Powerful, innocent, and free
I was recently out of college, working in finance, and had never been in a jail before. Just minutes away from going in with a Christian Science chaplain to help give a church service and conduct one-on-one interviews, I felt totally unprepared. On the heels of that disparaging thought, however, came a sense of strength and peace. I realized that the attentiveness and respect that I would receive would be totally based on the power of God in this activity, not on my personal qualifications, or lack thereof.
My experience that day, and in the years following, proved this encouraging idea to be true, as I consistently encountered a deep respect from inmates for the purpose and efficacy of our work sharing Truth and Love (names synonymous for God).
After that initial moment, I was never again fearful in my prison ministry, even as I sat down with some of the toughest-looking men, women, and young offenders around. There’s something truly humbling when a big muscle-bound dude or a normally defiant (ex-)gang member opens up and shows that, despite all their physical strength and tough experiences, what they want most is to feel the kind of deep spiritual peace and power that we’re there to explore together. Ultimately, we end up coming to the same conclusion: strength, importance, power, success, honor, and respect only come from one place—a spiritual sense of these qualities that comes from God, Truth and Love. We don’t have them based on any qualification apart from that which is God-derived.
Conventional concepts about manhood and about what makes a man strong and successful are often based on models of personal power and material advantages. But the more we understand about the spiritual nature of true manhood, the more we discover a way of thinking and living that has infinitely more power than any stereotyped model of what it means to be a man.
This point was also made clear in my finance business. Before I grew a bit of facial hair, I had an especially young-looking face—a fact that was initially troublesome to a number of my clients who needed to be able to trust me to help guide them through some important financial decisions. But my clients didn’t choose to stick with me because of my personal looks, background, or anything along these lines. I had none of these qualifications that would have been convincing to anyone, any more than I had street cred in the jail. My clients stuck with me because they were attracted to strengths and values of Principle (another name for God), in as much as I was able to let them shine through my work. The power and attractiveness of these qualities were especially appealing at a time when it seemed like strong moral character was in short supply in my industry. I’m certain it was for this reason that I got business from folks who never would have looked twice at me otherwise. There was a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the power and attractiveness of those God-derived qualities and my success.
Christ Jesus' life is a model of manhood. He was firm but forgiving; disciplined, but humbly open to wherever God would lead him.
Both of these experiences took place in environments where most people involved might have thought that power comes from brute force—be it physical strength, strong personality, or aggressive intellectualism—or that it comes from respect of position or money. I certainly heard plenty of talk along those lines, and I haven’t always been immune myself to such temptations. These models are commonly held up as the way in which men must seek to attain power and success. Likewise, the fear is often present that one will be thought of as less of a man if one doesn’t have these things.
There’s nothing really new about that way of thinking. Physical strength, dominating personality, and material wealth have been considered symbols of power and success throughout history. There have, however, been plenty of men and women along the way who have succeeded in proving that those volatile models are useless in the presence of genuine spiritual power.
The best example in history that I know of is Jesus Christ. Lots of people in his time were looking for a tribal leader, a brutish warrior who would lead his people by destroying their enemies—as opposed to someone who would lead through compassion and sacrifice of self. They thought Jesus’ meekness was weakness, but in fact, his willingness to put all personal strength, righteousness, and power aside, allowed the power of Truth and Love to shine through him. He let go of models of human power and showed that spiritual power attained through humility and deep love could accomplish the greatest of feats, including feeding thousands of people, redeeming the lives of those who had been lost in sin, healing every malady under the sun, and raising the dead.
Christ Jesus’ life is a model of manhood. He was firm but forgiving; disciplined, but humbly open to wherever God would lead him. He was a protector, but not through physical force, and without a sense of personal responsibility for others. He gave total credit to the divine power that animated him, and he knew that God alone was the savior of mankind. His healing wisdom and deep compassion were the tangible outcome of Truth and Love expressed.
Men today want those same Christlike characteristics. They want respect; they want to feel capable of protecting and providing for loved ones; they want to do something that is worthwhile in this world; they want to feel successful; they want wisdom. They want to help guide others along their way, especially their children. They want others to see that they are valuable. They want to be loved, and they want to love.
In our efforts to find and know this genuine goodness and power, we all—men and women—have the same necessary objective: to look to our model, the Christ ideal, and to better understand and follow that model. As Mary Baker Eddy noted in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Jesus was the highest human concept of the perfect man. He was inseparable from Christ, the Messiah,—the divine idea of God outside the flesh” (p. 482). There’s really only one way to succeed. Christ’s model of genuine power (and genuine manhood), is our standard, and we can all expect greater success in obtaining what is most important to us as we strive to follow this example in our daily activities and interactions.
We should also vehemently deny that men can be guilty, by their very nature, of being brutes, sensualists, or buffoons. The man of God’s making is innocent, pure, and wise by nature. False models of failure can’t define a man any more than false models of success. As the children of God, we have been made to be wholly good!
There’s also no pressure or heaviness in being a man. God’s children are each entirely supported by God, and thus none of us are personally responsible for our own power or for the well-being of another of God’s children. A misunderstanding of this point is what originally had me tied up in knots that morning before I first went into the prison. And this misconception can try to sneak in and act like it’s a part of what it means to be a man, but it has no part in true manhood! The man of God’s making is the protected of God, not a protector; he is provided for, not a provider. He’s not the boss of anything, and he’s not a decider or a director. With childlike, humble receptivity, God’s man follows the direction of his Father-Mother God wherever he is and whomever he’s with, be it in a jail, a business, a family, or the community.
Whether we’re talking about qualities traditionally associated with manhood or with womanhood, all of God’s children are made complete by God, not lacking anything good. We are each capable of letting go of false models and of expressing, right where we are today, the Christlikeness that is inherent in each one of us. This is the fulfillment of manhood and womanhood, and this is what it means to have genuine success and power.
