Canaan's Rest

Some time ago, I read an article by Matt Fuller entitled “Reclaiming Masculinity.”  I took some notes as he expressed in the article that men should “take responsibility to lead, be ambitious for God’s kingdom, use your strength to protect the church, serve others, invest in friends and raise healthy ‘sons’.”  As I read Fuller’s challenge anew, I found myself being inspired to finish strong, but also feeling regret for missing the mark way too often over 60 years of trying to follow the Lord. 

So, I went over Fuller’s checklist to see how I have developed as a man.  After 58 years of marriage, I tried to be honest as I looked in the rearview mirror:

1) Men and women really are different – but not THAT different.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I got married.  I failed miserably, not appreciating the strengths and abilities of my wife.  I have learned a lot about being married to a “woman.” God has given me a great treasure in Judy; “she is far more precious than jewels” (Prov. 31:10).

2) Take responsibility.  Being a firstborn son, I carried the world on my shoulders. So, early on I was more concerned about “saving the world” than being present for my wife and children.  My spiritual life begins at home. 

3) Be ambitious for God.  As a pastor, I have always been “all in” for God’s kingdom.  I knew I was called to this ministry.  But I prioritized this too much, and didn’t place my wife and family first.   

4) Display thoughtful chivalry.  It took me years to really practice chivalry and truly honor my wife.  She is my “lily among thorns” (Song of Songs 2:1).  Opening doors, giving eye contact, seeking her input, and speaking well of her in public – these I had to learn.  I’m still learning to “cherish” Judy and practice chivalry. 

5) Use your strength to protect.  I assumed the role as head and protector quite naturally; I was the one who “drove the train.”  But in the process I was not sensitive to the needs of my wife and children.  I had to learn to humble myself, put their needs before mine, and ask for forgiveness when my ego got in the way of my family’s needs.

6) Invest in friendships.  Being a heart guy, I have always been relational by nature.  But when it came to developing closer relationships with other men, I had little to go on.  In my later years, I have come to value closer male friendships that make me more accountable.  I am very thankful to have Dan and Bruce in my life.

7) Raise healthy ‘sons’.  I raised two sons and have mentored other young men. They are very different  from me and from each other.  I should have listened more intently, asked better questions, and given them more of my time.   

My wife did much better in her role as my wife.  She put up with my preaching for 40 years.  And she did it wonderfully.  She is a “total, natural woman” – integrated and authentic.  She has aged much better than I, while I’ve been more like a yo-yo: up and down. 

Despite all this, I’m grateful for God’s grace in my life.  And I take heart in Paul’s struggle with his “thorn in the flesh.”  For the Lord told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.”  I, like many of us,  can respond like Paul, “Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (II Cor. 12:9).   

To mark the 80th anniversary of C.S. Lewis’s book The Abolition of Man, Carl R. Truman wrote an article for First Things entitled The Desecration of Man.  Lewis wrote about a world losing its sense of what it means to be human: “Modernity was abolishing man.  It represented nothing more than a crisis of anthropology,”  The abolition of man as Lewis describes it took place against the background of “its disenchantment and its accelerating liquidity.” Modernity has pushed religion and the supernatural to the margins of life, stripping our lives of mystery. With liquidity, life is in endless flux with no solid place to stand.

Citing this, Truman proposes an additional category: the desecration of man.  “We have become cogs in the machine,” notes Truman “[and] it is because we built the machine.”  To make his point, Truman suggests that in the desecration of man, we need look no further than changing attitudes about sex and death. We are created in God’s image with a body.  The tendency of modern culture is to deny significance to the body.  “We think of ourselves,” points out Truman, “as primarily psychological beings, a notion reinforced by the frictionless, disembodied interactions of our online world, where we experience a battle against the authority of the body, specifically its sexual nature and its morality.”

Desecration helps us to understand the destruction of human exceptionalism and limitation as grounded in the image of God.  “Desecration is an assertion of power, reinforcing the greatest myth our culture, which likes to believe that we are the godlike masters of this universe.”  There can be an exhilaration in thinking we are gods.  “And there is no more dramatic way of being God than in waging a holy war against the God-given nature of embodied human personhood.”

With this desecration we are “divorced from the image of God and from personhood, [treating] the body is animate Play-Doh at best.”  We now use our humanity to dehumanize ourselves.  Augusto Del Noce calls this “a total revolution.”  Truman maintains our fundamental problem today “is not that man is disenchanted or turned into liquid, but that he has been desecrated, in part by the impersonal forces of modernity, but largely by his own hand.”  

Truman’s answer, first and foremost, is a theologically-informed liturgical one: “consecration.”  “The modern crisis of anthropology must find its solution among religious communities, worshiping in local contexts.  For it is in worship that human beings are brought into the presence of the God, in whose image they are made and who grounds their common human nature.”  Since this blog is intended for men, I take this to mean that men need to take the lead in living a life surrendered to God in word and deed, pointed to our heavenly father, in whose image we’ve been created. But we cannot do this alone.  We need to be in communities of faith, where Father, Son and Holy Spirit are worshipped.

Truman reminds us of the radical way the early Church affected Roman culture.  “Her vision of human beings as persons rather than objects and as possessing innate value was grounded in the notion that all were made in the image of God.”  This is our challenge today.  “The restoration of personhood and dignity to men and women requires the worshiping community of the church to grasp the greatness of the God in whose image we are made.”

The challenge for men: 1) Surrender to the Triune God of grace, 2) Adopting a scriptural worldview (II Cor. 10:4-5; Romans 1:16-32), 3) Involvement in a believing community and 4) Living intentionally as a follower of Jesus (I Peter 2:20-21).