The Inward Man
Self Help
What's A Mother/Father To Do?
Parenting For The New Millennium
Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
-- Ephesians 5:28
Few topics today create as much emotion as marriage and the role of men and women in society. Announce a sermon topic on "The End of the World in Three Months" and few would cancel a golf game to hear it. Preach about "Nuclear Holocaust by a Third World Madman" and most would still go sailing on Sunday morning. Announce "25 Percent Dead of AIDS by 2001" and many would yawn. But marriage and the roles of men and women in society arouse interest and emotion -- lots of emotion.
On a Mother's Day, I once took on the difficult task of speaking about the "Inward Woman" and her role in family and society. Only a few women pummeled me with their umbrellas after the service!
However, it may be almost as difficult to speak about the "Inward Man" and his role in society and family. If a man sounds like he is defending men, women get angry. If he sounds like he is defending women, he loses all his male friends for a month or two. Discussions of masculine-feminine roles tend to generate more heat than light. Nevertheless, these important subjects need to be addressed, and are to some degree, addressed by sacred scripture.
There has been a great deal of emphasis in recent years on minority rights. Blacks, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and Chicanos have powerful movements advocating their rights. Rights of senior citizens, the poor, the handicapped, students, gays, lesbians, children, and women have been loudly and effectively touted. Even though women outnumber men in this country, they have campaigned as a minority. Even animals have their rights advocates. Little do the whales, owls, and snail darters know how much has been said on their behalf.
But who, may I ask, has said anything lately about that much-beleaguered, much-maligned minority in America, the American male? And if minority men had long felt upstaged by societal forces, majority whites themselves now feel like outsiders. Attacked, mocked, neglected, exploited, and ridiculed, they, along with other males, wonder when anyone is going to mount a campaign for them!
We are all aware that we are in a time of social upheaval and transition with respect to sex, marriage, and family. Many men, as well as women, are bewildered, frustrated, and angry. People suffer anxiety and emptiness. Not only are more marriages and families breaking up than ever before; beneath the surface appearances of the stable family, more and more husbands and wives are seriously considering separation and divorce as real options.
And men are not immune to the upheaval of the times. Contrary to popular misconceptions, men are sensitive and do have feelings. And there is increasing evidence that many men are either resigned to a life of general unhappiness in marriage and family, or are about to explode in frustration, even rage.
Therefore, I believe it is time for men to consider being an inward man in two important areas -- career and marriage.
I.
First, consider career.
For most young men in their twenties and thirties, getting ahead in career is paramount. Determined and ambitious, they push hard for significant achievement and success. Realizing it's a dog-eat-dog, rat-race, swimming-with-the-sharks world out there, they give it everything they've got, assuming contentment and happiness with family and friends will fall into place.
But then, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, comes the well-known mid-life crisis. Arriving at their forties and fifties much sooner than they anticipated, questions of identity, purpose, happiness, and mortality begin to press in with considerable force. Why am I not happy and contented? What do I want out of life? Why are my wife and children almost strangers to me? As one of our men said the other night, now that I've got the house, the vacation condo, and the boat, why do I feel something is missing? What, in fact, is life all about?
I am reminded of a cartoon I saw in the New Yorker. Two distinguished elderly chairman-of-the-board types in the Wall Street district are holding football goal posts. Running toward the goal is a crowd of vested, buttoned-down, Brooks Brothers, middle-level management types. The only problem is that the chairman-of-the-board types keep running further away from them with the goal posts! Very often, it is not until our mid-life crisis that we discover our career and success goals keep receding into the future and we never achieve that deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
Besides all that, the financial pressures seem always to increase. Taxes always go up, of course. But unlike agrarian and small-town America where children were an economic asset, in today's urban world children are an economic liability. Not only does it cost one or two hundred thousand dollars to raise a child, prep school, college, and graduate school can add many more thousands of dollars to the cost of child-raising.
One father, lamenting those costs, said he had tried to make it nice for his children, giving them everything he never had. But now, he said, they won't leave home. Phyllis Diller has a different solution. She is working to help her children get everything she never had, and then, she says, she's going to move in with them.
If he feels economic pressures from his children, today's father can also feel it from his parents. About the time the children get through college and get married, his parents or in-laws may come to live with him or require increased financial and emotional support. Financially, he's the "sandwich generation," feeling the squeeze from both sides.
Many men feel a similar frustration in marriage. While it is true that women contribute financially to marriage and family, many men have paid large sums of alimony (or now "palimony," if never legally married). One of the rich husbands of Zsa Zsa Gabor said his marriage and divorce with Zsa Zsa cost him millions, and then added wryly, "It was worth it." But, despite Zsa Zsa's high rate of alimony, most men have not been married to her, and most are not that well-off, and are not sure that they want to be kicked out of the house or sued for what seem to be unfair alimony payments.
Christian men would do well, therefore, to develop a new sense of inwardness toward God. Early in life they would do well to heed Jesus' advice to give themselves first to the kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of this world, because they are always passing away. The goal posts are always moving.
Our true identity, our true selfhood and manhood, are to be found in God, the Source and Center of our being. The temporal world with its fads and fancies, its fashions and foibles, eventually turns to ashes. The inward man, inwardly focused on God, is attached to that which lasts forever.
II.
Second, we consider the inward man and marriage.
Many men have long regarded marriage as a prison, a ball and chain, or a trap. Men have seen marriage as a set of economic, social, and psychological obligations, which often brought little inward reward. Men often felt they had to sublimate their erotic urges to be stable and productive. The women they married often became more mothers and dominating domestic managers than soul mates and satisfying lovers.
In place of the blessings of marriage, they came to feel only the burdens. Instead of feeling enhanced in their masculinity, they felt emasculated by authoritarian females. Many could not even take credit for their success. For as Brooks Hayes wryly commented, "Behind every achievement is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law!"
And many men feel further threatened by some aspects of women's liberation. Rather than sexual companionship, they sense sexual competition, even in the marriage bed. And if once some men could be rightly accused of domination and exploitation, some women could now be rightly accused of being cruel and castrating.
But the inward man, like the inward woman, will go deeper than social convention or contemporary fads for definitions of sexuality, morality, and marriage. If the woman's femaleness is affirmed in the act of creation, so is the man's maleness. If femininity is a divinely-ordained expression of the image of God, so is masculinity. And if the inward woman is to find her truest identity in the grace of God which created and re-creates, so will the inward man find his truest identity in the God who made him male.
Men and women are different -- different biologically, physiologically, and psychologically in ways that are deeper than social role and cultural convention. It will be useless to attempt to make men and women equal in these ways. Anyway, who wants to be reduced to a dreary sameness? It is in the variety, in the com-plementarity, in the mutual self-fulfillment that we have the excitement. It is in the man and woman together in loving mutuality wherein the image of God is most fully expressed.
It is in the bed of mutual giving that deep, satisfying love is known rather than in the cool, calculating competitiveness of partners constantly struggling for dominance, maneuvering for the psychological advantage. Greed, selfishness, will-to-power, exploitation, and dominance look the same in minorities as they do in majorities, the same in women as in men.
But the inward man, the man centered on God, will not need to dominate his beloved or exploit her in order to find his personhood, for his worth is established first of all, not by her, but by our Heavenly Father who assures us we are his.
The inward man will not lord it over his wife, just as the inward woman will not lord it over her husband. Rather, she will submit to him in love, and he will give himself to her in love, as Christ gave himself for the church, suffering for her, even dying for her to bring her to wholeness. For he loves her as his own body, which she is.
Prayer
Eternal God, Father of all creation, who mysteriously and marvelously has brought forth life, imaging humankind after yourself, male and female, we praise you. We give thanks for the ecstasy of true love, the joy of faithful companionship, the sustenance of those who understand us with compassion. You enrich us with friendships and reach out to touch us personally in mates and comrades.
On this day, we press our claims upon you for the men of church and community and nation. We remember men grown old and lonely with the loss of job and wife, with declining health and dwindling financial resources. Visit them and help them by your Spirit, Lord God, giving them courage in these latter days of their lives.
We remember before you men divorced or widowed at an early age. Estranged from a former love and often cut off emotionally and physically from their children, they know well the pangs of forsakenness and loneliness. Open for them, we pray, new opportunities for genuine love, new chances for knowing and caring for their children. Grant that not all the tenderness of human touch be lost to them.
Consider too, O Lord, the men now embittered in marriage, weary with children who are ungrateful and unloving. Open their hearts to see wherein they might have wronged or neglected the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh. By your grace, open new channels for communication, so that the true man, caring and compassionate, buried beneath resentment and rage, might be expressed and the marvelous exchange of human warmth and tenderness be experienced again.
And for men powerful and successful, we lift up our prayers. Save them from the arrogance which trusts more in money than in you. Keep them from the conceit which claims it is only their own wit and work that has gotten these things. Be merciful to them that things not replace understanding, and that pride not put a barrier between them and those who love them most.
We pray for all sorts and conditions of men everywhere -- men defeated and destitute; men of high responsibility and little acclaim; men who serve in little-known, unwanted jobs; men who strive to be effective leaders, honest and wise for the good of all; and especially men who serve your kingdom's cause in unique ways. Bless them, O Lord, guide them by your wisdom, that all humanity might achieve new heights of fulfillment and happiness. Amen.
-- Ephesians 5:28
Few topics today create as much emotion as marriage and the role of men and women in society. Announce a sermon topic on "The End of the World in Three Months" and few would cancel a golf game to hear it. Preach about "Nuclear Holocaust by a Third World Madman" and most would still go sailing on Sunday morning. Announce "25 Percent Dead of AIDS by 2001" and many would yawn. But marriage and the roles of men and women in society arouse interest and emotion -- lots of emotion.
On a Mother's Day, I once took on the difficult task of speaking about the "Inward Woman" and her role in family and society. Only a few women pummeled me with their umbrellas after the service!
However, it may be almost as difficult to speak about the "Inward Man" and his role in society and family. If a man sounds like he is defending men, women get angry. If he sounds like he is defending women, he loses all his male friends for a month or two. Discussions of masculine-feminine roles tend to generate more heat than light. Nevertheless, these important subjects need to be addressed, and are to some degree, addressed by sacred scripture.
There has been a great deal of emphasis in recent years on minority rights. Blacks, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, and Chicanos have powerful movements advocating their rights. Rights of senior citizens, the poor, the handicapped, students, gays, lesbians, children, and women have been loudly and effectively touted. Even though women outnumber men in this country, they have campaigned as a minority. Even animals have their rights advocates. Little do the whales, owls, and snail darters know how much has been said on their behalf.
But who, may I ask, has said anything lately about that much-beleaguered, much-maligned minority in America, the American male? And if minority men had long felt upstaged by societal forces, majority whites themselves now feel like outsiders. Attacked, mocked, neglected, exploited, and ridiculed, they, along with other males, wonder when anyone is going to mount a campaign for them!
We are all aware that we are in a time of social upheaval and transition with respect to sex, marriage, and family. Many men, as well as women, are bewildered, frustrated, and angry. People suffer anxiety and emptiness. Not only are more marriages and families breaking up than ever before; beneath the surface appearances of the stable family, more and more husbands and wives are seriously considering separation and divorce as real options.
And men are not immune to the upheaval of the times. Contrary to popular misconceptions, men are sensitive and do have feelings. And there is increasing evidence that many men are either resigned to a life of general unhappiness in marriage and family, or are about to explode in frustration, even rage.
Therefore, I believe it is time for men to consider being an inward man in two important areas -- career and marriage.
I.
First, consider career.
For most young men in their twenties and thirties, getting ahead in career is paramount. Determined and ambitious, they push hard for significant achievement and success. Realizing it's a dog-eat-dog, rat-race, swimming-with-the-sharks world out there, they give it everything they've got, assuming contentment and happiness with family and friends will fall into place.
But then, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, comes the well-known mid-life crisis. Arriving at their forties and fifties much sooner than they anticipated, questions of identity, purpose, happiness, and mortality begin to press in with considerable force. Why am I not happy and contented? What do I want out of life? Why are my wife and children almost strangers to me? As one of our men said the other night, now that I've got the house, the vacation condo, and the boat, why do I feel something is missing? What, in fact, is life all about?
I am reminded of a cartoon I saw in the New Yorker. Two distinguished elderly chairman-of-the-board types in the Wall Street district are holding football goal posts. Running toward the goal is a crowd of vested, buttoned-down, Brooks Brothers, middle-level management types. The only problem is that the chairman-of-the-board types keep running further away from them with the goal posts! Very often, it is not until our mid-life crisis that we discover our career and success goals keep receding into the future and we never achieve that deep sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
Besides all that, the financial pressures seem always to increase. Taxes always go up, of course. But unlike agrarian and small-town America where children were an economic asset, in today's urban world children are an economic liability. Not only does it cost one or two hundred thousand dollars to raise a child, prep school, college, and graduate school can add many more thousands of dollars to the cost of child-raising.
One father, lamenting those costs, said he had tried to make it nice for his children, giving them everything he never had. But now, he said, they won't leave home. Phyllis Diller has a different solution. She is working to help her children get everything she never had, and then, she says, she's going to move in with them.
If he feels economic pressures from his children, today's father can also feel it from his parents. About the time the children get through college and get married, his parents or in-laws may come to live with him or require increased financial and emotional support. Financially, he's the "sandwich generation," feeling the squeeze from both sides.
Many men feel a similar frustration in marriage. While it is true that women contribute financially to marriage and family, many men have paid large sums of alimony (or now "palimony," if never legally married). One of the rich husbands of Zsa Zsa Gabor said his marriage and divorce with Zsa Zsa cost him millions, and then added wryly, "It was worth it." But, despite Zsa Zsa's high rate of alimony, most men have not been married to her, and most are not that well-off, and are not sure that they want to be kicked out of the house or sued for what seem to be unfair alimony payments.
Christian men would do well, therefore, to develop a new sense of inwardness toward God. Early in life they would do well to heed Jesus' advice to give themselves first to the kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of this world, because they are always passing away. The goal posts are always moving.
Our true identity, our true selfhood and manhood, are to be found in God, the Source and Center of our being. The temporal world with its fads and fancies, its fashions and foibles, eventually turns to ashes. The inward man, inwardly focused on God, is attached to that which lasts forever.
II.
Second, we consider the inward man and marriage.
Many men have long regarded marriage as a prison, a ball and chain, or a trap. Men have seen marriage as a set of economic, social, and psychological obligations, which often brought little inward reward. Men often felt they had to sublimate their erotic urges to be stable and productive. The women they married often became more mothers and dominating domestic managers than soul mates and satisfying lovers.
In place of the blessings of marriage, they came to feel only the burdens. Instead of feeling enhanced in their masculinity, they felt emasculated by authoritarian females. Many could not even take credit for their success. For as Brooks Hayes wryly commented, "Behind every achievement is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law!"
And many men feel further threatened by some aspects of women's liberation. Rather than sexual companionship, they sense sexual competition, even in the marriage bed. And if once some men could be rightly accused of domination and exploitation, some women could now be rightly accused of being cruel and castrating.
But the inward man, like the inward woman, will go deeper than social convention or contemporary fads for definitions of sexuality, morality, and marriage. If the woman's femaleness is affirmed in the act of creation, so is the man's maleness. If femininity is a divinely-ordained expression of the image of God, so is masculinity. And if the inward woman is to find her truest identity in the grace of God which created and re-creates, so will the inward man find his truest identity in the God who made him male.
Men and women are different -- different biologically, physiologically, and psychologically in ways that are deeper than social role and cultural convention. It will be useless to attempt to make men and women equal in these ways. Anyway, who wants to be reduced to a dreary sameness? It is in the variety, in the com-plementarity, in the mutual self-fulfillment that we have the excitement. It is in the man and woman together in loving mutuality wherein the image of God is most fully expressed.
It is in the bed of mutual giving that deep, satisfying love is known rather than in the cool, calculating competitiveness of partners constantly struggling for dominance, maneuvering for the psychological advantage. Greed, selfishness, will-to-power, exploitation, and dominance look the same in minorities as they do in majorities, the same in women as in men.
But the inward man, the man centered on God, will not need to dominate his beloved or exploit her in order to find his personhood, for his worth is established first of all, not by her, but by our Heavenly Father who assures us we are his.
The inward man will not lord it over his wife, just as the inward woman will not lord it over her husband. Rather, she will submit to him in love, and he will give himself to her in love, as Christ gave himself for the church, suffering for her, even dying for her to bring her to wholeness. For he loves her as his own body, which she is.
Prayer
Eternal God, Father of all creation, who mysteriously and marvelously has brought forth life, imaging humankind after yourself, male and female, we praise you. We give thanks for the ecstasy of true love, the joy of faithful companionship, the sustenance of those who understand us with compassion. You enrich us with friendships and reach out to touch us personally in mates and comrades.
On this day, we press our claims upon you for the men of church and community and nation. We remember men grown old and lonely with the loss of job and wife, with declining health and dwindling financial resources. Visit them and help them by your Spirit, Lord God, giving them courage in these latter days of their lives.
We remember before you men divorced or widowed at an early age. Estranged from a former love and often cut off emotionally and physically from their children, they know well the pangs of forsakenness and loneliness. Open for them, we pray, new opportunities for genuine love, new chances for knowing and caring for their children. Grant that not all the tenderness of human touch be lost to them.
Consider too, O Lord, the men now embittered in marriage, weary with children who are ungrateful and unloving. Open their hearts to see wherein they might have wronged or neglected the bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh. By your grace, open new channels for communication, so that the true man, caring and compassionate, buried beneath resentment and rage, might be expressed and the marvelous exchange of human warmth and tenderness be experienced again.
And for men powerful and successful, we lift up our prayers. Save them from the arrogance which trusts more in money than in you. Keep them from the conceit which claims it is only their own wit and work that has gotten these things. Be merciful to them that things not replace understanding, and that pride not put a barrier between them and those who love them most.
We pray for all sorts and conditions of men everywhere -- men defeated and destitute; men of high responsibility and little acclaim; men who serve in little-known, unwanted jobs; men who strive to be effective leaders, honest and wise for the good of all; and especially men who serve your kingdom's cause in unique ways. Bless them, O Lord, guide them by your wisdom, that all humanity might achieve new heights of fulfillment and happiness. Amen.
