Men Making a Difference

Most men want to make a difference

I’ve been doing interviews, focus groups and surveys with men for 18 years, for books such as For Women Only and others. And one thing is overwhelmingly clear: Although no one does it perfectly, most men are strong and caring. Powerful and wise with the use of that power. Providers outside the home and wanting to be loving and present inside the home.

Privileged? Sure—historically, especially. But being a man is not a sin. Simply having male tendencies of emotion and motivation is not wrong and should not be suspect. Now, male ways of thinking and acting are not automatically right, either. Men will do wrong things just like anyone else, but simply being a guy is not wrong. And when society (and television, movies, and social media) essentially infer that it is, how does that make all men feel? How does it make our sons feel?

Of more concern for society, how can men not want to check out when they feel they can do nothing right? When they hear they are not just privileged but broken? When they hear they should not want to handle things in a certain way, simply because it seems foreign to women? When they are told that no matter how honorably they handle the visual temptations that arise in their minds, they should not have those temptations to begin with? When they are told their anger is sinful—rather than being affirmed that anger can be a legitimate sign of emotional pain and the key is to not sin in their anger?

Men were designed by God and they were designed on purpose. And one such purpose is what we see walking the halls of a high school in Louisiana. To be a voice of strength and care in a world that desperately needs it. But the way a good man will want to do that may be different from the way a good woman will want to do that. We have to start encouraging and praising the healthy, caring men around us for being who they are—rather than subtly implying that the way they are is broken.