Retreat

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of going to an all-day retreat at Oak Openings, a very lovely group of metroparks in our area. The group at the retreat was made up of group leaders for our various small groups, and since I will be co-leading our couples group this year, I decided to go.

Our morning speaker, Pastor Bryan Hochhalter (Grace Community Church, Detroit) had an excellent message for us, focusing on the weaknesses of gender. He gave us astonishing statistics, showing that a majority of women in churches have extremely low levels of self-worth. His second session focused on men. The results of his survey with men (the same he had used with women), were not as clear, but when stepping back and looking more carefully, he found that men were mired in fear. This fear manifested itself in a wide variety of ways, but it was clear that fear was the main reason men did not want to get more involved in church (or small groups, for that matter).

He then challenged us to think about what we could do with this information. In my mind, the key to meeting both the needs of men and women in the group is by being transparent. One way to be transparent is to open up and offer authentic positive feedback on a regular basis. People need to hear the positive things others think about them. Personally, I need work on this, both in my group and in my life. I am not very free with my compliments, even though I generally think very positively about people. I am much more free with criticism. I am not sure why this is, but that's the way I've been most of my life. I recognize it, though, so I need to continue to work on this area of my life. The key, though, is to offer authentic praise, not empty praise. People are usually pretty good at discerning when they are having smoke blown their way, and they are more acutely aware of this when they have low self-worth. I learned long ago that a simple word of encouragement or a simple, honest compliment can go a long way towards helping another person feel important.

We also need to be transparent about our own missteps and falterings. Those men who fear feeling stupid or less than manly need to hear that others feel the same way at some time in their lives. No one is perfect, and as a leader, openly sharing my own inadequacies can help others feel more accepted in the group. We all struggle in life, but many keep their struggles close to the vest.

Small groups are meant to foster and build deep and meaningful relationships, and the only way to forge this type of friendship is by becoming exponentially transparent to those around us. It's dangerous to open yourself up like this, but the benefits far outweigh the dangers. I hope that I can grow in this area and use these ideas to facilitate our group in a loving, productive way.

Real Men Don't Cry

This is a photo of my grandpap. He was a blacksmith by trade. He was what many consider to be a man's man. Besides the requisite metalworking tools, his shop contained a variety of hard liquors and beer, spent pouches of plug tobacco surrounding a spittoon, and ragged copies of old Playboy magazines. I can't remember a time when I visited his shop that there wasn't a gathering of several men just shooting the breeze with him.

One of my strongest memories of him takes me back to my grandmother's funeral. I was five at the time, and I asked if I could ride with him to the cemetery after the service. He obliged, and we rode in complete silence until we got there. After he put the car in park, he pulled out his plug of tobacco and bit off a small chunk, gnawing on it in the silence of the cemetery. I watched him carefully as he surveyed the line of cars coming to a stop. Finally, I spoke.
"Grandpap, are you sad?"
He gnawed for a bit, then sighed.
"I suppose I am a bit sad. What about you?"
Tears welled up in my eyes. Grandpap looked at me, then looked away when he saw the tears that had started to roll down my cheek.
"Now we won't have any of that," he said. Reaching back into his pocket, he pulled the plug of tobacco out and tore a small chunk off, offering it to me.
"Here. This will help make you a man."

Our world has rendered men emotionless. Men don't cry. Men shouldn't show anger. Men shouldn't show mushy displays of love. Men shouldn't grieve. Who came up with these rules? Certainly it wasn't God. In Genesis 6:6, God was "grieved" and "filled with pain." In Mark 3:5, Jesus was "in anger, and deeply distressed." God is also shown displaying his pleasure, and Jesus was documented showing compassion. There are many, many places in the Bible where God or Jesus display emotions, both negative feelings and positive feelings. They certainly didn't hide or squelch these emotions, as they were evident enough to include in the Bible.

Our culture teaches men to stifle emotions, to be in control of their emotions. This is a warped version of what the Bible teaches. We should experience our emotions, not control them. Control should be aligned with the actions we take when feeling emotions. We can and should be angry at times, but that doesn't mean we should punch someone in the throat when we're angry. We should grieve, but when we are done properly grieving, we can take solace in God's promise of everlasting life for those who are His.

"Real men don't cry."

While that may be true in the eyes of our culture, real Christian men do cry, and they ask God to help them control the actions that arise from their emotions.

God, help me to express all of my emotions with earnestness, and guide me as I strive to honor You in all of my actions.

Thoughts on Thumos

I have been reading Paul Coughlin's Unleashing Courageous Faith, and the central idea of the book is the concept of thumos. Thumos, as defined by Coughlin, is a "courageous and animating spirit." From what I can discern, it's the part of us that makes us want to fight for what is right, our sense of outrage when we see the injustices in the world, and our drive to do something about those injustices.

I often share with my students an article I read about heroes in an issue of Life magazine years ago. It was written by Wally Lamb, an award-winning author and former high school teacher. He shared a story about his hero. Briefly, Lamb was outside in the courtyard of the school when he noticed a ruckus. As he made his way through the crowd, he could see that several of the jocks were throwing coins at a boy with Downs syndrome. The boy would laugh and bend down to pick up the coins. As the seconds passed, the coins began hitting the boy harder and harder. The crowd cheered the boys on and became louder with every flying coin. Just as Lamb was about to get to the boy, a petite girl busted in front of the crowd, grabbed the boy, and pulled him out of the crowd. Lamb was amazed at the girl for not only risking physical injury by doing this, but also by her courage to risk the taunts and shunning that could have occurred due to her actions. Lamb claims that this girl is his hero to this day.

I get choked up every time I tell this story. Maybe it's because I worked with developmentally disabled adults for more than a decade. Maybe it's because I love to hear about students who do something extraordinary in the face of adversity. But maybe it's because I always wish I was more brave and more able to act when situations of inequity present themselves.

In my mind, this girl was the definition of thumos in action. God did not make us to be meek, mild, and accepting in these situations. Yes, we are supposed to be loving, but we are also built to engage our thumos in the face of injustice and wrongdoing.

If Christians are to always answer to the question, "What would Jesus do?", then we should look at what Jesus was capable of doing in the face of injustice and wrongdoing. In Matthew 23:23-39, Jesus shows a side of himself -- a side of God -- that we rarely hear about in church. He berates the pharisees for their pious ways, calling them names and yelling at them for their hypocritical behavior. By doing so, he was literally risking his life for justice.

While this barely scratches the surface concerning the content of Coughlin's book, it is a good start to understanding what our thumos should be doing. Injustices are not to be ignored or handled with white gloves. We should not turn the other cheek when others are being subjected to the pain of injustice.

Lord, You have endowed me with Your thumos...help me tap into it and use it for Your good, Your plan. Help me be a better man for You.