MinistrytoMen

One of the most disturbing movies of our time is the violence-filled Fight Club. Almost all of the reviewers I read panned the movie as filled with excessive violence, but it has been a movie that I haven't been able to get off my mind. I am not recommending the movie, but I believe it makes a disturbing point about men.

Edward Norton plays the narrator, Jack, who is a mild-mannered employee of a major automobile manufacturer who is suffering from a bout of insomnia. Jack is a man who is whipped by the mind-numbing day-to-day drudgery of his dull white-collar job. He has an empty fondness for material things and an utter absence of anything to make him feel alive.

When he visits his doctor for a remedy, the disinterested physician tells him to stop whining. He suggests that if Jack wants to meet some people who really have problems, he should visit a support group for testicular cancer survivors. So Jack does exactly that, and he soon discovers that interacting with these victims gives him an emotional release that allows him to sleep. Soon, he is addicted to attending support group meetings, and has one lined up for each night of the week.

Then on an airplane he meets Tyler Durden, a soap salesman, played by Brad Pitt. Soon the two of them begin to physically fight each other as a means of release and rebirth. Soon, others find out about this unique form of therapy, and Fight Club is born, an underground organization that encourages men to beat up each other. The only way these men can regain a sense of their manhood is by getting in touch with the primal instincts of pain and violence.

The movie is really a psychological thriller, but this point about men is plain. It says that nothing in modern man's existence feeds their need for finding adventure, expressing aggression, and inflicting pain. The movie implies that men are beasts at heart and must turn to violence to become real men.

Sometimes it seems that the Bible supports that view. Most of you know that I am making a quick read through the Bible as my first book of the new year. I am currently in 1 Chronicles, and hope to finish the Bible in January. I have once again been struck by the depictions of men in the Old Testament. The favorite phrase used in the King James for admirable men is "mighty men of valor." Isn't that a great term?

These "mighty men of valor" were the warriors of Israel. They were heroes of the nation, they were real men because they were mighty warriors. Remember the favorite sayings comparing Saul and David. "Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands."

Those were times when the qualifications for being a real man were very clear. You go out to battle with a sword in your hand, or in the case of Samson with the jawbone of an ass, and you kill as many men as possible. You return from battle to be declared a mighty man of valor.

There are still occasions when such bravery is called for. Certainly the free world owes a debt of gratitude to brave men like those who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944. We are right to respect the soldiers who braved the deserts of Kuwait in 1991. And soldiers may soon be required to fight mighty battles again. Because of the sinfulness of humankind, wars are still a reality. When war comes, such mighty men of valor are really needed.

But war is not the intent of God. Surely our conduct in war is not the true measure of a man! I hope and pray that our world is coming to a place where a man can be a real man without having to kill another real man. If we read the Bible rightly, we can find a higher truth there.

For the truth is that many mighty men of valor don't return home to victory parades. War means that hundreds and thousands of families back home suffer terrible pain and loss. Loved ones grieve for years over the death of the one they loved. And some of us cannot help but wonder about the families of all those Philistines, Moabites, and Jebusites. Surely the intention of God for manhood has to be about more than blood and guts.
There is something terribly tragic about war. We should learn to hate war, not love it. And certainly we should not define our manhood by it.

And where does that leave the rest of us, the millions of men who have been fortunate enough to make our living on peace, not war. How are we to define our manhood without war, without bloodshed, and without the battlefield?
Most men today punch a clock, work for living to provide for their families. They don't have battles to fight, thank God. But sometimes that drudgery of modern work takes something out of a man's spirit. Serving only as a cog in the wheel of a large corporation doesn't give men a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Perhaps this same meaninglessness that leads many to turn to drugs and alcohol is also fueling the desire of so many to participate in the men's movements.

Many men in our culture have translated the battle imagery to games. If men did not have the opportunity to fight wars, they could still prove themselves on the field. Football, basketball and baseball provided venues for boys to become mighty men of valor.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying sports. But we should never forget that any sport is just a game. We surely cannot define our manhood by the won-lost column in the newspapers. I know there is more to a man than that!

Others apply all the blood and guts ideology to hunting wild game. A real man is one who has smeared the blood of a deer on his face. I don't have anything against deer hunting, squirrel hunting, or duck hunting; I've done all three. But I think there is something wrong with our idea of a man when our meaning is found in killing harmless animals or birds.

Men are certainly looking for adventure and competition. It is one thing to enjoy games and sports. It is quite another to claim one is not a man unless he wins the game or kills the buck.

And it is a cruel distortion of true recreation when we become overly obsessed with winning. There's something wrong with our recreation when we agree with George Steinbrenner when he said, "Second place is really the first loser." (1)

Some have even tried to apply this battle imagery to the Christian life. They sing "Onward Christian Soldiers." But some of us don't think that warrior imagery represents the highest values in the Christian life.

I would suggest to you that most people's conception of what makes a real man is simply immature manhood. It seems that many people today have the idea of manhood that is not much above that of the Village People. Remember their catchy song "Macho Man." "Macho, macho man, I've got to be, a macho man." But did you ever read all the words to that song. "Body, its so hot, my body, Body, love to pop my body, Body, love to please my body, Body, don't you tease my body…" And for some men, their definition of manhood is about their muscles. (2)

We should identify much of that tendency to battle and competitiveness in men as a result of the Fall of Man. Too many men have climbed the corporate ladder and found nothing but vanity at the top. Too many men have yearned to prove themselves in war, but have only sold out to the very lowest and most violent nature within a man. Some have returned from the battlefield and beat their wives and children. It is our sinful nature that leads to violence and separation from others.

John the Baptist brought all this to my mind. When I read our text for today, I was struck by the fact that John was what many would call a "man's man." John the Baptist fits much of the popular conception of a man's man. He was rough and rugged. He moved to the wilderness, lived with the animals, ate locusts and wild honey and dressed in itchy clothing. He was also bold and heroic. He didn't hesitate to preach an unpopular message, even directing some of his harshest critiques at the king himself.
And there must have been some kind of men's movement in the first century because the crowds came to the wilderness to hear the manly proclaimer of God. He was a wild man.

Many people still think that term "wild man" is the best description of a man's man. One of the most popular books in the Christian men's movement right now is one entitled Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. When I went to the local Christian bookstore this week to get a copy, the owner asked me who was promoting this book. He said he can't keep them on the shelves because so many men are buying them.

In the book the author says, “The church told me that my highest aspiration as a man was to be a ‘nice guy.’ I tried that - it absolutely killed me. Was this the abundant life Jesus talked about? I knew this couldn’t be true. It robbed my marriage of all passion; it left me frustrated, bored and angry. And that’s where most Christian men are today.”

So Eldredge leads self-discovery seminars using clips from movies such as Gladiator, Braveheart, and Indiana Jones. He preaches that men are most alive when they have an adventure to live, a beauty to win and a battle to fight.
I was not particularly impressed with his three-fold formula. It seemed to come more from movies, fairy tales and fables than from the Bible. And I strongly disagreed with his fundamentalist attitude about the relationships between men and women. Surely today women want more from a man than to be rescued like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel.

I think we should look very carefully at the message of the wild man, John the Baptist. He was a man's man, but what was his message?

He pointed to the One who represented the New Real Man. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John the Baptist was saying that Jesus is the man's man. If we want to be real men, then we don't have to eat locust and wild honey; we have to be like Jesus.

In Jesus, John saw that law would give way to grace, that water would give way to fire, that stamina was not about the strength of one’s actions, but the character of one’s heart. He rightly sees Jesus as the New Man - or as the apostle Paul would call him - the Second Adam; a revolutionary new approach to spirituality unheard of in his own day.

John, who himself had been the benchmark of spiritual success, now points his disciples in a new direction. In the future, he announces, Jesus will be the model whose life we will emulate.

Another popular book about men just now is entitled, The Men We Long to Be by Stephen Boyd. He suggests that the restlessness shown in the popular movies and men's movements is simply our misdirected efforts to fulfill a deep spiritual longing within us. We long to be more than we are. We long for a purpose and a challenge to give our lives meaning.
The Bible would tell us that a mature man is created in the image of God. A real man is one who like Jesus is committed to justice, strength, intelligence, and compassionate connection.