The masculine health crisis in western civilization hits home for me; I experience those emasculating, undermining, subversive powers trying to turn men into women and have found them intimidating and challenging to cope with. In struggling with my own confidence, masculinity and identity as a man, demanding I “get in touch with my emotions” while rejecting my masculine competence and strength hasn’t been helpful.
In pursing healthy masculinity, trying to understand God’s design for men and looking for His perfect standard, I need not look very far at all: the perfect Man, the Prophet-Priest-Warrior-King, lives inside and beckons me onward in my journey.
God has already made me both a king and a priest (Re 5:10), inducting me into an holy, royal priesthood (1Pe 2:5, 9), so Christ’s kingly, priestly qualities are to imbue my manhood.
A central quality of a kingly priest is compassion for those who are ignorant, who have lost their way. (He 5:1-2) Godly masculine love for others should be always looking for how best to encourage and edify them in their connection with God. (2Co 5:18-20) This not only requires me to be closely connected with God myself, but to carefully observe the needs of others and meet them where they’re at.
My example here is Christ Himself, of course, my great High Priest (He 4:14), Who knows me intimately and is always praying for me. (He 7:25) He has not only personally experienced the deepest traumas, temptations and suffering life can offer (He 4:15b), enabling Him to empathize with me, He is Personally touched with the feeling of (my) infirmities. (He 4:15a) This key phrase translates sympatheō, implying a deep, visceral sympathy or co-suffering; it’s not mere pity from afar; it’s an empathetic resonance where He feels the weight of my weaknesses as if they are His own, rooted in shared experience with me.
In other words, Christ is so in touch with His own feelings, so emotionally intelligent and connected, so secure in Himself, that He so fully acknowledges my feelings and connects with them that He invites me in my joy and pain into shared emotional experience with Himself; He allows the feelings of my personal ups and downs into His own heart and lets me touch Him where it’s real, where it matters most.
Father God is not afraid of my pain, of my fears, of my feelings of inadequacy; He knows all there is to know about me. (Ps 139:1-4) In knowing me and loving me, He is inviting me to know myself, and to love myself, to become more like Him, emotionally intelligent and free, not controlled by emotions, but embracing, embodying and mastering them for His glory.