Forgiven Forget

The fact is, our image of what makes a real man is based on precisely that - an image. Something detached, a marketing strategy. You can see it, and even touch it... but that's when you realise it's glossy and printed on paper and not connected in the slightest with reality.

I've been reading Every Man's Marriage with Sophie, my wife. While it's stacked high with good ol' American cheese, it is also refreshingly honest, and practical. Here's the authors list of ten character traits that men specifically bring into marriage. See if you can see any of them in yourself.

1. Men are rebellious by nature
2. The Male ego is bigger but more fragile than the Female ego
3. Men are relatively less sensitive to the needs of others
4. Men are less able to express emotions and feelings verbally than women are
5. The male brain is more oriented to facts and logic than to emotions and intuitions
6. Men are sexually stimulated visually
7. Before marriage, males take responsibility for nurturing the love relationship - after marriage he sees the bride as someone to look after him
8. Men need less romance than women
9. The male shield from inferiority is his work
10. Men desire peace from marriage, while women desire oneness

These all probably fit most of us men, to a lesser or greater degree, so in that sense, they define 'man'. But ultimately I see the definition of true man in one person. Jesus - who is both fully man and fully God. The Bible wonderfully describes him as 'the image of the invisible God'. When we see his character we see more fully what our unseen God is like. But he's also the perfect image of man, untainted, and uncorrupted by sin. And unlike the James Bond-a-likes of the movie and marketing world, Jesus is real and far from distant.

At the heart of a Jesus-based view on manhood, I see humility.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many

Mark 10:45 (NIV)Jesus as the glorious Son of Man, promised authority and rule over all creation, instead shows the height of his glory by serving, by humbly laying down his life. There is no finer view of what being a man is really about than in Jesus. In obedience to his Father, in love for us, in a desire for God's glory he served.

For me as a male who desires to be a man, that means my pleasure should come from seeing others helped. In my marriage, seeing Sophie grow in wholeness of character, growing closer to Jesus, as I serve her lovingly. As part of a local church family, setting the needs of others as highest on my priorities. At work, in town, out with friends, the attitude extends - I am here to serve. To be an apprentice servant, treading in the footsteps of the great servant - not disregarding my own happiness, but rather finding it multiplied as I serve others joyfully in love.