Is God Manly
Posted
Friday, May 19, 2006
by
Brian Beers
On a scale of 1 to 10, how manly is God? This is an idea that has been growing on me for some time now. I want God to be manly. During our menâs Bible study at church a man at my table put a label on his notebook that reads, âBiblical Leadership for Men.â The âfor Menâ leapt off the page at me. This Bible study isnât the ordinary, gender-neutralized Bible study. It is for men. Our pastor is determined to lead the men of our church to be leaders of our families. It was during our weekly menâs Bible study that I realized the scope of this need. We have forty to fifty men at a menâs Bible study in a church of 200.
I suggested the idea to my wife that men want God to be manly, and a pained look flickered across her face. She considered âmanlyâ a belittling adjective for God. But God repeatedly identifies himself as Father. I crave a hero, someone whom I can pattern my life after. Can God be this hero?
As a Christian man, my goal is supposed to be being like Jesus, but the descriptions I heard growing up are inadequate. Today, I see the paper, cut-out Jesus my sons bring home each week, and I sigh. I cherish them for they are signs of the innocence of childhood seasoned with Scripture. Yet I mourn them for their placid presentation of the person of Jesus Christ.
In Sunday School and in real church the supernaturalness of Jesus is dominant. The battle for the Deity of Jesus (or even just the existence of the supernatural) still has power to captivate us. The manhood of Jesus is unimportant. Except for the occasional excursion into Hebrews even the humanity of Jesus is all but irrelevant. The cost of this is high. This emasculation of Jesus has resulted in fewer Godly men and less Godly men in our churches. A Godly man and a manly man ought to be one and the same. Somehow, I canât combine those two images in my mind. My perception of Jesus is influenced by too much flannel-graph and B-grade movies. Both proffer a two-dimensional, caricature of a person. Where may I see the Jesus that I long to imitate? I can describe Jesus theologically as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the righteous sacrifice for our sins, but Iâm not supposed to imitate him in these ways.
I live in the huge, barren wasteland between a childâs understanding and a theologianâs formulations of doctrine. Do any other men live survive here? No man wants to serve a wimpy God so why is Godâs image so wimpy? In the pursuit of Godliness, manliness warms the bench while meekness, obedience, and âprays well with othersâ get all the glory.
I know it is possible for Godliness and manliness to be united. If our portrayal of Jesus included more of the overturning tables and the righteous anger of driving Godless men out with whips, I wouldnât be worrying about this.
The idea of manliness portrayed on television is a powerful opponent to Godliness. If you need me to explain any further, you need me to start with âThis is called a television.â Anyone who has seen the flickering phosphors knows that âGodless televisionâ is redundant, but it both shapes and reflects our cultureâs view of manliness.
And movies are no better. The strong, silent type portrayed by John Wayne has been modus operandi for an entire generation of men. His image as a manâs man is the bane of many a wife, and such manliness is also devoid of Godliness. In recent years, it seemed if any movie or TV show included a Christian, he was the antagonist, psychotic or otherwise unforgivable. The message is that being a Christian corrupts a person. Protagonists on the other hand invariably succeed without God. Whether the heroâs goal is protecting his nation or his family, Godliness is irrelevant for success. And thatâs just the ones who succeed by being moral. Then there are the many who succeed by judicious application of (usually violent) ungodliness.
None of us can honestly expect the media to portray manliness with Godliness. Why would we? This definition of manliness is written by unbelievers. But if popular culture has stripped manliness of Godliness, the church has returned the favor by stripping Godliness of manliness.
Our Sunday School lessons have plenty of âgoodâ and ârightâ and âloving,â but those are abstract concepts. They donât translate well into habits of Godliness. And other virtues such as humility or patience sneer at manliness. Though maybe you perceive it the other way around. Either way, it should not be. Manliness can incorporate these virtues without any loss of manliness. A heroic man is not simply a man who performs a mighty deed, but a man with mighty character. Character cannot be developed only through abstract teaching of right and wrong. We need examples of Godly manliness to follow. What we really need are stories. Stories of men being manly and Godly; men living in faith. A story can be powerful in shaping how we make decisions. We pattern our choices according to some model. If our pattern only consisted of rules derived from Scripture, we could avoid much sorrow, but we lack a positive direction, a purpose.
To translate the rules into actions, we need stories and characters with whom we can identify. Young men take hold of this idea whole-heartedly. They want to be like some hero, a baseball player, or a great scientist, maybe even one worthy of emulation. They make the choices that they believe their hero would make. They hope that their lives will reveal success like that of their hero. Some of us are too sophisticated to have a hero. Still, we distill patterns from everything we observe, and this means television and movies. This, in turn, means that we observe patterns distorted by the corrupt minds of people who donât even have the beginning of wisdom.
Yet those who do have the beginning of wisdom market bracelets with WWJD woven into them. The merest beginning of wisdom, but help is not far off. We have the solution within out grasp as we stroll into church each Sunday. In the scriptures 70% is devoted to narrative, stories. Most of the characters are men. Almost every story includes war, revenge, or violence of some sort. For good or ill this is man-stuff. Somewhere in here we can expect to find a few manly men. And where we find heroes serving their God doing manly things, we find God who approves of and participates in this manliness.
But when we are asked for men exhibiting manliness in Scripture, David and Samson are the first to spring to mind; two men we are averse to imitate. Who wants to die beneath a collapsing pagan temple. After a time a few others may come to mind: Peter, Paul, maybe Barak. We need to learn to recognize the manliness of men in the Bible. The heroism of Biblical heroes needs to be considered again. As we recognize the manliness of Godâs men, we can recognize that these qualities are reflections of Godâs character. And we too can reflect Godâs character in our own time.
Is God manly? Is God someone you want to be like? Or is he just someone your are supposed to be like?
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