Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles called Uprising from Kenny Luck, where God’s men seek to reject the material world and embrace God’s world. This series will be featured weekly in Charismamag.com’s New Man during January.
After doing men’s ministry for the last 25 years, I discovered some interesting things.
Men are searching for spirituality. They are asking: What’s my role in the world?
Men—both here in America and globally—are asking questions with growing frequency and urgency because of the gnawing anxiety that stems from undo suffering in the world caused by broken male culture. They know something is wrong. And they want to get involved and do something positive to change things—both at home in their families and in the global arena.
This broken male culture starts with our acceptance and adoption of an outside control: a cultural vision of masculinity that plays upon our desire to be great; to do something great, and our deep need to contribute and to be significant. The world offers us a vision and pathway to achieve this, but it’s a corruption of the vision God offers us—a spiritual vision.
The cultural world vision that we hope will save us from insignificance fails us.
Boys grow up in families. If they are not validated by their father, and given a positive identity that goes with the identity of their father, then they turn to outside forces: friends and other carnal world powers to see what is significant. Why? Because God gave us a free will. He gave us a thirst for significance.
That identity we hope is going to save us from insignificance usually follows a culturally generated “ism,” like hedonism, materialism, accumulation, or worshipping at the altar of greed or self-indulgence. THAT will give me significance… for a time it will at least give us instant happiness.
But two thousand years ago, Jesus fired one shot across the bow of greed, saying you can’t attach worldly visions to manhood.
In John 15:19, Jesus talks about this genesis of the broken male culture, beginning in the world and talking meaningfully with His men, saying you don’t need to go there. That is not the vision of what I have created you for.
John 15:19 NLT, says: “The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”
Jesus claims you as his son. He’s your father. He wants to protect you.
The carnal vision of manhood is adversarial, because the material is committed to death, while the spiritual is committed to life. Jesus is saying to His guys, ‘I chose you. I rescued you from that broken vision of manhood, so you are not of the world.’ You belong to me, Jesus says. You are my son. My offspring. You are mine.
You can’t blend the two, warns Jesus. Blending your life with the cultural version of manhood does not mark the follower of Jesus Christ. You cannot align yourself with the culture and claim spiritual. There’s no compromise here.
So what happens when we do? We see the dreadful fruits of this unholy blending everywhere in modern society.
Feminism: A Reaction to Broken Male Culture
Consider Feminism.
It started in the 1960s. Feminism was a reaction to the broken male culture. It was the beginning of a movement—a revolution, an uprising— in American modern culture, where women were fed up with the broken male culture, and wanted to replace it with their own vision ofrighteous society. Political activism was a reaction on the gender front to a broken male culture.
Feminism was a social intervention by and for the people that we hurt. In part, it was halfway houses and rehabilitation programs for women who suffered from the broken male culture. Billions of dollars poured into this.
How do the men react?
Defensively.
I was reading in an article in Men’s Health that explained that once a target has been put on us, we will defend.
No one likes the blame. Do you like the blame? I don’t like the blame in my marriage. But see, that is the burden of leadership. We are called to a position of right leadership under our Father, modeled by His Son, and empowered by the Holy Spirit making us more like Him.
God’s men are responding around the world with our own Uprising! Men are turning away from the carnal world and embracing the spiritual world. There is a spiritual “Uprising.”
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Kenny Luck is the men’s pastor at Saddleback Church and is the founder of Every Man Ministries. His 20th book–Sleeping Giant: No Movement of God without Men of God— is a blueprint for men’s ministries, and was recently released through Broadman & Holman Books. Follow Every Man Ministries on Facebook and Twitter.
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