Let the Men be Men!
Ken Stoltzfus
It happens over and over. Good men are made to feel inferior
because the church's definition of spirituality is based on feminine
responsiveness and expression. Men are judged as less spiritual because they
respond as men.
I've seen some really neat
guys whose wife and her female friends were sure couldn't possibly be a serious
Christian. They were too quiet about their faith. They didn't go to the altar as
often as their wife and may not have raised their hands in worship. And they
probably weren't dashing here and there chasing the latest religious fad.
Yet I saw these men listening
carefully. They were contemplative. Their faith was increasingly affecting
their life. They loved their families, and their servant hearts led them to do
many things unnoticed in the church. Their walk with God was visible to those
who had eyes to see.
God made man and woman very unalike.
Our obvious physical differences are symbolic of the inner dissimilarities in emotion
and thought processes which help shape our walk with God.
We men typically think more
"big picture" and more contemplatively than our wives. The urgency of
the moment is not as important as how it impacts the overall. We often watch
and wait to see how something pans out over time before plunging in. We're more
likely to change deeply, than quickly.
Women are not at the altar
more often than men because they love God more. It is because they express
their response to Him differently than us. Women are not more spiritual than
men because they talk about God and His work in their life more than us. They
do that because they are more verbal and more feeling based than us.
I'm tired of seeing men set aside because others, even pastors, don't
understand masculine spirituality. Because of our misguided expectations we
have discouraged many good men in their pursuit of godliness. They couldn't be
something they were not. Some tried to fulfill expectations and became
spiritually feminized. Even emasculated. And others quite trying because they
were not accepted for what they were. They just backed off and went for the
ride, as we say.
Not infrequently, women find
it hard to release spiritual leadership in the home to their husband,
especially if she has been walking with God longer than him. He may have a
meaningful spiritual walk and a concern for his family, but he doesn't meet her
definition of spirituality. So she plods along year after year, bearing the
burden of leadership and asking others to pray for her husband so he can become
the spiritual head of the home. Her expectations will need to change before he
can meet them.
Men, be a man. Walk
confidently but humbly in your masculine spirituality. Go deep with God in your
own way. Try to understand yourself and how you experience God, and communicate
as best you can with your wife. God created her with a greater need to communicate
and she needs to hear something from
you! But don't let anyone manipulate
you into responding in an artificial way. God made you a man - - be a man!
Pastors, some of those quieter
guys on the fringes are a whole lot more real than some of the
"flash" in the middle of the action. They are the thoughtful, steady
and strong guys who will work alongside you for the long pull if you are
willing to accept them for who God made them to be.
Born in 1940, Ken
Stoltzfus has worked as a pilot, ordained Christian minister, businessman,
missionary to Africa and writer. This is #8 in his series, "The View from
up Life's Path", and is one of many short articles that can be found at www.flyinghigher.net
© 2003, Ken Stoltzfus, flyinghigher.net, P.O. Box 548, Apple
Creek, OH 44606 USA. May be printed for personal use and may be reproduced for
non-commercial purposes without further permission if proper acknowledgment is
given and a copy is sent to the author.
