Walter on Being a Man
On Being a Man
March 6, 2005
Dear Paul,
Thanks for your short note regarding the
effects of my last letter. Very
interesting!
Now, a couple of weeks ago I promised to speak
about Being a Man - and now I plan to deliver.
This is a topic that is much easier for me to address in some ways -
much harder in others. The easier part
comes from biology - I am a man and just by that fact alone I know some things
about manhood. The harder part comes
from seeing what the Bible teaches about manhood in comparison to me. Would that I was half of what I knew!
When talking about women, we began by looking
at Eve and I intend to follow a similar pattern here. Adam was the first man and the first human -
created by God, in the image and likeness of God, out of the dust of earth God
made and having life breathed into Him from the mouth of God. This man, Adam, was made to work. Although that must have been quite a garden
there in
Like we noted last time, something went
terribly wrong. Adam chose to disobey
the one command given him by God and in response, God kept His promise and
mankind died. To begin with, that death
was invisible, although terribly felt.
Adam and Eve suffered death or separation from God in their hearts near immediately,
and their first instinct was to hide - first with fig leaves, then in the
bushes. They knew shame and its cause
was spiritual death - no longer could they be intimate with God. That spiritual death began to work its way
out to their eventual physical death and man's life became one of living under
the curse of God. The garden of
abundance, the sign of God's pleasure with what He had made, was taken away
forever and curse was levelled.
Now that curse of God struck right at the very
core of what it meant for Adam to be a man.
Genesis 3:17 And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened
to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You
shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall
eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it
shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By
the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for
out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Something happened to his relationship with the
source of temptation - the woman ("Because you have listened to the voice of
your wife"). The one person a man was
made to "be one" with - his wife - was now taken a step away, as it were. Man would still marry and give in marriage -
but the unity of
Something else happened with the item of his
temptation - vegetation or fruit or the land - well, that was cursed by God on
Adam's account ("cursed is the ground because of you"). It was almost as if God said, "If you're
going to love plants more than Me, then I will curse
the plants so they will never give you what you want - but I will also make
your whole life dependent on them." In
other words, the idol of Adam's heart would never deliver what his heart lusted
after - but he would have to deal with that idol day after day after day.
I've heard about different kinds of
torture. One type is where they put in
front of you the thing you most long for (like water or food or freedom)... but
never let you touch or taste it. The
idea is to drive you crazy - either to get information out of you, or just to
bother you a lot. Is that what the Lord
was up to in this cursing business? Was
He just seeking revenge on Adam and all his sons?
Well, that certainly doesn't sound like God,
does it? No sir, I believe there is
grace in this curse. First off, consider
what this curse does to a man... He will spend his whole life trying to eek out a
"living" from the tetra firma that surrounds him. He will feel greatly successful sometimes and
totally frustrated at other times. No
matter what he does, there will always be thorns in his garden and sweat and
pain in the harvest. Whether its farming
or fishing; horticulture or horse-breeding, nothing will be perfect. Even his
marriage, as good as it may be, will never fully satisfy his heart. Not only that, no matter how well a man does
at bringing in the sheaves, and trying to be happy with his bride... at the end
of it all he will die and go right back to where he started - the dust.
That means some things.
1. Life is futile if all you live for is
life.
If your only thought is the here and
now, what good is it all? If all I found
at the end of my life was death - why spend hours under the sun and in the
barn? Everything is useless if this is all there is.
2. Life
will never be perfect for anyone on earth.
Christian or not, perfection left
this earth when the door to
3. Security
and success are a mirage and nothing worth living for.
God is sovereign and the fact is no
amount of money or planning can bring total security. Safety and security and success are mirages
along the desert of life. Why live for
the sand when somewhere there is real water?
Those thoughts would drive a man to despair if
it weren't for that first gospel in Genesis 3:15:
Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you
shall bruise his heel."
The first gospel hinted at the full gospel
revealed in Jesus. Another Adam would
come, the second Adam, and He would live the perfect life the first Adam never
did and also become the perfect substitute for all those who trust in Him from
the first Adam on down.
Yet, even new birth in Christ doesn't end all the
effects of the curse on earth. A man
must still face those three scary thoughts:
1. Life is futile if all you live for is
life.
2. Life
will never be perfect for anyone on earth.
3. Security
and success are a mirage and nothing worth living for.
Why they are scary has to do with what it is a
man is to do and be. Every son of Adam
is called on by God to be a leader in his home, a lover of his wife, a provider
for his family, and a servant in his church.
And each one of those God-ordained responsibilities puts him at
risk. He must risk rejection, failure, a
bad decision and its consequences, being taken advantage of, being ignored,
being forgotten, letting down those closest to him, or just plain wrecking
something good.
There's not a man walking on this earth's dirt
who hasn't felt every one of those things at least 6 times. It seems to me, that's where the real issue
begins. Let me back up and explain.
Besides Jesus, the most manly
man in my Bible was Old King David. His
life models so much of what I want to try and say. Here was a man who jumped right into life -
"Bring on the giant!" - and did it just the right way:
1 Samuel 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine,
"You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to
you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you
have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand,
and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead
bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to
the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may
know that there is a God in
Would that a man could keep that all
in line in his head day after day on this earth. Here is
true manliness - "taking leadership for the good of others, in total dependence
on God for the ultimate glory of God."
I sometimes wonder if this wasn't what Paul had
in mind when he wrote those Corinthian Christians:
1 Corinthians 16:13 Be watchful, stand firm in the
faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in
love.
Did you hear that? Paul said, "Act like men." Behave or conduct yourself like men. We would all be left to guessing what he
meant by that if it weren't for all the phrases he surrounded that command
with:
- be
watchful (on the alert - protectively looking out for trouble)
- stand
firm in the things of the Lord (don't waffle on Truth)
- be
strong (not wishy-washy or like a bull with a nose ring)
- and do
everything in love
"Taking leadership for the good of
others, in total dependence on God for the ultimate glory of God."
But men get this all confused. Many of them figure that being a man is using
the extra physical strength God has granted them for the bullying of all the
women and children in their lives. No
wonder Paul tells husbands to "love their wives" 4 times in 7 verses when he
writes to the Ephesians. No wonder he
tells Dads to never "provoke their children to anger." A man can be unkind to
his wife and exasperate his kids for a good long time - just because he is
bigger and stronger.
Other men (and I might add I think there are
more of these today than the other) push the swing the other direction and try
to act like womanly men. Water is a
liquid and so is gasoline - but only one will make your car go! The sad truth is that men just don't work
when they try to act like women. The
most obvious clue to this is the confused fellows you sometimes see in downtown
Being a man is not about externals. Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-likes may be the
most unmanly of all. It is not about
being terse, never helping in the kitchen, leaving the
dirty diapers to your bride, knowing the players on your favourite team better than
your kids or glorying in particular sounds and smells you can create much more
effectively than your girlfriend.
Being a man is about venturing out and
attempting great things for the Lord. It
is about sowing your seed year after year, knowing that the Lord may deign to
send a flood or a drought. It's about
using your strength to prosper others. It's
about making decisions and calling others to follow after you as you lead the
way. It's about admitting you're wrong
when you make a bad decision and not giving up trying to lead another way. It's about choosing to love even when that
means missing a promotion or not having the "right" friends. It's about reading your Bible and knowing the
manliest man ever and not being afraid to talk about Him to others and love Him
more than others and worship Him in front of others and most of all - depend on
Him (not yourself or others).
Being a man is about coming to church in order
to lead by example - singing your head off, being the first to talk to new people,
always picking up chairs and doing the un-fun jobs week after week. It's about spending time with younger men and
encouraging them, and esteeming the ladies.
It is about letting other men know you and being man enough to let them
correct you and being man enough to correct them. It's about working at deep friendships with
other men and spending time with other men.
It's about choosing to do things that are manly and not do things that
are not manly (have fun talking about that!).
It is about learning how to be fiercely
dependent while always moving forward.
Like Peter in the
"Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick.
But that made no difference to what he had to do. He rushed straight up to the
monster and aimed a slash of his sword at its side. The stroke never reached
the Wolf. Quick as lightning it turned round, its eyes flaming, and its mouth
wide open in a howl of anger. If it had not been so angry that it simply had to
howl it would have got him by the throat at once. As it was - though all this
happened to quickly for Peter to think at all - he had just time to duck down
and plunge his sword, as hard as he could, between the brute's forelegs and its
heart. Then came a horrible, confused moment like something
in a nightmare. He was tugging and pulling and the Wolf seemed neither
alive nor dead, and its bared teeth knocked against his forehead, and
everything was blood and heat and hair. A moment later he found that the
monster lay dead and he had drawn his sword out of it and was straightening his
back and rubbing the sweat off his face and out of his eyes. He felt tired all
over" (Lewis,
106).
Now for the application.
I think it's as important as fertilizer in the spring that we church
folk do things to help men be men and women be women. I suggested to the ladies that they get
together and discuss things like Titus 2 and how they can begin a cycle of
older women teaching younger women. The
men could do the same kind of thing - taking the Bible and asking the Lord to
show them what it means to be a man.
More than that, though... I think the men ought
to start asking themselves what kind of manly things they can do. Men are by nature "doers," and, like birds
starting to fly, they learn by the doing.
You young boys... now pay attention to me. Just when do you suppose you are going to
become men? I know some 48 year old
boys! The time to work on your manliness
is now. You boys ought to be looking for
ways to serve your church now. You
should be holding doors open for the girls and sitting on the floor instead of
the girls when there are not enough chairs.
You can even attempt great things for the Lord - important things! I knew a boy who went around his
neighbourhood handing out gospel tracts to all the adults. Young Charles Spurgeon, when just a boy of 11
or so, marched into a bar and told a church member there to stop his sin of
getting drunk and put his life in order - and that man listened! David was a boy when he ran out to meet
Goliath. Christ was a boy when he taught
the learned men of
The Boy We Want
A boy that is truthful and honest
And faithful and willing to work;
But we have not a place that we care to disgrace
With a boy that is ready to shirk.
Wanted--a boy you can tie to,
A boy that is trusty and true,
A boy that is good to old people,
And kind to the little ones too.
A boy that is nice to the home folks,
And pleasant to sister and brother,
A boy who will try when things go awry
To be helpful to father and mother.
These are the boys we depend on--
Our hope for the future, and then
Grave problems of state and the world's work
Such boys when the grow
to be men.
From:
The Book of Virtues, William J. Bennett Copyright 1993, Simon & Schuster,
Page 196 Author Unknown
Older men can begin asking themselves the same
kind of questions. How can I make my
masculinity obvious in my actions and demeanor. You might charge me
with being an old legalist, but I'd go so far as to say a man even ought to
consider how he can dress and groom himself to make it clear in the context of
his culture that he is a man and not a woman.
I realize much more could be said in this here
letter, but I think the men in the crowd know what I'm getting at - like a
piano that hums when the clarinet plays - something in these words resonates
(be it ever so softly) in their hearts.
So, my hope is to talk enough to turn that hum into a song - so that
what comes out of the men at
"Taking leadership for the good of
others, in total dependence on God for the ultimate glory of God."
In the family, the church and the
world.
God grant us some manly men!
One who is trying to be,
Walter
P.S. Reciting poems is very manly. May the Lord bless your discussion!