It’s father’s day, and I wanted to post something that was shared at my church service this morning that I found helpful to hear. I recognized it is limited in it’s patriarchal view of God, and I recognize that as men we have failed women in seeing them as equals (as well as failed them in many other ways). And I recognize that the attribute described are not limited to males, and that not all of us will agree with what “maleness” means. But this is not what this post is about.
This post is to the guys out there to say, it is OKAY to be male. Because of our historic power imbalance in our culture with our female counterparts, we have a huge responsibility to figure out what it means to be radical Anabaptist men seeking after what God intends for us while rebuking harmful stereotypes.
This is a day set aside to honor fathers. But we at Dayspring want to extend this honor to all men. Today, we want to celebrate your masculinity…your manliness that was patterned after the divine image of our Heavenly Father.
We rebuke stereotypes that hurt and hinder you…. that seek to destroy your competence and question your value.
We celebrate with you instead the Christ-centered model of manhood that embraces your sense of adventure, your love of nature and the wild, your need to do battle for justice and your call to protect. We celebrate by echoing the voice from Heaven that Jesus heard at his baptism:
“This is my Son whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”If you’ve seldom heard those words from your earthly father, we ask that you hear them with your heart now:
“This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.”
Thanks, Denver. Very encouraging. Since I rarely look at this blog, it was nice to encounter something uplifting :) Have a great week!
–Forrest
“we have a huge responsibility to figure out what it means to be radical Anabaptist men seeking after what God intends for us while rebuking harmful stereotypes”
–Amen to that. As a female growing up in an Anabaptist church, even I have run into the constant “male-bashing” that the world seems to dwell on lately. Some of my close family memebers think the idea of submission is utterly appalling, and try to “offset” the idea by engaging in male bashing. Little do they know, they are guilty of the same thing they are so bothered by…
-in Christ,
Karaleigh
Thank you, Denver. One of the few Sundays I’m not at Dayspring, and it ends up blog-post-worthy. :-P
A couple of years ago I had a mini-meltdown over the question “Is it OK to be white?” I tried explaining this to some people at the conference (Jubilee) I was at at the time, but I think I weirded them out. So, while I can’t speak to the struggle of figuring out of it’s OK to be male, whiteness would be somewhat analogous.
When I hear males complain they’re not sure of their identities since the feminist movement began, I’ll admit I’m tempted to respond, “Congratulations, you now know a little bit of what it’s like to be a woman.” That may or may not be helpful. When I was having my mini-meltdown over my racial/ethnic background, I was grateful that people of other backgrounds just let me go through it instead of blaming me for not being further along.