One night sitting around the living room with our church, discussing these things, some inane plumbing problem manifested itself (a pipe that floods with water and sounds something like Niagara Falls in the sleeping baby’s room every ten minutes or so) and was noted by the group with annoyance.  Nobody knew how to fix it.  Then one of the men busted out, “We don’t even know how fix our own stupid houses, that’s so stinking LAME!!!”  Or something to that effect.

Another man began to share, “My dad can do ANYTHING.  He’s known for it–the whole town, all our relatives know that he can fix anything or build anything.  And I don’t know how to do ANYTHING.  He didn’t teach me ANYTHING.”  Several others affirmed similar stories around the room, a painful revelation.  It’s no common moment, to have men alive in discussion, being that honest about their hearts.  I was riveted.  Why would fathers who were exceptionally capable ignore passing their skills on to their sons?   In that moment of verbalization, it was apparent that it was such an ugly thing, like a kind of hatred.

If it had been a group of women, we would have FOR SURE needed to do the tissue box run.  But these were men.  They were trying to figure out what it meant through the numbness.  Not because they wanted to, but because they have sons now, and it’s urgent.  What did it mean that their fathers left their training to their sons’ schools and mothers, assuming whatever needed to take shape just…would?  How low, how very low, how very useless and insignificant a boy must be, if it’s not even worth his fathers time to explain what it is that he’s doing.  That is one message that went deep into these men’s hearts, a hateful, deceiving message that left them aimless and angry.

But even though the fathers mentioned above were skilled, their skills lacked purpose. What was their skill for? They might as well let somebody else train their sons.  There was no eternal why to their activity, so why take the time to teach their sons how?  THIS is the essence of passivity.  It’s abandonment and abdication in slow motion, over time and even decades, because the main thing, the raison d’etre, the purpose for that day, week, or decade was forgotten.  In real time, it just feels like boredom or distraction or busyness, but it laughs in the end, having stolen the best of life.  A man who worked for decades to support the family he forgot to father.

Hammers and nails are not the point.  The point is that Christian men are suffering from a lack of purpose and a lack of fathering:  the why and the how.  When you finally get down to brass tacks, many who are zealous are confused… “I know what NOT to do, but how DO I set my wife free and how DO I disciple my kids and how DO I lead other men and what DO I DO with my life that will matter in eternity?”

Christ-life is not a list of “do nots.”  It’s actually being taken over from the inside out by a God-sized To-Do list, found in Luke 4 and Isaiah 61.  Remember how Jesus said, “Zeal for His house consumes me,” and “My food is to do the will of my Father,” and then passed it on to us, saying that we would do greater works than the ones He had done?  Have you noticed that this Christ LIFE does not flow from a great list of what you DON’T do?  Just like no father ever taught his son to build a treehouse by telling him NOT to use the hammer on his own hands, NOT to throw the wood into the neighbor’s yard, or NOT to use the saw on the tree?  All those things may need to be said at some point if his son is young enough, but no treehouse would result from that instruction.  Nor would he stand there and describe the virtues of treehouses, how glorious they are or how ultimately desirable.  No one who had ever actually SEEN a treehouse would think the father was going to produce one that way.  Are you following me here?

But wait a minute…if the FATHER is chasing out demons, bringing light to the darkness, rescuing captives, opening the eyes of the blind, and planting transformed sinners as oaks of righteousness, if that’s our Father’s work, and the whole town and all the relatives know it, but He never taught us how to do it…If mainly what we can do is TALK about our Father’s work and hope it takes place at this Sunday’s service somehow, then how low, how very low and insignificant we must be to Him, if He’s not considered us fit to be trained in the family business?

And there, my friends, is the LIE that you will find at the root of passivity.