Vulnerability of Manhood

What is a masculine man? Is it the Mel Gibson in Braveheart running into the battle with war paint on yelling “Freedom”? Or is it Dwayne Johnson putting two chains on his shoulders as he does a workout? What about a man in a business room selling stocks and making a profit left and right? Men today are confused and dazed with the multiple different ideas of what manhood is and what manhood isn’t. Not only do we not know what manhood is, we have a lack of men teaching their children what it means to be a man. In a study by Pew Research, 23% of children grow up in single parent households in the US. What is more alarming is that 36% of children in Richmond, Ky, the area in which I live daily, grow up in single mother households with no father. To even further this point, in an article by the New York Times in 2018, a teacher asked his class what it meant to be a good man. The class responded with attributes like “Caring, Kind, Humble” and then asked what it meant to be a real man. The class then responded with “go getter, driven, hardworking, proud.” When the teacher of the seminar compared the two, he noticed they were drastically different and concluded that this is one of the problems in society, a real man and a good man aren’t the same thing. That is where we are at in society. Do we really believe that a good man and a real man aren’t the same? Or could someone be a real and good man? 

All throughout scripture you see the pharisees who were proud men of this time. They kept all, or what they thought, of the law. If anyone “looked” like a man, it was them. They were religious leaders and they were looked up too. But yet it was also the pharisees who Jesus answered harshest too, who he rebuked multiple times, and who he gave some of the toughest criticisms. Why? It has a lot to do with their pride. 

Matthew 5:5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” Meekness is the opposite of the proud. Meekness, by definition, is quiet, humble, teachable, and patient under long suffering. You see Christ came for the lost and broken, not for the proud. That is the problem we are stuck at. Christ says to gain life you must lose is. A sacrificial thing in which you put others first. While the world says that you must work for what you earn and to be proud of your work, Christ says he has done the work you could never do. Meekness is the opposite of the proud, and while society says to gain a good life you must be proud Christ says to gain an everlasting life you must be meek. So how do we accomplish this? Our natural tendency is to be proud and to have pride in all we do, how do we accomplish this unnatural task?

We run to the Gospel. Christ was the only man who lived the perfect life, who wasn’t prideful but rather  humble when he came to this earth, leaving heaven so that we could have eternal life. He had every right to stay in heaven and yet he came to earth and died so that we could live.

Philippians 2:6-8: “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” This is what a true man is. We look at Christ and we see what he did on Calvary for us, dying for us when he never had to but yet doing this all joyfully so that we could have everlasting life.

That is a real man. That is who we look to for manhood, the one who was good and real, truthful yet gracious, loving yet stern. So, I urge you… when you ask yourself what manhood is, look to the one who came and lived the perfect life to show you what a man is. Let the heavenly Father teach you manhood when your earthly father may have not.