Life Matters - August 30, 2023
The more selfish we live the smaller we get and the bigger little problems will seem. That is, our spirits “shrink” as the minute details in life become focused on, mulled over, and “stewed” about. God has designed faithful men to weather the storms of life with the hardness of a “good soldier” (II Timothy 2:3) with an ability to stay focused on the major issues of life, the “big picture,” a picture that includes the welfare of his wife and children if, or when, he is married, having his own family. A big picture that looks ahead, is on the lookout for danger in its many forms.
While there are, as well, “Deborahs” (Judges Chapters 4– 5) in our midst, women who are attuned to, “fixing the world” through political wars, they are the exception not the rule; are they not? Even then they tend to be the gentler, though firm, among us. That is because women are designed for the homemaking details in life while being unselfish. A mother’s love is a beautiful sight to behold! A mother’s unselfish giving may get tested but is unstoppable, even to death, can be desperately protective, then turn and be amazingly gentle. It is that very gentleness, that sensitivity, that calls for men to step up, to take the lead. Yet we need the sensitivity of the gentler gender among us giving us a “window” into the finer emotional details of life. May our unselfish giving also be as unstoppable as a charging elephant, but gentle, approachable, a real gentleman.
We live in a time, however, when masculinity is under attack with a constant “Woke” and liberal media bombardment against the God-given attributes of faithful men while staying silent, or else lauding, effeminacy in men, at the same time encouraging women to step up, to replace them. Another demonic attempt to disrupt, to upend, the nuclear (Biblical) family structure. Hidden in the attack on masculinity is an attack on femininity. It cannot be otherwise. The blurring of one role blurs the role of its completing counterpart. The present-day wokerites are adept at making problems out of nothing and nothing out of problems. Which is a human problem already that certainly needs no encouragement.
Were I to claim that masculine men never are, or have, problems, my own record would prove me wrong. But the attempt to upend nature, to upend the structure of man-woman-child that creates a family, because of problems here, there, perhaps everywhere, evokes a mind-picture of throwing out the baby upon seeing a “stool” in its bath water.
Yes, men have done wrong and messy things. So have women. So have children. Let’s face it, we are all from the same mold of human nature. The difference is in our roles, which, I might add, are God-given and therefore, unchangeable. Attempting to change the unchangeable creates many unnecessary problems as we might well imagine, except we no longer need to imagine beings the extreme “gender affirming care” people now, in their attempt to erase male and female genders, have instead erased our need to imagine the ensuing problems. This human butchery, floating under the auspice of “gender affirming care” is being exposed for what it is, a hopeless and unnecessary fight against nature and against the God who created nature. These extremes are indeed shocking. How did we even get here?
I’m sure I don’t know everything, but I do believe problems have been created out of thin air. That in times of affluence we can never escape the sense of living in a problematic world and so not having a problem becomes a problem. Living in a problematic world means we have a need to sort out the real problems from the spectral, the imaginary, the pseudo-type. For instance, in this fallen world we are called upon to always treat others fairly while staying benevolent when “treated unfairly” by others. We are called upon to live unselfishly even when others are being “selfish.” (Quotation marks because our feelings are not always right.) To be otherwise is to live in a miserable state. A world where men, women and children succumb to feeling like victims of each other. Is that Woke, or what? Let us allow Jesus to clean us up. True freedom comes when we give all problems, whether big or little, to Him. The wonder of it is when He receives them as a gift! And then transforms us. From the inside out. Life Matters!