Broken male culture – part 1

I don’t recall now exactly what the trigger was, but at some point back in December I wrote 3 poems on what I call broken male culture. Rather than just throw them on my blog I had been intending to write a couple of pieces to book end the poems. Well, intending has taken a long time to materialize into doing, but here we go, on Palm Sunday of all days I am beginning my look at the down side of today’s western culture.

So what do I mean by broken male culture? Look around, it’s not hard to see, men everywhere failing as fathers, struggling with their demons so much that industries have been created just to satisfy their craving for medication. Sure, you could say well that’s just life, not everyone is the same, it’s not hurting anything etc etc. The problem is, it is hurting, it is destroying lives. It is tearing marriages apart, broken men are leading women into brokenness, they are leading their children into brokenness. The sad thing is half the time they don’t even know it, half the time they are doing it absent from the people who they should be caring for.

I know, it is easy for me to say, I’m closer to 40 now than 30 and 20 seems like another lifetime ago (actually it was).  The thing is, I see broken male culture so clearly because I was a part of it for a long time. It defined my life until I met Jesus. I thought it was normal, I thought it was ok, I thought that was as good as life got (thank God for how wrong I was).  If it wasn’t for supernatural intervention, I dread to think where I would be today, or even if I would be today. The chances are you wouldn’t know because I wouldn’t be writing this.

Am I some kind of educated expert? No, I’m just a guy with a blog, a man on a journey to be a better me and as close to God as my sorry hide can figure out how to be. I am someone who walked away from seeking acceptance in things and places that could not give me life back and instead found acceptance in the One that gave me life.

I live today with a peace, an inner joy, that I couldn’t have comprehended ten years ago. I live with hope and with purpose; life makes sense today, ten years ago life made little sense to me. As a result I am a vastly better husband today that I was 10 years ago, I am a better father, a better friend all around just a better person. What caused that to happen? Nothing I did, all I did was have an encounter with Jesus that changed my destiny. My life is so much more today, so incredibly better that I couldn’t begin to fully put it into words. My great desire is to help others find that joy that I have found. So here I am, a guy with a blog and some thoughts on the world in which I live in. Which after all, is pretty much what having a blog is all about anyway.

Sure there are all kinds of problems in the world, however you will never convince me that if we could get men to start acting like real men, not emotionally stunted wanna be macho play boys. Then the vast majority of society’s ills would be solved. If men acted with honor instead of dishonor, respect instead of abuse, if a man’s word was once again his bond. Then how different would our society look? If daughters had real fathers raising and nurturing them, how many of them would stop seeking affection and acceptance in the arms of abusive partners or medicating their pains away? How many sons would grow into real men that honor their family and commitments and act with at least a modicum of self-discipline, if they were built up, given identity, had their masculinity bestowed upon them by their father in the way that life is designed to work?

What if there were enough of these men, freed from the traps of the world, to form an uprising, a revolt that could infiltrate the world. What if it got into the media and instead of celebrating people who can kick or throw or joke or pretend to be someone else really well, we started to celebrate people who were feeding the poor, helping the hurting, healing the broken. What if?

I know, I’m a romantic dreamer at heart, but what if? Maybe not the whole world but what about my world, what about your world? What if we all made the conscious effort to just be a little better. What if we all made the conscious effort to not say “I’m a Christian” and instead acted like someone who really believes Jesus is real and the bible is true. What if we really took the command to love each other to heart? How much better would your small part of the world be with a little more love in it? The funny thing with love is, it is infectious, the more your love, the more those around you will love. The more love there is, the more chance we have to get broken people moving towards a place of healing, a place of life change. Trust me on this, once a broken person has their life changed, once they have been healed, we have a drive to share it with others like you wouldn’t believe. So love a broken person this week, look past who they appear to be and into who they were made to be; help the scales to fall from their eyes and let Jesus bring them into their destiny.