Keeping Score
Men are in crisis. The problem includes the man in the pulpit and those on the session. We have bought into a lie. That lie is as old as the Garden of Eden. It is the lie that God is not good, that our lives are less than, that we are alone, and that we have got to cover up and hide. Our lives, while devastated by sin and by loss, are not defined by them; we are not condemned by the consequences of our choices or the furrowed brow of frowning providences. Dr. Anthony Bradley has recently written, “Something happens to American men when they reach middle age. There’s a real crisis of meaning. The suicide numbers tell you that much. In most Western countries, men die by suicide roughly three to four times as often as women, and the rate spikes hardest in the middle years, the decades we’re told are supposed to be about career stability, family, arriving somewhere. For a lot of men, those years are instead when the wheels quietly come off, and the research on why is both more developed and more neglected than you might expect.”
Men like to keep score. The older we get, the more losses are recorded and the wins become overshadowed by them. What if you’ve started off in the loss column? Think about the man who has been abused or who’s lost a parent? Who’s a child of divorce? What about the young parent who has lost a child? As you get older you start to lose stuff: you lose health not only for you, but for those close to you, you might lose a parent, your child comes to you and tells you that they are gay or that they want to transition and it’s a loss. Your child tells you they don’t want to be a believer anymore and it’s a loss. The job that you’ve done for 20 years that has given you joy and a sense of purpose, vanishes in a matter of weeks. Your wife has breast cancer and gets a double mastectomy. She is now a double amputee: she feels the loss you feel the loss. You get prostate cancer and your plumbing doesn’t work right anymore. You feel the loss. You have a major health event and all of a sudden, the stuff that you thought was secure is no longer there.
If a basketball coach keeps racking up losses he’s going to get fired. That’s the weight that men carry around with them because they’re keeping score, and if the book The Body Keeps The Score is true, it’s taking a physical toll as well. How do we sing songs like “Grace Will Prevail” or “I’m a Child of the King”? How do we believe that God will restore what the locusts have devoured? We become painfully aware, as Anne Lamott puts it, of three truths: we are so ruined, we are so loved, and we are in control of so little. The problem is that we forget the second truth, it gets drowned out by our buying into a narrative that we were going to be victorious on all levels and in control of everything. There are so many wins we could and should be reminded of, the love of Christ being preeminent, but there is the love of our families, the true gospel transformation of folks we have faithfully ministered to, the gracious provision of daily bread and new mercies every morning.
A common assumption is that men have the emotional range of a teaspoon. Men have a legion of voices and emotions swimming in their heads 24-7. This is what makes Dr. Anthony Bradley’s article so profound and worthy of discussing, confessing, and allowing room to process out loud with one another.
Genesis 3:6-12 is the biopsy, the lab report, the credit report, the 360 review that no man wants to hear or acknowledge. It is here, thousands of years ago, that men became messes. Think of it this way: if you built a house on a foundation of sand and then the inevitable storms of life pound against that house, the foundation will erode, and the house will fall--I got that from somewhere. Being a man contains both the image of God AND of Adam, including the shame, guilt, broken relationships, disappointment, struggle, futility, and a skewed way of looking at life and relating to everyone and everything else.
I like to hunt and a big part of hunting is camouflage, scent eradication, being still, being aware, and pretending to be something that you are not. So much of what I see in myself and in others is hiding and pretending to be something that is either safe or so prickly that no one will notice you or want to approach you. Both strategies end up in isolation. We learned, all of us, male and female, how to hide a long time ago. We wrongly assume it is for protection or control, but in reality it results in loneliness and chaos.
In Genesis 2:18 God proclaims that it is not good for man to be alone. We usually use this as an apologetic for marriage, and to be sure that is the primary application. But while a man will only find a helper fit for him in a wife, he also needs to be with friends, men that know him as God has made him to be AND as who the thousands of years of cumulative sin has made him to be.
So what does one do? The man, the pastor, who dares to stand up in front of another man or group of men and say, I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m scared, I have made a mess of my life, or I feel the weight of missing a standard that I’m not even sure is real -- that man will find that he is not an outlier at all; in fact, he is quite common.
The emotional life of a man that most people see is just the tip of the iceberg. Below, the surface is massive and is made up of volatile emotions, memories, and expectations that at any time --and inevitably will-- become a volcano that erupts from beneath a surface that we have so carefully curated to make everyone, including ourselves, think that we have our acts together. We absolutely do not. To quote a popular pharmaceutical ad, “I got somebody for that.” His name is Jesus, He is the only mediator between God and man, and He has overcome ALL our enemies by His almighty power and wisdom. He has FELT everything you have FELT; He even knows the guilt and shame. He became ALONE so that we do not have to be. Tell someone, your wife if married, your grown sons, your fellow pastors that you have been hiding from, that the fig leaves are not cutting it anymore and you need a friend, someone with a sympathetic and empathetic ear and you absolutely NEED them to listen. And then ask if you can do the same for them.
Here is the rub, and here is where we need you to be a voice in the WILDERNESS. I had a friend who after many years of faithful service as a pastor was overcome by a cornucopia of grief and tried to end his life. He failed, and the long and the short of it is that he was fired from his pastoral position with the charge being that he violated the sixth commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. Very little compassion, very little patience, no hard work of rebuilding Humpty Dumpty. The world and oftentimes the church are NOT safe places to admit you are ruined and have no control. And unfortunately, if you are a pastor, it is not safe at all. Bent Tree is trying to help churches, ministers, elders and their wives do just that. There is an old adage in exercise, “Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” We must provide the space for folks to be honest, to give the Holy Spirit space to work in our midst, smack dab in the middle of the uncomfortable. One of our end goals at Bent Tree is that church will be a place for repentance, belief, AND restoration even for your pastor. It is for some, and for others not so much. We exist to remind these men that we all want to believe the lie, and yet it is imperative that we cling to the truth.
Please investigateus, send your pastor to a conference, contact Bent Tree to find out more and if you can, give financially, because we are living on the ragged edge out here in the WILDERNESS.
Men like to keep score. The older we get, the more losses are recorded and the wins become overshadowed by them. What if you’ve started off in the loss column? Think about the man who has been abused or who’s lost a parent? Who’s a child of divorce? What about the young parent who has lost a child? As you get older you start to lose stuff: you lose health not only for you, but for those close to you, you might lose a parent, your child comes to you and tells you that they are gay or that they want to transition and it’s a loss. Your child tells you they don’t want to be a believer anymore and it’s a loss. The job that you’ve done for 20 years that has given you joy and a sense of purpose, vanishes in a matter of weeks. Your wife has breast cancer and gets a double mastectomy. She is now a double amputee: she feels the loss you feel the loss. You get prostate cancer and your plumbing doesn’t work right anymore. You feel the loss. You have a major health event and all of a sudden, the stuff that you thought was secure is no longer there.
If a basketball coach keeps racking up losses he’s going to get fired. That’s the weight that men carry around with them because they’re keeping score, and if the book The Body Keeps The Score is true, it’s taking a physical toll as well. How do we sing songs like “Grace Will Prevail” or “I’m a Child of the King”? How do we believe that God will restore what the locusts have devoured? We become painfully aware, as Anne Lamott puts it, of three truths: we are so ruined, we are so loved, and we are in control of so little. The problem is that we forget the second truth, it gets drowned out by our buying into a narrative that we were going to be victorious on all levels and in control of everything. There are so many wins we could and should be reminded of, the love of Christ being preeminent, but there is the love of our families, the true gospel transformation of folks we have faithfully ministered to, the gracious provision of daily bread and new mercies every morning.
A common assumption is that men have the emotional range of a teaspoon. Men have a legion of voices and emotions swimming in their heads 24-7. This is what makes Dr. Anthony Bradley’s article so profound and worthy of discussing, confessing, and allowing room to process out loud with one another.
Genesis 3:6-12 is the biopsy, the lab report, the credit report, the 360 review that no man wants to hear or acknowledge. It is here, thousands of years ago, that men became messes. Think of it this way: if you built a house on a foundation of sand and then the inevitable storms of life pound against that house, the foundation will erode, and the house will fall--I got that from somewhere. Being a man contains both the image of God AND of Adam, including the shame, guilt, broken relationships, disappointment, struggle, futility, and a skewed way of looking at life and relating to everyone and everything else.
I like to hunt and a big part of hunting is camouflage, scent eradication, being still, being aware, and pretending to be something that you are not. So much of what I see in myself and in others is hiding and pretending to be something that is either safe or so prickly that no one will notice you or want to approach you. Both strategies end up in isolation. We learned, all of us, male and female, how to hide a long time ago. We wrongly assume it is for protection or control, but in reality it results in loneliness and chaos.
In Genesis 2:18 God proclaims that it is not good for man to be alone. We usually use this as an apologetic for marriage, and to be sure that is the primary application. But while a man will only find a helper fit for him in a wife, he also needs to be with friends, men that know him as God has made him to be AND as who the thousands of years of cumulative sin has made him to be.
So what does one do? The man, the pastor, who dares to stand up in front of another man or group of men and say, I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m scared, I have made a mess of my life, or I feel the weight of missing a standard that I’m not even sure is real -- that man will find that he is not an outlier at all; in fact, he is quite common.
The emotional life of a man that most people see is just the tip of the iceberg. Below, the surface is massive and is made up of volatile emotions, memories, and expectations that at any time --and inevitably will-- become a volcano that erupts from beneath a surface that we have so carefully curated to make everyone, including ourselves, think that we have our acts together. We absolutely do not. To quote a popular pharmaceutical ad, “I got somebody for that.” His name is Jesus, He is the only mediator between God and man, and He has overcome ALL our enemies by His almighty power and wisdom. He has FELT everything you have FELT; He even knows the guilt and shame. He became ALONE so that we do not have to be. Tell someone, your wife if married, your grown sons, your fellow pastors that you have been hiding from, that the fig leaves are not cutting it anymore and you need a friend, someone with a sympathetic and empathetic ear and you absolutely NEED them to listen. And then ask if you can do the same for them.
Here is the rub, and here is where we need you to be a voice in the WILDERNESS. I had a friend who after many years of faithful service as a pastor was overcome by a cornucopia of grief and tried to end his life. He failed, and the long and the short of it is that he was fired from his pastoral position with the charge being that he violated the sixth commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill. Very little compassion, very little patience, no hard work of rebuilding Humpty Dumpty. The world and oftentimes the church are NOT safe places to admit you are ruined and have no control. And unfortunately, if you are a pastor, it is not safe at all. Bent Tree is trying to help churches, ministers, elders and their wives do just that. There is an old adage in exercise, “Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” We must provide the space for folks to be honest, to give the Holy Spirit space to work in our midst, smack dab in the middle of the uncomfortable. One of our end goals at Bent Tree is that church will be a place for repentance, belief, AND restoration even for your pastor. It is for some, and for others not so much. We exist to remind these men that we all want to believe the lie, and yet it is imperative that we cling to the truth.
Please investigateus, send your pastor to a conference, contact Bent Tree to find out more and if you can, give financially, because we are living on the ragged edge out here in the WILDERNESS.
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