We live in a world that operates on balance, structure, and order. Despite what your science teacher may have taught you in high school, nothing is just random. We are not the result of some random and cosmic explosion. If we are random and purposeless, then you and I cannot trust our own thoughts or anyone else’s. If what we are thinking right now was created by some random, cosmic, and impersonal explosion, nothing about us can be trusted and our thought patterns are illogical and unprod-
uctive. Randomness and chaos are not part of our DNA and that is further proven by man’s constant and persistent pursuit of advancement. Disorder does not pursue order and advancement all on its own. It must be guided by a higher and more ordered and intelligent being than itself.
Todd, what’s your point? Man is designed for order (women are too, but for today’s post we are talking about men). Yes, men. Masculine, macho, and unapologetically full of testosterone human beings. I am not a person who lives in the chaos and mirky world of gender fluidity or gender confusion, or whatever the culture calls it today. Again, we are not created for the chaos and confusion that the culture breeds. I believe in facts, truth, order, structure, and balance. Amid all the chaos that our world attempts to push, we have forgotten that men have real needs. They are human beings. They are necessary to human advancement. Men are still here and we are not going anywhere. And men are designed (as are women) for a certain order that breeds something in them that makes them who God wants them to be.
The problem with men today is that they are hungry, malnourished, and starving to death for the order and balance for which God created them. The prisons are not full of evil men. They are full empty men who have decided to feed on anything that they believe will fill their bellies, even if what they are eating is killing them. Here’s what we men need in order to thrive. Here are the things for which men were created.
1. Marriage: A man needs a woman who deeply loves him. God told Adam that it was not good for man to be alone. There is a need that a woman meets in a man that is extremely unique. Even when Adam had just God in the Garden, God said Adam was still alone. That should blow our minds. Many women function well without a man, but few men function well without a loving wife. Men need to be affirmed by a woman who loves them and is cheering for their success. A woman’s words are extremely powerful in a man’s life in both directions—for both good and bad.
2. Children: A man’s ultimate expression of who he is comes through his children. Men express the image of God the Father through their relationship and how they raise children. Men desire to leave legacies and it is done through children.
3. Stewardship: God created this world, but He turned it over to man to manage. Even the Garden of Eden needed someone to prune it, care for it, and oversee it. Man has a deep desire to make things, improve things, and leave things better than he found it.
4. Provide and Protect: Not only did the Garden need managing, but it also needed protecting. Man has a deep need to protect, defend, and provide. Culture has replaced men with government programs and dollars that fall woefully short of God’s intent and many men today are content to let the government take their place yet wonder why they can never “get their lives together.”
5. Govern: Finally, man thrives inside boundaries and rules. Men love sports because sports are the ultimate expression of success and thrills within the confines of boundaries. Boundaries provide excitement, challenges, and order. Men thrive inside boundaries, and he was created to both operate in them and enforce them so that others could thrive as well. The world says, “break all the rules.” That ultimately results in failure. True success, excitement, and freedom is found in boundaries.
When men do not perform their God-given purposes and responsibilities, the rest of culture falters. God has placed the success of His creation in the hands of men. That’s hard to believe, but that was God’s original purpose and plan. When men fail, we all fail. His life fails. His family fails. His job fails.
As we celebrate fathers this past Father’s Day, we look sadly at the state of men and see that they are faltering. Men are belittled, insulted, rejected, and put away in jail, prison, rehabs, and crack houses. Men are empty. Men are hungry. Men are malnourished. They need to eat, and they are eating at the wrong table and the world is fueling it. Until we get back to God’s design for man’s fulfillment, men will suffer and all of society suffers.
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