Jesus as a masculine mentor
If you’re like me, you probably have a hard time thinking of Jesus as a masculine mentor. The modern church presents Jesus as a tame and soft man who knows how to behave. The way Jesus is portrayed reads to me as a Christian woman’s idea of a well-behaved man. We know this because most of us resist going all in on following Jesus because it sounds kind of boring. We have neutered the Great King and made him fit into our industrialized, feminized image of the ideal man.
We have been taught to believe that if we can simply shut up, follow the rules, be “nice”, sit down quietly and warm up our 18” of church pew on Sunday mornings and have our mental furniture arranged properly regarding the correct beliefs about God, that we will avoid burning in hell after we die.
But we never truly LIVE!
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The industrial revolution put men in offices, classrooms, factories, warehouses, and on assembly lines, refining our lives and creating untold wealth and technological power. But something essential to our masculinity has been lost.
We all feel it. A restlessness that comes from living in a world we’re not made for.
We’ve lost the goodness that we were created to bring to the world. We’re losing many of the institutions in our culture where that goodness could manifest itself. Marriage and family is in decline. The birth rate is well below replacement rate. A substantial minority of young men will never mate.
The world is crying OUT for men to step up and lead. Lead themselves first, then lead their marriages and families, then step up and lead their communities.
We have lost our vitality, virility and sense of adventure, and with it, so much more has died. We don’t have a masculine ideal to strive for, a hero who has gone before us and shown us the way. We have no masculine initiation and no framework to be initiated into.
“We have lost our vitality, virility and sense of adventure, and with it, so much more has died.”
From a young age, boys are taught to sit down, shut up, hold still, and ask permission to speak or go to the restroom. Any real wildness left in a boy by the time he’s out of third grade is medicated out of him before he reaches puberty.
The closest thing to real adventure in most young men’s lives is the sexy sirens on their digital screens where they can escape into a fantasy and dream of sexual conquest, wasting away their years and their life force, one illicit escapade at a time.
Perhaps a man rebels against the feminizing forces of modern civilization, but falls into the ditch on the other side of the road. He becomes the lone cowboy type, the rugged individualist, or perhaps the perpetual playboy. He values freedom above all, and eschews anything that looks like it might tie him down or keep him from pursuing his next romantic conquest or hedonic impulse.
The Marlboro man might look like a romantic ideal for the bored Western man, but he also misses the mark. Moving from relationship to relationship, he never settles into the true strength that can only come by letting his heart be broken open into Love.
This is not the life that men were created for. As author John Eldredge says in “Wild at Heart”, every man has an adventure to live, a beauty to rescue, and a battle to fight.
We must recover our true masculinity and step into the life we were created for. Our hearts desperately need it, our families are dying for it, and our wives long to feel us in our true strength.
Men need an embodied ideal. Something solid for us to become like. A heroic mentor, who has gone up against the worst that the enemy can throw at him and can prevail. Not just prevail, but flourish. To model eternal life in all of its guts and glory, and demonstrate true mastery in all areas of life.
That ideal, that embodied truth IS Jesus Christ. There is no higher path for a man to choose than to choose to map his life onto the reality of a resurrected Christ. He represents the pinnacle of what a man could aspire to.
Christ’s life represents in real flesh and blood that the nature of reality is such that the King of Kings, the pinnacle symbol of the highest ruler and creator of the universe is a SLAIN LAMB. Not a lion. A LAMB. That was KILLED. Then came back to LIFE and lives forever. (In each one of us too!)
How metal is that?
Jesus fully lived out the proposition that if I live in LOVE all the way - go all in on love and live it as a reality, that even if I’m killed, I will stay grounded in love, and I’ll raise up from death and live eternally.
This is meant to teach us something of the nature of reality - how reality is structured.
I know: from our perspective, it can look like we are living in a power, fear, shame, control game, not a love story. But I believe that what God is trying to help us to see is that God is LOVE. God is I AM. God is the Ground of Being.
The Ground of Being- IS LOVE.
Love is more powerful than fear, shame, power, addiction, abuse, trauma, and all of it.
Jesus is THE WAY.
The truth of the universe embodied in physical form. To show us that this is the true nature of things. Despite what it looks like - love remains and is unshaken.
The solid, unshakeable love that holds all things together is our true identity as men. We are made in this image, and our journey is to live into the truth of that identity. To love our wives like Christ loves us. To die and be reborn in the spirit.
To animate the true spirit (the LOGOS) that is “planted inside of you” (James 1:21), to bring it forward into the world, to reflect the glory of the Creator as you work towards the restoration of Eden. Putting your good gifts and talents into the world in the service of Love. Working towards the restoration of Eden. Living in the Kingdom of Heaven (on Earth, in this present-day reality).
When Jesus was being pulled apart on the cross - suspended between heaven and hell, hanging in the infinite tension between the good thief and the bad thief - He remained grounded in love. He confidently spoke to the “good” thief: “today you will be with me in paradise”.
He knew that Love was not threatened. Even in what looked like the end: death, Love was not threatened.
These truths ring out across all of reality - present at every level of our perception.
In our marriage, our personality, emotions, psychology, our physical body, mindset, politics, art, culture, etc. there is an echo of this deep truth that Jesus embodied: that the way of love is more powerful than the way of the “world”: fear, power, & control.
When you are stretched between the left and the right, the good and the bad, suspended awkwardly between heaven and hell while your wife tests your masculinity and your children challenge your authority. Will you stay present and even playful, looking at your wife compassionately, knowing that “today you will be with me in paradise?” Knowing that love is not threatened, cannot be threatened?
Much of the modern Christian story for men is thin gruel - an uninspiring slop of guilt & shame mixed with some power & control along with a dash of self-help mixed in. Oh yes, throw in some cheap grace, easy believes, moral superiority and some spiritual abuse in there, and you’ve just about got the recipe dialed in.
There’s just no power in it, and we know this because we stay bound up in the patterns and addictions of our life, powerless to bring about our vision for our life, and becoming resentful or depressed about it. Eventually the “wages of sin are death” and we get sick, suffer needlessly, and die before our time.
We must see the truth of who we really ARE: noble image bearers of the Divine, created IN Love, FOR love, and BY love, called to embody the reality of Christ in us, bringing love to a broken world.
Our lives should be shaped by the noble love represented so perfectly in Christ.
The Good King is a community of men who seek to embody the ethos of the Good King. To surrender to love and let it change us into the powerful men of the Kingdom we were created to be. To put to death the misdeeds of the body and live in integrity, aligned to our deepest values.
Aligned to the truth of reality: Love.
We seek to embody the reality of Christ, surrendering our false selves and our egos in service of the Way of Love. We practice being present with our kids, grounded and present in our marriage, healthy in our minds, souls and bodies, and living true: in union with God (obedience).
The men of TGK are the few. I understand why.
Not everyone is ready to go on the adventure of their lives. Stepping out of the stories of shame and lack and following the call on their lives.
It’s scary and dangerous.
No promise of success
It requires the death of something that you hold dear.
You have to step out in faith before you know how it’s going to work out.
It requires radical ownership (bearing your cross).
It requires the sacrifice of everything that doesn’t fit with this new highest vision for life.
You have to completely give up lying about anything and speak the truth as carefully and humbly as possible.
On the other hand: I don’t know of a better story to live in my life.
Think about it… it’s pretty great! The more that I go “all-in” on Love, the more I see my life change for the better in the ways that matter the most.
Yes, it involves death and resurrection, it involves sacrifice and radical honesty, and it forces you to confront your deepest fears, but then again, you look back and discover that you’re being that kind of man.
Transformed by love
Grounded, strong, and free
Seeing your wife and children flourish
Finding deep meaning and a sense of purpose.
Becoming the man you were created to be.
Like, it’s actually not a bad deal.
You have to sacrifice the "“f*cked up guy” (false self, ego, perception of separation from God, living for base desires: greed, sex, and hunger) and in exchange you get to be reborn into the person you always hoped you could be.
Yes, it costs you everything, but you get the Kingdom in return.
I want to be mentored by this Christ. I want to embody this Christ in my life. To be the Good King, living in Love.
This is what I see happening in my life as I follow the Way of The Good King (Christ). I see the healing that love brings, and I experience the peace and joy that marks the Kingdom of Heaven. I
We’re building a community of men who are committed to this healing path and are freeing themselves from the chains that keep them locked up.
The Way of The Good King is an endless adventure and one I’m thrilled to share with you!
DM me on Instagram and let me know:
Do you struggle with picturing Jesus as a masculine archetype that is real enough for you to “follow”?
What is keeping you blocked from experiencing the life you seek?
Do you experience the “Kingdom of Heaven breaking out into your present-day reality in a way that you are aware of it?