Frustrated Men, Face Down
Author: Andrew Comiskey
January 25, 2021
‘Because we are
vulnerable, we can be brave.’ Josef Pieper
‘Inner healing’ tends to
attract women, who usually access their wounds more readily than men with the
help of words absent from the masculine vocabulary.
Yet guys are no less
frustrated, perhaps more pent up than their female counterparts. On one hand, God
made us for noble acts of conquest and self-sacrifice; on the other, we’re
unclear on proper outlets and less certain of our capacity to sustain a holy
charge in the right direction. Frustrated. Ashamed.
How many of us typify what
Pieper describes as ‘the roving unrest of spirit’ and ‘a dreary sadness’ that
result when we forsake ‘the nobility of being that belongs to our essential
dignity as…sons of God’? In other words, we’ve glimpsed the Lion and our
lion-heartedness then dully return to domestication through porn and video
games. We war online and kill ourselves slowly through virtual unrealities.
Roving unrest indeed. Only
complete surrender to Jesus calms our storm.
God allows sin to level us
as to raise us up. I have been blessed this year with a male majority (what?)
Living Waters group full of guys diverse in lust, age, and church tradition yet
united in common frustration and determined to find the narrow way that leads
to life. We found words through which we humbled ourselves in consistent
accountability. We chose to see and grieve the damage we’ve done to women. We
opened to the Father’s love. We now stretch under-used muscle in focused
self-giving and are relishing the burn (a little.)
My sharp-as-a-whip
colleague Mark convinced us that masculine vulnerability is the threshold over
which men become strong. The Spirit brooded. We marveled. After Trump and the
masculine frustration that surfaced in vile, random acts of violence throughout
the last four years, are we still capable of forsaking our ‘roving unrests’
facedown before the Crucified? Dare we stumble to the Savior?
All is not well. The Merciful
Doctor is in.
‘The unique design of God
is fully realized in a man only when he is transformed in Christ.’ Dietrich von
Hildebrand
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