When you think “passivity,” don’t picture a couch potato.  That’s the most obvious form of it, but many extremely busy people are totally passive.  I know, because I was one of them.

Passivity is at it’s core a scheme to divorce people from purpose.  Yesterday I used the word “production;” the Bible uses the word “fruit.”  What we’re talking about is the effect that should follow a cause, the reward for the labor, the point to the speech, the closing of the sale.  Passivity is the vehicle that drives on the highway of our unbelief that God would be so good as to direct us to be fruitful, productive, purposeful, EFFECTIVE.  Or our unbelief that God would be so good as to create US in such a way that we could possibly be these things.  Passivity will let you be busy morning til night, as long as your activity is futile (especially in eternity).  If you suddenly get struck with a migraine and can’t read the rest of the blog, please meditate on that statement for a long time.  PASSIVITY WILL LET YOU DO ALL SORTS OF ACTIVITY, AS LONG AS IT IS FUTILE.

God didn’t create us this way, blind and numb to our purpose.  Remember that first command I mentioned in Gen. 1:28?  The command to be fruitful and multiply, subdue and take dominion?  Remember those millions of megawatts running through our sons?  Those megawatts are directly correlated to what they were created for, their purpose…they’re born wanting to subdue, take dominion, be fruitful (effective)…

Do you hear this all day, too, from your little guys?  ”MAMA!!!!!!!!!  LOOK AT THIS!!!!!!!!!!  I HAVE MY CAPE ON AND I CAN JUMP OFF YOUR BED ALL THE WAY TO CHAIR AND KNOCK THAT PILE OF BOOKS ON THE FLOOR!!!!!!!!!  MAMA, LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…”  Do you hear what he’s really saying about himself in his world?  Yes, my son!  You CAN!  You DO have power!  You ARE effective!  You DO have a place in the universe!  You CAN do what you set out to do!  You ARE a force!  These boys, they’re innately delighted by their own sense of purpose, and it fills them with joy.  They are not born passive.

But we’ve discovered that for most men (and women, but I’ll get to that later), this very sense of effectiveness, ability, strategy, and force is carefully trained OUT of them, rather than carefully developed as EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE CREATED FOR.  So by the time they’re men, they are marked by lack of confidence or misplaced confidence, anxiety, indecision, hesitation, confusion, and at an utter loss as to what they could do to be significant in their universe.  THIS IS PARTICULARLY TRUE OF CHRISTIAN, OR CHURCHED, MEN.  Where does that flying superhero go?

Picture this:  a man sits in his seat at church every Sunday for his whole life.  He files in, he hears sermons, he listens to announcements that give him some more attendance options, he sits with a few hundred other listeners and watches ONE person be active in front of a microphone.  Over the course of his life, he hears 200-300 sermons on how God made him for a purpose, that he has good works prepared before him, that he was made to rule and reign with Christ, and various other excellent purposeful topics.  His mind is packed with the what, but the how is completely left up to him to figure out.  He wants to obey God and is too devout to admit that he’s utterly bored, and mostly at a loss.  In spite of the great sermon topics, did this man learn to be effective or passive?

Picture this:  a boy starts with preschool, moves on to kindergarten, then to elementary school, then to high school.  If he did well, then he goes to college.  By this time, he knows that if he’s excelled then he will move on to:  tada!!!  The reward for excellence:  more school!  Every day his job is to sit still and intake, process assignments, and regurgitate information.  Opportunities to initiate or produce will be the rare exception.  The purpose of each year is not to be able to produce food, build houses, manage businesses, lead people, or steward land and resources.  The purpose of each year is to prepare him for the next year.  To begin to learn those productive specializations (an MBA, for instance), he first has to do 15 -20 years of generalized time, during which he has learned to respond and not initiate.  Did this boy learn to be bold and confident, or passive?  Did he learn that his days are a fleeting vapor, he is eternally significant, and EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE IS CRUCIAL?  Or that it’s totally normal to be in an eternal cycle of preparing for someday and never hold your reward in your hands?

Picture this:  for his formative years, when he’s not at school, a boy is at home with his mom.  His father is at work.  Mom has a household to care for, kids  younger than him, and everybody’s survival depends on her ceaseless labor.  It’s her job to make sure their stuff doesn’t break (they need that coffee table…what are you DOING TO THE COFFEE TABLE, SON????), the house gets clean, meals are made again, again, and again, and that everyone is safe.  She cuddles and protects the baby, and does the same thing fifteen hundred times, be it diapers, or mac and cheese, or laundry.  Her role is not limited to the cyclical, but her nurturing nature inclines itself toward maintenance, safety, and beautifying.  She is a GREAT mom.  Most of her instruction to her son comes in the form of “Don’ts,” as his very nature, when confined, tends to conflict with what is core to her role.  She is often tired and her son pushes her right over the edge into exhaustion.  Was this son trained to subdue his world and take dominion, or that his manhood poses a subtle threat to everyone’s well-being?

Have you noticed what’s missing from my pictures?  It’s the one person who is actually equipped to bring a boy, a man, a SON into purpose.  IT’S HIS FATHER.