"For after years of living in a cage, a lion no longer even believes it is a lion... and a man no longer believes he is a man."
I've felt this way a lot in the last few years. Jobs have ended and new ones haven't opened up. Having to move my wife into my parent's basement simply so she has a roof over her head. Being unable to provide the simplest things for her doesn't help me feel very manly. Being stuck in dead end jobs that I'm uninterested in and have absolutely no passion for doesn't help. Not having the time or the space to do what I most love sucks the life out me.
We've all been there, and if it goes on long enough, we begin to accept it as the life we've been given. We set aside our dreams and aspirations because we've decided to set our passions aside and simply exist. I just thought of the line from the song Eye of the Tiger, "So many times it happens too fast, you trade your passion for glory...", that's where many are at. We do our duty, and go through life miserable and dead, at least inwardly. We are unsatisfied with our jobs, our relationships, and our lives in general.
But in all of this our desires are still there. The yearning for battle, adventure, and beauty never goes away. It's built into our core design. But since we've been caged for so long it doesn't look like it was supposed to. Instead of battles we channel our built in aggression to anger against people who don't deserve it. The smallest things make us snap because there is so much built up inside of us. Our core desire has gone unfulfilled and it works itself out in a destructive way.
In place of adventure we live vicariously through others. John talks about sports addicts who are glued to the TV every minute of the weekend. Or think about the guy who pushes his kid to the breaking point as he tries to live vicariously through him. And in place of beauty, which requires the strength that the challenges of adventure and battle are to prepare men to rescue, they turn to the safety of pornography. Porn is something that will never tell you "No" or "Slow down". It will never leave you for a better looking or richer guy. It is the beauty without the requirements, and as John points out, "more than anything else in a lost man's life, it makes him feel like a man without ever requiring a thing from him."
As caged beasts we don't believe we really are men. Our question of "Do I have what it takes?" is answered with an "I don't know" and rather than find out we play it safe. We turn to shallow imitations that never fully satisfy. Think about it, does snapping in anger end after you've done it once or twice? No it simply fuels it so the next time is bigger and meaner. Does your teams sports championship meet the desire? No it simply fuels your passion for the next season to start with hopes of a repeat. And what about porn? I'm not going to look up how much business it does a year because I don't know what would pop up, but I don't think saying it's a multi-billion dollar a year industry is a risk.
These imitations don't fully satisfy us, because they can't. They don't meet our true needs, and rather than building and molding us into men of God, they simply remind us of the fact that we are huge posers. And out biggest fear is that someone is going to find out. "Every man feels that the world is asking him to be something he doubts very much he has it in him to be." It all comes down to this fact. We really don't feel like men at all. We don't believe that we have strength to offer, the little we do have we don't feel is enough.
We were made for more than this. We yearn for more than this. But we don't believe we have what it takes. We haven't been tested, we haven't been initiated (more on this later), we've never been affirmed by men. And so the world is left with tame, caged men. "Every man dies. Not every man really lives." We were made to really live. "...Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
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