What A Mighty Good Man

What a Man, What A Mighty Good Man

Mark 5:1-19

Today is father’s day; a day that we set aside to honor those men who played a very important role in our lives. But on Father’s Day I want to ask you a question, who in their right mind would want to be a man? If you were to look at the way we as a society portrays men who would want to be one. For example if we were to watch one night of TV what do you think we could learn about men?

They are not very smart, always being out smarted by women, children, or dogs.

They are not very loyal; they are always looking for a better job, car, wife, or family.

They are not very motivated, they would love to spend their days sitting on the couch drinking and eating Cheetos.

And the best they can do is be the bumbling idiot in the office or work as a shoe salesman.

You know if that’s our idea of what being a man is about you can have it. Because I want to be the type of man that I remember growing up.

John Wayne or Clint Eastwood riding into town and taking on 100 bad guys and winning with their fists and a good piece of Hickory.

One of the three musketeers who would loose their very life to save the honor of a lady.

To me that’s manhood, and if we think we can remember some great men. Remember right after September 11th as the firemen and policemen, and paramedics made there way into the rubble and risked their lives for the lives of others.

Or do you remember the stories about men like Todd Beamer who fought his way to the cockpit of an airplane to overtake some terrorist and save the White House from being destroyed by crashing the plane he was on into a Pennsylvania field. Do you know any men who have left their homes and families to go off and fight for the freedom of a country that isn’t very grateful?

Those are real men, but honestly those types of men are in short supply, and I think that it’s my fault and yours. You see in the 60’s we were told that a woman could do anything that a man could do, and we believed it. Then we were told that women could do it better, and we accepted it.

Now I believe that women are powerful and they can do anything that they set there mind to but I also believe that we have forgotten the way that we were made. You see God made men to act like men and women to act like women. It is not anything that we can teach. It is how God made us. With a 16 month old and a 4 year old boys in the house I am learning that no one has to teach them how to act like boys they just do and if you try to go against their nature you frustrate them.

We have some friends who wanted to train there son to be polite, and kind, and quiet, and act against his nature, so they gave him little girl toys as well as little boy toys so he could be well rounded. You know he has the kitchen set right next to the tool set in his room.

I remember one day seeing them and listening to their frustration as they explained how there son would not quit taking the Barbie doll they gave him, bending it over at the waste holding the legs in his hands and shooting it like a gun. That’s not the way to you play with a Barbie doll, they said and I thought that’s the way you play with it if you are a boy.

Trafton acts like a little man. He is not interested in tea parties or staying clean he wants to bite his cheese sandwiches into guns and shoot his mom or me. Rylan makes noises like Vroom, and beep, beep and he thinks it’s funny to burp because that’s how boys act. I didn’t teach them how to do those things they just know.

But some boys are confused because as women took the mans role in the home there was nothing left for the man to do so he got bored and left. They left a powerful wife at home to raise the kids. You see we told them that they were not needed, a woman could perform both roles, so the dad in the house was useless and in homes across America dad’s left. Left the house, Left the family hurting, and left the family confused.

Now it’s 2005 and we have a generation of young men who have no vision. They think real men play football or wrestle on TV, and get paid millions of dollars to play a game. They see men, like presidents or basketball players cheating on their wives and we have told them well that’s just how a man acts.