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How Women Help Men Find God Rating: 6 on a scale of 10 Review I'll be honest, I liked this book. I read it cover to cover. I liked it, but I wanted much more from it. What did I like? Well, I liked his recognition of the heroic journey, but I wanted to understand more about it. I liked his recognition of the "feminization" of the church, but I wanted to know more about this. For me this concept alone might take up a whole book (obviously not his goal). I liked many of his little things like "Metaphors Matter", a short little section that basically said to forget about talking to men in all manner of love metaphors, go for the adventure metaphors, brilliant, but kind of hard for us to do actually (I'm thinking "End of the Spear" here). He has an interesting style. I have to reveal a little known fact here first. I am a card carrying member of the NRA. Yes, I grew up with a lot of guns around. You would be shocked to know how many, my father was a gun collector. Ask me about old guns, I know a lot about them and have shot most of them before. Anyway, as a card carrying NRA member I get one of the magazines they offer, in my case it is "American Hunter". I'll be honest here, I love reading the stories in the magazine. I don't consider myself to be a "gun crazy". But, for me a poor day hunting would beat a good day in the office anytime. A good story from American Hunter beats a pile of news stories any day of the week. My great compliment to this fellow is that when I read his prose, I hear the same voice in my head that I hear when I read American Hunter. There is a certain quality to it. And, I suppose, as a male, I enjoy it for some reason, it resonates for me. Having said that, I would say I am much more complex than this sounds, but that's another story. I also appreciated his journey. He undergoes a journey to get to where he was writing this book. It is good to hear about a person's journey. We are all on a complex journey, males and females, feminine and masculine, but how these things come together is more complicated than he revealed in his work. There is much more that could be said. I suppose this book is meant to help women work with their "manly" men. I can appreciate how complex this might be. I have listened to sermons by pastors like Mark Driscoll in Seattle, and I'll be honest, I don't quite want to go where he is at. But, the church today does not leave much room for "manly" men often times. The dynamic qualities of mixing masculine and feminine is very complex.. Recently, while teaching a Sunday school class on "dreams" in the Old and New Testaments, I came upon the dreams and visions of Rebekah and Isaac in Genesis 25-26. A mythic struggle is portrayed using the example of twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Using the scriptures we had read, I asked the class to describe for me the character of each man while I wrote down the traits under their names on a white board. The class did a great job, just what I expected them to do. Then I asked them to tell me what they saw in each list, what did it mean to them? This was harder for them. So, then I wrote a set of headings, one entitled mythic male and the other mythic female. I asked them to give me the defining characteristics of the mythic male. They began to rattle off a few and very quickly realized they were describing Esau's list, just as I had wanted them to see. They quickly realized that Jacob's list was the classic feminine character, but Jacob was clearly a man. How could a man seem feminine? Indeed, this is a fundamental question. These ideas are a rich area of discussion and can lead to a much deeper understanding of ourselves. The metaphor presented in the dreams and story of Jacob and Esau are issues of critical importance to us today. We are told the "manly man" Esau will be supplanted by the more "feminine man" Jacob. This is what Jacob's name has come to mean, the one who supplants, one who will rise above his brother. Does this story still apply to us? I believe it does. This is the epoch struggle at work in the church today. I applaud Murrow for realizing that these struggles are all about "balance". They are also about much more. This issue applies not only to differences between men, but to the very nature of the differences inside of men during different portions of their lives'. For the "manly man", the second half of life will be marked by an encounter with the feminine character buried within him. Little does he know that the struggle of Jacob and Esau is also the struggle of his consciousness and personal psychological development. If you are a younger manly man, I just lost you big time. Don't worry, some day it will make more sense. I say this because I was impressed to find that my "manly" Sunday school attendees all knew what I was talking about. They just did not want to be called feminine. Our lone woman in the class solved it for them nicely by telling them they were "caring men". I like that a lot, indeed, they were caring men, and I was proud to be with them. We need to learn to work together like this more, as caring men. This is a good book. Some will have issues with it, but overall, it has an important message. It is specifically written to women, but can easily be read by men, too. The question remains, can a manly man communicate effectively to women? I believe he has been successful, but then I understand all the "manly" aspects. This coming together of feminine and masculine is at a deeper level a reflection of how our brains are designed and how they function differentially in people, regardless of biological sex status. This deeper understanding is something we lack in the church and in religious literature generally. Can we respect each other as feminine and masculine characters? So far, history would suggest we have problems in this arena. This is an area of active working of the Spirit at this time I believe. All opinions are those of Curtis Climer, MD Copyright 2012 |
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