Last week I watched a nauseating, repulsive, and daft TV show. No, it wasn’t The Big Bang Theory or The Playboy Channel. (Or Barney.) I watched a reality TV show on house hunting.
The plot was simple. A couple was looking for a house, a real-estate agent showed them several options, and the couple chose one. Shakespeare it was not.
This particular episode featured a middle-aged man and his younger wife. (The details are fuzzy; I think I’ve suppressed them.) They were looking for a condo in the Caribbean, a place with a little excitement, some comfort, and a bit of luxury.
Each condo came pre-furnished, and each resort offered differing amenities. The man in question (and I do question the “man”) grew increasingly excited with each unveiled nicety. He was thrilled about a zip-line at the first condo, ecstatic about granite counters in the second, and rapturous at the sight of a Jacuzzi at the third.
When he saw lace doilies in the last condo, I swear I thought he would wet himself.
I wanted to scream at this doily man so ecstatic about granite counters. “Can your life grow any shallower? Will the measure of your fifty years be gauged by the depth of your Jacuzzi?”
But I guess everyone is entitled to their fifteen minutes of shame. I mean fame.
Boys playing men
The first talk on manhood I ever heard was in the mid-seventies in a little farmhouse outside Ann Arbor, MI. It was the best talk I ever heard on manliness, though I admit, those details are a little fuzzy too. (As boys become men, we age.)
It may have been the best talk because the idea was so novel. Back then, no one ever talked about manhood. People only talked about being a solid citizen, a team player, or tithing. But what does a real man look like? (Certainly not like the buffoon on the zip-line.)
And of course, all of us young men got it completely wrong. We immediately began swaggering, spitting, and smoking cigars. We were boys playing men. Manliness is not machismo. The depth of a man cannot be measured by the breadth of his biceps.
But the talk awakened a desire for real manhood.
The real purpose of adventures
“The glory of young men is their strength, but the glory of old men is their gray hair” (Pr. 20:29).
Each new day of a young man (or a young woman) brings a risky adventure. We learn to walk, run, ride a bike, ask a girl on a date, act in a play, and choose a career. We scrape our knees, blow our lines in front of the audience, and screw-up our first business presentation.
But we also run marathons, make first chair in band, and receive our first promotion. Such adventures increase confidence, a strength that is the glory of the young.
Little risks increase risk-ability. They teach us how to deal with danger and how to face failure.
But some of us took too few risks as kids, so we need to grow in our risk-competence. That’s okay. Go ahead and try to waterski, act in a local play, or learn to play guitar. To grow in risk-tolerance, it’s okay to rent a condo with a zip-line. Just don’t buy it!
It’s not your home. It’s a training ground—Bootcamp if you will—where boys learn to play men.
The whole purpose of little adventures is to grow us into men and women who finally face adult adventures, adventures where our glory is reflected by our gray hair, not in our biceps.
Gray-haired glory changes the world. It may vacation at the pool, but it lives in the deep.
Deeper adventures
Adult risk begins when we start a family. It’s a wonder that God entrusts this task to mere boys and girls. We lack a single gray hair. We know nothing about pouring out our lives, making unpopular decisions, or seeing our daughter on her first date (which we finally allow when she turns 37).
Children turn our brown hairs gray.
As we grow in risk taking—making hard decisions that often result in rejection, and working out decisions with spouses who have different ideas—it’s time to take risks with friends.
Not just whitewater rafting with friends; it’s time to take risks inside friendships. It means telling your friend that “thing” you know they need to hear but you’re afraid to say. It means learning to speak directly and graciously; it means finally learning to be real. It’s scary.
And we will blow it. It’s scraped knees and screwed-up business presentations all over again. But we are beginning to change the world one friend at a time.
Besides, we temper these direct (but gracious) conversations with the risk of sharing our deepest fears, shames, and temptations with the same friends. It’s called the risk of humility.
Boys become men
The fully grown man faces the final frontier. Confronting our culture.
You and I live in multiple cultures simultaneously: families, work, Christian movements, and volunteer organizations. Each has been infected by the culture of the world and the flesh.
Are we willing to stand up to the worldly infection in our movements and cultures? The peer pressure, legalism, Not Invented Here-isms, modern answers to ancient problems, and bullying? Go ahead. We are no longer boys playing men; we are men deepening one Jacuzzi at a time.
Men stand up. Boys sit down. Boys playing men just spit. It’s that simple.
It has nothing—nothing!—to do with testosterone. I’ve witnessed muscle-bound, doily “men” sit down, simper, and conform. I’ve also seen outwardly effeminate men stand up and tackle. Which will we be?
Of course, we should always begin at home, with the doily buffoon sitting behind this keyboard.
Sam
A Blank Sheet of Paper
Well said Sam. I find that many men really have not entered the journey of risk taking in relationships with other men and wonder if that is because they have never allowed the Father to really speak to their heart. How do you help men becoming emotionally self aware without becoming too introspective?
What is “too introspective?” I experience a lot of Christian men today as lacking in genuine self-awareness, and masking the fear of looking deeply inside with the justification: “Oh, so you want me to be one of those navel-gazers, huh?” So the baby of emotional self-awareness is too often is thrown out with the bath water of passivity and inactivity. It requires courage to look at oneself, but true self-awareness (emanating from God-awareness) results in action… IMHO.
Hi Mike,
I think we confuse introspection with self-obsession. It’s okay to be introspective, but most men and women (including this writer at the keyboard) think too much and too often of ourselves. Self-obsession (How am I being perceived; why don’t people like me; how can I become a leader; etc.) is not real introspection. It’s just about me.
Real introspection is done in the presence of God. It’s a prayer.
But watch out. God loves to answer!
Sam
Hi Tim,
I love your analysis of why men’t don’t risk deep male relationships; they haven’t experienced their true father’s voice. So they go to other men for affirmation rather than depth and reality. We need to HAVE in order to give. We need God and then our friendships aren’t about self-affirmation.
Secondly, how do we become rightly reflective without becoming obsessively introspective?
My first response is for each of us to ask our primary tendency. Most men I know err on the side of too little self-reflection. We just don’t want to go there. For those men, I suggest practicing a little MORE self-reflection. Take at least ten minutes a day, review the past 24 hours, and ask ourselves: Why did I get angry, or insulted, or anxious? Or, why did “that thing” make me so thrilled or emotional? What is God (through my heart) revealing to me?
For those men (and women) who seem obsessively introspective, I guess I suggest a tiny bit more self-reflection. Why are we so inward focused? What fear causes it? How do we not know/trust/believe in the Father’s love for us?
All real self-reflection–in my opinion–needs to be done in a conversation with God. We will never know the depths of our hearts (emotions, beliefs, hopes) without God’s revelation. If we’re doing it on our own, don’t expect great results.
Thanks for your comment and question. Good stuff Tim.
Sam
Sam,
Your comment to Tim that we need to have in order to give resonated with me. I used to think that in order to be a man who was an adequate father that I needed to HAVE a good example from my own father. I no longer believe that, but I had to buy into the fact that a heavenly father could use my failures and lack of strength to BE what I never had.
The real miracle was that God worked with my inadequacies and I’m learning that desires can be realized apart from the supposed reality we loosely strive for.
It seems our Heavenly father delights in defining how reality truly plays out in spite of our reflection and introspection.
Is a real man someone who admits his strength comes from outside himself?
Hi Jim,
Great comment. Thanks.
I think modern Christianity emphasizes too much having good examples. (Though of course, they can be helpful.) The problem is, good examples often become burdensome–HOW CAN WE BE THAT GOOD?
That’s what I like about the New Testament disciples. They were all idiots, scaredy-cats, and prideful. But God loved and pursued them. Now THAT gives me hope. The example I like is that they admitted their faults to the whole word by writing the gospels.
We don’t need to have good (but burdensome) examples as much as we need to have God’s love in our hearts. It’s his love for us that enables us to love other idiots who are just like us.
What I love most about my father is not his great example but his humble example. Over and over, he apologized for his (many) mistakes. The gift he gave me was his gift of IM-perfection.
As you said, a real man admits his strength comes from outside, because his inside ain’t fully healed yet. That’s a man I would follow.
Of course, Jesus was perfect, but his perfection was displayed when he became a weak human, subject to pain, temptation, and eventually death for me. I first need to accept my desperate need of him (my imperfection) before I can truly follow his example of goodness.
If I try to be good like him without his help, I’ll either be proud (“Why can’t you other guys be like me?”) or despairing (“This is too hard.”)
Only the gospel brings confident humility and humble confidence.
Sam
Thank you!
Hi Susan,
This article really was triggered by a show I watched on TV (although I changed the details just a touch–I really don’t want to disparage even that man on TV).
But part of what inspired it was thinking about our pictures of manhood. Most of the time they involve a virile, macho, adventurous he-man. We often contrast them with seemingly effeminate men.
But I really have seen tons of “effeminate” men tackle issues that he-men are afraid of. So it got me thinking. Was the man on the show repulsive to me because of the doilies or because of the shallowness?
I love the Caribbean and I would love a home there, or a condo. And that wouldn’t necessarily be right or wrong. But, if my life cam from shallow, self-numbing niceties, it would be wrong.
God wants you and me to actually change the world, not just sit in Jacuzzi’s. But our flesh simply wants comfort.
i think real men and women finally face the difficult world changing tasks in family, friendship, and in figuring out how culture has invaded our places.
I’ve been re-reading the narratives of the Old Testament. Almost every sin was caused by accepting the world’s approach rather than God’s. Solomon is a prime example. he was the wisest of all, yet he inter-married and eventually began idol worship. He was doing what all the secular kings did–marry for reasons of state.
What do I adopt from the world rather than address?
I think that is the area I need to grow in, and I need to face. As a man.
Thank YOU Susan,
Sam
“It means telling your friend that “thing” you know they need to hear but you’re afraid to say. It means learning to speak directly and graciously; it means finally learning to be real.” – Great Quote!
In all honesty, Sam, I think, the first step must always begin with accepting the truth of Galatians 6:3-5. Being real men means we accept that our indentity should not come from anything but Christ which allows us to get out of the comparsion game. As long as our indenity does not come from Christ and we actually believe we are somebodies we will always be comparing ourselves against those we think are somebodies for whatever reason and then determine whether we meet up or not.
Your right when you say boys. For in truth this fascination with acting like we think real men act is nothing more than the old games of
1) My Dad is bigger than your dad.
2) You think that’s something, I can beat that!
3) Looking at teh cool kids, the popular kids then determining we need to be one of those.
Thanks for a good post.
Hi Pat,
Great points. We become men and women (not just boys and girls) when we finally let God father us.
But what are signs of it? they include a NEW kind of fearlessness. Not the fearlessness of macho adventures, but the risk (which means we are sometimes full of fear but do it anyway) of addressing life changing issues.
We can only do so when we have the assurance of an undeserved love from the Father.
Thanks
Another homerun, Sam! I would like to share with you how your writing has influenced me. Blessings! http://www.faithreboot.com/5-blogs-change-your-life/
Brittney!!!!!!
Wow, that is so cool. And THANK YOU.
And don’t sell yourself short. You just influenced me, and I subscribed to those blogs.
Thanks,
Sam
Pardon me, I’m stepping out of the room. I can see this is a men’s only group. See you next time when women are allowed back in. For now, I’ll go wash the dishes and whip up a batch of biscuits.
Annette!!!!!!!!!!
Please don’t leave us. Not even for good biscuits.
I ‘d love your input. This topic, ostensibly for men, is for all of us as we mature (at least I want it for of all us—once I mature I’ll let you know).
Get out of that kitchen and back into the discussion!
(please)
Sam
Okay, okay. *Sighs* and puts apron back on hook.
Two questions:
Doesn’t this post address Women as well as Men (even if some of us express our stupidity in different ways)?
And, I bet you have some observations of boys and girls playing at being men and women. I just bet ….
(Okay, that last one wasn’t a question.)
Sam
I am the opposite of the effeminate man. I’ve always been a tom-boyish woman. When I volunteered at a mission, the men became my brothers or sons. The hearty laughter we shared helped ease their pain. I wrote about my experience in a poem called, Gentlemen, May I Serve You.
My humility has come from setting aside truth telling long enough to let it soften. My closest friend has always invited my honesty and my risk-taking side, but I’ve also learned how to listen through her.
I am more like Ruth (in the book of Ruth, of course) who was not afraid to go into a strange land and leave what is familiar and comfortable.
I don’t want to become so mature that I become afraid to grow up.
I wear a glorious crown of white hair by the way.