Becoming a King: The Path to Restoring the Heart of a Manনমুনা

Becoming a Generalist

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. – C.S.Lewis

“What does a man need to survive?” I posed this question years ago to my very young son as we were headed out on an adventure. 

After careful and honest consideration, he responded, “A wallet and a phone.” 

It was brilliant. And painful. Brilliant because of his perception of our culture, painful because the culture in which my kids are being raised gives the false perception that his response is true. Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac, offered a thought that implied part of the antidote to a world without men: “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other is believing that heat comes from the furnace.” Something in us recoils. Right.

These spiritual dangers have become institutionalized norms in our technological age. Anything you need, you can order online, even get it shipped for free in one day via Amazon Prime. All that’s required is a few clicks. Yet in this age of über-convenience, something inside us grows soft, atrophies, and dies.

How do we avoid the spiritual dangers Leopold described? Dang, it’s hard. After all, most days it feels like heat does come from the furnace and our breakfast does come from the grocery. And on any given day, doesn’t it feel true that what we really need to survive are a wallet and a phone?

To become a generalist is to restore the capacity to do real things and handle real things, to become the kind of man who can handle himself in any and every situation, whether fixing a broken toilet or helping mend a broken heart. 

Far from a caricature, the generalist brings skill and harnessed strength to meet the world’s needs. Instead of corrupted power or learned helplessness, the generalist brings humility and confident skill. 

And in all things, the restored generalist brings life and not harm.

Through becoming a generalist, we recover essential agency with real things and take one more step toward becoming a trustworthy king.  

Reflection Questions

1. Where do you find yourself feeling strong in the company of men? What about these men or these circumstances allows you to feel strong?
2. Where do you find yourself feeling uncomfortable or weak in the company of men? What about these men or these circumstances compels you to feel uncomfortable or weak?
3. What parts of you as a man feel the most atrophied and in need of regeneration, nourishment, and growth? Where might God be inviting you to take back some mastery in these areas, in the name of restoring the generalist he has set within you?

Closing Prayer

God, I want to recover everything you meant when you meant me, as a man. I confess I gravitate toward places and roles where I feel strong and find myself avoiding places where I feel weak and uncomfortable. I open my heart as a man to you, God, to recover the parts of my masculine soul that have atrophied. I ask that you would shine your light on the parts of my soul that remain unfathered, uninitiated, unguided. I invite you to father me in the process of becoming a generalist. I reject every caricature of masculinity, and I invite you to expose the places and roles in which I have hidden as a man. I want to recover the foundation of true masculinity, so that from this base, in any and every situation, I can become the kind of person who can bring true masculine strength, masculine courage, and masculine love, as you intended since before the creation of the world. Paul invites us to “act like men.” Would you reveal to me what you meant by that and how it is to inform me in my path of being restored as a man? Holy Spirit, I ask for your counsel and your leadership to guide me into what is next for me on the frontier of becoming a generalist. Amen.