Previous Post – Wild Goose Synchroblog

I remember the first time another guy called me out to fight.  I was in my early teens and another kid at the community center just didn’t like me.  He told me he was going to kick my ass the moment I stepped outside, so I had better be ready to fight back.  I swallowed hard, fear rising in my gut.  I glanced around frantically, but there was no one around to help.

As I stepped into the sunshine that day, the first thing that caught my eye across the street was our little white, steepled church.  In that instant I knew I could not fight this other boy.  When he appeared with his buddy in tow, I informed him that I wasn’t going to fight him.  He snickered and attacked.  In a matter of seconds he had me in a head-lock, frustratedly demanding that I fight back.  He swore at me, called me names- even as a kid I wondered why calling me a little girl was supposed to upset me- but refuse to punch me until I struck at him.  I wouldn’t do it.

Eventually he let me go and got in my face, his buddy right beside him.  I wasn’t going to run, no matter how badly I wanted to.  Something deep down inside me told me that he needed to know that I was not restraining myself simply out of fear.  So I stood there and said nothing.  They shoved me.  They called me names.  Finally, in a moment of dark inspiration and fed up with my lack of response, they took turns spitting thick gobs of phlegm into my face.  And I did nothing.

That is the day I truly believe I became a man.

When they finally walked away and I wiped the spittle from my face, I expected to feel waves of revulsion, shame and hatred overwhelm me- after all, anyone who knew me as a kid knows I had a violent temper.  Instead, a deep and painfully beautiful peace settled over me.  I sensed the Holy Spirit in a way I had never experienced at point in my life (and rarely since).

Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near…

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Far from the skinny kid I was back then, I am now a fairly big guy.  No one would use the term “effeminate” to describe- at least those who would presume that to be pejorative.  I’ve had amazing men model manhood to me, including my wonderful, athletic, “guys-guy” of a father.  I’ve been happily and healthily married to my wife for almost 10 years.  I am a pastor and an urban missionary in one of our city’s more troubled (and beautiful) neighbourhoods.  I saw all this because, as an adult, I’ve never had to defend my masculinity.  So this post is not an attempt to justify myself.  There is no need to.

However, because of the experiences of my youth and what I have seen through the 20 years I have been in ministry, I felt it was important to say something about this topic.  I am a man.  I would like to believe that, most of the time, I am also a godly man.  Further- and here’s the critical point- while fully a man, my godliness is as “effeminate” and it is “masculine”, because so is my God.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

I was raised in a Christian home, going to a rural, evangelical church.  Like many churches then and now, it did not take me long to realize that a significant portion of the ministry of church was sustained and carried forward by women of all ages.  While our church always had men in the pastorate- good men!- we all knew the story of how our church was formed primarily out of the ministry of a young woman.  I grew up watching women organize events, cook meals, teach Sunday school, raise families and so much more.  And though I knew from what my family taught me that women could (and should) be free to do more than just these “traditional” roles, even in those tasks I learned godliness in deep and profound ways.

All too often we want to grab hold of cultural norms- be they healthy or otherwise- and universalize them as “biblical absolutes”.  The results of such choices lead to the alienation and marginalization of many people who are held back from being the authentic, godly individuals they were created to be.  In an age where people will quickly denounce someone a heretic for the wording of their articulated theology, why are we not incensed over these incarnated blasphemies against the nature of God, in whose image women and men are equally created?

I am part of the church, the Bride of Christ.  To be so identified with some beautiful and sensual a figure as she relates to Jesus does not disturb me.  Why should it?  It is a humbling and moving reality that I embrace, turning to my sisters in the Church to teach me about that aspect of God and godliness that I could never begin to explore without their place at my side as teacher, pastor, guide, mother, sister, aunt, author, bishop, babysitter, friend and leader.

Some say there is a crisis of masculinity in the church.  I agree.  Godly masculinity is being threatened every time “effeminate” or “feminine” are used as criticism.  Godly masculinity is diminished every time we buy into the hateful distortion of sin that equates strength with dominance and violence.  Godly masculinity is twisted every time we deny a person’s role in marriage and the family based upon their gender.  Godly masculinity is tarnished whenever we seek to justify inequity and subjugation through the language of “roles” and “nature”.  More than this, the God in whose image we are made becomes that much more obscured from us and watching world when we buy into the lies of the “machismo man”.

In a few weeks, my wife and I will be bringing home our first child- a little 3 year old boy that we adopted from Ethiopia.  Given the dynamics of work, our sense of vocation and the strengths each of bring into the marriage, I will be the primary caregiver- a stay-at-home Dad.

I can think of few other things that better express my godly masculinity.