleness we are locked in perpetual male adolescence, and will have a hard life in addition to creating hardship for many others. This is where we start.

“Masculine” is what happens when we begin the process of separation. Masculinity is characterized by making distinction, separating, withdrawing to be one’ own man. In healthy situations it begins when we are children, recognizing that we are no longer attached to mother, we are not like her, and we cannot have her as our own. We begin noticing girls and distinctions between those of the fairer sex and us. We begin looking to other males for help in learning how to be a man.

The Hebrews recognized God as masculine (and not necessarily as male) because he deals with us in terms of separation and making distinctions. Creation was a separation of the elements into order, and salvation comes to us through making a series of sanctifying distinctions.

With us masculinity means carefully and over a period of time separating ourselves from being emotionally stuck to others (family, friends, etc.) to be fully differentiated on our own. We need this to be healthy. This means cutting the apron strings from mama. It means times of solitude and going off on our own. At the same time masculinity carries a degree of melancholy or sadness because of the constant separations that must be made.

If we don’t adjust well from these separations we may try to numb the pain with excessive or obsessive bahaviors with work, alcohol or drugs, sex, or obsessions with outdoor “macho” activities like hunting or athletics. We may become anti-social and withdrawn.

The separations in the process of masculinity are essential. Without them we are not fully differentiated and will become effeminate or feminized. Our strength and passion to conquer and create will be subdued. Our culture does not understand this and does not help boys harness the maleness within and properly differentiate through masculinity. That is why so many males today are immature or effeminate. They have not been exposed to masculinity.

To be a “man” means to be a mature, differentiated, responsible male. It is to have vision and passion and strength channeled in a positive direction. It is to have the maturity of the likeness of Christ and lead others into kingdom building. It is to harness sexual energies with one woman to build Godly families, and to protect, provide, and nurture wife and children. It is to live in covenant.

In other words, to be a man is to be a patriarch. It is to live in perpetual death to self in deference to the well-being of others. I love the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:13 (King James): “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”

Are you a male? Good. Our maleness is the raw material, the soil of the earth, that God uses to shape into something for his glory. Are you masculine? Good again. You have learned and experienced a degree of sometimes painful separation and distinction and are learning to be your own man. It seems we spend a lifetime doing that.

But the important question is, are you a man? Have you experienced death to self so that you can live into the resurrection of Christ? Are you, as Wesley asked, going on to perfection? Are you responsible and living in covenant? Do you channel those wild energies and passions into the pursuit of God’s perfect will?

Be a man. Watch, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Do everything you do in love.

Woman, submit!

We continue frank conversation on the love-respect circle between man and woman, and hopefully gain wisdom on how to deepen the marital bond and enhance our patriarchal role. The love-respect circle is mentioned at least three times in the New Testament; twice by Paul (Eph. 5:22-33; Col 3:18, 19) and once by Peter (1 Pe. 3:1-7). Once Paul uses it as a metaphor for how Christ relates to the church. All three tell wives to submit, husbands to love.

I’m going to write about the first element, “wives submit,” because it is mentioned first. Much has been made over this phrase. Overbearing, domineering men love it. Feminists and liberals hate it. All misunderstand and misapply it.

To submit (‘υποτασσω, hupotasso) means to place yourself under, and suggests to me a voluntary response to conditions that warrant submission. Understanding how a woman loves and responds to a man helps us understand how she will willingly and happily place herself under the authority of her husband. The conditions must be right for this to be lived out in a healthy and fulfilling way. I have discovered that at least three elements must be in place for this to work right. Today I speak of the first, respect.

A woman must be able to respect the man to whom she will submit. She must see him as one who has noble values which she admires, and one who will defend those values against all challenges. She must see that he is constant in character and convictions, and that he is kind to women and children. She will naturally honor a man who has these qualities.

Often a woman “falls in love” with a man who has a noble vision beyond himself, who has a sense of destiny and purpose, and a plan to get there. His vision and aspirations capture her attention, touch something deep within her, and cause her to want to join in his cause and stand by his side. She finds herself wanting to be his help-meet, to help him accomplish those grand dreams. With a great sense of admiration she will willingly submit to helping a man like that.

The corollary to this is that men need to be loved this way. They experience love through the respect they receive. They want to be respected by other men, and they want to be respected by their wives. Men who do not feel respected by their wives do not feel loved.

Men need to separate themselves from the smothering, doting, protecting “love” a mother wants to give her child. This kind of love expressed is emasculating, dibilitating. Wives who try to treat their husbands this way do not love them because they do not respect them. Remember that a necessary component of masculinity is the healthy separation from father and mother so that a man can join himself to his wife (Gen. 2:24).

The respect factor will not work if we are simply demanding that our women submit. This works when we have done our part, when we have shown ourselves respectworthy. A young man, with his eye on a pretty girl he wants to court, needs to know what kinds of things will attract her attention and give her cause to respect. After he wins the girl he needs to live out respectworthy behaviors, manners, and dreams.

If she is turned on to a steady, who is faithful in going to work and bringing home a payday, then respectworthy is a good work ethic and Christian values. If she is impressed by a valiant man seeking to conquer the world and solve its problems, the man will live a life of vision, destiny, and purpose beyond punching the clock every day. If a man punches her buttons simply by living his life with integrity she will readily submit.

Men, we do not have the right to demand, “Woman, submit!” at any time. We have good reason to look for it when we have done things to earn her respect.

My next entry in a day or two deals with another element of submission, trust.

The way of a man with a maid

Mature content warning: The content of the journal entries on “the way of a man and a maid” may be sexually explicit at times. Marriage is a covenantal sexual relationship between a man and a woman and there is no use in trying to politely explain that away. If you are squeamish over frank discussion of sex in a Christian context you might want to go to this website today instead. Seriously, I need to discuss content for mature men so please steer children away.

In a recent journal entry I promised to post some of my discoveries and thoughts on the love-respect relationship between a man and a woman. It seems that men and women regard each other in different ways, and these work together to create a deep and abiding relationship between the two which will last a lifetime and grows more intimate and intense as time passes. Men, as I am discovering, the majority of the responsibility lies with us to keep the intensity going.

Solomon confessed that “the way of a man with a maid” was too wonderful for him to understand (Prov. 30:19). Apparently he was right, because his 700 wives and 300 concubines, mostly taken for economic or political advancement, turned his heart away from serving the Lord (1 Ki. 11:1-8).

Even with all those wives to keep him satisfied Solomon struggled with marital fidelity. He apparently had an illicit affair with the Queen of Sheba when she paid him a state visit. She was overcome by his grandeur, and “there was no more spirit in her” (1 Ki. 10:5). She was seduced by his prowess. She made herself vulnerable and “spoke with him about all that was in her heart,” (1 Ki. 10:2) without assurance of his covenant commitment. Persistent rumor has it that she went home to Sheba, now Ethiopia, pregnant with his child, and that a line of Ethiopian kings descended from him.

Solomon’s problem was that he did not understand the relationship between genuine love between a husband and wife, and the sexual relationship they share as an integral part of that love. The way of a man with a maid is indeed complex, but taking the time to search out its mysteries and apply its wisdom will help marriages grow strong and deeply satisfying. In a time when now more than half of professed Christians divorce that is welcome news.

I have read that men tend to be promiscuous by nature, probably because our biological role in reproduction is limited to a brief encounter. Without covenantal and moral restraints a man moves from partner to partner for sexual fulfillment. In fact I believe this is happening more today as social restraints on sexual expression are being relaxed. I heard recently that as many as two-thirds of all births are by unwed mothers.

Ancient Hebrew culture developed patriarchy as a means of restraining sexual activity in a moral way, and redirecting masculine energies to caring for their wives and children. In Hebrew thought the image of father was one of adoptive love, covenant bonding, tenderness, and compassion.

Even in covenantal relationships the tendency to promiscuity is intense. Men are visual by nature and drawn to feminine beauty. We must establish disciplines and ways to redirect powerful attractions and drives back into our covenantal relationships with our wives. That is why understanding the way of a man with a maid is so critical.

Thankfully God has given us a way to direct our passions in holy and honorable ways. After all the marriage bed is indeed undefiled (Heb. 13:4). The Bible is clear that sexual energies are intended to be directed toward and contained within the marital covenant. If both husband and wife understand this, and respond in the manner in which God created them, the degree of intimacy and release will be fulfilling for both. But we must understand the mystery of the man with the maid.

The apostle Paul gives us what I believe is brilliant psychological insight with the language of wives submitting, husbands loving. This is grossly misunderstood and misapplied if not ignored today. But it remains in Scripture and must be equitably dealt with. The love-respect cycle between man and woman begins in courtship and really should be repeated throughout marriage. The circle should draw tighter and more intense through the years.

My next few journal entries will explore further the mystery of the man with a maid in the love-respect cycle. Be prepared for direct and mature content. It is essential to get the point across.

Seasons of life

I went with three of my daughters to the Rebelution Do Hard Things conference a few weeks ago. Rebelution is the project of twins Alex and Brett Harris (age 20) who as teenagers published the book Do Hard Things to encourage their peers to not accept the low expectations the culture places on youth, and to aspire to significant accomplishment as youth.

At the conference I ran into their dad, Gregg Harris, an old friend and pioneer in the home school movement. Gregg now heads the Noble Institute for Leadership Development and is teaching elder of Household of Faith Community Church in Portland, Ore. We talked about changes in our lives and how we both seemed to be moving into new things. Gregg said, “We are moving into a different season of life.” When he said that my mind went back ten years, to a time I had heard Gregg speak on the seasons of life.

I have reflected often on the concept of the seasons of life. I have felt the uneasiness of transition from one to another. I am coming to realize that when we move from one to the other another time of separation and inner alignment is called for so that we can successfully make the transition with minimal anxiety. It seems the masculine way requires continual separation and reflection, connecting in new fully defined ways. We are never quite “there.”

Gregg speaks of four seasons of life I’d like to mention, with my own reflections. To me they speak of the development of patriarchy and maturity in our lives as we continue on the path of becoming more like Christ.

Preparation. From childhood until the time we marry and begin having children we live in a period of preparation, where first responsibility is being student. We are learning all we can to prepare for life. We begin to venture out into the world and attempt to find our place. We begin to learn who we are as an individual.

I am convinced the best transition point out of preparation and into the next season needs a defining moment, a coming of age trial and ritual. Here is where our first separation should occur, where we go away from family and familiar way of life to find our identity and calling before God, where we define who we will be and how we will relate. Confession: I did not get to have such a period, and I am now convinced it severely slowed my progress. This is critical to moving into adulthood. I am equally convinced we have many immature adult men because they also did not have this kind of transition.

Production. The next season begins when we transition into adult life. We take a wife, establish a household, begin having children. We learn responsibility and we learn how to become productive. The main emphasis at this time is household and community. We become the patriarch by living out prophet, priest, and king as we raise our children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

The transition is when our children grow up and marry, and begin having children. We realize everything changes and we take on new roles as advisors. We become grandparents. It is hard for me to believe I will be a grandpaw in December! Transitioning out of this phase can bring about what we call “midlife crisis.” We begin to realize we are aging and that many of the goals we set in our youth will not be accomplished. Any errors we made with our children will become obvious and painful.

Provision. Having built our household and earning potential we move into a time of greater wealth production. Children are growing up and we can begin getting involved in other pursuits. If we have been maturing, we can put our accumulated wisdom to work in community efforts. This is the time when we earn eldership, where people begin to look to us for counsel. A young man approached me not long ago for counsel on particular matters. He said he wanted the wisdom of an “older man.” It is good to become active in church eldership at this time, because this is when we have the practical wisdom to contribute value to leadership conversations and decisions.

The transition from here is when we anticipate retirement. We become aware something has changed. Our energy may not be where it was, or we simply want to go in a new direction. Here another masculine separation is necessary to gain a perspective of how to relate in a new season.

Protection. The last season of life is what Gregg Harris calls protection. He refers to this as the time when we can lend the strength of our experience and wisdom to the community around us in government policy that protects us from harm. I think history shows our country’s best statesmen have been those in their 60s and 70s.

Our culture wants to devalue the contribution of those with experience. It wants to appeal to a younger generation unfortunately lacking in experience and wisdom, and totally consumed with self gratification. Our societal problems will stem from this significant error.

Lived out faithfully and with integrity, these four seasons of life are the stuff of patriarchy. Learn about the seasons, do all you can to live into the season you are in now, and when it is time to prepare for the next, separate enough to discover how to transition well.

Prophet, priest, and king

We have noted before that patriarch means “rule of the father,” and that ruling in biblical thought actually means guidance by teaching, praying, and leading. We discipline and direct our masculine strength into these areas on behalf of our families. It is a sacred trust, not to be abused, overlooked, or abandoned. There can be no such thing as a lazy, passive, or disobedient patriarch. We live into the role of patriarch by intentional diligence, initiative, and obedience.

Let me observe that if we have the responsibility to do these things then we have an anointing to do these things. That is, we are set apart (separated in the masculine sense), sanctified, directed, and empowered into these functions. Could it be that the much-needed separation from family of origin (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:5; Mk. 10:7, 8; Eph. 5:31), and spending time apart from them to discover our identity and direction for life, somehow is the place where God imparts this anointing on us before we are joined to a wife? Could it be that we need to have these roles and boundaries clearly defined before we are married? Could it be that separation and solitude are necessary to eliminate the distraction and confusion of unbroken ties (i.e., “apron strings”) when new vision is being set?

I know that Jesus received his anointing at his baptism and immediately went to the wilderness, alone, for 40 days and nights, “to be tempted by the devil.” From there he returned to Galilee in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus then functioned in three roles: prophet, priest, and king. First he was the prophet to Galilee, sent to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then he was priest, going to Jerusalem to become the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” and the once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of humanity. He continues to be our priest, sitting at God’s right hand, interceding for us. At his resurrection and ascension he became the king of all, and now expands the kingdom of God through the agency of the Church.

Of course the precedent for the anointing for the roles of prophet, priest, and king comes from the Hebrew Scriptures. When a man entered any of these offices a public pronouncement was made. A man in recognized authority poured consecrated oil over head of the man being set apart, and he was said to be “anointed.” Many times these men spent time in solitude, in the wilderness, alone, to hear from God and discover identity, vision, and direction for his role.

I am convinced that the patriarch is a man who is truly set apart and anointed by God for the task of patriarchy. We have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives to give us grace to carry out this calling and responsibility. Grace is the supernatural strength of God which rests in and upon us to amplify our own strength to accomplish his purposes. Because of God’s grace we can say with Paul, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9, 10). That is what salvation truly is, not “going to heaven when I die.”

And that grace is given to us to enable us to be like Christ, to sacrificially live and give as prophet, priest, and king of our homes. That is, we are given responsibility and grace to teach our families by precept and example. We cannot pawn that off on the Sunday school teacher or youth group leader. We have a duty to function as priest, to intercede on behalf of our families, and to take personal responsibility before God for their failures. We are expected to lead our families with vision, direction, and setting boundaries; to protect them from harm; and to provide for them.

These are non-optional for the patriarch. If we do not actively, intentionally, and aggressively do these things we are not patriarchal, we are merely taking advantage of our women and irresponsibly siring children to be sent aimlessly into a dangerous world to find their own way. This is reprehensible in the sight of God.

My next few posts will explore the roles of prophet, priest, and king respectively, and hopefully help us discover guidance for living into them as patriarchs.

The roles of prophet, priest, and king are depicted in this stained-glass window in the chapel of Wadham College (Oxford, England). The prophet is depicted by Moses (center), the priest is illustrated by Aaron (right), and the king is portrayed on the left. Click on the image for a closer look.

Men of sorrows, acquainted with grief

Men are creatures of hope. We live our lives in hopes of a better tomorrow, of a destiny fulfilled. We are always looking for that next chance, that stroke of luck or fortune, that one little thing that makes a difference. But we never quite get there, and we somehow feel that something is missing. Things never quite work out as we planned. We are men of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

The predicament is well documented. John Eldredge speaks of the wound men carry, torn when we have to separate from home and mother, and perpetuated when we never hear from father that we have what it takes to be a man. Keith Drury tells us we inherit a collective grief from all the blood we have collectively shed as warrior and defender. James Dittes writes of hope deferred and the sacrifices we make to defer our own lives for duty and honor.

As I ponder the matter I think there is a lot of truth to it. The choice to redirect our wild energies to patriarchal responsibility causes us to live disconnected in some way from the dreams of our childhood, when we thought about what we would do when we were all grown up. We focus our energies on wife and family, as we should, and gain a measure of satisfaction from that. “Midlife crisis” reminds us we haven’t quite made it and we probably won’t. In a sense we are men of sorrows. We are acquainted with grief.

God’s men live in a state of hope deferred. Abraham left his father’s house and all he had to follow a God who never let him arrive at his destination. The writer of Hebrews tells us he lived in the land of promise as a foreigner, always looking for the city whose builder and maker was God. He never found it. He was promised a multitude of descendants and went for many years with no fulfillment of the promise. Taking matters into his own hands only intensified the frustration before God gave him one promised heir, through whom his multitudinous offspring would come. He never got to see them.

Moses also lived in anticipation unfulfilled. He led the Israelites from Egyptian bondage to the borders of the promised land, in the process turning a large extended family into a nation. He oversaw the implementation of a system of law and religion on the go. Moses performed the single greatest management task of all time. It is still unmatched. Yet God did not allow him to cross into in the land of promise. He died on a mountain with the objective of his 40-year dream in sight but out of reach.

God called Isaiah to a mission he would never accomplish. He told him to go preach repentance until everyone was carried away captive and the land was laid waste. Same for Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. He prophesied doom and when it came he spoke of God’s peaceful thoughts for a generation yet to come.

Likewise I believe Paul always held out hope that his brethren the Jews would come to Christ. The book of Acts ends on a sad note when Paul had one last audience with the Jewish elders in Rome. They remained unconvinced despite his best efforts. He finally realized that it wouldn’t happen, and gave up hope. Not long after that he was executed.

Jesus is the ultimate man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He came forth boldly proclaiming the advent of a new kingdom that would change the world. His excited disciples could not wait to go to Jerusalem to throw out the Romans. Jesus rode in like a triumphant king amid the praises of the people, and then provoked the religious leaders to have him put him to death. The kingdom did not come in the way everyone thought it would.

Despite our disappointment from hope deferred, we maintain anticipation of ultimate fulfillment. Jesus’ death was not in vain, because his resurrection promises an eternal future of satisfaction. Isaiah chapter 65 speaks of a time when we’ll live to accomplish our dreams. A time when God’s justice will reign and peace and contentment will be the order of the day.

In the meantime our calling to be faithful patriarchs is a constant encouragement for hope. Living into our responsibility and purpose, leading our families in God’s work of redemption and restoration, gives us continual glimpses of the kingdom that is both here now and yet unrealized until eternity descends on us in the resurrection as Isaiah describes so vividly. When we let grace and peace abide in our homes we give others glimpses into what that day will be like.

Men of sorrows, be of good cheer. Jesus has overcome the world, makes all things new, and sets us on the path to fulfillment in him. Live into his grace. Live in anticipation. Build the kingdom, beginning in your own domain.

Kingdom advance

The turning point in Jesus’ ministry on earth is in Matthew chapter 16. Jesus said something to his wild-eyed disciples that was absolutely radical. “[O]n this rock I will build My church, ” he said, “and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” He then gave “keys” to Peter, a metaphor for authority and accountable stewardship.

In our world where church means comfort and security and Aunt Mildred’s Sunday school class bazaars we overlook the huge impact of this statement that would have shocked and excited the young men standing there.

They would have understood church, εκκλησια (ekklesia) in the Greek, as the gathering of God’s people for a specific military purpose. The Old Testament is full of stories about kings and prophets sounding the alarm through the blowing of the trumpet to assemble the army. At the sound of the trumpet they stopped everything, picked up weapons, and went to the gathering place for orders.

Israel had been the gathering of God’s people in the wilderness, as they moved toward the promised land to invade it. The entire exodus was a military operation. Now Jesus is calling forth a new nation, a new army, to invade a new promised land.

Jesus’ military intention is clear. “The gates of Hades will not prevail against it,” he said. The clear suggestion is an offensive military action against the walled fortress Jesus called Hades, where all its defenses will fail and the invaders’ action will succeed. The church’s movement is aggressive, forceful, decisive, and successful. It advances forcefully.

This is not the first time Jesus used language of force. Another time, another place, Jesus said, “[F]rom the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). Still another time he said, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” He goes on to talk about how his movement will disrupt and divide, not bring peace (Matthew 10:34-38). It’s enough to make Aunt Mildred spill her tea in her lap.

Just what foe is the assembled church taking on? Hades, Sheol of the Old Testament. The place of death, decay, and nothingness. The inherited result of Adam’s passivity and disobedience. In Hebrew thought everything living is active and fruitful. There is no state of being, only action and result. God’s Spirit moved over the face of the waters, and continues to move and create and produce today. To discontinue action is to be dead, unproductive, lifeless. A horrifying thought in the Hebrew (biblical) way of thinking. When we finish this life we are buried in Hades to await the restoration of life in the resurrection, where we are redeemed from the curse of Adam’s inaction.

To be in the church is to be called to arms, to prepare for war, and to move into action. Jesus began the militant kingdom movement to take back everything Hades had absorbed. Listen to what Jesus told his hometown synagogue folks about his ministry:

The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.

This is the language of a conquering king, changing the regime and setting up a new government with definite plans to help the poor, bruised, oppressed, captive, and blind. It is reversing the death and decay that Hades has claimed.

Jesus intends for the kingdom to advance forcefully, as a conquering army, overcoming the grip of Hades on the lives of people. He has called men, redeemed from the effects of Adam’s passivity, to become alive and dangerous and passionate to his cause. Take back ground. Restore. Rescue. Rebuild. Subdue. Fill with good things. Sounds like what Adam was supposed to do to begin with. It is what is hard-wired into our DNA.

So what are you doing? Sitting around on your blessed assurance singing about going to heaven? Setting up tables for Aunt Mildred’s bazaar?

This is a call to action. A call to war.

Rise up, O men of God!
Have done with lesser things.
Give heart and mind and soul and strength
To serve the King of kings.

Rise up, O men of God!
The kingdom tarries long.
Bring in the day of brotherhood
And end the night of wrong.

Rise up, O men of God!
The church for you doth wait,
Her strength unequal to her task;
Rise up and make her great!

Lift high the cross of Christ!
Tread where His feet have trod.
As brothers of the Son of Man,
Rise up, O men of God!

The salvation of the Lord

Modern American evangelism makes much of the phrase “get saved.” It seems we’ve talked about getting saved and salvation for many years. So many years, in fact, that we have made the concept both cliche and meaningless. Ask the average postmodern twenty-something, or beer-gut bubba if he is saved and you’re likely to get a blank stare at best. He may even return, “Saved from what?”

Saved from what indeed. The classic evangelical line, developed primarily in the last century, has us in imminent danger of hell fire and needing to be saved from that so we can go to heaven when we die. The entire concept revolves around the afterlife, where we will live in eternity in disembodied spirits, either in torment or in heavenly bliss.

I see the problem as three-fold, all of them offensive to our masculine identities.

First, we have come to the place where we speak in figures of speech supposedly well known in the church world but not well known to those we might hope to reach. Our cliches are like a foreign language, speaking in tongues if you will, to people who are non-religious. I make a point of NOT speaking in what my daughters call “church language.” Besides, these expressions tend to lose their meaning among believers too.

Second, the get-saved-to-go-to-heaven-when-you-die concept comes directly from Greek mythology, particularly gnosticism, where spirit is good and material evil. We will go away from this evil earth to a heavenly place, sing in heavenly choirs, and live in a mansion on a gold street. Pardon the cliche, but we are so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. The problem with this is that it offends the masculine destiny of making something of the earth now. It is totally foreign to Hebrew thought, the intentions of all who wrote the Bible. Jesus died on the cross to redeem the creation to himself, the creation that God pronounced good. The kingdom on earth is the process of redeeming the earth from the devil’s influence. The resurrection and life-after-death will occur on earth, as God intended from the beginning.

The third and most offensive to our masculinity is the aspect of being saved itself. As if we are totally powerless. Damsels in distress. Effiminate wimps. This too is totally foreign to Hebrew thought. To the writers of Scripture salvation means the lending of strength to get you out of a jam. It is a military idea referring to a predicament an army gets into from time to time, and the much-needed help from reinforcements that changes the equation and turns certain defeat into glorious victory.

Applying it to our spiritual lives salvation means we find ourselves away from God and unable to live for him. We may have self-defeating habits and behaviors we cannot change on our own. We call upon the name of the Lord and he delivers us by sending the reinforcements of his grace, the power to do what we cannot do for ourselves. You do not have to pray a “sinner’s prayer” (invented by 20th century evangelists, by the way) or confess all the bad things you have ever done. The Bible is clear. We call upon the name of the Lord. We look for his grace. We wrestle with the flesh within and crucify it.

God does not intend to emasculate us. On the contrary, he wants to amplify the masculine strength within through the power of grace working in and through us. Sanctifying grace that works out our salvation in fear and trembling, and shapes and conforms us to the image of Christ. Didn’t Paul say we are saved by grace?

Think of how much damage we have done to the cause of Christ with our effiminate cliches of salvation never intended by Scripture! We will stand before Christ our Judge and account for that. It is said that roughly 90% of men in America believe in God, but only 30% or so actually go to church. The reason the 60% do not go to church is that they cannot connect with the blatant weakness, effiminacy, and other-worldliness of the church. Hence the charge of “hypocrites.” I can’t say that I blame them.

It has not always been this way. Judaism was a masculine religion. Early Christianity was a masculine religion, begun by a man with 12 male disciples. It remained thoroughly masculine until the late 19th century. Then men began falling away in droves.

If we want to be the triumphant church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to return to our heritage. We need to drop the ridiculous cliches and figures of speech that no longer communicate. We need to get over our fixation on going to heaven and do something creative and redemptive in the world we have now, while we have the time. We need to quit alienating solid, faithful men by our love-affair with the feminine.

Instead of sitting around weak and afraid, and waiting on the Lord to come and take us to heaven, let’s call on the name of the Lord for his salvation, the grace and strength added to ours to do mighty deeds in his glorious name. The church is the assembled army of God, ready for war. Be fruitful. Multiply. Subdue. Have dominion. Fill the earth with good things. This is the salvation of the Lord.

Jesus Christ, the Pantokrator

Quit you like men

The King James Bible has an interesting phrase that has been removed in many of the modern translations. 1 Cor. 16:13 says, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”

Paul is nearing the end of his first letter to the Corinthians (which is actually his second letter to the Corinthians, but that is another matter) and giving them final admonitions and encouragement for the difficult times they face. His advice to the church? Be men!

Quit you like men is an old English phrase translating the Greek ανδριζομαι (andrizomai). It means to behave oneself with the wisdom and courage of a man. In other words, act like a man!

Let’ consider the context. The other phrases also appeal to masculine imagery. Watch ye means refrain from sleep and refers to the night watch, where vigilance and alertness is necessary. Be on the look out.

Stand fast in the faith reminds us not to give an inch. Stand firm in faith and duty, persevere, be constant and consistent, don’t waiver.

Be strong to make, grow, or be strong. It is the same admonition God gave to Joshua when he took over command of the Israelite nation as it entered the promised land. See Josh. 1:6-8.

These are all masculine thoughts but I am most intrigued by the strong reminder to be a man. Can you imagine the pastor of most churches proclaiming that today, especially when 80% of the attendees on a given Sunday are women? I wonder if that has anything to do with the phrase being removed from the modern translations.

This is not the only place the Scriptures record God’s desire to see men active in his work. In Jer. 5:1 God told the prophet to look carefully for a man who would have the courage to execute judgment. In Ezek. 22:30 God mourned that he sought unsuccessfully for a man to stand in the gap to intercede for the people. In Is. 59:16 God wondered why he couldn’t find a man to intercede. In all these the Hebrew language is clear. God wants a male. Masculine. One who will serve him.

God is still looking for a man, even in our feminine-enlightened culture, God needs men who will execute judgement, pray, stand fast, and remain strong.

I ran across this thought-provoking article by an Orthodox priest on the masculinity of ancient Judaism and eastern Christianity, and the decline of western Christianity into feminization. I think it offers helpful commentary on the state of Christianity in America and the desparate need for us to “quit you like men.”

Journal notes: active v. passive

A blog reader requests clarification on active v. passive, with a few examples. Glad to oblige.

As men we have certain responsibilities. When we take a wife and have a family it produces certain patriarchal responsibilities that involve provision and protection. Eph. 5:25-33 suggests that our responsibilities are parallel to those of Christ to the church and gives clear guidance for that. What I see in that is unconditional love, of making special and set-apart, of teaching and guiding.

We are passive when we do not take the initiative in fulfilling our covenant responsibilities. We are also passive when we do not lead our families away from anything that would harm or bring reproach.

Adam failed because he did not keep his covenant responsibility to protect, guide and provide; and Eve felt she had to do this on her own. He stood there passively and witnessed the entire temptation and did nothing about it. When she invited him to join her in her failure he willingly obliged. He was passive.

Examples: Romance your wife. Regularly. Love her by talking to her and listening to her. Lead your wife, explaining why you want certain things done a certain way. Do not expect her to wait on you hand and foot and do not be demanding. Tell her what you want included in home schooling. Give her guidelines for buying clothes for the children, and make sure she has the money to get what she needs.

Spend time with the children and give them affection. Read the Bible to them, and if you’re not a good reader ask your wife to read and then comment as you can. Draw lines and set rules for behavior, for the amount of candy and toys you allow and explain why. Then be consistent. Set boundaries for friends, clothing styles, and time on telephone, television, and Facebook; and don’t give in to the “everyone else is doing it” argument. Monitor contacts with friends, particularly those of the opposite sex, and set rules for and manage courtships.

In other words, LEAD. Be out in front. Be the first one. Take initiative. Actively be the prophet and priest of your home. It takes a lot of time, and you will have to sacrifice a lot of things.

Remember you will have to stand before God one day to account for your life. He will not be interested in how many fish you caught, how many holes-in-one you managed, the horsepower of your car, or how much you accumulated in your 401(k). He will ask about how you managed the family he gave you. What kind of report do you want to give?

Worship early church style

Bouncing off yesterday’s discussion of worship, I’d like to post the words to one of the early church’s oldest hymns, Te Deum laudamus (You Are God), dating back the 4th century.

The Te Deum was normally sung in chant. Note the depth of worship and sound doctrine, along with the thoroughly masculine themes. If you want to read more the history go here; if you want to hear it sung in Gregorian chant click here.

This version is from the Book of Common Prayer (1979).

You are God Te Deum laudamus

You are God: we praise you;
You are the Lord; we acclaim you;
You are the eternal Father:
All creation worships you.
To you all angels, all the powers of heaven,
Cherubim and Seraphim, sing in endless praise:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
The glorious company of apostles praise you.
The noble fellowship of prophets praise you.
The white-robed army of martyrs praise you.
Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you;
Father, of majesty unbounded,
your true and only Son, worthy of all worship,
and the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide.
You, Christ, are the king of glory,
the eternal Son of the Father.
When you became man to set us free
you did not shun the Virgin’s womb.
You overcame the sting of death
and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
You are seated at God's right hand in glory.
We believe that you will come and be our judge.
Come then, Lord, and help your people,
bought with the price of your own blood,
and bring us with your saints
to glory everlasting.

I use this hymn in my own devotions and with family. The beautiful and profound words and depth of meaning add much to my spiritual life. It helps me to have a glimpse of heavenly worship and to worship God in spirit and in truth.

The early church provided resources like this to help men pray and worship God. Memorized prayers and hymns helped men find the language to worship and to lead their families in worship. They are preserved for us in books like the Book of Common Prayer.

The precedent for fixed songs and prayers goes all the way back to Judaism, where men went to synagogue together every day to pray 19 specific memorized prayers. Jesus amended those prayers for the disciples in what we call the Lord’s Prayer, and told them to pray in that fixed form every day.

I encourage you to find resources like this that work for you, and then use them in your own devotional life and when you lead your family to worship.

This is who I am

I am preaching tomorrow from John 6:35, 41-51. Jesus there declared to the large crowds hoping for a free lunch that he was the bread of life. That was quite offensive to the “Jews,” or religious leaders self-appointed to check out and approve all the new rabbis. “Isn’t this Jesus, son of Joseph, whom we know?” It seems they let familiarity breed contempt.

But they also let their own agenda breed contempt for God’s plan through Jesus. They had their own ideas of how and when God would manifest the Messiah, the bread from heaven, and they were darn sure it didn’t include Jesus, son of Joseph, the carpenter. Just give us another free lunch like you did yesterday and we’ll be on our way.

The way Jesus responded is instructive to our masculine quest. “I am the bread of life,” he maintained. He continued to insist it was through him, not the Jewish sacrificial system, that men could approach God. He continued to say, “This is who I am.” Jesus remained thoroughly masculine and refused to be redefined by repeated attempts to “bring him into line.”

In our culture, even at church, there is overwhelming pressure to conform to prevailing opinions and behavior patterns. In the same way Eve gave forbidden fruit to her husband standing with her and bid him conform to her disobedience, we have unrelenting pressure to drop our individuality and come in and “be like one of us.” We need to understand clearly that the pressure to “come in and be with me, like me” is inherently feminine, and without missional and moral reference points (see the post below), it leads away from obedience to God. Even if the collective purpose is admirable and noble and does a lot of good things, if it is opposed to what God has told us to do it is disobedience. God does not justify our weakness to conformity as easily as we do.

I do not want to give the impression that femininity is wrong, it is not. God created the female but he created her to be joined to her husband to live into his mission and moral compass and not the other way around. If the man she is joined to has no idea of his mission and moral standard (or fails to act on it as did Adam) she will be frustrated and eventually fall into Eve’s pattern of adopting her own. She will then want him to join her. If that happens it is not her fault, it is his.

If Jesus had given in to the unrelenting pressure to conform to the expectations of his time he would have failed, just as Adam failed. He would have yielded to the uninformed feminine. The opportunities to perform signs on the terms of the people he was trying to reach would have been useless, however dramatic. Everything had to be on Jesus’ terms, fully defined and fully adhered to. He had to continually say, “This is who I am.”

Jesus was completely masculine. He was separate. Though fully human he also was fully divine, with the mark of the Holy Spirit placed on him at his baptism. He had a solitary wilderness experience where he went away for 40 days to discover his identity and purpose. He then rejoined the first century Hebrew culture to become prophet to Galilee and ultimately sacrifice for our sins on his terms relative to his mission and moral compass. At no time did he ever back down. He never meant to be included, he always sought to include.

Paul put it this way: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1, 2). Our “reasonable service” or worship is living as set apart or sanctified unto God, not conforming to those around us.

Men, like Jesus, we need to be able to say, “This is who I am.”


I love this photo of rebels captured during one of the battles of the War Between the States. They are standing by the pile of logs, awaiting transport to the POW camp. I love the message that their facial expressions and body language shout to the world. “We may have been captured, but we are not giving in. This is who we are!”

Journal notes: masculinity redux

In a recent post I described the journey toward masculinity and noted the cycle of separation, discovery of identity, and union.

To underscore I offer the following thoughts I wish had included in the original post. Adam was created before Eve. He was given a mission tending the garden and naming the animals. The authority and power to name indicates dominion. He was also given the law, the command to not eat from a particular tree. When no help-meet was found for him from among the animals God gave him a wife to share his mission.

See the cycle of masculinity? Adam was separated from the ground and and shaped into the image of God, and God’s breath gave him life. Then in solitude he was given a mission and moral compass. He discovered his identity and purpose. After that he was given a wife, who was taken from his side and intended to live at his side. Adam is formed by separation and differentiation (masculine), and the woman is formed to be united to man (feminine).

Now see the significance of the fall? Instead of living into his moral agency Adam deferred to his wife. Her nature was to include him in what she was doing, which she did when she handed him the fruit as he stood there with her. He did not remain masculine, leading her from the perspective of his mission and moral compass. Instead he allowed himself to be united into what she was doing when she did not have the same missional and moral reference points.

Man’s continual struggle is to remain differentiated enough to live into his moral agency, his identity and purpose, while being fully committed to his help-meet. Interesting to ponder.

Strong, passionate, and dangerous?

One of my daughters has been reading excerpts from Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. She is preparing for marriage one day and I want her to think seriously about what she should expect in a man. She came across the description of “strong, passionate, and dangerous” (p.46) and asked, “Should I actually have a man who is dangerous?”

A good question for us to consider. Should we be dangerous? How is that consistent with the patriarchal role?

Webster defined dangerous as “perilous; hazardous; exposing to loss; unsafe; full of risk.” That seems to be the opposite of what most women want. They want security and warmth. They want to feel loved and cherished. They want to know their man will be around to provide and protect. But they also need to be able to respect their man.

The need for provision and protection requires risk-taking. By our very nature, before we are tamed or emasculated by the feminine world, men are born risk-takers. Our nature draws us to lay our life on the line, to be willing to die for God and family in the pursuit of providing needs and protecting from harm. That is what makes men respectworthy.

If we can step out of our religious box we will have to admit that Jesus, the model of ultimate masculinity, was a risk-taker and constantly exposed his disciples to danger. Jesus is not by any stretch of the imagination the limp-wristed effeminate wimp, lamb draped over his shoulder, and playing with lots of little children, that Aunt Ethel’s Sunday school class has made him out to be! We need to rip that silly picture out of our Bible, and that false image out of our minds.

Jesus lived a life of constant danger, and continually exposed his disciples to life-threatening experiences. Granted the disciples were all male, about 19 or 20, and full of testosterone. They were ready to take on the world. But Jesus pushed them beyond their limits, and commanded their respect in the process.

Twice he deliberately sent them on a sailing voyage knowing they would face the storm of their lives. Once he went to sleep in the back of the boat. The next time he sent them on ahead, and caught up with them by walking on the water. Both times the maritime experience of these fishermen was no match for the elements. The boats were breaking apart and the young fearless men were scared to death. What did Jesus do? He slapped them around a little. “Why are you so afraid?”

Another time Jesus had an all-points-bulletin out for his arrest in Judea. He was waiting in the wilderness for the most opportune time to go there, where the danger of arrest and death would be greatest, when he got word that friend Lazarus was sick. He waited more, until he was sure Lazarus was dead. I guess he wanted to attract a lot of attention when he put his life on the line. By now at least Thomas was catching on. He said to the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”

The most dangerous thing Jesus did -- and the thing that cost him his life -- was that he waltzed into Jerusalem like a king who had already conquered. On the busiest day of the year. While folks were shouting praises! Talk about drawing attention. Jesus went straight into the temple and shut down the profit center. He then sat down to teach in seats reserved for the priests, and began to criticize them! Wouldn’t you say that was dangerous? Needless to say the religious folks were furious, and they manipulated the Romans into putting him to death on the most hideous form of torture and execution ever devised.

Yet Jesus knowingly and willingly did all that to restore us to what we were before Adam gave it all away in a disgusting display of passive laziness. Accessing his grace and following his example helps us to be the men we were intended to be. We cannot fulfil our patriarchal calling unless we are risk-takers.

So to my daughter I would ask, which do you respect more? The noble warrior who gave it all so that others might live? Or the disgusting wimp who backed away from defending his wife because she liked the looks of the fruit and he wanted to be a nice guy?

To men I ask, which man do you want to be? As for me, no more Mr. Nice Guy! I’d rather be strong, passionate, and dangerous.