I was pretty much over blogging about this issue for a while until I came across this article in the LA Times, Manliness is next to godliness.
Hey, do I think we might have wandered away from Jesus’ message in the last couple of thousands of years and possibly have domesticated him in the process a little bit. If I need to agree on something I could agree on that. But this other stuff is just crazy. Just read some of the excerpts on what it means to be a godly man according to this article, highlighting Brad Stine and his revival meeting called “GodMen.”
Excerpt #1:
In fact, men taking charge is a big theme of the GodMen revival. At what he hopes will be the first of many such conferences, in a warehouse-turned-nightclub in downtown Nashville, Stine asks the men: “Are you ready to grab your sword and say, ‘OK, family, I’m going to lead you?’ ” He also distributes a list of a real man’s rules for his woman. No. 1: “Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down.”
Are you kidding me? Why don’t you just put the toilet seat down yourself. We are talking about toilet seats here, but under the guise of humor is the idea that women need to be the ones submitting and not the man. What happened to mutal submission that Paul talks about in Ephesians 5.
Excerpt #2:
But some men at the conference run into trouble when they debut their new attitudes at home. Eric Miller, a construction worker, admits his wife is none too pleased when he takes off, alone, on a weekend camping trip a few weeks after the GodMen conference this fall.
“She was a little bit leery of it, as we have an infant,” he reports. “She said, ‘I need your help around here.'”
Miller, 26, refuses to yield: “I am supposed to be the leader of the family.”
He’s pretty sure his wife will come around once she recognizes he’s modeling his life after Jesus’, like a good Christian should. It’ll just take a little explaining, because the Jesus he has in mind is the guy on the wanted poster: “confrontational and sarcastic when he needed to be,” Miller says, and determined to use “whatever means was necessary to achieve his goal.”
When was leaving your wife and infant at home alone so you can go out into the wilderness a from of modeling your life after Jesus and being a good leader. Seems more like avoiding the difficulties of life and the difficulties of laying one’s life down for each other….just retreat into the woods instead. Sorry for sounding harsh, but I just think this is the wrong message to be sending to men.
You can read the rest of the article and find out that part of being a godly man is lacing your vocabulary with profanity as well.
I have had a lot of great male role models in my life. And none of them were or needed to be about this.
