We continue our study of the three phases of a man’s life by moving on to the Wisdom stage.
If we retain faith through our apprenticeship in Woundedville, God will probably move us on to a wisdom phase, the last stop on the masculine journey before being promoted into the Creator’s presence. So let’s look at the Old Testament concept of wisdom.
The Hebrew words are ish and zaken. Ish carries the idea of male maturity. “The reborn ruler.” Zaken means the sage, the fulfilled man. Zaken literally means beard, and connotes becoming old, gray, being an elder. Zaken mens wise mentor. Gray hair – celebrate it. Honor it. Enjoy it.
Examples of these words in the Old Testament are:
- Proverbs 11:17 “A kind man [ish] benefits himself ….”
- Proverbs 17:27 “A man [ish] of knowledge uses words with restraint and a man of understanding is even-tempered.”
- Exodus 18:21 “…select capable men [ish] from all the people — men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain ….”
- I Samuel 12:1-3 “As for me [Samuel during his official farewell to Israel], I am old and gray [zaken] ….”
- Genesis 15:15 – “You [Abraham], however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age [zaken].”
The ish man is not attracted to every voice wanting him to do something, be something or buy something. He does not jump at quick solutions. Attuned to God’s voice, his mental filter is working. He knows who he is and what he is doing. He has accepted his gifting – what he is and what he is not and he is at peace with how God has created him. At rest about what he has accomplished and what he has not accomplished. No longer striving when some warrior proudly pushes passed him or muscles him out of the way. He has given up arm wrestling. He has nothing to prove. Instead, he’s content to enjoy each day’s obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. Manhood rests comfortably on the ish man. Ish-dom brings a man into a deeper relationship with the Creator; deeper than ever before. The ish man is living according to Biblical truth more than ever before . . . entering into grace relationships more than ever before . . . knowing what he is and isn’t more than ever before. So he is freed from struggling to do or be what God will probably never allow. He’s at rest.
The ish man is moving beyond the painful discovery of his sinfulness to enter into God’s sufficiency and mercy. The ish man has been resurrected out of Woundedville. Ish is the name used more than any other in the Bible for man. It conveys “man of God.”
One brother said, “I am not interested in what most of my co-workers want – houses, land, money, things. I am not running after what they are pursuing.” Such is the blessed freedom of the ish man from striving for more.
Slime Climb
How can we climb out of the slime? How can we move past woundedness into the rare air of freedom, grace and wisdom? How can we stop playing the victim video in our heads and escape the gravitational pull of bitterness?
My assumption is that most readers have given themselves to God. If you have not done so, please turn to page 57-63 to understand an essential of moving on to the wisdom phase.
1. Fish Theology Ralph or Norm, Loretta or Bernice did you wrong. Leaving them out of our mental calculations, we focus on ourselves and having our theology straight so we can make the climb back to health and vitality. We live and move and have our being in
God like a fish lives in water. It is God who sovereignly works in our lives. We are not dealing with Ralph or Bernice. We are doing business with the creative God of the universe. God is leading and guiding in all events, using even the human sinfulness of Norm or Bernice to accomplish His will. Glenn Ripley says, “God is always working for His own glory and our good. That means even the events that led to me feeling wounded were a part of His plan and good purpose.”
2. Faith Theology The Christian life is a life of faith. Every time you’ve read I Samuel 17, you’ve hoped you would have stepped out to take on Goliath. You’ve believed you’d have gone cheerfully to the lion’s den with Daniel. And you’ve trusted that you would have believed God for rain with Elijah. Instead of such heroics (which are more appealing and warrior-like), God calls on us to trust Him about the embittering things that have come our way. Forget the rah-rah stuff that would sound good in the next men’s testimony (bragimony?) meeting. Trust God – that He knows best, that He still loves you and that your service will yet glorify Him. Forget you. Do you have enough faith to stop licking your wounds? Health comes as a by-product of seeking God’s glory. Yes, that is quite a pill to swallow. But it’s the only route back from the edge of the bitterness / anger cliff.
3. Pauline Theology Satan, the enemy of our souls, seeks to exploit our fallen sinful natures to destroy us. If a frontal, exterior
assault of public criticism, rejection and humiliation doesn’t neutralize us, then the cancerous one will try a back-door, interior attack of self-pity, fear or bitterness. These are sins. And what does a Christian do with sin? We confess and forsake sin.
Paul says, “Count yourself dead to sin but alive to God . . . do not let sin reign in your mortal body . . . do not offer the parts of your body to sin [like using your mind to dwell on self-pity, fear or bitterness or play the victim video again].
4. Interpreting Correctly A huge part of healing, regaining freedom and becoming wise is correctly interpreting our wounds. How you interpret your past and present circumstances is critical. The frame you put around your experience will control your attitude.
Consider the example of Jacob’s limp. This man wrestled with an angel and limped the rest of his life. How will Jacob interpret his limp?
He could put a negative interpretation on it:
- “This is terrible.”
- “It hurts.”
- “I am embarrassed by this limp.”
- “It diminishes my masculinity.”
- “I feel self-conscious – people watch me and feel sorry for me. I don’t want their pity.”
Or he could be full of faith by placing a positive interpretation on his reduced mobility:
- “I have learned some things in life. I now enjoy the reduced responsibility of an elder statesman.”
- “I have a trophy limp from that august occasion of wrestling with an angel . . . what a night that was! That experience is my greatest spiritual treasure.”
- “How I rejoice that I met God that night.”
- “My limp is a badge of honor, of spiritual victory over my sinfulness. I finally faced who and what I am – a trickster, a schemer! A sinner. Blessed confession.”
Warrior Spencer Boughman was an aggressive high school football player. A 220 pound, 6’3” quarterback. A scampering, get-that-first-down cannonball is what he was. Paint smears on his helmet – red, blue, green and black – the colors of opposing teams – attested to numerous collisions. When the equipment manager wanted to freshen up his helmet with a new coat of white paint, Spencer protested. Why? Because those color smears were trophies of the conflict; indications of valor; evidences of football battle.
When I was a lad, our church in the Los Angeles, California, area helped resettle some Hungarian Freedom Fighters who opposed the Russians in 1956. While swimming with one of these men, I noticed a scar on his leg. Pointing to it, I inquired, as a child would be allowed to do. He gestured that a bullet had gone in one side of his thigh and out the other. My eyes got as big as dinner plates. His scar was no disfigurement – it was a glorious trophy of the battle . . . proof he had faced the enemy.
The first church I served as pastor in Max, North Dakota, was in a Russian farming community (See page 13). Most of the men had either lost part of a finger, had a scar or had some other mark of their occupation. Were these disfigurements? No. Badges of honor! To be one knuckle short or one finger short was to show others that you had paid your dues. You were not a rookie; you were a veteran – an experienced farmer. Such losses and scars were the entrance fee of the Farmers’ Fraternity. Such a man was “one of the guys.”
As the farmers were unashamed of the marks of their experience, our Lord Jesus Christ retained the evidence of His victory. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a London preacher of the 1850’s and 1860’s, comments: “Jesus Christ will wear in eternity the court dress of His redemptive work . . . He retains His wounds as trophies of His triumph over death . . . He will drape Himself with the regal attire in which he wooed and won our souls. His scars are the distinguishing marks of His valor. Jesus found such value in His wounds that He will not renounce them. He will wear the royal purple of His atonement through the ages of eternity.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ could have removed from His hands, feet and side all the wounds of crucifixion. Instead, when reconnecting with His disciples after His resurrection, He called attention to His wounds as certain indicators of His identity.
In the same way, our wounds are marks of ownership. God owns the believer. Scars – emotional, financial, physical, spiritual – are statements of ownership. Badges of spiritual honor. The entrance fees to the Fraternity of the Faithful.
In this context of “correctly interpreting one’s wounds,” consider the names that Joseph gave his sons. Following the potentially embittering experience of being sold as a slave and spending years in prison, Joseph named his first son Manasseh, which Scripture interprets as “God has helped me forget all my trouble.” His second son, he named Ephraim, saying “Because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering.” Forgetful and Fruitful. These names suggest that as we choose to move on from wounds – as we give our injustices and hardships to God and “turn the page,” we become fruitful in a new venue. And as we apply ourselves in that other job, other city, other situation, we further forget past wounds. Our past ceases to influence our present.
5. Forgiving = Freedom Forgive those who have abused you, lied to you, cheated you and made your life miserable. Why does God command us to do this? Because as we forgive our enemies, we gain freedom. God tells us to forgive others for our benefit. Only a secondary benefit of our forgiveness goes to our enemies. We benefit from stopping the mental video. Every time we play our favorite victim video, we become more right, the other guy becomes more wrong and our emotional energy is focused on getting even, getting justice, licking our wounds or feeling sorry for ourselves. God wants to free us from such a significant energy drain. And He wants our eyes off ourselves and on Him. To forgive a person is to release them from obligation. It is deciding you won’t try to collect what you think they owe you. Even though they may indeed owe you, freedom comes from leaving the matter to God.
6. SNOLA Our healing is assisted by realizing that we are not objective. We try, but reality is that we are not. We really are to blame to some degree.
C.O.L.A. stands for Cost of Living Adjustment. When the cost of living increases sometimes employers provide more money that is called a Cost of Living Adjustment. COLA.
If our relationships are to be healthy and positive – if we are to stay at the same level of peace and harmony – we need a SNOLA: Sinful, Non-Objective Living Adjustment. When tensions and disagreements arise, we need to recognize that we have ceased to be as objective about the blame as would be desirable. Our sinful natures are probably reducing a large problem (in their minds) to a medium sized problem (in our minds), and reducing a medium sized problem (in their minds) to a small problem (in our minds).
Are we teachable? Proverbs says: “Rebuke a wise man and he will love you . . . Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still . . . a wise man listens to advise . . . He who listens to a life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise . . . whoever heeds correction gains understanding.” But the opposite is also true: “Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you . . . the way of a fool
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seems right to him . . . there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”
7. Crying Out to God will eventually bring emotional peace. Your emotions will find no reason to forgive. Your emotions will lag far behind your obedience to God. And you will need to cry out to God constantly until you are free in your mind and spirit to love all people. That’s true freedom.
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