Below you’ll find a link to one of the best sermons I’ve heard on “manhood.” It’s delivered by Jay Pathak, lead pastor of the Mile High Vineyard – one of the best communicators in Denver, in my opinion.
I’ll warn you though – the sermon gets into some of the differences between men and women. I’m personally sensitive to the conversation we’re having in our culture about gender. But, because of the legion of physical/biological differences we share, we’re in dire need of thinking a bit deeper here.
Also, as some of my readers aren’t people of faith, a quick disclaimer – this is Christian sermon, but Jay’s a guy that’s mastered the fine art of not beating people over the head with his beliefs, and communicating them in a way that anyone can sink their teeth into, believer or not.
I can promise you that you won’t regret listening.
Without further adieu, here’s the sermon, followed by some exerpts (my paraphrases) if you’d like to read a bit first:
What’s broken in the world can feel natural, because that’s what we always see. We’re used to it. It’s interesting to note that this brokenness is unique to men and women. In other words, men express theirs in a different way than women do.
Men derive much of their significance from what they produce; their work, their accomplishments – not their relationships. Many times, you’ll find husbands and fathers completely checked out because they’ve become too focused on, and distracted by, their work.
That’s a bad thing to be sure, but the pain goes deeper. We never feel like what we’re doing is enough. As soon as we accomplish something, we immediately see all the other things that we haven’t accomplished.
In a nutshell, we only feel good about ourselves when we accomplish something, but the good we feel from our accomplishments only lasts a short time. For most men, we spend a lot of our time feeling like we don’t matter, that there’s nothing good in us.
And when we feel bad about ourselves, and we can’t accomplish our way out of it, we turn to things like alcohol, or porn, or an illicit relationship – anything we can dive into that might help us feel better.
If you’re in a relationship with a man, constantly scratching your head, wondering why you’re husband burns so much of his energy fretting about work, there you have it. It’s hard-wired in all of us, and it’s part of our brokenness.
The sermon goes way deeper. Consider taking a listen. It unpacks/explains a ton about our culture, and what it means to be a “man.”
Peace.
Mark
