Means to be a Man

"I choose to run towards my problems, not away from them, because that's what heroes do." -Thor

"The moment, you own it, you better never let it go.  You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow.  This opportunity comes once in a lifetime." -Eminem

"She is more righteous than I."  -Judah

"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground...I give you every seed-bearing plants the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.  They will be yours for food."  -God

"It is finished." -Jesus

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." -Paul

I haven't watched the Matt Walsh documentary "What is a Woman?"  I doubt I ever will.  As much as I adore truth, I'm not a huge fan of the far right culture warriors that seem to think our main issue is political or intellectual in nature.  After all, Jesus refused to join any party in his day besides the one where Levi invited his friends.  I swear the entire book of Matthew was written for Matthew to get back those that spied on his party.  

The two sexes are God's idea.  His best idea if you ask me.  Male and Female reflect His image more than anything else in all creation.  I continue to have my mind blown by how male and female carry the image of God in their own right.  The more I learn, the higher view I have of men, the higher view I have of women, the higher view I have of God.  You can learn a lot by paying attention to images and who set them up.  

To no small degree I owe my thoughts to the book "Wild at Heart" by John Eldridge.  His writing kind of snapped me out of my fog.  You see...I lost my masculinity for at least a year...maybe five years.  I became a shell of myself.  Weak, whiny, withdrawn.  I think I tried to become a type of man that our Christian culture is trying to build: a nice guy.  It didn't work.  I didn't become a nice guy.  I became a pansy.  Unable to love my wife, unable to lead my children, unable to think, unable to create.  No courage.  I have become passionate about what it means to be a man because I have had to endure the pain of not being one.  And those closest to me got to experience the pain as well.  It was a hell I don't want to ever relive. 

A real man is strong.  This is why men participating in women's sports is repulsive.  A man that competes against women isn't a real man, he's a fearful and confused coward.  It's only the weak that need to make themselves feel better by picking on those he knows are weaker than him.  The real man takes on assignments that make most men flee and hide, because he knows that the only way to glory is through suffering.  To be tough as nails, you had better be willing to take some serious blows, you know?

It's mind blowing how fast man failed to see his power and privilege and fell for a cheap substitute.  We like to call Adam a moron.  But we swim in a sea of cheap substitutes.  As one man pointed out to me a year ago or so, we live in a world of flavor without nutrition, sex without relationship, and adventure without courage.  The painful thing is looking around our houses and seeing that we, all of us, have ignored our divine power and settled for the substitutes.  And how we've let our homes, our minds, our marriages, our medicine cabinets,  and our refrigerators get infiltrated.  The pain is enough to put a man on the ground.  

The Truth is this: just because it hurts like hell doesn't mean you can't get up and start taking back what the enemy stole.