So, at the time of this writing I became the proud owner of a truck. It’s a real, live pick-up truck. It’s not an SUV or even a mini-truck. It’s a truck. I traded my old Toyota Camary to someone who felt that pouring gas into an eight-cylindar engine on a regular basis was a foolish expenditure.
Sucker.
My motives were purely utilitarian. Some of the work I do requires the truck along with the great joy I have in dumpster/curb diving. This is what I tell everyone. I would never want it to get out that driving a truck gives me the odd emotion of feeling like a man. There are many who argue that I’m more Prius than pickup, but I can’t deny that I now feel my Y chromosome completely justified. In order to keep my testosterone is check, I now find myself sipping a grade Latte pondering the relationship between stuff and manhood.
In downtown Nashville there is a boot shop. Picture Payless shoes meets the OK Corral. It was amazing. No boot was the same, each had it’s own character and calling. My sense of this place was that a man was to enter and then listen for his boots - the ones that were stamped with his soul. When he finds them, they fit perfectly. He leaves, grabs a few beers at a honkey tonk and goes back home in his - yes kids - truck. I was able to wander these sacred isles thinking that there is one undeniable truth of manhood.
All men want to be cowboys.
If you don’t believe me, look closely. Look into the eyes of the men who live behind the cages of corporate cubicles, manicured lawns of suburban sprawl, or stuck in downtown traffic. You can see the search for the horizon and the longing to ride into the sunset.
Believe me, the appeal is not the ride, the wilderness, the work, the bad food, the lack of women, the rugged lifestyle, or anything that is the reality of being a cowboy. It’s the notion that somehow we’ve missed the essence of who we are and the man selling us Marlboro’s offers an invitation to the calling jailed in our pinstripes.
I wholeheartedly agree that we have fell headlong into a lie. Most men have agreed to believe that our value is in aquisition. If we make more money, get more recognition, capture every heart, and conquer on each battlefield then we are men. I won’t explore the cliche of how stuff doesn’t make us happy, except to say that it’s killing us. We’ve got it all twisted and in our hearts lies a cancer that slowly eats away at our soul until only the question of “where did it all go wrong” haunts our restless sleep. There is a great difference between the things I want to have and the man I want to be. The role of sacrifice in manhood is seldom explored the way it should be. Men often work on the principle that our happiness is dependent on our power to get what we want - anytime we want it. It might be career, recreation, possessions, or sex, or a combination of all. Regardless, many of us would give assent to Woody Allen’s quote “the heart wants what it wants when it wants it.” An that’s OK.
What’s amazing to me is that the life we deny ourselves we live virtually in our heroes, yet never make the decision to move toward a new definition of what it means to be a man.
Our heroes are those men who gave of themselves for the good of the weak or powerless. These are the men that forgo pleasure, comfort, or recognition so that others may have the kind of life ordained for them. This is the true hero soldier - not the ones that use firepower to wipe out innocents so that we can keep on buying ipods - but the ones that for the sake of the safety and well-being of others gives himself freely. It will never go out of vogue to honor men who run into buildings as others run out or voluntarily put themselves in the line of fire to protect our neighborhoos. These men deny pleasures that bring pain to others simply because that is not who they are.
Our ideal man shows up in our stories (specifically, comics written at at 12 year old boy level). A casual reader of comics understands that an unusual power merely makes a man super. SuperHERO requires a much different characteristic. Eventually, every superhero must face a mortal threat - an enemy that could kill him. These are our favorite issues/episodes. Superman knows that Doomsday is going to kill him and fights on anyway. Spiderman knows that having a normal life with Mary Jane just isn’t an option as long as he wears the suit.
Then there’s Batman. Batman is the only superhero that has no superpowers. Batman is no more than Bruce Wayne behind a cowl, yet his commitment to the good of others shouts of our call to manhood. He has embraced a life in the shadows, denying possible happiness with Vicky Vail (or even Catwoman), all for a Gotham that he could never truly embrace and that never could embrace him.
These tells me less about Superman, Spider-man, or Batman and more about Kal-El, Peter, and Bruce.
This brings me to my ultimate hero. I can’t say enough about what Jesus teaches me about being a man. We talk about Jesus the Savior, the King, and the God, but are often unclear about Jesus the man. Jesus, in his life, shows us what men are supposed to look like. His whole life was a setting aside of himself and the happiness that, one could argue, he was entitled to. The earth, by virtue of His sonship, was his inheritance. With all of his deity to draw from, he was completely man. He wanted the same things I want. He wanted significance, comfort, safety, even love. He could have slept where he wanted, eaten what he wanted, wore what he wanted, got the prestige he deserved, and lived out his life with a woman's love and his children on his knee watching unlimited sunsets.
It’s become part of theology, so it’s significance is often ignored. St. Paul writes to his friends that Jesus could have had it all - he deserved it all - but chose the cape and cowl (my translation of “becoming man”) to walk into my darkness. (See Phil 2) Another writer says that “instead of the joy set before him he endured the cross”.
Do you see it? Jesus’ call to manhood demonstrated itself in the love that fueled him. It was a call given out to all men - a call to make great sacrifices in a mediocre world.
At the end of my story, will I be the man who got what I wanted or will I have become the man I am called to reveal?
