The high school in my home town had only a handful of sports in its athletic program. For girls there was basketball, gymnastics, track, and golf. For boys there was golf, track, baseball, basketball, and—of course—football. The other day I was talking with one of my high school buddies and we were reminiscing about particular football games. He was a star receiver and defensive back, and my job was to nurse his bruised and battered body back to health. Our little trip back in time reminded me of one of our head coach’s favorite phrases. Actually I remembered several, but most of them I cannot repeat in polite company. The phrase he used over and over again was probably the most effective thing he said: “What kind of man are you?” Looking back, it is very clear that we were all adolescent boys, or perhaps you could be generous and say that we were very young men. But that question had a way of instilling both fear and courage in you. And we all learned that if you could survive football, you might actually grow up to be a man.

In our continuing Sunday series about having a real faith for the real world in which we live, we are looking at the real relationships we all experience in life. Much of what we can say and learn about relationships must be informed by our knowledge and beliefs about the fundamental identity we develop as either men or women. And so, in this, my first sermon as a fifty-year-old man, I want to talk about that question, “What kind of man are you?” And if the women want to listen in, that’s ok with me.

One of the ways I learn about what is current in people’s minds about things is to peruse the magazines for sale in airports. You can learn a lot just by looking at the covers. A recent issue of a best-selling men’s health magazine listed these headlines: “10 Ways to Grow Muscle Fast!, Look Your Best Ever!, 100 Instant Upgrades, 15 Foods That Fight Fat, 759 Cool Sex, Stress, Nutrition & Fitness Tips, The Easy Way to Hard Abs!, 8 Pains You Must Never Ignore, Exclusive—Retire Rich!, and 139 Quick Health Fixes.”ⁱ Another one had these: “The 20 Questions You Need to Ask Your Doctor, The 10 Best Suits Under $500, and Five Great Meals Every Guy Should Know How to Cook.”ⁱⁱ Apparently, being a man involves muscles, money, meals, and cool clothes.

There are many other views of what makes for manhood, though. Another version was immortalized in a poem written 101 years ago by Rudyard Kipling. Some of the lines of that poem go like this:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!ⁱⁱⁱ

What makes a man a man? There are many versions of manhood to serve as examples. You can pick John Wayne or James Dean, Tom Cruise or Tom Selleck, “Dutch” Reagan or Dagwood Bumstead. You can heed the common wisdom that real men don’t cry and real men don’t eat quiche or that real men don’t wear pink. For several decades our American culture has debated manhood, with a major revision prompted by the women’s liberation movement in the 1960’s and a backlash against that revision that reasserted “true” manliness, epitomized in some sense by Sam Keen’s book Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, published 15 years ago. Keen begins his book with this little poem:

A man must go on a quest
To discover the sacred fire
In the sanctuary of his own belly
To ignite the flame in his heart
To fuel the blaze in the hearth
To rekindle his ardor for the earth^iv

Hey, guys, sort of makes you want to sit in a circle around a fire and beat a drum, doesn’t it?

Frankly, I don’t know how you would go about deciding what information to trust from all the stuff that is out there when it comes to learning how to be a man. For Christians, though, that decision has already been made. We who follow Christ believe that in Jesus and his way of life we already have the best information available about the most important questions, and so we look first to him and to his disciples for clues about the things that matter to us. When it comes to the question of what it takes to be a man, some very helpful and profound thoughts come from Paul’s letter of advice to the young pastor Timothy: “But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Throughout his letter, Paul has written about the ways of the world in which he and Timothy lived, and those ways were not really so different from the world today. What the world taught about the successful life, then as now, had to do with power, money, sex, fulfilling your appetites, getting ahead, running your own life. But in God’s eyes, a man who is mature and fulfilled lives by a different set of priorities and agendas. “But as for you, man of God,” there is a different way. And that different way begins as a man decides not to follow his own path in life, but to follow instead the path that God sets before him. To read any of the common wisdom from modern culture today is to learn that a man is someone who is master of his own destiny, captain of his own ship, lord of his own life and in control of everything around him. But not so with a Christian man. A Christian man is actually a slave, a servant, of someone else, who just happens to be, in Paul’s words, the “King of kings and Lord of lords,” a pretty impressive fellow! What kind of man are you? A Christian man must answer that he is a man who has surrendered control of his life to someone else, therefore every decision he makes, every path he follows, every aspect of masculine identity he develops, is subject to the will and plan of someone else, to Jesus, the quintessential man.

Once this primary decision is made, the rest follows from it. And so, rather than hard abs and cool clothes, the Christian man’s fundamental focus is on the things that Jesus considered important: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. There is nothing wrong with being healthy and educated and capable of functioning successfully in today’s world. But the most important things have to do with qualities that the world often ignores, or at least, discounts. It’s not often that you see a magazine cover with headlines like, “10 Steps to Being a Loving Man, Righteousness on a Shoestring, Endurance is Not For Wimps!, and 422 Ways to Stretch Your Faith!” There are plenty of other lists in scripture of what God wants in a man. All of them have to do with interior spiritual qualities that result in outward works of mercy, love, kindness, justice, and faithfulness to the only true God. What God celebrates in a man is the courage to do his will when that can be the most unpopular thing to do, the patience to work through love and service rather than dominance and power, the selflessness to seek the good of other people before your own good, the wisdom to pour your energy into relationships with your family and friends at least as much as into your career, and the discipline to slug away at life day after day in order to be there for those you love, no matter what comes.

As Paul writes to Timothy, he speaks in terms that men can understand in such a fundamental way. “Fight the good fight…take hold of the eternal life.” If men are the physically stronger and emotionally more aggressive of the two genders, then Paul is using the right words with Timothy. “Fight!” “Take hold!” I don’t mean to suggest that women aren’t capable of winning battles. But in most cultures it is the men who do indeed serve as the warriors and protectors. Such fighting is a crucial part of life in the realm of the spiritual as well, though so many of us simply refuse to see that reality. It is a huge lie that religion is only for women and children and men who are too timid to take care of themselves. Real religion is a battleground between good and evil, between truth and lies, between life and death. And spiritual testosterone is badly needed there. The hardest enemy to conquer is yourself. The most cunning opponent is the devil. The most dangerous battlefield is your heart and your mind and yes, even your soul. A Christian man is the kind of man who is honest and wise enough to know that the realm of faith and spirit is not so safe and tame as one might initially imagine, and that it takes real courage and grit to wrestle with Satan, and sometimes, to wrestle with God.

John Eldridge has written about Christian manhood, and he comments that, “There are three desires I find written so deeply into my heart I know now I can no longer disregard them without losing my soul. They may be misplaced, forgotten, or misdirected, but in the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”^v Bill Perkins has written a fascinating little book entitled, Six Battles Every Man Must Win. He talks about men as being “warriors,” who must live a focused life, who know they’re part of a cosmic battle, and who fight for what’s most important. The six battles all Christian men must fight, he says, are the fight for your identity, for personal holiness, for family, through pain, for your friends, and for a strong faith.

Napoleon once said that, “Men, in general, are but great children.” And we all know the truth of that, don’t we? But Carlyle said, “Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are, for it shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of man you long to be.” I have been blessed with many men in my life who have shown me what true Christian manhood is all about. Someone once said that the difference between men and women is that women know all about their children, about their dentist appointments and romances, their best friends and favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams, while men are only vaguely aware of some short people living in the house. I suppose there are men like that, but the men I admire are like my friend, the late Jim Formhals, or my brother, Ted, whose wives left them with very young children to rear on their own, and who did an admirable job as the primary caregiver in a role that society tends to think only women can fulfill. Or let me tell you about Coach Roy Johnson, who was one of the other football coaches in my life. One day after a really bad practice, Coach Johnson did what most football coaches do at one time or another, as he let us have it with both barrels until the air was blue. But then, he did what most football coaches don’t do, and he apologized to the whole team for losing his temper and using language that he said was “unbecoming a Christian gentleman.” Or let me tell you about Edward Perry, who several years ago committed all his financial resources so he could start an orphanage in Tijuana, and who now works nonstop to provide a safe, Christian home for the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak, just a few miles from where you and I enjoy lives of amazing blessing. Or let me tell you about my dad, who loved a young woman whom he knew was going to die, but he married her anyway so that he could take care of her in the last few years of her life.

Or let me tell you about…Jesus. Here was a man who lived in the glory of heaven, and yet he came to this earth, to a poor and despised people, to live as one of them, so that you and I could know that God up in his heaven loves us. Here was a man who we now know was the divine Logos, the reason and wisdom that undergirds all things, who took the time to visit with common fishermen and tax collectors to teach them the fundamentals about God. Here was a man who had the power of the universe at his fingertips, and yet he chose to give it all up and die as a disgraced criminal, so that you and I would not have to die forever. Here was a man so strong, so wise, so loving, so totally amazing in all respects, that his few brief years on earth have forever changed the human family, and whose impact still is growing and changing lives today.

We can talk all we want about this or that quality or characteristic or model of manhood, but what really matters is the examples we see, the men we know, who by their lives show us something of what God wants in men. Whether you are a man or a woman, you know a man or two who embodies the best qualities of Christian manhood. And as I’ve mentioned a few from my life, you’ve thought of them, haven’t you? I hope so. We need to thank God for them. But we need to do more than that. If you’re a woman, you need to encourage the men in your life to be Godly men. And if you’re a man, you need to ask yourself this question: Am I the kind of man of whom others might say, “There is an example of what God wants a man to be?”

Amen.

ⁱMen’s Health, May 2006.
ⁱⁱGentleman’s Quarterly,, October 2006.
ⁱⁱⁱIf, by Rudyard Kipling
^ivBantam Press, New York.
^vWild at Heart, p. 9.