Ok, here I am again… two times in quick succession, wow. I guess you guys are wondering what’s hit you, huh? Well, it’s probably someone behind you spluttering. If so, I recommend you move, or put up an umbrella. Either way, they’ll probably get the hint and stop spitting at you. Good. I feel we’ve all learnt something here today.
So, I’ve been learning all about and getting to know Jesus. Not unusual you might say, seeing as I’m on a Christian youth workers course. But yeh, you know, I think you can spend an awful lot of time hearing about someone, whithout actually learning about them. And you can spend a very long time learning about them without actually getting to know them. So yeh, I’ve just been trying to actually get to know Jesus. Like, really know Him, His personality, and what that means for me. I mean if you read through the Bible, you just start to get a view of how totally awesome and manly this man was! Have you ever watched the movies of manly men and thought ok yeh, definitely they are men! (that might not make sense to everyone reading this, but hey, bear with me…) and then someone who watch these protrayals of Jesus on film… and He’s like. Well. He’s nice. He’s very nice. Sweet, even. Just this sweet, nice, toddler hugging guy with a ‘love one another!’ message and sandals. But where in the Bible is that image of Jesus even from? Like this guy insulted people, whipped people, I mean He spoke and people fell over! He spoke and winds and waves stopped! Think of the most manly man you can iamgine… I mean a real man. Like fierce and scary sometimes… but also gentle and loving. And Jesus is like 100 times more than that. Like Jesus’ life was an example of how men were created to be – of how Adam must have been. And then for some reason, we water Him down, and we pick and choose points, and then we’re left with this bizzarre image of what it means to be a man – some cowed over, brow-beaten ‘nice’ guy, who doesn’t fight, or have fire in his eyes. How many dull men do you meet? I mean like, where the fire has gone totally out of their eyes? It’s like there’s something dead there, that used to be alive and excited, but they long since learned that good, Christian men can’t be anything but ‘nice,’ right? Well just look at Jesus! This man argued with demons and took complete control. He was fully in the will of God from beginning to end, but He wasn’t some sort of nicey-nicey push over! This guy had strength… it’s just that He knew when and where to use it – and He did use it! And yeh, Jesus was humble… but again, what kind of picture do we put on that word humility? Push over, right? Cowed down, putting yourself down? No, humility is recognising that you matter, but you want others to matter more! It’s not making less of yourself, it’s making more of others.
So yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking of recently… and yeh. It’s been making me wonder… what would men be like if they felt free to be like Jesus?
