As Fathers’ Day is forthcoming, allow me to share a Blog Series on the Quest For Authentic Manhood.
Here are some strange facts to consider:
- It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
- It’s physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.
- Before this day is over, anyone who hears that it’s physically impossible to lick your elbow will try to lick their elbow.
- But here’s the strangest fact of all: Even though there are about 4 billion Men on the planet, most men cannot tell you what a man is. Not succinctly. Not compellingly; not with a sense of empowerment that makes you want you live UP as a man.
Most of us do not have that kind of core definition of masculinity for our lives that drives us and sustains us in everyday life.
The Quest for Authentic Manhood is kind of a foundational level of the study of masculinity. Its focus is on a man’s core identity. The key elements, which we’ll be going through, is a man’s wounds. It’s looking kind of at the past that has shaped or sometimes misshapen him. We’ll be talking about that in the days to come. We’ll also come up with that compelling definition of manhood that I told you 4 billion men on the planet have a hard time coming up with. And then we overview and look at, pick at a few of a man’s primary issues.
The major challenge is a phrase that is ‘the boy in you must die.’ There is a transition that has to take place in a man’s life where he moves from boyhood to manhood, and if that isn’t a very specific transition in his life, then even as he grows older, he still relates more to boyishness than to noble manhood. There are many men walking around in bodies 40, 50, 60 years old who are still boys. Not men. So, the boy in you must die.
For some of you today, it’s going to be the beginning of laying a new foundation for your manhood. For some of you – throughout the years you’ve already laid your foundation, but there are some cracks in it and so throughout the blogs, we’re going to fill in some of those cracks, to help us become a more solid foundation.
What I’d like to do today is start by just giving you 5 of the presuppositions that I’m going to be working off of that will help you understand where I’m coming from as we walk through this blog.
So here are 5 basic presuppositions I’m going to be bringing to this particular manhood journey.
1️⃣ The first is this: Manhood is in a state of confusion. That’s going to be one of my basic and most fundamental premises. Manhood is in a state of confusion? right below the surface of men’s lives is confusion. And there’s a lack of confidence as to what it really means to be a man. today’s young men – particularly those 25 and younger -- are nearing a state of masculine meltdown. They have no clear identity as to their masculinity or what it means to be a man. They’re drifting, and underneath the surface of their lives is confusion.
Three words– or 3 phrases from Young Men’s lives:
a. They express disappointment with life. They say, you know, that they got out of college with all these expectations about life becoming more thrilling, and as they move through life, it just simply becomes more heavy. And the things that were fun in their lives seem to drain out; there seems to be a heaviness of responsibility and when they hit about 40 or 45, it seems like they just kind of hit the wall. All the things that were promised to them early on, that would give them life – once they attained those things, they didn’t really deliver life. And so a disappointment kind of settled in over their spirits. They weren’t really sure what to do about it. They only knew they felt it.
b. Another word is ‘pain.’ Underneath the surface of men’s lives there’s a lot of pain that they haven’t resolved. And they don’t know how to talk about it because they look at the guys around them, and those guys seem like they’re doing all right. It seems like they have it together, but underneath their life is pain. Some of that pain relates to their dads -- an unresolved issue there. Some of that pain relates to their dreams, and things that never came to fruition, that they always hoped for, wished for and wanted, but never came about. Some of it had to with failures in their lives – things that they had messed up and screwed up, and they didn’t know how to go back and fix it, or get over it. So there is pain there that they needed to talk about. But they didn’t know who to talk to.
c. Another word Is ‘loneliness.” Isn’t it amazing that we’re in a world today where we’re wired everywhere -- we can talk to anybody. We have access everywhere, and yet, with the increase in technology, there has been a decrease in intimacy. We really know people less and less, and in today’s society men in particular are lonely. They know everybody, but no one knows them. No one has access to them – and they’re not sure how to get out and get connected in a way that would be satisfying to them. I tell you all that because men are in a state of confusion.
2️⃣Secondly, I believe confused men – those kind of confused men – will create major problems in life. I don’t think most of us need to be told that.
All we have to do is watch TV or read a book or read the newspaper, or hear the latest statistics from the government, and we will find that most of the social problems in our society -- for whatever reasons – seem to rest at the feet of men. For some reason, as strong as we are, we are a fragile bunch. We are. And most of the marriage problems that we experience in our world today oftentimes are men problems. Now I’m speaking as a Family Man, and I can tell you that is the fact! When you go to statistics, what you’ll find is most kids today who are truant or who have problems also have absent dads, or deadbeat dads. 90% of all the major crimes globally are from men. 100% of all the rapes are from men. Most if not all the burglaries are from men. Most if not all the offenses against families or children come from men. Most if not of all drunken drivers are men. You may wonder ‘Are Men Really That Bad?”, “what’s wrong with us?” It’s because confused men create major problems.
“The central problem of every society is to define appropriate roles for it’s men.” That’s the central problem.
And why do men need clear direction and appropriate roles? It’s because we’re a fragile group and without clear direction – without clear understanding of who we are and what we’re intended to do, confused men create major problems.
3️⃣Thirdly, I believe confused men also settle for less in their life.
The clearest picture of an empty life is the suburban man, who gets up at the same hour every weekday morning, takes the same train/taxi/matatu/bus to work in the city, performs the same tasks at the office, lunches at the same places, comes home on the same city train/taxi/matatu/bus each night; Goes to church but does not really know why he goes, and moves through a routine, mechanical existence year after year until he finally retires at age 65 and very soon thereafter dies of disease, possibly brought on by repressed anger. Though perhaps he died from boredom.
The point is this: many confused men – in whatever setting – settle into an empty rut in their life, because they don’t know what else to do. Comrades, do you understand how oftentimes we’re programmed? About campus age, we think we’ve got this job we’re supposed to have, and money we’re supposed to make; and things we’re supposed to have, and a wife we’re supposed to marry. And we move into that thinking because we’ve been told that if we have all those things we’ll be alive. And what happens is we move into that process – kind of like on a conveyor belt – and we move into what I call a ’standardized manhood process’ and after a while we don’t like it. But we don’t know what to do about it. And we have no higher calling on our life other than ourselves! And that doesn’t satisfy. Confused men settle for less.
4️⃣ I believe there is no lofty vision of manhood today that’s compelling to men, the kind of manhood that calls men up.
A frustrated young man wrote this following poem. He said this: What is a man? Is he someone who’s strong and tall? Or is he taut and talented as be plays ball? Is he someone who is hardened enough, Who smokes, and drinks and swears enough? Is he someone who chases women hard with a quest to conquer – Or without dropping his guard? Is he someone with a good business mind Who gets ahead of the others with his nose to the grind? Or is he someone who tries his best While not really caring for any of the rest? What is a man? Does any one know? Tell me! Who is the prototype? To whom shall I go?
There are a lot of men like that – maybe not expressing it that way, but at the core of their existence, they’re saying ‘who is the prototype? A real man? And to whom shall we go?”
In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul makes this statement. He says, “When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, and think as a child, and reason as a child. But when I became a man, I gave up childish things.”
We may want to ask Paul because he made this statement, ‘but when I became a man’; “how did you do that? How did you become a man? And when you became a man, you said you put away childish things. What were those things that you put away? And what new things did you embrace? And Paul, did they give you life? I know I had fun when I was a kid – can you have fun as a man? Is there a better calling than childhood and boyishness? Is there something to pull me up to a higher mountain where the challenges are just as thrilling and the view is just as magnificent, and even more so? Can you get me there?”
That’s what I want to know. I want to know how to become a man. I want to know what real men do, and how they feel, and how they act, but it doesn’t seem anyone knows today, how to answer that question: What is a man? Which leads me to my premise number 5.
5️⃣ I believe the Bible has helpful insights to all of the above…to all of the other four presuppositions, and I am aware, by the way, that there are all kinds of men reading this. Some of you are Anglicans, Born Again, Baptist, some of you are Episcopal, some of you are Jews; some of you are Catholics; some of you come from a very mixed background – You’ve come from everywhere – you’ve had all kinds of mixture in your past. And that’s okay. There are some of you here who are non-churchgoers. In fact, there are some of you are cynical about religion altogether.
And quite frankly, if you and I sat down and talked for a little while, there’d probably be some really good reasons why. Let me put you all at ease just for a moment. I have not religious axes to grind. You’re not going to hear me do that. I’m not going to cram my religion down your throat.
This is a manhood journey – The only reason is to help you become better men, and I believe that’s why you’re reading this, as well.
Now, I’m going to use the Bible from time to time and I’m going to use it, because it’s great literature, first of all. Secondly, it has time-tested wisdom in it. It’s been proven out over the ages, and thirdly, it’s because we need its help. We really do.
So these are my 5 pre-suppositions:
1️⃣Manhood is in a state of confusion;
2️⃣ Confused men create major problems;
3️⃣ Confused men settle for less;
4️⃣ There is no lofty vision of manhood calling us up. I mean, really. Do you watch TV commercials today? Because they speak to our culture. And do you know what you see about manhood when you look into the fact of commercials? You see the other guy in the beer commercial looking past these women mesmerized by a bottle of beer. That’s manhood in the 21st Century.
5️⃣ The Bible is going to help us get there, as well as the other material that we’ll be talking about in the next few days.
Now let me finish up – just making some 5 bold promises to you if you stick it out with me over the course of the whole blog series, and I really hope that you do. Because if you do this, I can deliver on these 5 promises.
1️⃣ First of all, you’ll have a clear definition of manhood. Remember at the beginning we said most men can’t tell you succinctly with a compelling kind of passion what a man is? If you’ll stick with me over these blogs, I can promise you this: You will leave here with a definition of manhood that you’re excited about. And not only excited about, excited about living your life for and excited about telling your sons about. That’s the kind of definition we want to craft together in our time together.
2️⃣ Secondly, you will develop a new manhood language. You see in our modern culture, we don’t have that language. And because we don’t have a language, our souls kind of stay starved for some substance about real manhood issues, and without that kind of substance, what we end up doing is we end up talking about our soccer, or cars, or the jobs/work or about our business and we stay right here on the surface. But we never talk about anything of destiny. Soulish kind of stuff that feeds the masculine soul. We have to build new bridges to one another, and those new bridges are built on a manhood language and so over the course of this Blog, you’re going to hear terms like servant leader and feminized man and rejecting passivity and leading courageously. You’re going to hear about conventional manhood and manhood ceremonies, and manhood wounds and things like that. You’re going to hear phrases like the boy in you must die. You’re going to hear other phrases like the king in you is what decides. Or if you’re not being admired by another man, you’re being hurt every day. And when you hear those phrases, with another – when you hear that this guy needs to unpack, you’ll know exactly what you’re talking about. And the other men you’re telling it to will know exactly what you’re saying. And that creates bridges of depth into the masculine soul that helps us live up – rather than down.
3️⃣Thirdly, you will make some significant personal discoveries about yourself. You know there’s a lot, as I’ve said, about manhood that lies right beneath the surface of men’s lives. But you know what we have on us? We have a lid on, just like streets have those manhole covers – we have our own manhole cover over our lives. Because it’s scary down under there.
And sometimes if you watch the kind of government workers who tend our streets, they have a special instrument to pull that manhole cover up, because otherwise you can’t pry it up. It’s just too heavy. That’s the way it feels for a lot of men’s lives. It’s just too heavy to get that off so I can look inside. MOC-Men Of Courage becomes the tool to help you pull the lid open and look inside, and though it may seem fearful at first, what I want you to know, it’s the keys that are down in there to unlock your life. And that’s what we need to get down in there and find them. Because they can open up a whole new adventure for you. And over the course of this Blog, you will make some exciting discoveries – some significant ones about yourself.
4️⃣ You will make some new friends here who are pursuing a common goal. You need to be in a Men’s small group, and if you’re in a small group, and if you have the courage to open up your life and take a look inside and be willing to reveal yourself to other men, there are going to be some new connections made with other men. Just Comrades talking to one another, getting to know one another, being encouraged by one another. So, I want to really encourage you to go into the small groups and be a part of that.
5️⃣ And then the last thing is that you will have your own personalized plan for achieving authentic manhood. I need you to do one thing for me. Over the course of the blogs, we’re going to give you this. In fact, I’ll explain this in two days to you: Your Manhood Plan because the thing we’re trying to do is establish a new manhood identity for every man in here. But to do that, you need to do that work for yourself. You need to have your own personal plan for manhood.
So in a couple of days, we’re going give you the sheet, and then you’re going to use it as a draft to take the things that you’re read day to day and you’re going to process it for your life. It’s going to ask you to look back on your life and what shaped you as a man; it’s going to ask you to make a good evaluation of what you’re doing right now. It’s going to ask you to think about where you want to end up in life, and then to put all that down and keep refining it, and at the end of the blogs, we’re actually going to ask you to type it up and share it with me. Every man’s got to turn in a plan to me, but this plan can be the most profitable thing in your life, if you’re willing to take a hard look at your life. Men need to know where they’re going and when they know where they’re going, they become a very positive and powerful force – not only in their own lives – but in their family’s life and in the community. And that’s what we want to help you achieve. A plan for your life. Okay?
So, 5 presuppositions I’ve given you here today that are going to shape my messages over the next 25 days now.
And then 5 promises that I can deliver on, if you’re willing to stick with me throughout the whole blog series. Men, welcome to the Quest for Authentic Manhood.
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