The Gender Mindbender

I recently had a conversation about the feminine-ness of church, and whether that is turning off men. I actually laughed when I first heard the idea: its seems truly ludricrous at first blush. I mean, what a cop-out! But wait-a-sec. It's been a long time trend that church appeals to women more than men, and if we're honest, we need to ask why. Could it really be because church has become so touchy-feely, so emotional that men disconnect? The "buddy Christ", not a man of contentious nature, radical behaviour and righteous rage, but replaced by an eternally calm, soft, sadly-smiling hippie? Actually, that is a turn-off, come to think of it.

Suddenly I've become curious as to what a more masculine church would look like. I'm not talking about paternalism here. While it seems easy to equate masculinity with power, we'd lose the important advances we've made in gender equality. I'm asking (like perhaps 100 billion people have before me) "What does it mean to be a man?" I can think of some excellent examples, and some pretty shoddy ones. Secure, honest and wise make for a good start, but then what? Ach, let's zag a little.

You know, frankly it's flat wierd we're so commonly told to "fall in love with Jesus". That jus' don't do it for me, and I sincerely hope women don't fall for that line either. It's not a matter of neurosis, it's a matter of disappointment. Um, hello? He's God! Let's just say it's not a relationship of equals (like, for example, humans have bodies, and aren't in charge). Generally we're in an era with far too much emphasis on friendship, the humility and coziness of the transendent being, and far too little on the God that would melt your eyeballs if you caught a glimpse of him. We've gotten so comfortable in the fur, we've forgotten it belongs to a lion. Is that what men are missing (out on) in our brave new world?

I could write a lot more, and point to how the gender question has been addressed in our larger cultural context by movies such as Legends of the Fall and Fight Club (and tons of others). I could speculate on how the culture of the church moves a little slower than the greater culture, and that protects us from the hardest of knocks to our human identity, and perhaps gives us a unique perspective to guide our culture through some of the gender minefield. And maybe I could even smugly mention that we follow the truth about what it means to be human (and promptly miss the whole point of the journey!). But instead, I'm just going to mull this over for a while.