Man Enough

How does one define himself as a man? This is a question that has attempted to be answered by countless people over the coarse of modern history. To often in the church we are faced with a compelling counter cultural view of manhood. We are faced with images daily that scream “manhhood”, images like sport stars, models, beard wearing chest thumping man’s men and completely overly macho. However when we compare these images with that of Christ we run into some issues. Yes Christ was a carpenter and probably knew his way around tools but to often in Church we try to fit him into what society says is a man, instead of really looking at how He defines manhood. In “Man Enough” Nate Pyle unapologetically does just that. He rips back the cover of societies expectations of men and lay bare the reality that the man we are to be like is in fact soft, kind, serving and full of grace. Not exactly the Braveheart warrior that we hoped for, but rather the fighter this world needs. The fighter that is focused on what is really important for the kingdom. “If men are to fight, then we need to be clear what it is we fight for. Peace. Reconciliation. Grace. Justice. But let’s be clear: We are mad not for conflict but for action” (Man Enough, p. 76). This quote really caught me and probably is one of the best from the book. We in the Church have for to long been trying to “man-up” the gospel that we have missed again the fact that we are ministers of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18). We are not fighters in the worldly sense we are called to action on the Godly sense and Nate Pyle does probably the best job of pointing that out that I have ever read. Being a father of boys this book calls to me to be more like Christ and less like “The man” that society feeds them. I believe that also women will benefit from reading this book too, while I think his intended audience was men, Pyle has written a great work on identifying yourself in Christ no matter who you are now.