Category: Brother Al (Page 49 of 68)

I enjoy those Dove Soap ads that show clips of caring Dads.  The Dove+Care ads are intended to push its line of men’s grooming products and promote fatherhood.  A Father’s Day ad shows two dads kissing and rocking an infant to sleep. “As a brand, we’re focused on the evolution of masculinity and highlighting dads’ caring sides,” said Jennifer Bremmer, director of marketing.  “Definitions of heroism have traditionally been rooted in physical strength, but this Father’s Day, Dove Men+Care will celebrate how heroes gain strength from moments of care, elevating them to hero status in the eyes of others,” said Bremmer.  Are two dads kissing part of the evolution of masculinity?  Do heroes only have strength when they care?  What ever happened to the “tough” and “tender” man?

These ads want to portray the sensitive side of men.  But how do men actually become sensitive and more caring dads. In my opinion, the narrative is going to leave a lot of guys confused.  I thought of this quote: “To ask a man to become relationally aware, without being first of all secure in his maleness is to ask a man to be less than a man.  It is in some ways asking a man to act like a woman without first knowing what it is like to be a man.  A man must be sensitive from the heart of a truly secure man.”   If the ads implies that a man cannot be physical strong as well as caring, then we are talking about feminized men.  Is the ad implying that we celebrate a new kind of hero?  I worry about the emulation of the soft male.

I wonder if this ad is not going to cause some men to distance themselves from their natural instinct of embracing the strong, physical, protective role of men.  I humbly submit that if it were not for the heroics of men, we would not have become a great nation.  Camilla Paglia puts it bluntly,”If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.”  We need a good dose of heroism in our culture.  Speaking of heroes, William Bennett observed, “there was a certain nobility, a largeness of soul, a hitching up of one’s own purposes, to larger purposes, to purposes beyond the self, to something that demanded endurance of sacrifice or courage or resolution or compassion, it was to nurture something because one had a sense of what deserved to be loved and preserved.”

Every man knows that he is meant to embrace both the “tough” and the “tender” aspect of his masculinity.  A man balanced in his relationships will express both the masculine and the feminine.  A  man can only be both tough and tender when he is secure in his masculine soul.  To emulate the soft side, without regard for the strong, protective side of a man, is asking a man to be feminized, that is, relating from his feminine side without regard for his true masculine soul.

Our model for the balanced tough and tender man is our Lord Jesus.  Philippians 2:5-8 expresses it well.  “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself.  He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.  Not at all.  When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human……It was an incredibly humbling process…….he lived a selfless obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death” (Phil 2:5-6 – The Message).  Being secure in himself Jesus could give himself for us.

Jon Lovett was the White House speech writer who penned those infamous words, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”  In 2013 Lovett gave a graduation speech at Pitzer College, in which the 30-year-old sage seemed to be warning graduates about people like himself.  “One of the greatest threats we face, simply put, is bulls—.  We are drowning in it.  We are drowning in partisan rhetoric that is just true enough not to be a lie…it infects every facet of public life, corrupting our discourse, wrecking our trust in major institutions, lowering our standards for the truth, and making it harder to achieve anything… Know that being honest, both about what you do know, and what you don’t, can and will pay off.  Up until recently I would have said that the only proper response to our culture of B.S. is cynicism, that it would just get worse and worse.  But I don’t believe that anymore.”

Could this young man be wondering if speaking the truth is a better way?  How would he get out of the  deep deceptive fog he lives with, in order to walk in the truth.  Truth today is elusive and slippery, having become an object of wordplay. This young man is lacking in the ability to recognize truth when he sees and hears it.  I recommend young men like him and others caught in a web of lies to look to Jesus, who tells us: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).  Who else could possibly free us from our own deep deception?

When I read this quote I thought of Leanne Payne’s perspective on the crisis of masculinity in our culture and the relationship to the truth.  “The crisis of masculinity is a crisis of the unaffirmed masculine and the inability to initiate and stand for the truth.  For the power to honor and to stand for the truth is at the heart of the masculine.”  Men, we can believe something is true and still be wrong.  But truth itself is clear: truth has to do with whatever is real.  An affirmed man, speaking truth from a clear mind and heart cuts through a lot of lies and deception.

Before  his crucifixion, standing before Pilate, Jesus was asked, “So you are a king?”  Jesus responded, “You say I am a king.  Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth.  All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true” (John 18:37).  Pilate’s replied to Jesus, “What is truth?”  Like a typical politician, Pilate was cynical regarding truth.  Truth for Pilate was whatever the majority of people agreed with or whatever helped advance his  own personal power and political goals.  When there is no standard or acknowledgement of truth, there is no basis for moral right and wrong.  Truth becomes  whatever we want it to be.  Pilate was not able to face reality, when confronted with the truth.

Standing before Pilate that day  was the ultimate expression of truth embodied in a person.  Jesus came from the father to reveal the truth to us.  Jesus and His kingdom are the expression of ultimate reality.  “I am the way, the truth and the life,” Jesus proclaimed, “no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).  Ultimately truth is a matter of relationship. I assure you men, a committed, whole hearted relationship with Jesus will bring you face to face with the truth about yourself, others and the world.  But remember: Jesus is full of grace and truth.  Grace helps us live in and with the truth.

I have not commented on the travesty of our national policy regarding transgender bathrooms.  But a blog by David Murrow over at “Church for Men” got me to thinking about men and our instinct to provide for and to protect women and children. Husbands and fathers are frustrated because the wives and daughters they love could be victimized in the bathroom.  We know that men can be real perverts.  We worry about what goes on in the bathrooms. “Biologically defined men are now allowed to disrobe in front of women,” observes Murrow.  “Most men would see this as a threat to the wives and daughters they are expected to protect.  Furthermore, they are powerless to shield their loved ones because the threat occurs in a place they themselves cannot be.”

This new bathroom policy angers men “because it strips them of their ancient protector role.” This is a deep invasion of the government into a sacred, instinctual duty of men: protection of family.   Even worse, “any man who expresses concern for his daughter’s privacy is labeled a bigot.  Men can’t shield their loved ones – and they’re publicly shamed if they try.”  Just writing this get me upset.  If the prospective I am presenting doesn’t get  you mad as a Dad, then you have capitulated to an imposing “nanny” state mentality.  We live in a culture of female empowerment.  Murrow wonders, “Maybe women don’t need men to protect the any more.  One wonders what society will be like when men finally realize they are no longer needed as protectors and providers.”

Men, you need to understand that husbands and fathers will continue to be stripped of their ability to provide and protect because of the combination of the intrusion power of a “nanny state” which believes it has the right to  supplement the traditional role of husband and father, and the empowerment of women who no longer see the value of the traditional roles of husbands and fathers as necessary.  So, we need to wake up.  We need to be a  part of a Christian culture that will form a culture of resistance to what is happening in our society.

Let me make four suggestions for men who want to be – and who feel called to be – providers and protectors:  

First, get yourself under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Allow Jesus to have lordship of your life. Declare in our family the Lordship of Jesus.  You will need his protection as you stand for your family. 

Second, thank God for the gift and stewardship he has given you as a husband and father of a family.  Unless you have the gift of celibacy, this is why God made you a man.  You have a role to fulfill that no one else can.  You are irreplaceable.  Your family is not a burden but a treasure to fight for.

Third, don’t play the role of the martyred father or defeated soldier.  This is warfare.  The enemy want to destroy your  family by taking you out. If you are feeling overwhelmed by the rapid social changes taking place in our culture, know that there are many other warriors going through the same conflict. 

Finally, as I say often in this blog, cry out to God for mercy and wisdom.  Realize you are desperate and need help.  “Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role play before God.  Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage.  The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace” (Matt. 6:6 – Message).

I do not intend this blog to be political, but I could not resist writing about the “Pajama Boy.” During the showdown over Obamacare, a PAC put out an ad now known as “Pajama Boy.”  “It showcased a young fellow in thick retro-rimmed glasses, wearing black-and-red plaid children’s pajamas, and sipping from a mug, with a sort of all-knowing expression on his face.  The text urged: ‘Wear pajamas.  Drink hot chocolate.  Talk about getting health insurance. #GetTalking.'”  I think the hash tag should have read GetWorking,  young man, instead of GetTalking, which strikes me as adolescent.

How many men do you know, who sit around in their pajamas, drinking hot chocolate, while contemplating their health care? I see the image of a man who is no longer outer directed, taking the initiative to be responsible. The pajamas cry out, “Help me in my fragile condition.” This is the classic picture of a “feminized man.”  He is hoping someone will take care of him so he can live a sheltered life.  He is  the “soft male” that Robert Bly described: “The male in the past twenty years has become more thoughtful, more gentle….He’s a nice boy who now not only pleases his mother but also the young woman he is living with….You often see these men with strong women who positively radiate energy….yet he himself has no energy to offer.”

It bothers me that a government ad would portray such a dependent, weak man, sitting around with “an all-knowing expression”  hoping to  be taken care of by someone else.  He needs to get working.  Work is what God gave Adam to do in the garden. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). However with the fall, work was cursed (Gen. 3:17) and became toil, carried out “by the sweat of [man’s[ brow” (Gen. 3:19).  But the curse of sin did not eliminate work as a God-ordained and vital part of life.  God still commands people to work: “Six days you shall labor and do all our work” (Ex 20:9).

God himself is portrayed in scripture as a ceaseless worker.  His first great work was the work of creation (Gen. 1).  As one observer said, “The God of the Bible is preeminently a worker.”  The concept of work found in Genesis I is that it is purposeful, creative and above all “good.”  But it will also involve sweat, labor, often being unproductive and laden with a curse (Gen. 3:17). Each man reading this blog knows what it means to toil under the curse of the fall.   But by the grace of God we work as good stewards, bringing glory our heavenly Father.  We want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matt 25:21).

Jesus saw himself as a worker.  He saw his public ministry as his assigned work.  His food was “to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34).  He said of himself, “”My Father is working still, and I am working” (John 5:17). On another occasion he said to his followers, “We must work the words of him who sent me” (John 9:4).  Following Jesus, we get up and work.

Jesus warns us, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27).  Then he tells us, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:29).  In other words, the ultimate focus of our productivity has an eternal focus, with the intent of bringing  glory to the Lord Jesus.  We “do it” for Jesus.

In the 1967 war, Israel wrestled control of the West Bank known as Qasr al-Yahud from Jordon. It was thought to be the traditional site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. But Israel mined the entire site on the banks of the Jordon River to ward off attacks from across the border.  In 1994 Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan and their border has been relatively quiet for more than 20 years.  Israel cleared part of the site in 2011, making the site a popular attraction for Christian pilgrims.  Now Israel and the Palestinians are clearing the rest of the site – about 135 acres littered with more than 3,000 antipersonnel and antitank mines and an unknown number of improvised explosive devices.  Present day pilgrims, “must pass through a ghost town of churches fenced off by menacing signs that read ‘Danger! Mines!”

I thought about the minefields in the call of John, the Baptist to submit to a baptism of repentance, which for the Christian implies death to self and  resurrection life in Jesus.   John was a prophet warning folks coming to be baptized about their insincere intentions.  “Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God.  Don’t just say to each other, ‘ We’re safe, for we are descendants of Abraham.’  That means nothing, for I tell you, God can create children of Abraham from these very stones.  Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees.  Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:8-9).

One of the common minefields in the contemporary church is the practice of  half-hearted repentance, involving incremental, self inducted attempts at change.  The fruit is not life producing.  There could be a sign outside churches saying, “Danger! Mines!”   It is easy for men to fall into the trap of “performance orientation” where we work hard at change, but never getting to the root of our sin nature.  We try the latest spiritual program or learn more biblical truths, but never get to the roots.

I spend years practicing “shallow” repentance.  It was a matter of admitting  I was wrong and then trying to be better.  I was into my  spiritual self improvement  mode.  I finally had to come to the point of “tasting” my sinful nature.  I could not change myself.  I had to repent even of my trying to change.  I continue to have to come to the end of myself, and let the Spirit of God change me.  Death to myself is not easy.  But it is the only way to resurrection life.

It is very dangerous, that is, it is a minefield to say “we’re safe” because we are following Jesus.  “Even now the ax of God’s judgment is poised, ready to sever the roots of the trees.”  Could it be that God is calling the followers of Jesus to deeper repentance in our day.  Men, in the days to come we will be tested regarding our walk with Jesus.  It will bring out of each of us, things that we have buried not wanting to bring to  repentance.  But when the ax comes to the roots,  don’t take it to mean you are unfit to be his witness.  Rather, see it as the grace of God calling you to deal with those things that go deep into your soul life.

In a recent Wed Morning Prayer Meeting, I shared about the “birth pangs” people who are involved in intercessory prayer experience.  I referred to Romans 8:22-25 from the Message: “All around us we observe a pregnant creation.  The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs.  But it’s not only around us; it’s within us.  The Spirit of God is arousing us within.  We’re also feeling the birth pangs.  These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance.  That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother.  We are enlarged in the waiting.  We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us.  But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.”

I acknowledged to the women in the prayer group that I could not identify with the birth pangs of a pregnant mother.  But I do have some sense of experiencing spiritual birth pangs and in the process being enlarged.  In this passage Paul locates our journey in the midst of a pregnant creation experiencing birth pangs.  This is a reference to the fallen nature of our world.  Our personal experience and the media make us aware of the suffering and pain in our world.  These birth pangs are in expectancy of  something greater to come. During this in-between time (the now and not yet) the Spirit is also being  aroused within us.  We feel the birth pangs as we live through a time of “great transition.”  This is an enlarging experience as we anticipate deliverance in the reign of  the kingdom of God.

Men, I experience the birth pangs of the human condition in my heart as I countenance what is happening around me.  I am being enlarged as I “grieve” in prayer.  I wonder  what will happen to our country, to my family, to loved ones.  I pray for those in leadership..  I pray that I might be an effective witness during the darkness that is descending.  Yes, I am having birth pangs.  But the encouraging aspect of this grieving is that I am being “enlarged,”  being prepared for something greater. I plan to finish strong.

How am I being enlarged?  First, in what I am beholding, the Spirit helps me carry the tension of my grieving by creating space within my soul. There is so much that is so wrong. The Holy Spirit helps give me a divine perspective, allowing me to be have a positive attitude in circumstances and with people. I  don’t want to become a negative, angry, complaining man.  Secondly, the enlarging give me the capacity to embrace the rancor, pain and negativity with a Christ like attitude.  “Put simply: we must speak with confidence and tranquility, with kindness and gentleness, so that people will begin to say of us that we speak with a ‘Galilean’ accent that sounds a lot like Jesus” (Michael Cromartie).

Furthermore, Paul reminds us of the work of the Holy Spirit during this time of enlarging.  “Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along.  If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter.  He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.  He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God.  That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is working into something good” (Romans 8:22-25 – Message).

This name comes from church historian Carl R. Trueman.  “The sempiternal orgiast [is] the one who lives for the pleasure of the moment.”  Trueman goes on to say, “Once the end of human existence was identified with happiness and happiness came to be identified with pleasure and pleasure came to be identified primarily with sexual gratification, the game was up for history. For the sempiternal orgiast has no need for history for he has no time – no past and no future, just the intensify of the pleasure of the present moment.”

With the rise of the sempiternal orgiast mentality, Trueman  maintains we no longer have a culture, but rather an anti-culture.  “If we define [culture] as the elaborate structures and materials built into the very fabric of society for the refinement and transmission of its beliefs and its forms of life from generation to generation, connecting past, present, and future,” Trueman contends,” then we really have none.”  We no longer have a culture to engage with the hope of reform.  If the West is now an anti-culture, the church will need to provide the culture.

Why say all this in a blog for men?  Because if there is a real possibility that we have lost not only “the cultural wars” but also culture itself, then the wildmen of this blog will  need to become “a resistance movement” in our society.  Some observers now refer to a church being in “exile” in America or visualize a “Babylonian captivity.”  Peter when writing his first letter addressed the believers as “exiles” living in “Babylon.” I maintain that we are not to flee from our society but  rather infiltrate society with a “subversive spirituality.”  What is called for is a new perspective on how to live out the gospel in America.  What will be asked of men in our day?

Certainly we must prepare ourselves, our families and our churches for greater opposition to the kingdom reign of Jesus.  An anti-culture in which no God is allowed to reign supreme will revolt at the words of Jesus in Revelation 22:13, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”  Submission to such a God in America today will bring opposition resulting in suffering.

Near the end of his first letter Peter gave this encouragement, “You’re not the only ones plunged into these hard times. It’s the same with Christians all over the world.  So keep a firm grip on the faith.  The suffering won’t last forever.  It won’t be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ – eternal and glorious plans they are! – will have you put together and on your feet for good.  He gets the last word; yes he does” (I Pet 5:11-12 – Message).  Men who have a deep sense of calling to follow Jesus are beginning  to prepare themselves to resist, while living within our fallen culture.  What are some characteristics of men in a resistance movement?

I  suggest three characteristics. First, they will be resistance fighters.  As “followers of the Lamb” they will be strong, courageous, but also loving and humble.  They will resist by being humble, loving followers of Jesus, no matter the cost.  Secondly, they will be defenders. They will fight with, “the praise of God in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands” (Ps 149:6).  And thirdly, they will be protectors.  Living a life of integrity they will protect their families and churches from the lies of the enemy.  “The Devil is poised to pounce, and would like nothing better than to catch you napping.  Keep your guard up” (I Peter 5:8 – Message).

We now know that it will be Donald against Hillary in a battle of the distorted masculine and feminine in the Presidential race. I am wading into the “muddy waters” of the presidential race, to offer the following observation.  The gender wars that will occur will be intense and down right disgraceful.  For the wild men of this blog, I want to purpose that the next six months can be a blessing rather than curse.  Why?  It will bring into sharp contrast the images of a broken masculine and feminine and the hope offered in a biblical view of a secure  masculine  that also embraces a healthy feminine.  Both candidates will display a deeply distorted  masculine or feminine, while attacking the other out of their brokenness.

Leanne Payne, (I have mentioned her often) both in her seminars and books has been instrumental in the healing of my masculine soul.  She made this prophetic statement in her book, “Crisis in Masculinity.”  “A crisis in masculinity is always a crisis in truth.  It is a crisis in powerlessness of the feminine virtues: the good, the beautiful, and the just, in a culture or in an individual.  A culture will never become decadent in the face of a healthy, balanced masculinity.  When a nation or an entire Western culture backslides, it is the masculine which is the first to decline.”  My suggestion –  remember this quote.

Mona Charen in her column said it well.  “The greatest failures of the past genearation concern men, women, and sex – and there could not be two more awful representatives of what has gone wrong than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.”  Men, get ready for a distorted national conversation about  sex and gender. Without a biblical perspective the discussion is void of the truth.  Clinton will use accusations of sexism for her advantage  as the champion of radical feminism.  “The masculinity of Trump,” states David French, “is exactly the caricatured, counterfeit masculinity of the feminist fever dream.  It takes the full energy of manhood and devotes it to sex, money and power.  It’s posturing masquerading as toughness and anger drained of bravery.”

So how shall we as men respond in the coming days.  First and foremost, celebrate your God given gender identity as a man.  Receive these words from your heavenly Father, “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life” (Mark 1:11 – Message). Your unique masculine soul is a gift from God. Don’t be a confused, angry man; rejoice in your maleness.

Secondly, don’t throw Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton “under the bus.”  They are only  products of our confused culture. It will take much grace and long suffering to see beyond what will be portrayed on TV, the internet, and social media so as to be able to embrace and  live out a healthy countercultural expression of the masculine.

Thirdly, be very intention about your witness to angry, confused men.  “The angry man needs to grow up, to put away childish things, and to see that every moment that Trump commands the national stage is another contribution to feminism’s ultimate triumph “(French).

Fourthly, weep for our nation.  I mean this literally.  “The family, the cradle of new life and the font of civil society, is in jeopardy in unprecedented ways, as our society increasingly disregards basic facts of human existence.” (George Weigel). Men need to be protector not predator.

Fifthly, use the gender war  as an opportunity to show men of all ages a better way.  Men are being told to shun their masculinity and live a “de-gendered life.”  Many….men are left confused, aimless, and of the angry.  They simply can’t and won’t conform to a genderless society” (French).

I have a passion for men live in the spiritual freedom  of “receiving the love of God.” It is similar to being held in our heavenly Father’s  loving arms.  I identify with the  Palmist, when he declares, “We’re not keeping this to ourselves, we’re passing it along to the next generation.”  Recently I have been reading a book by James K. A. Smith, which  explores persons  as lovers of God.  He makes reference to I John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.”  “Even our disordered loves,” states Smith, “bear a backhanded witness to the fact that we are made in God’s image.”

He quotes Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar,  “After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives her child’s smile in response.  She has awakened love in the heart of her child, and as the child awakens to love, it also awakens to knowledge…..the seeds of love lies dormant within us as the image of God.  But just as no child can be awakened to love without being loved, so too no human heart can come to an understanding of God without the free gift of his grace – in the image of his Son.”  The mother evoking a child’s smile models God’s initiative in the incarnation, smiling on us in love, allowing us to love him in return.

Our part is to move out of ourselves and look into the face of Jesus.  We prayer with the Palmist, “My heart says of you, “Seek his face!’  Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Ps 27:8).  “Jesus is the smile of God.” (Smith)  With Paul we can say, “All of us, without any veil on our faces, gaze at the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, and so are being changed into the same image, from glory to glory, just as you’d except from the Lord, the spirit.” (II Cor.  3:18).  We come to know that “the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5: 8).  Gazing upon Jesus, we become aware of his presence within our hearts.

As a result, God’s spirit awakens love in our hearts.  As a mother radiates love to the child, so God radiates love to us allowing us to respond to his love. It is not the result of our effort or worthiness.  Rather it is God’s loving kindness.  “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (I Cor. 4:6).

Secondly, we gain knowledge of the love of God.  In coming to experience the love of God, we  come to the knowledge of God’s love for us.  But first we must receive this love, just as a child learns to respond to the loving gaze of the mother.  It is the gaze that bring the awareness of love, not our understanding or effort in being presentable.  What relief to know that God loves us in our guilt and shame.

Thirdly, God meets us in our incapacity, giving us the capacity to love. In God first loving us, we see the gracious initiative of God   granting the grace that allows us to love him in return.

Fourthly, our journey in Christ becomes one of surrender to the love  rather than the dutiful obligation.  Out heavenly Father desires that our intentions to serve him come from willing, joyful hearts.  Duty can be short lived, while willingness can endure because of the awareness of God’s favor.

A quote from my favorite feminist, Camille Paglia,  got me to thinking about masculine energy. “The more women succeed and rise up into positions of power, the more remote they become from actual masculine energy.” Reflecting on the present status of feminism, Paglia observed, “We don’t know what we want….My generation produced the sexual revolution and your generation is stuck figuring out how it’s going to work.”  Nicole Russell laments the lose of male energy, “Women have blindly followed the feminist mantra and now find themselves lonely and confused. It’s time to welcome back the patriarchy.”  She sees men, “slowly shriveled to mere shells of themselves in an effort to avoid the witchy brigade of feminist diehards.”  It is an indictment of men in our culture.

Like so many other issues regarding  gender, we have to go back to the order of creation (biblical reality).  “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Gen. 2:15).  These verbs can  be translated “serve” and “guard.”  The NIVZSB notes, “The man has a priestly role to protect the garden sanctuary” (Gen 1:26). When he failed in his task, he was expelled from Eden.  Productive work and guarding the garden were to be part of God’s good plan for man.  It was after his command to Adam that God created Eve as “a  helper suitable for him” (Gen 2:18).

This surely implies energy. Men, think of yourself as Adam, responsible for work in your garden.  Like God, Adam was to be a worker.  Without the taint of sin, work was an undiluted blessing.  The word “work” means “serve.” After the fall work became “painful toil” (Gen 3:17) being accomplished “by the sweat of your brow” (Gen 3:18). Without an understanding of our role as God’s worker in creation, our masculine energy can be distorted, misguided and even intimidated into passivity.

Like each of you, I live in my particular “patch of creation” (sphere of influence).  It has changed over the years from getting married, my vocation as a ordained pastor, raised a family of three and now living together with my wife in our “small monastery” on the lake in the northwoods.  Expressing and living out of godly masculine energy has consistently meant the following for me.  It has not been without its share of pain and disappointment.   I wonder how other readers have been challenged in a similar manner.

First and foremost is taking  initiative and being responsible. In my opinion one of the greatest tragedies among men in our culture today is the passive-aggressive man (the beta man).   The Genesis story tell us that we each have been put in charge of our patch of creation.  We get up every morning to tend our garden.

Second, provide direction and order.  God will show you how to do your work.  He wants you to work for his glory.  We do it grateful, without whining and complaining.

Third, being a  protector.  You are to spiritually fight and defend your patch creation.  God has placed you as a “watchmen” on the walls, alert to spiritual danger. Perceive the danger, name it, and cry out for God to come and do battle on your behalf.

Fourth,  being the priest.  Men, you are God’s priest in your garden.  You bring the presence of God.  Don’t depend on your wife and others in this task.  No one knows the condition of your garden like you do.  At times all you can do is cry out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” God hears the prayer of desperation.