Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

Introduction

Just about every Christian man I talk with wants no more than to live a quiet life.  He wants to have a job that he can be good at, in return for a fair wage.  He wants to build, provide for, and rear a family, with all that involves.  He wants enough leisure to play some sports, to go hunting and fishing, to engage in outdoor activity, to travel once in a while, to have some male friends, to support some hobbies, and to have a wife with whom he can enjoy family life and married romance.

But, for many, there is a problem.  Some men default into a kind of retreat place where life just happens to them.  Others continually and aggressively pursue what they think they want, rolling over anyone in their path.  Then, life brings them up short.  They don’t seem to be able to find the pathway to anything that fills the longing they have for – something else. 

Men often feel lost and alone, with a growing sense that life has passed them by while they were not looking.  They have gone along with the flow or ignored the warning signs, and suddenly have no clue as to what they really want to be or to do in the world.  They hold jobs that allow them to live a preferred lifestyle, but that bring little satisfaction.

In the motion picture, City Slickers, the Billy Crystal character, Mitch, together with his two buddies, struggles to find out who he is in the world.  He joins his friends on annual adventures, and in the film we see them in a western cattle drive.  As events unfold, we are challenged to consider that there is a secret to life.[1]

It should come as no surprise that Crystal and company cannot ever quite grasp how that secret is learned, largely because they do not recognize the spiritual dimensions of their quest.  There is a puzzle-piece missing.  As worldly men, they have no insight into the Christian view that the secret of life for a man is not discovered in the aimless and endless pursuit of challenges to masculinity, but rather, in the spiritual realms that influence manhood.

Perhaps you are one of these men who are still playing roles in search of meaning; posing, posturing, pretending, and fearing that you are going to be found out for who you really are.  Maybe, like the Crystal character, you are running before the bulls in Pamplona.  Then, you get what you wanted, but you find it to be a hollow shell.  You learn that the reality is different from the dreams, and that they no longer engage your passions, if they ever did.

Whatever happened to open-roads, bounding seas, and long vistas from lofty crags and mountain tops?  For some of you, awe and wonderment have disappeared and you are left trying to find the secret of life.  Is this what it means to be a man, feeling anxious, troubled, aimless, out of control, and without purpose; or, just being lonely, even when you are surrounded by people?

In this series of articles I would like to talk with you about just exactly these things.  You can find a renewed vision for your life.  In this process, God will ask you to help others along the way, especially your own sons.  It all begins by coming to understand that while there may be missing pieces in your life, God has built you for nobility and has called you to strength and to honor, to be His warrior, for His purposes.  It will be hard to follow such a call.  It means that you will experience opposition and that life, as you know it, will change.  But, as Todd Beamer of United Airlines Flight 93 said, “Let’s roll.”