Our culture yells at us everyday it’s idea of what a real man should look like. It’s a deafening noise to every man trying to live out God’s purpose for their life because it is an exceedingly short-sighted and vain picture of what a man should look like. To look at the world’s ideal of a man you would have to look like Brad Pitt or Hugh Jackman, be as athletic as Lebron James, have a small harem of girls like Hugh Hefner, be able to talk any girl back to your apartment, drive cars that make James Bond jealous, have a penis the size of a Louisville Slugger, have your number of sex partners look like the pitch count of an extra inning game, all while at the same time holding down a job where you make enough money to have Warren Buffet on speed dial. You for sure can’t ever cry, show weakness, balk at being disrespected, or fail at anything also. These worldly ideals are a shallow farce that is sadly pervasive and applies unneeded pressure to men in this culture. Lil Wayne said it best, “Fuck bitches, get money.” That is the gospel of this world that is preached to men every day in our culture.Not that any of this is new, it’s all the same trick with a new paint job. Men have always battled trying to find their identity in God and not in how many bricks they could build in a day. For so many of us our achievement and our worth are so connected we don’t know where one starts and the other ends. If you can achieve more than the other guy, you are better than him-which means you must be valued more than him, which means you must be loved more than him. Which is all garbage. We even see this played out today-what is the first question that any man hears when you meet someone new? “What do you DO?” Why? Because when we know that then we start to jockey for position and see who we can one-up in that particular crowd. We can see who is more important, who makes more money, and we can see where we are on the food chain. We all may not struggle with this, but it’s difficult at times not to see people as people, God’s own children, but more as commodities like cattle or sheep who are more valuable the more they can provide for you.A man also has to have a woman now-and God forbid you would be gay. If your gay you definitely lose the man sweepstakes because no matter how much you achieve, your still gay. A woman is the hood ornament for a man’s Mercedes, and little else is expected except for possibly a sexual appetite that makes Jenna Jameson look like Mother Teresa. To many man in this culture getting the hottest woman or maybe multiple hot women is as essential to their existence as oxygen. For that man to be “The Man” he must spread his seed and have so many stories about his sexual conquests that Penthouse calls him clamoring to make him their Editor-in-Chief.So what does all this mean? What does God think about this? This is such a perversion of the men we see in scripture. The men we see in scripture are men who stand up for the rights of the lowly, men who treat women with the utmost love and respect, men who take a beating for the God they love not out of obligation, but out of a pure heart and a clear conscience. These men slay lions, stand up to unjust authorities, and live lives devoted to God while fighting their sinful nature. Such a paradox is difficult to understand and live out, but these men lean on their weakness and allow God to be their fullest strength.The world needs more men like them. Me and many of my closest friends are trying daily to be those kinds of men. I pray we see a whole new kind of man emerging from this generation that rebel and fight against the norms this culture loves and holds to the standard God set for us.
