In watching Madagascar last night, I couldn't help but see myself in the role of Alex. Here is a lion, like Adam, who represents the "king of the beasts", but has become domesticated by birth under the reign of civilization foreign to his nature; nonetheless, this is "home" to him.
His restless zebra friend Marty has the prophetic vision to see past their artificial institutionalized life. Marty reminds me of my mother, trying to get me to do things I know I should do, but my initial reaction is always to rebel, to be self-justifying.
Alex finally comes "alive" later in the movie when led to sprint behind his zebra friend in the meadows of Madagascar. Alex begins to "remember" who he is on the most basic level - a predator. That naturally makes his best friend Marty, a prime steak candidate.
As a man, I have constantly felt the pressure of the adventure of masculinity. I've begun to "come out of my shell" over the past few years, but no sooner do I cast off a domesticated spirit, that I put on a judgmental one. I become a "boss" of sorts, judging those closest to me who are quiet and shy, even females, for "weaknesses" that I've seen in myself.
Oh, that I would always put on Christ! One pastor sums up the problem and its solution this way:
I think the natural power of the male is over. He can rebell against it all he wants, but it is struggling in quick sand. The more struggle there is, the faster he sinks. The patriarcal head of household thing is completely artificial and is NOT a return to something spiritual, but something natural, and it is a nature that is dying.
The only way forward for masculinity is to die to this. Jesus was the first man to give up his natural masculine powers. The Kenotic poem of Philippians is the essential telling of this story. It has now caught up with the world. It is only in dying to what is natural that masculine authority and headship can be raised again and come back in a new "final" form that is shorn of nature.
Now, I know everyone will want details on what this means. All I know is that every man I have ever seen who tried to revive nature ends up being an ass. [Or in the case of Madagascar, a predatorial "king of the beasts".] I have seen cases of the most macho masculine and by nature controlling men, with what are undoubtedly very high male hormone levels, just rendered helpless by the current culture. They thrive no better than an Apache warrior in modern Arizona. And in fact, the reality is exactly the same as for the warrior. He can only die, and be raised as a Christian, which looks very different and does not exist by humiliating and degrading women and children.
I think everything in the natural world exists by rivalry. In the natural world, the man is the man is the man by overpowering rivalry over against the female and the children. In God's world, this is undone. In reality, it may well be that large elements of all of this death have only come to pass as late as the 20th century.
Posted by Eric Pyle at October 29, 2005 10:04 AM
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Passing Thoughts