Brian Bill has put together a “Top-ten List” of “You might be a male if . . .”
10. You know stuff about tanks.
9. You can go to the bathroom without a support group.
8. Someone forgets to invite you to something and he can still be your friend.
7. You can drop by to see a friend without bringing a little gift.
6. Another guy shows up at the same party in the same outfit, and you become lifelong buddies.
5. You have one wallet, one pair of shoes, one color, for all seasons.
4. There is always a game on somewhere.
3. Your pals can be trusted never to trap you with, “So… notice anything different?”
2. Something mechanical doesn’t work, and you bash it with a hammer and throw it across the room.
1. You can do your nails with a pocketknife.
When I was growing up we watched television programs like “Father Knows Best,” and a whole genre of programs that were basically written around the same theme. Today the shows could be called, “Father Knows Squat.” Most men in television households are pretty dumb and a bit gross, not to mention incompetent and insensitive. They all seem to have maturity issues. I am unaware of any television shows that has a male figure who is intelligent, sensitive and mature. In fact, this morning I want to show a clip from “Everybody Loves Raymond” to show how men are portrayed in the media. It is a very funny piece, but it also gives you some idea how father’s are depicted. (Show clip, 2 minutes – Raymond’s daughter wants to know, “Why did God put us here?”)
The great thing to me is how many dads we have here this morning who could answer their children’s questions like that one very well. I am grateful for the men of this congregation who demonstrate emotional and spiritual maturity. They provide a positive example of what it means, both to be a man and a man of God. You not only work and provide well for your family, you provide the emotional support for them as well. You spend time with your family and let them know they are important to you. I want to give honor to men today. I want to say that it is a good thing to be a man. The Bible says, “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:4-5). God has crowned you with glory and honor. He has set you over all creation. Along with women, we are the crowning work of God’s creation.
John Eldredge, in the introduction to his excellent book for men entitled Wild at Heart, says, “I know. I almost want to apologize. Dear Lord — do we really need another book for men? Nope. We need something else. We need permission. Permission to be what we are—men made in God’s image. Permission to live from the heart and not from the list of ‘should’ and ‘ought to’ that has left so many of us tired and bored.”
I would like to address some of the issues with which our current culture is trying to brainwash us. I want to do that by helping us to understand how men and women are different. The first thing I want to say is: God created men and women different physically. This should go without saying, but it seems to be a point of contention, and even resentment, from many in the feminist movement. For a number of years now our culture has been using the term unisex and promoting the accompanying philosophy that men and women are basically the same. But that is not true, for beyond the obvious anatomical differences, every cell in our bodies is a male cell with a Y chromosome. Every cell we have is different from a female. Our muscles are different, and we are different in physical strength and makeup.
It was interesting as Annika Sorenstam recently attempted to play in the PGA tour after becoming the No. 1 player in the LPGA. A native of Stockholm, Sweden, she has won several LPGA events this year, already earning nearly $1,000,000. She created a media storm as she endeavored to qualify for the PGA Colonial Golf Championship this year. She was trying to become the first woman ever to play in the PGA’s 58-year history. However, her scores of 71 and 72 disqualified her and she did not make the cut for the tournament. I point this out, because in spite of Sorenstam being the top female golfer in the world, and putting herself through a demanding physical regimen, she cannot compete with the men who are professionals. For one thing, men are simply able to hit the ball farther.
Likewise, in spite of Serena and Venus Williams’ enormous prowess in the world of women’s tennis, they understand that they are no match for the men in the professional circuit. They have enormous strength and skill for women, but the men are quicker and able hit the ball harder and faster. That is just the reality. God must have had a reason for making us different physically. It does not make men better than women, it makes them different. Men are to be protectors. This is why it complicates things in our military when women are placed in combat situations. Men begin to take on the protector role and compromise their role as combatant. The point is that God has made us differently, and instead of trying to be like each other, and compete with each other, we should understand our differences and appreciate them. Women should enjoy being women, and men should enjoy being men.
The second thing I want to point out is that: God created men and women different in temperament. Normally, men do not cry when they get the power sander they always wanted for their birthday. They don’t usually cry when they are mad. Sometimes they don’t even cry when they are sad. At times you might wonder if they have any feelings at all. Men feel things differently, and that is okay. It is okay to be a male and think and feel differently. Again, God has made us that way for a purpose. In more primitive times, if men were awash in tender feelings toward animals their families would have starved to death.
Men are more competitive and aggressive. When they see a problem they want to conquer it. They are generally more goal oriented. Psychologists tell us that women are more oriented toward security and men are more oriented toward significance. That is why a man’s job sometimes becomes too important — he finds significance in his work. He pours himself into his work and career because it is where his need for significance is being met. He sees home as the woman’s domain. And that is normally where her needs for security are being met. She cannot understand why his need for significance is not met in his home, and he cannot understand why she can’t see the importance of his work. As we grow spiritually we find our primary source of significance in our family, but our work may still be tied to our identity.
Because a woman’s temperament is bent toward security my wife has always wanted to have our own home. It has never been something that was important to me. I had too many other things to think about. But because that need is important to her, and I’m finally starting to “get it,” we are going to begin to look for a house.
The difference between male and female temperaments can bee seen very early. One mom told me she would not let her boys play with the dolls in the nursery, because by the time they were through playing soldiers or karate with them, the dolls were not in very good shape. The girls feed the dolls. They tenderly cover them up. They sing to them and pat them. The boys bang them into each other in fighting matches. The girls see the playhouse in the nursery as something to play in. The boys see it as something to climb on.
I am used to the way girls react. I had two daughters, and I now have five granddaughters. We finally got a boy, and it is amazing to see the different ways he reacts. He is drawn to anything that looks like a ball. He loves the cars and trucks in the nursery. He loves to climb the stairs and looks very proud when he has climbed to the top. You never have to beg him to eat.
Our granddaughters will sometimes ask me to lift them into the tree in the backyard. They might stand there for a couple of minutes and then they want down. But we had a couple of boys at our house one day, and they wanted to know if they could go outside. All of a sudden I looked out the window just in time to see one of them jumping out of the top of the tree onto the ground. Males have a desire for adventure. They will flirt with danger in order to experience excitement. The love to take risks. They can’t stand sitting and watching Oprah, but they will sit and watch boxing or football for hours.
John Eldredge says that in the heart of every man are three great desires: “a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.” He challenges, “I want you to thik of the films men love, the things they do with their free time, and especially the aspiration of little boys and see if I am not right on this.” When I think of the great stories of literature, and the great movies of the past and present, they seem to support Eldredge’s claim.
Is it any wonder that men are frequently bored with the God the church has often presented — a God who talks about being gentle and nice and tame, and is himself passionless? Many men see the church as trying to turn us all into clones of Mr. Rogers. I’m not against Mr. Rogers, but we don’t have to speak softly, wear sweaters and soft shoes to be a man of God. Do you think Noah thought of God being tame when he sent the flood waters to ravage the earth? Do you think Pharaoh saw God as gentle when he devastated Egypt? Do you think that the disciples saw Jesus as weak when he calmed the storm and stilled the waves with a shout? Did they see him as timid when he confronted the man possessed by demons. Groups of men had tried to bind this demonized man with chains and he broke lose every time, but Jesus rendered harmless in a matter of minutes. Do you think the Pharisees saw Jesus as nice or dangerous? They were so threatened by him they tried to kill him.
Dorothy Sayers says that the church has “very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah,” making him “a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.” Is that the God that Job knew? Job encountered God and was frightened. He said, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). If you think God is tame go out into the wilderness. . . at night. . . alone. Stand out in a thunderstorm. Walk in a tornado. Go out on Lake Erie when the waves are higher than a house. There is a wildness in God that speaks to the wildness in the male heart. It attracts us to him. His temperament matches our own.
The third point is: God created men and women to live out different roles. We each serve a different, but equally important place in the world and in the home. The writer of Proverbs said, “There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a maiden” (Proverbs 30:18-1). The way men and women react is truly mysterious. We are very different in the ways we approach life and the roles we play in marriage and the family.
Dave Barry, the newspaper columnist, writes about what women want: “To be loved, to be listened to, to be desired, to be respected, to be needed, to be trusted, and sometimes, just to be held.” Then he writes about what men want: “Tickets for the World Series.” Actually, men also want to be loved, listened to, desired, respected, needed, trusted and held. And when they are they might take their wives with them to the Word Series.
What this is saying is that God has built something into us that makes us different in temperament from each other. And if God has done that, there must be a purpose for it. Differences in God-given temperament lead to different God-given roles. The purpose is this: leadership. God is calling men to be leaders — leaders in the world, leaders in the church and leaders in the home. The world tries to make us passive and retreat, but God is calling us to step forward to be the leaders he has designed us to be. This is not easy, because being a leader means accepting responsibility. The old idea that since a man is supposed to be the head of the household, therefore he calls all the shots and always gets his way, is an ugly distortion of biblical teaching. Headship does not mean bossing people around, it means accepting responsibility. It means serving the people in your home. You accept the responsibility for the financial well-being of the family, the physical and emotional well-being of the family, and the spiritual well-being of the family. A man who is living out the maleness of his heart takes this on as a great privilege. Those who run from God and their true nature run from this responsibility. But those who understand what God has created them to be take this on as a great quest and delight in the challenge.
Even when we fail, we pick up and keep going. Many of you have seen the film The Patriot. Mel Gibson plays the role of the patriot Benjamin Martin who is a reluctant soldier in the Revolutionary War. However, his 18-year-old son, Gabriel, is eager to join the battle. Throughout the first half of the movie, young Gabriel carefully repairs an American flag he found in the dirt. But, tragically, as the war presses on, Gabriel becomes a casualty of the war. Holding his son, Martin is ready to quit the cause and go home. While Martin grieves at the side of his dead son, his commanding officer, Colonel Burwell, tries to persuade him not to quit. Martin has great influence with the other soldiers, and the colonel knows that if he quits it would be demoralizing to the rest of the troops. “Stay the course, Martin,” the colonel tells the grief stricken father. “Stay the course.” “I’ve run the course,” Martin replies. Sure that Martin has made up his mind, the colonel tells the troops that he is leaving and they ride away dejected. But as Martin gathers his son’s personal effects, he finds the flag that Gabriel had so carefully restored. The next scene shows Martin in the distance, charging toward the regiment, carrying the flag. His heart is fixed and fearless as he rides tall in the saddle. His face is set like flint. He will not let defeat or grief stop him. He uses them as motivators. He is a leader and symbol of perseverance for the men. When they see him, there is a triumphant shout from the once-weary troops as they see the patriot crest the hill.
The real man, the real leader, is not the one who never fails or makes a mistake, but the one who picks himself up and keeps on going in spite of adversity. He faces life with courage and determination in spite of the setbacks or dangers, for he is a man — God’s man.
Rodney J. Buchanan
June 15, 2003 - Father’s Day
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
Male and Female Created He Them
Questions for June 15, 2003
1. What are some of the things that you find mysterious about the opposite sex?
2. What are some of the things that you think are the strengths of the opposite sex?
3. How are men portrayed in the television sitcoms? What do you feel is the reason for this?
4. How are children usually portrayed? What do you feel might be the reason for this?
5. Why did God create us male and female?
6. What are the qualities of maleness from God’s perspective?
7. How does our culture go against God’s plan for males?
8. How does our culture go against God’s plan for females?
9. How are you trying to live out God’s plan for your role as a male/female?
10. Read Matthew 22:23-30. Why do you believe this is so?
