At Crossing on the third Sunday evening of every month we have MANschool. Last night my friend Massimo taught on biblical manhood. This is his definition:
A real man rejects passivity and takes responsibility to lead, provide, protect, and teach expecting to receive the greater reward.
That’s good … but where does sacrifice come in?
It is an interesting definition… do you have any insight on how he came to those conclusions? Is it for all men?
I think the thing that I struggle with the most in his definition is the idea of rejecting passivity.
Another question, are all men responsible to lead? Is that in reference to the man’s wife? Because not all are called to general leadership, at least that is my opinion.
I know that these statements are open to criticism… please don’t take the comments above negatively. I only seek to be curious, not critical.
He drew it out of elements of Adam’s creation mandate, and out of some of the accounts of Christ in the gospels. I’m less sold on the helpfulness of the second half, but what rocks me is “rejects passivity and takes responsibility”. That’s a pretty good nutshell, I think. I think sacrifice might be implied in “takes responsibility”, because often that requires sacrifice.
I think he took part of his definition from Robert Lewis and his book, “Raising a Modern Day Knight.” Lewis puts forth the following definition of manhood: “A real man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously, and expects the greater reward.”
I think sacrifice is taking responsibility too, but more so, expecting the greater reward means a man must sacrifice the reward immediately before him.
If it is a definition specific to being a man then it should not be appicable to women. For example, shouldn’t every woman reject passivity and take responsibility to obey God, serve others, and fulfill her God-given purpose(s)? I think the answer is clearly yes. So, how is this definition specific to a man?