A Few Good Men
   | Jason Clark (from Emergent U.K.) heats up the blogosphere (70+ comments already) with posting Where Have All The Good Men Gone? It includes a list taken from the book Why Men Hate Going To Church. A first glance through the list evokes echoes of John Eldridges' Wild At Heart, with the idea that somehow churches have become "feminized" and "real" men want something less about relationships and more about adventure. Maybe I'm less than an ideal manly man, but relationships, community, and a "safe place" are high, high, high on my list of values for any community of faith. And so is risk-taking, step-out-in-faith, "if God doesn't come through we're toast" kind of exciting adventures in faith. Strangely, my beautiful and sagacious wife Wendy feels the same way. As do many of our married and single friends. Anyway, it's an interesting read, as are the comments following it. Stop by at Jason's, and let me know what you think of the whole discussion. |
posted by Robbymac at
12:19 PM
6 Comments:
Looks like we're all talking about the same thing!
I'm with ya...as is my husband...as are pretty much every one of our friends.
I was a biker... rode a Harley...
1990 evo with a shovelhead 4 speed transmission, rigid Santee frame... wide glide front end....
It had a flaming boars head on the front and the license plate that said, "evol hog"... I wore leather and would go bar hopping with the guys, passing cars in the middle of the highway with on coming traffic...
Some of my friends died in head on accidents, some went on and joined the Hell's Angels...
I sad all that because I was a putz, not a real man, who would face who I was and who I was becoming... I read Wild at Heart and loved it... some of my friends (now) did not even get through it...
I found a real man can be as Driscoll stated, yet also grow beyond the selfishness that he is actually describing as being a real man...
Driscoll is only talking about some of these men who really are half the people they should be… IMHO. He is alienated those of us who have decided to really live our values… without realizing he has done this.
A real man realizes there is something more… that he is not the beginning and end of the universe… It is a real man who instead of sitting in front of the TV watching football and talking stats, gets off his butt and pursues God, even if it is uncomfortable.
I am a man… who has taught Sunday school, and is willing to give up a fishing trip with the guys to be with my family.
Am I feminized? I think I am more of a whole person now… then when I worshipped at the alter of Harley Davidson.
Blessings,
iggy
Iggy,
Wow, I really resonated with what you've written here. You put it into words far better than I could. Thanks!
(Second try...Edited as much as I can and still saying what I need to say...)
I've been following the discussion at Jason's site and went over to Bob's to read the comments there. Some people simply want to go in circles and don't really want to discuss, which leaves me tired and dispirited; they can believe what they want to believe. I feel safer commenting at your site, especially since you asked :)
Michael Kruse linked to this interesting article:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7245949
which explains the results of the "latest research" into the differences between men and women, particularly on the hormonal level. Yes, there are biological differences between men and women that go beyond plumbing. I have no problem affirming that. Humanity does not exist in any other form than the sexed bodies of males and females. The article also talks about how those biologic/hormonal differences fall along a continuum for both men and women.
I'm not aware that people even had questions about what constitutes "masculinity" and "femininity" before the industrial revolution, when the change in the economic base led to huge social changes. Biological differences notwithstanding, our notions about masc. and fem. run on a continuum and are largely socio-cultural constructs, and I think nearly everyone still has a HUGE blind spot about this.
Miroslav Volf has written the most lucid examination of gender identity I have ever found as chapter 4 of "Exclusion and Embrace". The whole thing is worthy of being quoted, but I'll try to restrain myself in a blog comment :) Specifically related to this issue, Volf says "The 'guy trouble' stems from the decline of patriarchy...and the consequent uncertainty of men about their roles as spouses and fathers." p185 I think Driscoll and those who think like he does are putting so much energy into defending "masculine" and "feminine" roles because their interpretation of the bible and the assumptions on which it is based do not leave them any other way to address their angst over this uncertainty in real life. In the West, patriarchy has been gone for at least a generation, at least de jure and as a matter of everyday practicality. I'm not saying patriarchal attitudes are gone, but that as an institution its grip on society in general has definitely been significantly loosened for some years now.
Volf writes further, "Though turning inward and bolstering the identity of each gender can be important as a strategy, it is mistaken as a goal in itself. For one, more often than not an exclusive concern with one's own identity generates pernicious ideologies of superiority...More important, the turn inward misses the very character of gender identities. We are neither masculine nor feminine 'from the start'...we are made so through relation to the other gender." p185 "...all of this -the affirmation of the equal dignity of genders, the symmetry in construction of gender identities, and the presence of the other in the self- all of this is kept in motion by self-giving love... The model for the goal is the eternal embrace of divine persons (the Trinity)...." p190
Gimmicks to "get men into church" are only gimmicks. I think "the answer" lies somewhere in a theology that promotes a recapitulation/Christus Victor/inaugurated eschatology view of life, wherein all of redeemed humanity is invited to join the creator God, because of Jesus' incarnation, life, death, resurrection and sending of his Spirit, in his rescue operation of all creation (not damsels in distress), as we are called to participate in this mission through our own lives singly and in community.
I long for the day when this is reality among Christians: "Instead of setting up ideals of femininity and masculinity, we should root each in the sexed body and let the social construction of gender play itself out guded by the vision of the identity of and relations between the divine persons. ...It is precisely the one triune God in whose image all human beings are created who holds the promise of peace between men and women with irreducible but changing gender identities."p182 This rises so far above lobbing bible verses at one another.
Dana Ames
p.s. Iggy, nice.
i read wild @ heart by eldredge, and i agree with him, that the church IS being feminized. i agree with your idea of taking risks for Christ, and taking adventures. thats what i'm doing out here at camp ENBC. (if i tell you that much i hope you'll figure out who this is...)
i'm home in a week.
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