It really bothers me that “manhood” in its traditional sense is becoming a dying way of life. I’m well aware that I’m not alone in this lament for the lost art of manliness and the desire to recapture it, but nevertheless I believe it’s something that we as a culture are starting to value less and less, and some even attack it as a “reinforcement of antiquated gender roles.”

I recently witnessed an event which, although it was minor, prompted me to want to remind the men out there it’s time to stop acting like boys, and equally importantly, it’s time to stop tolerating those around us who do.

Everyone longs to be in a meaningful relationship with another person. It’s as natural as your desire to eat and sleep. Yet even though we spend so much of our young lives seeking after it, many of us often balk at the opportunity when it finally comes along. We look at our parents’ marriage, our peers’ relational drama, and our own shortcomings, and decide that maybe this “relationships” thing is a can of worms better left closed. I know I’ve certainly been in that position before. The problem is not that we don’t want to be close to someone; it’s simply that we fear the vulnerability which that closeness brings. After a certain point in every relationship, the time for “putting your best foot forward” is inevitably replaced by the intense weakness of being totally transparent, and for the first time allowing someone else to take a look at all of your personal junk. Not only is it intimidating to be known that intimately, I think for many of us there’s an even greater fear that because of our past hurts, we’ll end up hurting the person we care about.

I recently had an excellent conversation with someone who posed the question to me, “Does God want me to be happy?” I had to think very carefully about my answer, and the more I pondered this question, the more I realized I had just been given my latest piece to write about. (Thank you, smart person!)

My first answer was naturally yes. There are numerous verses which support the fact that God loves you and wants good things for you (Psalm 84:11, James 1:17, Psalm 37:4, Matthew 7:11). Just this cursory sweep of scriptures tells me that God does indeed delight in seeing you happy. Nevertheless, I think we very often fall into the trap of thinking that “being happy” and “getting what I want” are exactly the same thing, when in fact they aren’t. We all want things which are very often contrary to our best interests. Like a loving parent who refuses to feed their child a steady diet of ice cream and candy, our heavenly Father is oftentimes forced to deny us the things we so earnestly desire, not because he’s vindictive or unhappy with our performance, but simply because he knows that’s not what’s actually best for you. Sometimes wanting what’s best for your child means saying “no” quite a bit.

I think sometimes we’re all guilty of harboring the secret fear that God might be angry at us. I know I struggle with that from time to time, and I’ve been a Christian long enough that I should “know better” by now. The New Testament is literally brimming with verses about God’s unending love and his unlimited patience. Yet we all go through seasons throughout life (or even throughout a single day) when we suspect that God must be angry at us for some offense we committed.  The idea of a judgmental God represented by a long-bearded, white-robed man sitting on a throne is not new. It started for most of us in children’s church, when we saw God represented through cute cartoon drawings designed to teach us all about him and how he loves his children and wants us all to believe in his son Jesus. As we grew older, and learned to be more rebellious towards our parents, that haunting image of the man on the throne watching our every move began to sneak back into our minds. Even though we’ve heard all the sermons about the forgiveness that we have in Jesus, we still secretly suspect that the reason we don’t get the answers we want when we pray is because we did something wrong. 

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
 and his ears are attentive to their cry;
…
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:15-18
 

I’ve written a couple times already on the subject of perseverance, because it’s a lesson God has taught me over and over in some of the most painful ways. One story about me that I’m not sure many of you know is that I struggled very hard to graduate from boot camp when I first joined the Navy. During the final week of training, right before graduation, one of the last evolutions we had to complete was our final PFA (Physical Fitness Assessment). It wasn't extraordinarily difficult, just two minutes of sit-ups, two minutes of push-ups, and a mile and a half run. The problem for me was that, in the weeks leading up to the PFA, I had begun to experience a dull aching in my left shin. Because we were required to run constantly during those eight weeks, often times in heavy boots, I had been placing a lot of strain on my legs. I would later discover that this ache was in fact a stress fracture in my tibia, but at the time I didn’t care, because I thought if I could just tough it out a few more days, I’d be graduating as a US Navy Sailor.
 

Before we begin, please watch this video. (It’s about 10 minutes long)

If you’ve ever read Psalm 139, then you’re familiar with the phrase “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” In one of my previous posts, I concluded by saying that one day in life you will come upon your ultimate test, whatever that may be. I believe that God has given every single one of us a moment in history for us to shine. Our talents and abilities were given to us by God with the intention that we should use them to glorify Him. When you start working in the area of your giftedness, you may discover that you are ten times better than the people around you who work just as hard to do the same job. This is not a coincidence; it is because God delights in you as his child, and he has empowered you to do more through him than you ever could have on your own.

First, for the benefit of my theatre-loving friends, let’s take a moment to sing the song.

Good, now that that’s out of your system, let’s continue…

One of the greatest misconceptions I think all people of faith have is that they’re not doing a “good enough” job in keeping their faith pure. This is one of the primary attacks against Christianity by non-believers; that the church is essentially peddling guilt as a kind of emotional blackmail to get people to do what we want. As much as I hate to admit it, I think this assessment is not totally unfair. While those within the church who actively seek to promote feelings of guilt are few in number, their evil has far-reaching consequences for those of us who try to bridge the gap between the church and the unbelieving world. We as Christians are often forced to answer for the crimes of those either in the present age or in ages long past who have perpetrated evil, manipulative schemes in the name of God. This, frankly, needs to stop. Just like you can’t categorically condemn and harass all German-born citizens for the crimes of Nazism, so too the majority of Christians are innocent of the kind of self-serving manipulation of faith that has earned us all a bad reputation in the eyes of the “forward-thinking” world.