Welcome to the Party!
by on Oct 1st, 2009 at 12:49 am
Men, let me speak plainly. You and I did not get to choose to be born as males. Either we can attribute this first mark of distinction as the random act of evolutionary chance or we can sit under the weight of Scripture and admit that God must have intended for us to be the gender that we are. He did not wait with eager anticipation for the day of birth, like human parents do, to find out if the new child will emerge as a boy or girl. He planned it.
I also believe that God did not create male and female without any intention for their roles and responsibilities. Just as He created Adam and Eve with purpose, so He has also brought you and me into this world for a reason. To Him, manhood means something just as womanhood is charged with important meaning.
Our first clue to any sense of design, purpose, or calling in this world is found in the fact that we are made, not consciously self-activated. The second clue is found in whether we were created male or female. This clue has nothing to do with our worth or value as a human, for Genesis 1:26-27, as well as the rest of Scripture, indicates that God values males and females with equal weight in terms of personhood. However, just as every created thing preceding the creation of mankind was given a purpose or unique function, so male and female humans are given responsibilities that correspond to our sexual orientation.
Before we develop intellectual, emotional, economic, or physical competencies, we are granted, by the sovereign will of the Most High God, maleness or femaleness, and this determines much in the way of what is expected of us in relationship to each other as a human community. In case the physical proof of our gender is not enough to grab our attention, He has also planted in us a drive to be fully man or fully woman, though what this means is often difficult to determine. Nevertheless, we long to be a true man or a true woman from the time we are children.
Many people who do not wish to live in submission to God or to the biblical teaching of complimentarianism are disturbed by the concept that God could purposefully attach function to our biological form. However, I am more disturbed by the lack of attention we give to the significance of our sovereignly-determined gender. After all, how long has it been since you removed all distractions from your mind so you could focus on the implications of your chosen gender and all that God requires as a result of His purposeful decision?
On the whole, males are not taking God’s creative decision into consideration. Christian males are not excluded in this crime, but the hunger for being what God created us to be has not abated. Therefore, if you are like me, then your hunger is compelling you to start considering the implications of manhood and what it means for your life.
Over the next few weeks, I will be posting just a few of what could be many arguments for why manhood matters and why we need to get serious about putting away childish things to take on the challenge of being God’s man in this day and age. I am no expert in this topic. Who besides Jesus could speak definitively about true manhood? I hope to be a catalyst, and in time, I hope to be one of many catalysts who will utilize this resource to stir us all up to love, good works, and responsible manhood.