As I said yesterday, I think it is pretty much unanimous that men don’t just sort of bumble along through life only to wake up one day and have magically been transformed from boy to man. Physically it may seem so. I’m watching a boy morph into young man right before my eyes. And while I know it isn’t over-night, it feels like it.
But the transformation into a man, at least in the ways that really count, doesn’t happen quickly or easily. One of the studies I’m doing, Raising a Modern Day Knight, has beaten into all our thick skulls through agonizing repetition a definition of what it means to be man. Again, I’m leery of “defining” manhood, but for the sake of conversation (one-sided though it may be), I’m going to share it.
An Authentic Man…
– Rejects passivity
– Accepts responsibility
– Leads courageously
– Expects the greater reward; God’s reward
Now like I said, I’m somewhat resistant to the idea of trying to define manhood at all. I’m just not sure being a man can be reduced to four bullet-points. It seems too easy. I know that men characteristically like things simple and clear, but come on.
Yet, there is something about it that rings true. And not just that it lines up with some of my own preconceived notions of what it means to be a man. But as I think about ideal men, or even the ideal man, those qualities do seem to stand out. In fact, even as I’m reflecting on all this for a few minutes here, the phrase, “Jesus was the man!” is taking on a new meaning.
More on Jesus the manly-man another day.
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