We men today are not a stellar species. We do most of the murdering. We commit almost all the rapes. We wage the wars, commit the felonies, and precipitate the global economic crashes due to our greed and stupidity. Over 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies are controlled by men. We run the big banks, the conglomerates, and the military-industrial complex that has slaughtered tens of millions of our fellow brothers and sisters. We created the porn industry, rigged the electoral process, and degraded God’s creation on a scale never seen before in history.
What is wrong with us?
Seriously—what is so broken inside the male heart that makes us want to dominate, seek, kill and destroy?
The answer, in short, is darkness. We live in the dark. We suffer in silence. We allow our sin to fester.
We need help.
For the most part, the Christian resource industry hasn’t helped. My friends in the Christian music industry tell me their record labels actually have a target market in mind: Her name is Jenny. Jenny is married. She is 25 to 34 years old. Jenny is a stay-at-home mom. Jenny has two kids. Write your songs for Jenny.
In the Christian publishing world, women do about 70 percent of the book purchasing. So whom do you expect publishers to gear their books toward? I don’t blame the publishers—they’re just fulfilling demand. The truth is, most devotionals aren’t made for men. Publishers don’t write a lot of books for men in general, because men couldn’t be bothered to sit down and read them. This is our fault. So their books are geared to women. Not that there’s anything wrong with birds or flowers, but we wanted to write a devotional we’d want to read ourselves.
So we did.
We wrote prayers and discussion questions and picked 31 of our favorite Christian dudes throughout history and wrote profiles about each. These guys lived their faith in real, tactical, practical ways that led millions of people closer to Jesus, in big efforts and small acts of love.
Genesis 2:18 makes it pretty clear: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Like going to war, or making an exodus from Egypt, or taking a journey to Mordor, we need one another’s help along the way.
It’s time we help ourselves. It’s time we form bands of brothers to help one another through life. It’s time to go on a healing journey together.
First John 1:7 offers us a double incentive to do so: “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Together we find our healing. In surrender we find our strength. {eoa}
This is an excerpt from Bearded Gospel Men.
Jared Brock is the co-author of Bearded Gospel Men and the director of Over 18: A Documentary About Pornography.
