I’ve been going to a Christian men’s group recently. It’s not really a bible study or prayer group. I’ve been to those and they are great and all but not something I am looking for. This is more about the specific struggles of being a man. We talk about our past and how that shaped us and so forth. I would compare it to something like mixing John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart with group therapy. 

Recently, I have been thinking about my dad. He passed away a few years ago. We didn’t really have a relationship at the time of his death. I didn’t hate him or have any ill will against him. There was just not a father/son connection there. I wish he would have had a men’s group to go to when I was younger. Maybe some part of our relationship could have been redeemed. But the men in our church were too perfect. No man wanted to help another man who was publicly struggling. The other men were too busy being good Christian men.

Growing up in an evangelical Baptist church I thought I knew what being a good Christian man was about. A good Christian man has it all together. A good Christian man doesn’t struggle or sin. A good Christian man doesn’t drink or curse. A good Christian man wears a suit to church. A good Christian man is pretty much perfect. These are the lessons I learned as a kid from the men of our church. These are the things I thought I had to master so that I too could become a good Christian man. 

My thoughts have changed a lot over the years about what it means to be a man who follows Christ. I think the image of a holier than thou good Christian man who has it all together is a harmful image. We are all broken in the process of being redeemed. Men have the stigma that we don’t like to talk about our wounds and how they have shaped us. But I know this for a fact; ALL men have wounds and these wounds have impacted their lives. The sooner we can be honest about our own brokenness; the sooner Christ can redeem those parts of our lives and guide us to be the man we are meant to be. 

Key takeaway: All men struggle; do not trust any man who acts like they don’t. And I don’t blame the other men in my childhood church for my father’s mistakes. I just wish they would have tried to reach out to him, rather than casting him aside.