Chapter 1: The Lion Speaks
Courage has no meaning apart from danger, nor strength apart from weakness. To be given courage and strength implies the responsibility to exercise them. Are we ready for that?
Chapter 2: Out from the Womb
In order to exercise saving manly power in the world and bond with a woman, a man must first have separated from his mother and bonded with a masculine one who is greater even than his own father.
Chapter 3: Come Out, Son of Our People!
What does my own culture offer as a validation of manhood? The driver’s license at sixteen; freedom at eighteen to join the army, attend pornographic movies, and to buy cigarettes and beer. The message is clear: Becoming a man means operating a powerful machine, killing other men, masturbating, destroying your lungs, and getting drunk.
Chapter 4: She Left Me!
Whatever sensitivity a man exercises simply because the woman has “released him” to have it may make him similar to the woman, but it can never comprise the manly sensitivity that both he and the woman need. A woman can release a man to feminine sensitivity only as defined in the mother – that is, nurturing and feeling for the other, drawing the other to herself. She cannot release him to masculine sensitivity, as defined in the father – that is, listening for the larger word of truth and lifting its sword in the other’s behalf.
Chapter 5: From Love Bug to Faith: Sexuality and Spirituality
The root of most problems in man-woman relationships today is our unwillingness to recognize the spiritual dimension of sexuality.
Chapter 6: To Corral the Stallion
Today, more and more men are willing to risk destroying family, career, ministry, nation – and themselves – all for brief physical gratification. Such a man may fancy himself as a bold macho figure in his sexual prowess. But he’s actually a boy, abdicating his manly initiative and strength to the woman.
Chapter 7: Lost Among Men: A Nonpolitical View of Homosexuality
Neither the liberal nor the conservative view of homosexual impulses serves the healing purposes of God. According to the conservative, it’s a sin that must be punished; to the liberal, it’s either a free choice, entirely healthy, or a genetic component, no more “wrong” than being black. In praying with many men struggling against same-sex attraction, my experience suggests rather that these impulses reflect deep emotional and spiritual wounds.
Chapter 8: Warrior Redeemed
The true warrior criterion for us men today is neither the “body count” hailed by conservatives nor the “sanctity of life” proclaimed by literals; but rather a deliberate lifestyle.
Chapter 9: Boots for a Working Man
I’m convinced that much of the inner conflict I and other professional men today experience with respect to our jobs and our manhood is rooted in our history. Most of us are not more than two or three generations away from the so-called “working class.” Our “class” today no longer bears the term “working.” We’re therefore caught between a heroic image of our physically hardworking grandfathers in farms and factories, and the white-collar professionals in antiseptic office buildings.Our culture urges men to achieve, to reach a higher socioeconomic status, and then it equates that achievement with losing male fellowship, even scorning it as lower-class.
Chapter 10: The Father and the Man: Of Fathers and Sons
Because every earthly father is an imperfect human being, he can never meet the profound need we all have for fatherly love. The question for fathers, therefore, is not whether they will hurt their children, but will they be willing to recognize it when they do and then seek reconciliation?
Chapter 11: The Father and the Man: Of Fathers and Daughters
As a pastor I’ve heard many a woman tell me that her father had been close to her as a little girl, but essentially abandoned her at pubertk – on the threshold of womanhood, when she needed his affirmation most. If indeed the father calls forth both masculinity in the boy and femininity in the girl, the hallmark of fatherlessness in a society would be gender confusion. Welcome to our modern world.
Chapter 12: To Know the Father
The best that can be said about our human efforts to love one another is that we mediate God’s love. That is, when we say we love another person, we’re essentially receiving love from God and channeling it to him or her. other?s heart precisely when we need love most, in hopes that we will, in desperation, turn to Him at last.
Chapter 13: Where Are All the Men? Why Men Don?t Go to Church
The question is not whether men should be “tamed,” for any unbridled lack of discipline ultimately harms others and keeps you from accomplishing your own life tasks. The question, rather, is “Tamed by whom, and to what order?” Any lack of male participation in churches testifies that men will not be tamed by a program based exclusively upon feminine virtues.
Chapter 14: Rational and Independent, Faithless and Alone
This “lone ranger” model of manhood, common in our cultural icons, is so deeply and so hopelessly rooted in isolation, separation from other people is proclaimed a virtue.
Chapter 15: An Ancient Mama’s Boy is Called Out: Wrestling with the Father for New Life
So the God of Love reaches out and seizes and shakes us at the very core of our identities before blessing us with new life. For if indeed God is the Love we human beings are created from and the Love that we feel for others and long for from others, then those who have ever loved someone else know that love always requires a struggle. And the struggle for love is against the Jacob in us.
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