Month: September 2009 (Page 3 of 3)

Richard Rohr makes this very perceptive observation about men and the women in their lives.  “Women for the most part carry our feeling world.”  Oh, how true this was in my home, in my church and often in my marriage.  Just observe the ordinary interaction between men and women in our culture.  When it comes to “the heart” stuff men more or less go silent in the discussion or simply stay in the “control tower” of descriptive and factual language.  That is why in so many churches women meet to talk about spiritual needs and desires, while men prefer to do things for the church.

My mother set the tone emotionally in my family.  My dad was silent.  So as a boy I learned intutively more about emotional expression from my mother.  I had a lot of emotional energy that was expressed either wrongly or never got expressed.  It took me many years before I felt there was any significant  integration of my thought life with my soul life.  This insecurity made me defensive, feeling very inadequate in my self expression of my true self. I had deep gut level feelings that I was not able to give expression to in a healthy way.  My inner world was a kind of confusing fog of emotions and negative images.  I just didn’t have the words to express what I felt, nor did I have any confidence that I could express it clearly. 

I have found that many men are not comfortable talking about their deeper faith issues because their experience in the life of the church has been one of women dominating the discussion.  While we need to be thankful for all the women who have passed on the faith to us men, what is so often painfully missing is the male voice and male role model of faith.  This absence of the male voice spiritual at home, in society and especially the church, has been very damaging.  Men have gone “back in the weeds” spiritually, acknowledging that they are not as spiritual as their wives.  How tragic!! 

So what should men do?  This is where this blog can be of help.  I hope that men read some of my stuff and react to it both positively and negatively if need be.  For now,  here are a few suggestions.  First, men don’t beat yourself up spiritually.  You are as capable as your wife.  We have a God given male perspective that is often diffferent from our wives.  2) Admit that you have neglected your soul.  I believe that men will not become whole in Christ till they move from the control tower of the mind into their hearts.  3) Don’t be afraid of the unknown.  Sure it is new territory.  But Jesus waits for you at the center.  4)  Find another guy or a group of guys where you feel safe to be vulnerable about the stuff stirring in your soul.  5) Most of all continue to look up and out to Jesus, asking him to guide you on the journey of inner transformation.  Change comes from the inside out.  It is his work.  We only make ourselves avaliable to him.   6) It must be repeated continually – the way to a man’s heart is through his pain.  So ask for grace to see what is there, even if it hurts.

In my journey to greater wholeness and continuing inner transformation of my soul, I had to come to the point of realizing that I feared the love of God.  This may sound strange to some who are reading this post. but stay with me as I share more.  The words of I John 4:18 are becoming more of a reality in my following  Jesus. “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear.  If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”  I have come to learn that my fear of God’s love is based more on my fear of myself.  Instead of facing my real self, with all its shortcoming, I have spent most of my adult life hiding this real self and all of negative emotions involved.  I was afraid to admit the depth of my guilt and the accompanying feelings of rejection, guilt, and shame.  I kept God’s love from entering my deeper self.  In my shame and vulnerability I was afraid of the one thing I most longed for in my life

In my fear I lived with strict boundaries.   This caused me to try to be in control of my life both outwardly and inwardly.  There was a real fear of getting out of control.  David Benner points out, “The notion of being afraid of one’s self points to the inner conflict that lies at the core of fear.  Although the object of one’s fears may seem to be external, the real source of the fear is internal.  The danger is within.  The enemy is one’s own self.”  For me the guilt I often felt was not real, objective guilt, but rather a fear that came from the unrealistic expectations I put on myself.  This unresolved guilt prevented me from receiving God”s love for me.  I didn’t think I deserved his love, so I would work harder to prove that I was deserving.  I had a fear of messing up and not pleasing God. 

Men, Jesus knows that so many of us have this fear of love.  That is why He says, “Don’t be afraid.”  Why!  Because our Father knows how much we as men struggle with responding to anything that threatens our need for control.  These words to our heart are not a command but an invitation.  God freely initiates a loving relationship with us.  Richard Rohr observes that as men, “we are threatened by such a free God because it takes away all or our ability to control or engineer the process.”  We are talking about surrender, trust and vulnerability. 

God simply loves us because he is good.  Why is it so hard to surrender to such love?  Because it feels like the loss of control and power.  But this is what happens to a “wildmen” in Christ.  We have to trust God and not any of our goodness and righteousness.  It is a risky journey into the outer world with lots of uncertainty and at times failure.  Many men would rather play it safe in the world of idea and programs, rather then risk being loved by a God who asks for total surrender.  But remember  that in surrender we are free to finally begin to know the love of God, thus becoming the man we were create to be from before the foundation of the world.  In the relational knowing of love, our hearts begin to thaw out as we let go of the controls, knowing that God really love us in our stink. A wild man is someone who is experiencing the springtime of a spiritual thaw.