Machismo—or real manhood?
Men have faced hard adjustments over the last few decades. And some people would say that's an understatement! Activist Andrew Kimbrell, for instance, takes this rather dark view in his best-selling book, The Masculine Mystique: "Over the years I have learned that there is something terribly wrong in the lives of most men. ... They feel bewildered, out of control, numbed, angered, and under attack. Numerous social forces, including the increasingly difficult task of breadwinning and the financial and personal devastation of divorce, have eroded their lives to the breaking point." The basic difficulty, Kimbrell says, is that men don't understand who they are. They don't understand "their own masculinity" (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995, pp. xii–13).
Now, maybe you're wondering how someone could say this. Especially when, to all appearances, it's still pretty much of "a man's world"—with men predominating in most corporate boardrooms, legislative bodies, the news media, academics, the arts, religious institutions. And with women still playing, in many cases, supporting roles.
Yet Kimbrell points out that these appearances are deceptive. Actually, he says, the number of men who reach the top management level is minuscule. This privileged sector contrasts starkly, he says, with the overwhelming majority of men who suffer from poor career prospects, poor family relationships, poor health (often thought to be connected with stress), low self-esteem, drug and alcohol abuse.
Add to this the effect of the worldwide women's movement on men—the mass influx of women into the job market, and the cruel practice of "male bashing" (blaming men for just about everything that goes wrong in society).
How have men responded to all this? Sometimes with feelings of hopelessness. Sometimes with feelings of what American newspaper columnist William Raspberry calls "male abandonment" of both family and church ("Saving men's souls, and maybe society," The Tampa Tribune, June 10, 1995). And sometimes with what's called machismo, or macho for short—defined as the tendency to be "an overly assertive, virile, and domineering man" (Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition,1988).
Recently though, there's been a very different response. Some men are banding together to provide "positive male role models" for the upcoming generation of males. Some are volunteering as mentors for high-school boys who need help ("Big men on campus," The Atlanta Constitution, March 2, 1995). And some—actually, hundreds of thousands of men—are responding with prayer.
In marches, rallies, stadiums, and quite places across the United States, men are gathering to learn how to be "more godly" ("Promise keepers...," The Baltimore Sun, June 25, 1995). They're gathering to comfort one another, to turn away from what they see as their failures, to assume responsibilities they feel they've abdicated for too long.
These gatherings represent crucial steps forward. Yet if the fervor of these all-male gatherings is to translate into lasting fulfillment, won't all of us—men and women—need to work together? Won't we need to reach for a higher, spiritual understanding of who we really are? Won't we need to support each other in comprehending, and embodying, real manhood and womanhood?
This kind of cooperative spiritual effort will take us to a new, spiritual vision of ourselves and of each other—a metaphysical vision. It will take us beyond ("meta-") the merely physical view of manhood and womanhood. It will take us beyond biological differences. It will take us beyond male-female stereotypes that say men are aggressive and women aren't, that men are competitive and women aren't, that men are detached and women are emotional, that men want sex and women want love. It will take us to the core of our real and only selfhood: the selfhood that mirrors the Father-Mother of the universe. The selfhood that comes forth from God.
The heavenly selfhood of each individual is distinct, special for every one of us, yet from the one divine source. It's the true you and me. It's the beautiful, totally spiritual self that the Apsotle Paul spoke of in the Bible. Sometimes he called it "the new man." Sometimes he called it the "perfect man," having "the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:24, 13 ).
Paul explained that this spiritual self is totally unrelated to racial and political and gender concepts. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female" he wrote, "for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28 ).
And he was so right. In the world, racial and political and gender barriers may seem real and insurmountable. But "in Christ Jesus," they're not. Real manhood is "all one."
Real manhood and womanhood couldn't be in conflict unless the father-motherhood of God were in conflict. And that's impossible. God is one undivided whole. And He's the creator who has made us all, male and female, unfragmented, complete. As Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God" (p. 516 ).
And because God originates both the strength associated with masculinity for and the gentleness associated with femininity, it's so natural for us to show forth these qualities. And to do so happily and fearlessly. I found this out years ago, when I taught at a university in South Florida.
To my great surprise, I was asked to serve on a team of faculty members that met regularly with university administrators to resolve salary and benefits issues. The first meeting was like a verbal fistfight. Macho-style rhetoric flew back and forth from both men and women. The only way to be heard in that group, it seemed, was to talk tough—and, for me, that just wasn't natural.
So before the next meeting, I prayed. As I did, I realized that the men and women at the meeting had a lot more to offer than just anger and machismo. Underneath that rhetoric, they were all children of God—my brothers and sisters! How could there be anything terrifying about coming together with them on that basis? The purpose of the meeting was simply to share the good ideas our Father-Mother was giving all of us.
Well, I can't honestly say the next meeting was a lovefest. But it was better than the last one, and I began to feel at home. Over the next few years, I actually enjoyed working with these people. They became real friends. And, as a group, we reached some remarkable agreements that benefited the whole university.
But we also found out a few things about ourselves—and each other. I honestly believe we sometimes felt the touch of something holy. Something like what Mrs. Eddy once described this way: "Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense and leading man into the true sense of selfhood and Godhood; wherein the mortal does not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance of eternal being and its perfections, unchanged and unchangeable" (Unity of Good, pp. 42–43 ).
"True manhood and womanhood" aren't dreams in the far-off yonder. They're as close as your Father-Mother God. And they're tendered in His love forever.
Mary Metzner Trammell
