Iron John And Plastic Pete
Self Help
What's A Mother/Father To Do?
Parenting For The New Millennium
Bid the older men be temperate, serious, sensible, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Likewise urge the younger men to control themselves. -- Titus 2:2, 6
Men have been taking it on the chin lately, especially white men, especially men in their middle to later years, men perceived to be the symbols and realities of patriarchal power -- patriarchal power which in the psyches of many feminists, still pertains, and must be challenged and broken at all costs.
A professor friend of mine, brilliant, well-educated, holding great promise for a scholarly future, was turned down for a prestigious position in a prestigious seminary because he was, alas, not only male, but white. The Dean said he was by far the most qualified of all the candidates, but that the times demanded that they hire a woman and preferably a minority woman.
If white men seem to be bypassed in academia, they often feel even more neglected in the corporate and business world. If women complain of the glass ceiling in corporate structure above which they cannot rise, and if women complain that there are a higher percentage of men in executive positions than women, men increasingly are saying, "Welcome to the real world."
Men increasingly are speaking up and speaking out, saying, of course there are more men executives than women because women have only recently arrived en masse in the corporate scene and haven't had time to work up the corporate ladder. "And besides," say the men, "guess what, there's a glass ceiling which most men don't rise above either. Just how many positions do you think there are at the top of the pyramid?"
Many men, who think of themselves as well qualified, don't get the big promotion upstairs they think they deserve. In fact, complain many men, in today's feminist climate, it is likely a less qualified woman will get the promotion over the more qualified white man. Men are taking it on the chin.
In fact, the white man is the only group upon whom it is politically correct to pour public contempt and ridicule. "Male chauvinist pig" was a popular, politically correct slogan for a long while. Feminists could regularly denigrate men as oppressors, exploiters, Neanderthal patriarchs, unfeeling production machines given to war and violence and forever seeking sex without intimacy or commitment.
Comedians today have difficulty finding targets for their jokes. Ethnic groups and minorities are out. Poking fun at religions is taboo, as is joking about drunks and bums (the homeless). Poke fun at feminists and the comedian will be off the air. But politicians and men, especially white men, are fair game. Men are taking it on the chin.
Even in the perpetual war between the sexes, one attorney told of the female attorneys who come to work provocatively dressed and who expect to be "one of the boys." They flirt freely and flaunt what they have. But if one of the boys makes a comment typical of the boys in the presence of a woman, he risks being charged with sexual harassment. It's a new kind of double standard and many men feel as though they are taking it on the chin.
So what's a man to do? What's a Christian man, old or young, to do? Probably the answer is in being a blend of "Iron John and Plastic Pete."
I.
Consider first Iron John.
A few years ago author and poet Robert Bly published a book with the title, Iron John. Drawing from the nineteenth century Brothers Grimm tales, Bly attempts to help men and boys recover a sense of maleness and identity. In the tale, "Iron John" is the "hairy man" who becomes a mentor to a young boy to help him in his growth through the various stages of development.
Bly's book caught on with many men, partly as an antidote to the men-bashing so much in vogue today, but also partly because the book re-introduced the idea of men mentoring boys, rather than women mentoring boys, as is so prevalent in our culture.
Bly's Iron John wants to teach boys not only how to be tough guys, but also how to be in touch with feelings and how to be in touch with the dark side of our psyche, the "wild man" within us. Bly does not, like Freud, try to blame the mother for all the boy's problems. Instead, his book is an attempt at building a positive identity and image for men and boys, and especially an effort to develop the "inner warrior," learning how to defend what one loves without violence.
The word "iron" is akin to "ire" -- to anger. If a few years ago it was popular to talk about the angry young men, like the James Deans, today it is popular to speak about the macho men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who literally pump iron to be muscular "iron men."
We Americans have liked tough guys who are hard as nails with cold, blue, steely eyes and a John Wayne swagger. Robust, healthy, hard, and impenetrable men have fought and sweated their way across our movie and television screens for years. And our modern gladiators, professional football heroes, make millions of dollars while creating millions of football widows each fall. "Iron Johns" all!
However, it is instructive to look further at the dictionary definition of iron. Iron is a "heavy malleable, ductile, magnetic, metallic element that is silver white when pure but readily rusts in moist air...." Ah, yes, when pure it is silver white. But the problem is rust, and not only rust, but also rigidity and inflexibility and impenetrability and hardness and severity and rudeness. If our nation has a "rust belt" where outdated factories and industries are languishing for lack of adaptability and progressiveness, so too, many men stuck with the macho man, tough as nails, "Iron John" image are rusting out while history moves on.
That's why Titus is instructed to encourage the older men in the churches on the island of Crete to be sober. Cretans of his time were known for their heavy drinking. And many men today are judged to be men when they can "hold their liquor" and "drink anyone under the table." Christian men are to move away from that measure of manliness to the standard of sobriety and clear thinking.
The older Christian men of Crete were also advised to be high-principled. Strangely, many American men are thought to be men only when they can play as dirty as the next guy, and get him before he is gotten. But our faith calls men to be high-principled rather than low-principled.
Older Christian men are also advised to be sound in faith and love. As the years go on some men like to boast they have seen it all, that there is nothing new under the sun and that what has been is what will be. They become comfortable in skepticism and cynicism while all around them amazing new discoveries are being made in every area of science and medicine, nature and psychology, and religion.
And older people can easily drift into negativism, criticism, censoriousness, and faultfinding. Some men resist new ideas and become intolerant and unsympathetic with the failures and foibles of the young. Having repressed their own feelings for years, they are now not able really to express feelings for even those closest to them. They have become a hardened, rusted, "Iron John." But our text urges men toward faith and love.
And yet there is one further trait, which older men are to have, and that is endurance or steadfastness. They are to be resilient, able to bear up under the burdens and pressures and tragedies of life. Often it is the "heat" of life, being in the "pressure cooker," in the "crucible" that makes the real man. Because just as iron is changed into strong and rust-proof stainless steel by intense heat and carbon, so the "Iron Johns" of our time can be made into "Stainless Steel Stans," durable, resilient, reliable, and strong in deep, inward ways. As Paul puts it, "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us" (Romans 5:34).
Or as Browning put it, older men can say,
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made ...
He fixed thee 'mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance
This present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest,
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth,
Sufficiently impressed.
So may all of us "Iron Johns" be "sufficiently impressed" into "Stainless Steel Stans."
II.
That brings us then to Plastic Pete.
The word "plastic" comes from the Greek, piastos, which means "formed or molded." It also suggests giving form or having the power to form. Plastic suggests a capacity for being shaped or molded or the ability to shape and mold and be creative.
Until recent times men and boys have been dissuaded from creative careers in literature, music, art, and theater. Two of the three historic professions of law, medicine, or theology were acceptable. Engineering got an enormous boost from Russia's Sputnik, and politics gained new favor with Kennedy's "Camelot" as did stock brokering with the unprecedented bull market of the 1980s and 1990s. The Harvard MBA is the current ticket to success in many minds. More and more women are into these fields, of course, but men have generally been guided away from the so-called feminine world of creativity and plasticity.
Never mind that most of the greatest artists, musicians, authors, and thinkers of history have been men. American men were encouraged to get into the "real" world where money can be made, which is what really matters. But Titus would never thwart the young Christian men of Crete in that way -- Crete, home of the Palace of Knossus where art and fresco painting took a leap forward sixteen centuries before Christ; Crete, source of European civilization, if the ancient legends are to be believed.
However, Titus had something even more important to recommend to the young Christian men of Crete, as he would have to the young Christian men of today. He urged temperance or self-control. Young men are to be self-disciplined and masters of themselves. He is not recommending William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" where he boasts:
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Nor is he advocating Swinburne's mildly cynical:
Glory to man in the highest
For man is the master of things.
Instead, Titus is advised to tell young men not to give themselves over to wild passions. If that advice was lost on a lot of young Cretan men, so it is lost on a lot of young American men. We've lately been reading about the fight of young men outside a nightclub after a night of drinking. One man was beaten into a coma, and two men are in prison charged with the crime, one of them a policeman. Passions totally out of control. Or consider teenage keg parties where young people are sick, sexually exploited, and later, while driving drunk, are maimed or killed. Passions out of control.
Which leads us to another characteristic of plastic -- its flammability. Many plastics are derived from petroleum and thus are flammable, easily melted and molded, non-resistant to real pressure. Some young men are "Plastic Petes" of that kind. Hot-blooded, hot-tempered, flaming up in bursts of sexual passion or furious anger until they spend themselves or waste their lives or burn themselves out. But if young men cannot govern themselves, how can they govern church and society? Who will be mature and responsible enough to lead? Surely not these "Plastic Petes."
But plastic suggests a couple of other things in today's world. One is artificiality and the other is deferred payment. Go to a movie set in Hollywood or Orlando, and discover that those massive rocks on the set are really plastic and can be carried by one man. We have plastic plates, cups, and saucers, plastic flowers, and, yes, in the winter, tomatoes that taste like plastic! Just as they are not the real thing, so are some young men tempted not to be the real thing. Molded and pressured by the political correctness police, they often become imitation men in need of an "Iron John."
Plastic also suggests deferred payment. We'll put it on the credit card now and pay for it later. Which may be a way of saying, I'll grow up later, I'll become a man later, develop into my real self later, get some religion later. It is well known that many people think of themselves as immortal. If garbage men, gardeners, bicyclists, and joggers on our streets and roads think of themselves as immortal, even more so do the young. Therefore, deferred payment of real selfhood and real religion is the mode of many. But today is always the day of salvation, even for the young, especially for the young, who are determining their destiny in their youthful decisions.
We need men today, old and young, with iron wills and stainless steel durability. But we need creative men, artistic men, men in touch with their feelings and with each other and with women. Rigidity is as outdated as artificiality is repugnant. But men of God -- they are a joy and treasure at any age. May we have more of them.
Prayer
Eternal God, out of whose being all gender and sexuality have come, and who has desired partially to express yourself in maleness and masculinity, we give you thanks and praise for the mysteries of manhood. Throughout history you have called men to serve your cause and to advance your purposes in the world. From Adam to Noah and Abraham, from Moses to David and Jesus, you have prompted, by your Spirit, men to place their faith and hope in you and to be steadfast in their devotion. We give thanks for them.
Look with favor upon the men of our time. See what powerful temptations they face, what tremendous pressures, what enormous challenges, and what threats of competition and loss of job. Some are uncertain of their identity and unsure of the destiny you have in mind for them. Some are anxious over money and marriage and troubled with wayward children. Some are gripped with debilitating habits of thought and action and need liberation and strength. Some are lonely for love and companionship and at the same time are fearful of intimacy. See what deep, heartfelt needs we bring before you, O God. Out of your infinite wisdom and compassion, be pleased to grant the blessings we so much need.
Grant your favor to older men. Some are widowed and lonely and in need of comfort. Save them from cynical resignation and fill them with hope and a zest for life. Look upon the middlemen, the sandwich generation, squeezed between caring for the older generation and nurturing and educating the young. Give them strength and resilience. And for young men and boys, we especially pray. Keep them strong to control youthful passions. And may they learn the power of faith and the spiritual life at a young age so that they might come into the fullness of life you have planned for them. Bless our men and fathers, young men and boys. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Men have been taking it on the chin lately, especially white men, especially men in their middle to later years, men perceived to be the symbols and realities of patriarchal power -- patriarchal power which in the psyches of many feminists, still pertains, and must be challenged and broken at all costs.
A professor friend of mine, brilliant, well-educated, holding great promise for a scholarly future, was turned down for a prestigious position in a prestigious seminary because he was, alas, not only male, but white. The Dean said he was by far the most qualified of all the candidates, but that the times demanded that they hire a woman and preferably a minority woman.
If white men seem to be bypassed in academia, they often feel even more neglected in the corporate and business world. If women complain of the glass ceiling in corporate structure above which they cannot rise, and if women complain that there are a higher percentage of men in executive positions than women, men increasingly are saying, "Welcome to the real world."
Men increasingly are speaking up and speaking out, saying, of course there are more men executives than women because women have only recently arrived en masse in the corporate scene and haven't had time to work up the corporate ladder. "And besides," say the men, "guess what, there's a glass ceiling which most men don't rise above either. Just how many positions do you think there are at the top of the pyramid?"
Many men, who think of themselves as well qualified, don't get the big promotion upstairs they think they deserve. In fact, complain many men, in today's feminist climate, it is likely a less qualified woman will get the promotion over the more qualified white man. Men are taking it on the chin.
In fact, the white man is the only group upon whom it is politically correct to pour public contempt and ridicule. "Male chauvinist pig" was a popular, politically correct slogan for a long while. Feminists could regularly denigrate men as oppressors, exploiters, Neanderthal patriarchs, unfeeling production machines given to war and violence and forever seeking sex without intimacy or commitment.
Comedians today have difficulty finding targets for their jokes. Ethnic groups and minorities are out. Poking fun at religions is taboo, as is joking about drunks and bums (the homeless). Poke fun at feminists and the comedian will be off the air. But politicians and men, especially white men, are fair game. Men are taking it on the chin.
Even in the perpetual war between the sexes, one attorney told of the female attorneys who come to work provocatively dressed and who expect to be "one of the boys." They flirt freely and flaunt what they have. But if one of the boys makes a comment typical of the boys in the presence of a woman, he risks being charged with sexual harassment. It's a new kind of double standard and many men feel as though they are taking it on the chin.
So what's a man to do? What's a Christian man, old or young, to do? Probably the answer is in being a blend of "Iron John and Plastic Pete."
I.
Consider first Iron John.
A few years ago author and poet Robert Bly published a book with the title, Iron John. Drawing from the nineteenth century Brothers Grimm tales, Bly attempts to help men and boys recover a sense of maleness and identity. In the tale, "Iron John" is the "hairy man" who becomes a mentor to a young boy to help him in his growth through the various stages of development.
Bly's book caught on with many men, partly as an antidote to the men-bashing so much in vogue today, but also partly because the book re-introduced the idea of men mentoring boys, rather than women mentoring boys, as is so prevalent in our culture.
Bly's Iron John wants to teach boys not only how to be tough guys, but also how to be in touch with feelings and how to be in touch with the dark side of our psyche, the "wild man" within us. Bly does not, like Freud, try to blame the mother for all the boy's problems. Instead, his book is an attempt at building a positive identity and image for men and boys, and especially an effort to develop the "inner warrior," learning how to defend what one loves without violence.
The word "iron" is akin to "ire" -- to anger. If a few years ago it was popular to talk about the angry young men, like the James Deans, today it is popular to speak about the macho men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who literally pump iron to be muscular "iron men."
We Americans have liked tough guys who are hard as nails with cold, blue, steely eyes and a John Wayne swagger. Robust, healthy, hard, and impenetrable men have fought and sweated their way across our movie and television screens for years. And our modern gladiators, professional football heroes, make millions of dollars while creating millions of football widows each fall. "Iron Johns" all!
However, it is instructive to look further at the dictionary definition of iron. Iron is a "heavy malleable, ductile, magnetic, metallic element that is silver white when pure but readily rusts in moist air...." Ah, yes, when pure it is silver white. But the problem is rust, and not only rust, but also rigidity and inflexibility and impenetrability and hardness and severity and rudeness. If our nation has a "rust belt" where outdated factories and industries are languishing for lack of adaptability and progressiveness, so too, many men stuck with the macho man, tough as nails, "Iron John" image are rusting out while history moves on.
That's why Titus is instructed to encourage the older men in the churches on the island of Crete to be sober. Cretans of his time were known for their heavy drinking. And many men today are judged to be men when they can "hold their liquor" and "drink anyone under the table." Christian men are to move away from that measure of manliness to the standard of sobriety and clear thinking.
The older Christian men of Crete were also advised to be high-principled. Strangely, many American men are thought to be men only when they can play as dirty as the next guy, and get him before he is gotten. But our faith calls men to be high-principled rather than low-principled.
Older Christian men are also advised to be sound in faith and love. As the years go on some men like to boast they have seen it all, that there is nothing new under the sun and that what has been is what will be. They become comfortable in skepticism and cynicism while all around them amazing new discoveries are being made in every area of science and medicine, nature and psychology, and religion.
And older people can easily drift into negativism, criticism, censoriousness, and faultfinding. Some men resist new ideas and become intolerant and unsympathetic with the failures and foibles of the young. Having repressed their own feelings for years, they are now not able really to express feelings for even those closest to them. They have become a hardened, rusted, "Iron John." But our text urges men toward faith and love.
And yet there is one further trait, which older men are to have, and that is endurance or steadfastness. They are to be resilient, able to bear up under the burdens and pressures and tragedies of life. Often it is the "heat" of life, being in the "pressure cooker," in the "crucible" that makes the real man. Because just as iron is changed into strong and rust-proof stainless steel by intense heat and carbon, so the "Iron Johns" of our time can be made into "Stainless Steel Stans," durable, resilient, reliable, and strong in deep, inward ways. As Paul puts it, "Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us" (Romans 5:34).
Or as Browning put it, older men can say,
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made ...
He fixed thee 'mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance
This present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest,
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth,
Sufficiently impressed.
So may all of us "Iron Johns" be "sufficiently impressed" into "Stainless Steel Stans."
II.
That brings us then to Plastic Pete.
The word "plastic" comes from the Greek, piastos, which means "formed or molded." It also suggests giving form or having the power to form. Plastic suggests a capacity for being shaped or molded or the ability to shape and mold and be creative.
Until recent times men and boys have been dissuaded from creative careers in literature, music, art, and theater. Two of the three historic professions of law, medicine, or theology were acceptable. Engineering got an enormous boost from Russia's Sputnik, and politics gained new favor with Kennedy's "Camelot" as did stock brokering with the unprecedented bull market of the 1980s and 1990s. The Harvard MBA is the current ticket to success in many minds. More and more women are into these fields, of course, but men have generally been guided away from the so-called feminine world of creativity and plasticity.
Never mind that most of the greatest artists, musicians, authors, and thinkers of history have been men. American men were encouraged to get into the "real" world where money can be made, which is what really matters. But Titus would never thwart the young Christian men of Crete in that way -- Crete, home of the Palace of Knossus where art and fresco painting took a leap forward sixteen centuries before Christ; Crete, source of European civilization, if the ancient legends are to be believed.
However, Titus had something even more important to recommend to the young Christian men of Crete, as he would have to the young Christian men of today. He urged temperance or self-control. Young men are to be self-disciplined and masters of themselves. He is not recommending William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" where he boasts:
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Nor is he advocating Swinburne's mildly cynical:
Glory to man in the highest
For man is the master of things.
Instead, Titus is advised to tell young men not to give themselves over to wild passions. If that advice was lost on a lot of young Cretan men, so it is lost on a lot of young American men. We've lately been reading about the fight of young men outside a nightclub after a night of drinking. One man was beaten into a coma, and two men are in prison charged with the crime, one of them a policeman. Passions totally out of control. Or consider teenage keg parties where young people are sick, sexually exploited, and later, while driving drunk, are maimed or killed. Passions out of control.
Which leads us to another characteristic of plastic -- its flammability. Many plastics are derived from petroleum and thus are flammable, easily melted and molded, non-resistant to real pressure. Some young men are "Plastic Petes" of that kind. Hot-blooded, hot-tempered, flaming up in bursts of sexual passion or furious anger until they spend themselves or waste their lives or burn themselves out. But if young men cannot govern themselves, how can they govern church and society? Who will be mature and responsible enough to lead? Surely not these "Plastic Petes."
But plastic suggests a couple of other things in today's world. One is artificiality and the other is deferred payment. Go to a movie set in Hollywood or Orlando, and discover that those massive rocks on the set are really plastic and can be carried by one man. We have plastic plates, cups, and saucers, plastic flowers, and, yes, in the winter, tomatoes that taste like plastic! Just as they are not the real thing, so are some young men tempted not to be the real thing. Molded and pressured by the political correctness police, they often become imitation men in need of an "Iron John."
Plastic also suggests deferred payment. We'll put it on the credit card now and pay for it later. Which may be a way of saying, I'll grow up later, I'll become a man later, develop into my real self later, get some religion later. It is well known that many people think of themselves as immortal. If garbage men, gardeners, bicyclists, and joggers on our streets and roads think of themselves as immortal, even more so do the young. Therefore, deferred payment of real selfhood and real religion is the mode of many. But today is always the day of salvation, even for the young, especially for the young, who are determining their destiny in their youthful decisions.
We need men today, old and young, with iron wills and stainless steel durability. But we need creative men, artistic men, men in touch with their feelings and with each other and with women. Rigidity is as outdated as artificiality is repugnant. But men of God -- they are a joy and treasure at any age. May we have more of them.
Prayer
Eternal God, out of whose being all gender and sexuality have come, and who has desired partially to express yourself in maleness and masculinity, we give you thanks and praise for the mysteries of manhood. Throughout history you have called men to serve your cause and to advance your purposes in the world. From Adam to Noah and Abraham, from Moses to David and Jesus, you have prompted, by your Spirit, men to place their faith and hope in you and to be steadfast in their devotion. We give thanks for them.
Look with favor upon the men of our time. See what powerful temptations they face, what tremendous pressures, what enormous challenges, and what threats of competition and loss of job. Some are uncertain of their identity and unsure of the destiny you have in mind for them. Some are anxious over money and marriage and troubled with wayward children. Some are gripped with debilitating habits of thought and action and need liberation and strength. Some are lonely for love and companionship and at the same time are fearful of intimacy. See what deep, heartfelt needs we bring before you, O God. Out of your infinite wisdom and compassion, be pleased to grant the blessings we so much need.
Grant your favor to older men. Some are widowed and lonely and in need of comfort. Save them from cynical resignation and fill them with hope and a zest for life. Look upon the middlemen, the sandwich generation, squeezed between caring for the older generation and nurturing and educating the young. Give them strength and resilience. And for young men and boys, we especially pray. Keep them strong to control youthful passions. And may they learn the power of faith and the spiritual life at a young age so that they might come into the fullness of life you have planned for them. Bless our men and fathers, young men and boys. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
