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ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

A man was made to find a cave with a bear in it,

drive out that bear, and take over that cave.

And a woman was made to find security

in the love of that strong man.

I have forgotten the source of that bit of doggerel, but for years as a pastor, I have used it to teach the truth of Ephesians, chapter five, which is based on the basic needs of the man and woman.

First, we have to understand the metaphor. The cave is the man’s niche, his place in life, the thing for which he was created, the man he was made to be.

The battle with the bear is every man’s battle with himself. John Eldredge puts it this way: “Even if he can’t quite put it into words, every man is haunted by the question, “Am I really a man? Have I got what it takes ... when it really counts?” He reminds us that the story of Adam is every man’s story, and while our stories differ, “the outcome is always the same: a wound in the soul. . . . Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by his father.”

My wound was inflicted verbally and physically by my angry and frustrated stepfather. A recovered alcoholic, he came to faith late in life and became a fundamentalist zealot. And so the wound, inflicted in the name of God, was compounded.

One of the most important tasks before a young man is known as identity formation. Generally, we find out who we are by our mid-twenties, but the consequences for the man who fails in this task—fails to find healing for the wound—can be far-reaching. I have counseled many men in midlife who were engaged on a familiar battleground, still trying, in subtle and unconscious ways, to prove their worth to their fathers. Usually they were very smart men making really dumb decisions because they had never won the battle with themselves. Their wounds were still open.

Christian psychologist Robert McGee identifies four false beliefs that can result from our early life experiences: The Performance trap: I must meet certain standards in order to feel good about myself; The Approval Addict: I must be approved by certain others to feel good about myself; The Blame Game: Those who fail are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished; Shame: I am what I am. I cannot change. I am hopeless.

For the man who lives by such beliefs, the symptoms are many and varied. It may be arrogance or anger; the problem is not that he gets angry but that he is angry. It can be fear: the fear of failure or the fear of success. Sometimes it is greed and materialism, the he-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins mentality. Addictions to alcohol, drugs, nicotine, work, ministry, lust, sports or eating are often on the list. A man “in the bottle” is a man who has never driven the bear out of the cave.

Control issues and perfectionism are often in the picture. This is the “macho man” who is domineering on the outside but a frightened little boy on the inside. I knew a young man who, everyday after work, drove home, backed his truck into the garage, lifted the hood and polished the engine, and then went into the house and raged at his wife if anything was out of place or dinner was a minute late. It was not surprising that she experienced pain in intimacy, or that their marriage dissolved.

After his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, actor Michael Douglas remarked, “You have to be secure to be married to someone as beautiful as Catherine.” The truth is you have to be secure to make a good marriage with any woman.

The man who finds what he was made for, and more importantly, understands who God made him to be is blessed, and he has found the source of his sense of security as a man. The man secure in who he is has nothing to prove and nothing to lose because he has already won the battle with himself. It is that man who is able to love his wife “as Christ loved the Church, giving himself up for her.”

How do we win the war and find that sense of security? The answer lies in getting back in touch with our true objective—knowing the God who made us.

Of all the questions Jesus could have asked Peter, he said simply, “Do you love me.” Henri Nouwen says, “The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus? Perhaps another way of putting the question would be: Do you know the incarnate God?” In another place, he says, “We will never understand the full meaning of Jesus’ richly varied ministry unless we see how the many things are rooted in the one thing: listening to the Father in the intimacy of perfect love.”

Jesus shows us the way. It is in communion with the Father that we find healing of the father-wound, win the war with ourselves, and become the men we were made to be. And so it makes sense that Paul begins his discussion with, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Written by: Jonathan Edwards