Defeminized and Remasculated Men...

artsy fartsy.  mamby pamby.  airy fairy.

This is what it feels like to a man and a ro"man"tic.  I'm telling myself this because I have been groomed in a culture that has neutered and thus, neutralized men.  For Pete's sake, what is a man?  Does anyone have any idea what we're supposed to look like, act like or feel like?  When God made man, what was He making anyway?  Am I what He had in mind, or am I far, far from home?  

I feel like my heart has been...

"Manhandled" - It has been roughed up and kicked around by culture.  It has been beat up and left for dead.  It has been handled so poorly by women in general.  It has been misunderstood and missed by most authors and artists who write and sing of the symptoms but ignore the causes.  We are rarely good for more than our face-value, our curb appeal.  We are seen as cheap, not deep.  This is a mishandled man in my opinion.

"Manipulated" - My heart has been sold a bill of goods that goes something like this, "You will never be strong.  You're incapable of being noble.  So the best you can do is fake it in the daylight and go underground with your desires in the moonlight."  My heart struggles to belief it is anything more than a "problem needing to be solved", a "danger needing to be tamed"... a "train-wreck waiting to happen."  I've been duped into believing that I'm shallow, fallow, sallow, can callow.  And you know what...I belief the sales pitch on most days.  I've been completely and utterly bushwhacked, hornswoggled.

"Managed" - My heart can't be released, it has to be superintended by an outside strength, at least something is telling me this inside.  Women don't need accountability, men do.  We can't be trusted, given the chance to do something evil or stupid, we probably will.  We can't be left to our own devices, we must be policed, chaperoned.  And since culture has thrown in the towel on men ever being any different, we bow to the management of our unruly nature.  Murphy's law says if something can go wrong, it will.  This has become the definition of men - "If they have a choice to do something wrong, you won't be able to stop them because they can't help themselves."  It's their lot in life.  It's the damnation of their destiny.  The best you can do is control them through lion-taming techniques...because they can't change, this is who they are, "Feral souls incapable of self-discipline and self-control."  Amen and amen.

"Manicured" - Let the makeup begin.  Let's pacify our evil desires by turning into women, albeit woman with armpit hair and perspiration issues.  Let's keep our nails trimmed and our tails between our legs.  Let's not take risk for fear of looking stupid.  Our hearts have started measuring themselves with a female ruler.  And the measurement will always leave us wanting.  We will be wanton and wanting our whole lives under these imprisoning cosmetics.  We cannot be domesticated and civilized without bury so many God-breathed desires that we're hardly worthy of being called "Adam's sons".  Living out the image of God and the imagination of God as a masculine heart is Kingdom-critical, and the emasculation of the man's heart has led to a crippled Christianity at best...a hopelessly corrupt Christianity at worst.  Our hearts were not made to be feminized.

"Manure" - If you cut through the crap, most men feel like "s$%t" most of the time.  They feel like failures, missing the mark on most fronts in their life.  No matter what the outside seems to be saying, so many men wake up feeling like they are nothing more than dung waiting to be spread around on the open fields of life. Decomposing and Decomposed.  They question their value, they intimately know their sins (as David says, "my sin is ever before me"), they don't feel like they are the real deal under their skin (in the same chapter David said, "I long for truth in the inner parts), they feel perverted, pent up, and powerless.  I just asked a guy how he was doing last week and he said, "I feel like crap!"  And our hearts are crucified with this thought even before most days begin.  But here's the killer, this belief becomes our identity and then our reality.  We start becoming the crap we think we are.  "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he" type of thing.  

"Manufactured" - Last but certainly not least, men feel like they are forced into a certain mold, fabricated into a figment of the original dream.  They feel like they are putting on a show to maintain the cover.  They are trying to be what everyone else wants them to be and needs them to be, but they are not themselves.  They are butt-kissers and people-pleasers selling out to diplomacy.  They become "yes-men"...spineless and toothless, scared and scarred by a culture that has manufactured masculinity to mean nothing more and nothing less then  "acquiescence at all costs".  And we aren't the only ones who pay for this sell out, this facelift, this remodeling...the world of women live desolate and deserted, and humanity advances with a rock its shoe, limping because men are limping liars who have been lied to and lied about.  We carry on and tarry on "deceiving and being deceived".

Men have been mangled...but I feel a stirring.  I have a dream.  I see men rising out of the ashes and reclaiming their rightful place.  A place of depth and breadth.  A place of honor and valor.  A place of chivalry instead of chimeras.  And I want to be among them with they do surface and stand.  I want to be in that number.  I want to lead and be led by that mass of men.  "For the kingdom of heaven is forcefully advancing, and forceful (with violent affection) men will lay hold of it." - Matt. 11  So kick off your loafers, boys, and move forward as a force to be reckoned with.  A force of defeminized, remasculated men.  "For the glory of young men is their strength." - Prov. 20:29   It always has been, it always will be.  Return to your glory, return to your strength.