Everyday, I seem to find something new to tell me that this world is getting weirder and weirder. Now people are saying that men are wrong just for being men. I guess that you may think I have been living in a closet, since there have been people saying such things for a while, but I had not seen such gross prejudice displayed until recently.

This past week, it was a mention from some news program about the MasculinUT program at the University of Texas at Austin (https://www.inquisitr.com/4884615/texas-university-masculinity-restrictive-masculinut-treats-toxic-masculinity-as-a-mental-health-issue/). There they are trying to address masculinity as a mental disorder. This is crazy as women are just as guilty of bullying and violence as men.

Also, several weeks ago I was at the gym. There was a guy working there who, when I was leaving, accused me of something untrue and impolite. I denied it and his response was to call me outside to beat my brains out. It was a totally inappropriate response, which cost him his job.

A lot of men are confused with what it means to be a man or how much of a man are they allowed to be. I am not saying that I have any answers. However it is pretty clear that a lot of men are really messed up. I think men today are so desperate that they look to movies or sports stars or Lady Gaga to figure out what it means to be a man and how much they can express it.

Again, I don’t know and I don’t claim to have it all figured out.

However, I would like to point to one man for some ideas about how to be a man, who was a man. That was my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ/Yeshua Bar Joseph/Joshua or however you care to address Him. I think since He is part of the Creator of Men, He would have some idea about manliness.

He was not afraid of women. Jesus interacted with women on numerous occasions in the Gospels. He was not afraid to talk to them in public, something that good Jews did NOT do. He traveled with them, He ate with them, He taught them. He accepted them and looked at them as His father saw them. He even appeared to them first after His resurrection. We too, need to ask the Lord to allow Him to show us how we should see women. That is a tough one, especially today with the influences of feminism and porn which are so pervasive. Remember God’s ways come before political correctness or feminism.

He was not afraid of hard-work. He lectured and spoke to the crowds and was not afraid to go the extra-mile to make a point. A great example of this is when He went to Jarius’ house. He constantly was impressed with others who went to great lengths to meet Him and be healed by Him. The women with the blood-flow, the Centurion, the group of men who went as far as to take the roof off of the house that Jesus was in, to lower the paralytic to Him, come to mind. There are many other examples. Studying the Bible and spending time with God are such difficult things to make time for. Yet, like the paralytic in the stretcher or the blind man on the road, we need to be persist and have faith that the Lord will reward such behavior. When wrestling with the angel, “I will not let you go until you bless me!”, Jacob said.

He was willing to suffer for His mission. He knew that to accomplish what God had Him to do, it was not going to be easy. He knew that the Earth was going to be hot (especially in the Middle East), dirty, there were going to be few who listened to Him, and even more that wanted to silence Him. Yet He came anyway and endured with His view of Heaven before Him. He knew that the nails in His wrists or hands were going to hurt and that His friends were going to betray Him. He even said, ‘Hey God, uh…if there is another way, Hey! I am alllll for it! But not my will, but yours be done.’ Just like Him, we need to aspire to that kind of manliness. We need to be willing to do the things that need doing to accomplish something greater.

He loved and prayed for His enemies and for those who just were not so bright. He did not bully anyone into accepting His path or His teachings. He did not judge those who were different than Him. The Samaritan woman at the well comes to mind. He did call her sin, “a sin” but He did not judge her as evil or bad. He also did not condemn the woman caught in adultery. These are two more women who He was not afraid of. He constantly was praying for His disciples for God to help them to understand what He meant. He also prayed for those people when He was on the cross dying for them. even though they put Him up there.

Remember that next time someone impugns your manhood!!!

I prayed many times for that kid from the gym. I prayed that he would understand what he did wrong and learn not to try to solve conflicts with his fists in his next job, especially with a customer. Praise be to God. That does not make a man.

I am not saying that those are the ONLY true expressions of being a man. I am also not saying that those are the only ways that Jesus expressed being a man. However, I do know that there are a lot of confused men out there, probably more than in the past 30-40 years. If that is due to a lack of fathers (in my opinion, there is also a war on fathers) or TV or games on mobile devices or Justin Bieber, I do not know. but I do believe that you should look to Jesus for truer expressions of manliness than the University of Texas at Austin could ever give.

Psalm 1:1-3 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

——————————————W.