Men should be able to fix cars.

That's kinda what I always figured...men should be able to fix cars. They should also be able to use whatever a router is (the wood-cutting kind, not the cable-modem kind), be able to tell the difference between a Camaro and a Firebird from the back, know who drives #32 in NASCAR, and be able to spot a nickel prevent defense from the blimp-cam.

By these standards, I am not only not a man...I may actually be a woman. It took me a good 20 minutes to put new wiper blades on my Toyota yesterday, I wouldn't know a router if I were holding one, I'm fairly certain that I could tell a Camaro from a Hummer but that's as much as I'll claim, I can only assume #32 is driven by a mustachioed man named "Darryl" or "Cole," and...I think I made up the term "nickel prevent defense."

This is the part of the blog where I am supposed to stick my digital finger (seems redudant, doesn't it?) in the air and say "But no! These are outdated, archaic ideas of manhood! The modern man isn't constrained to these kinds of criteria to achieve manhood!"

...but I'm not so sure.

I've went to the "Fight for Freedom" weekend last weekend, which is based on the perversely popular "Wild At Heart" by John Eldredge. To summarize way too briefly: the idea is that men must reclaim their masculinity from a society that tells us that men are to be docile, soft and tractable. That we spend the rest of our lives fighting the desires that God built us with...the desire to know that, in the end, we are strong enough to come through when the time comes for us to fight.

Now, don't get me wrong here...I'm not convinced that watching NASCAR has something to do with being a real man. But I think there is an element of our culture that tells me that I need to be calm, pleasant and an all-around nice guy to everybody I come in contact with...and that the more carnal, visceral nature of manhood is something to be tamed and eventually extinguished. It's one of the reasons that Fight Club speaks so powerfully to me...the idea that we can meet God somewhere between burning, acidic breaths in the middle of a fight with another man. You don't have to be mad at him...you don't even have to know him...you just have to fight him, and let that be your entrance to the Cathedral. It's an intriguing idea for me...not because it's strange and violently subversive, but because I think that, deep down, I long to connect with the carnal Justin that lies somewhere between layers of 50/50 poly-cotton plaid.

What is a man? How do you know? I think you're supposed to learn from your father...what if you don't remember him telling you anything about it? I think he's teaching you regardless, either in his presence or in his absence. But the question for me becomes, what did I learn from that absence, and is it really truth?

Peace,
Justin