Where "Males" Hide by Arthur Beem

Ever since Adam, men have sought to hide from being "man." 

Although, since the onset of the 20th century and our so-called enlightenment, there is a wimpishness that has entrenched in our being as men, as though wimpishness must be a natural part of the very fabric of which we are made. 

In that statement is found the unobscured naked truth. Look at it: "of which we are made." 

Do you really think that God would have built into the very cellular structure of who we are as males to be cowardly, sniveling, shaky handy milk sops! ? Hell....NO! 

Look at His titles: The Great I AM, Yahweh, God, The Father. 

Do you see any ambiguity in there......anywhere? No, of course not. That is because there is none.

When Our Father comes into the room He does not apologize for any one of these titles. 

No. Why? Because He is The Father of Truth, strength, mercy, grace...and in him there is NO guile. 

Hmmmm, let me see....there was something I have heard about, in the distant past, that the Lord made....aaaaa, hmmm, that was kind of like him. Wait, no. Now I remember. It was in the very image of Him! Oh yeah,...man (God is being very gracious here to call us that...at least in our vernacular) or, maybe from the very beginning He set out what we are always suppose to be... a man. That is not just a local colloquialism to call us "man." God graced us with life, by creating us in His image, which also includes the capability of some of His attributes.

As a parent, I have found how we can speak (or read "breathe") into our children: strength, courage, generosity, love, and many other fundamental elements that go into the perfecting and making of a man...yes, I said a man. The Lord breathed these in the making and growing of "man." It is a title, not just some sub-title of another animal in the animal kingdom. He made man, in the image of Himself: The Non-Ambiguous, The Father of Truth, The Ruler of the Universe. When God says "man," he designed us to be and act like a man, but with many of the same characteristics of God the Father. And for the record, God knew how we would understand that word or title, "man" today.

All men, are males, but not all males... are men. And, no, there are no "versions" of being a man. Only Gods version.

How did men become like this today? By emulating Father Adam...

Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden, when approached by Eve to eat of the fruit, was for Adam to hide behind his wife. Man started out by hiding and not being truthful with God, Eve, or himself. Then instead of calling on God and confessing and taking responsibility for Eve and himself, he hid.  He dodged his authority, and the pain of having to deal with the responsibility. It was, in Adam's mind at the time, easier to lie and dodge responsibility for others (you know...the whole thing about being our brother's keeper). Yes, I know Cain said that...but where do you think Cain got it! All of it...too inconvenient and painful...at least Adam thought it was.

Yes, but we all are not made to be warriors…right? We are just sinners waiting around for Christ to come...? Right...?

You know, that is interesting. We constantly look at history as being old and out dated. Unless things are new they have no validity at all. Except for Adam and men hiding, which this concept is renewed every time a male hides from what is hard or embarrassing, inconvenient, or dangerous. No, we all were not made to be Judas Maccabaeus, Gideon, Joshua, or King David as far as being excellent warriors. But we are all to be warriors of prayer, truth and all the things that are good...things of God. We are to do this in any career we have as men in life. St. Paul was a tent maker...a glorified seamstress! But would there be anyone that would say he was not a true warrior! Hell no! You are talking about a man that was stoned multiple times. And then would get up after the stoning, bleeding and in pain and walk right back into the same town that just stoned him! He was a warrior extraordinaire! Today, there are no professions that men cannot be a true man in.

So where do men hide?

We have made hiding a fine art form. Men hide firstly by being disengaged. 

There are many forms of this. The beginning version starts when we are boys and are allowed to get away with the sniveling excuse of "I didn't know!" Sounds just like Adam, doesn't it? That is because it is exactly like Adam. No, no one is perfect but we all need to learn to be perfect. (Directive number 1472, section A "Be ye perfect" Matt.5:48.) Confess and become holy. We are to learn and not hide from the responsibility of learning. And when we get older, we cannot hide from the responsibility of teaching our children…teaching them early is our responsibility, painful or not. The "I didn't know" approach to hiding starts young and can last a life time.

Then there is the tough guy approach that states that they don't care what anybody thinks and "too bad for them." This is a very unrefined version of hiding but still...is hiding. We continue to be our brother's keeper and need to be the good Samaritan to them. Remember others can be broken and bleeding just like us and not show it.

There are various versions of hiding and an endless supply of excuses of why hiding must be done...but they are still hiding from responsibility. 

Then there is one of the weakest positions a man can be in: hiding because of arrogance. 

"People are stupid and don't deserve an answer."
"I'm not going to waste my time with them."
"That is just the way I am." 

"I was born that way." 

Or the pseudo-pious, "we can't judge, we are all sinners."

The list is endless, but all are just another version of Adam's hiding.

Man, as God made us, in HIS image, have the ability to follow God as hard as it may be. As painful as it may be, and as inconvenient as it may be. 

As a neuro/trauma nurse, I tell you, like I might tell my  patients; you, or "we as a man" have had a horrific wreck. Through our "hiding" we have multiple injuries and they will require multiple surgeries, and between them...there will be pain...lots of pain and discomfort. There is some relief from pain with small doses of pain medication, which takes the form of speaking truth, taking responsibility and helping others do the same. We will not be out of pain of sin...for a while. But we can help other men to be in less pain by not perpetuating lies, taking the pain, the pain of the cross and fighting the battle God has designed us as men to fight.

It's simple. Stop hiding. We are "man", built to be warriors for God, in the image of God. What we do, reflects on God.

We, as men, have always had the ability to follow the Lord, and not hide from him or make excuses. It. does not matter what we do for a living, whether we are priests, pastors, doctors, students, theologians.  We must stop making excuses and hiding behind them. We must speak truth and take responsibility and continue to learn and seek the face of God, not the dark corners of life hoping that someone does not ask us the hard questions.

Men, stop hiding.

Arthur D. Beem, RN

The forgotten saint, "St. Olaf's Acts of War"

Unless you have grown up in Minnesota or Norway, or have done an exhaustive search into the saints of the Catholic Church you probably have not heard of St. Olaf. I had not heard of him  myself and I am Norwegian. 

When I became a Catholic, I was very interested in my heritage not only my Catholic heritage but my national heritage. In research I came across the history of St. Olaf (or Olav). I was rather disappointed to be honest, when out of the glorious and grand stories of our saints that for some of them took several pages, I finally find St. Olaf. It was maybe 20 to 30 lines...very underwhelming.  Especially for a martyr? And mainly saying that he was a accomplished warrior, went to France and was converted to Catholicism and  then went back to Norway and united his country in Catholicism. Not long after he was martyred in battle trying to protect Norway.

As I thought and prayed about the whole story of St. Olaf, it came to me like a thunder bolt. God puts each one of us in this world for a reason. St. Olaf had decided at one point to go into exile. And through prayer and fasting, he came back to take back the Catholic kingdom of Norway. Which was a very hard decision I am sure. Especially since he was in a safe place where he could of just lived his life out. But he made the hard decision, the decision that was painful but the right one. And the one that made him a martyr.

St. Olaf's legacy does not seem like much to eyes of today. What did he really accomplish. He brought Catholicism to Norway which in turn brought many to the Lord and save many souls...not bad for a forgotten saint.

But the point I want to make is about me, and you and everyone else. It is easy to say, "I'm not going to write that book because someone else probably has already written it","I don't have to write my bishop about the rainbow mass, he already knows about it and it wouldn't do any good anyway", "It doesn't  matter what I put in my brain for entertainment, Im a mature Christian, I will just ignore the language and adult content... . All are equivalent to St. Olaf running away in exile. 

Each one of us has a very unique perspective from where the Lord has put us. It not only is unique but integral to someone, somewhere in our lives. We cannot use our human judgement to say that we are worthless, or powerless, or meaningless. St. Olaf was nobody. Hardly anyone ever heard of him, but in "God's" plan he was huge. St. Olaf's decision to come back was just as hard, (and right) as many of the very famous decisions of history, such as St. Paul going back into cities that he had been run out of and stoned in, the infamous decision's of "follow me" or "take all that you own, sell it and give the money to the poor...". 

When we look at St. Olaf's very short but very important life, I see him as a perfect example of how each person, with each hard decision, can be helping to make saints of others (which you may never know about) or of themselves.

St. Olaf's "acts of war" were two fold. One, he had to actively war against himself and make the hard choice to come back to Norway, and two, he had to make the very hard decision to come back and war against evil trying to take over his country.

St. Olaf,
Pray for us that we may, like you, make  the hard decisions to do right in all things.

Pray that we may recognize these "hard" things.

Pray that we do not expect others to do these hard things. 
Pray that we each are given the gift of seeing the hard things we need to do

In the name of the Father, and Son, 

and Holy Spirit

Amen

Being logical is hard...you must be honest AND logical

What do these have in common? 

God The Father in Heaven

King of Nineveh (right after the flood)
Alexander The Great
Ghengis Khan
Ceasar Augustus
Chairman Mao
Polpot
Stalin
Hitler

God the Father the creator is the creator of all that is good. So what could He possibly have to do with these completly evil and vile despots?

God the Father "Is." He is "The Great I Am." All good and love flows from Him. 

The evil despots take their cue from satan himself, who in turn takes his cue from watching and knowing God the Father. In satan's case, at one time a perfect seraphim that became all that is evil, he became the ultimate evil. 

But still what does he have to do with God?

Good question. Even being the ultimate evil, satan and all of the evil despots will still follow the Lord in certain things. 

They all are unified for their own cause. All that follow them, albeit for different reasons then we follow the Lord. Evil, demands obedience through lies and the fear that they will be killed if they don't "unite." Even the devil knows that you cannot accomplish anything through anarchy. There must be some assemblance of organization to get anything done. Do you remember the tower of Babel? What was the one thing that was done to completely destroy their ability to build? Confuse their speech so that there was no understanding or trust and faith in one another. So they all disbanded and went their separate ways and the tower, the building of all buildings, was destroyed through lack of unity and disorganization.

God is organized from the very throne of God to the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. He is the Master of all things...He is not random. When the Lord creates, He creates in an orderly manner. He is the very essence of order. From the very order of the creation of the earth...all things are orderly. From the very beginning, God set up order. He is the Alpha and Omega, and everything in between.

Ok, ok, but still what does this have to do with anything about God?

Now lets look at the other group. The despots. Lets take Hitler because we know about him probably the most of all of them. Hitler from the very beginning of his life was very well educated, he was involved in politics and involved in culture from the arts to music. When he undertook anything, he did it in a organized manner. And for him, if  people did not listen to his orders they would disappear. But the key things that are most important is that he was always organized. His people had the same color shirts, the same color skin, the same uniforms, and most importantly the same ideology throughout the build up of his movement. All his followers from the military to even the civilians. Now whether the civilians thought he was going to create jobs or make their economy better does not matter. They were unified. They were unified in all things, even if they might disagree with what the head might do they still remained unified.

When Martin Luther came on the scene, he introduced the idea of self, instead of unity. Self, then, became the army of one, self ruling, self governing, self deciding of all things. It did not matter what level of education you had, or if you studied, or if you cared at all. Which then became painfully evident in the pure anarchy of the French Revolution. 

What he did was release one of the most virulent viruses on the world since original sin itself. But actually it is a copy of the original sin..."I can decide what is right, even if God himself tells me not to touch the tree...". Luther not only touched the tree, he chopped it down and sold it whole sale under the idea that it does not matter, "here everyone, have a piece" or in translation, "here, everyone have a bite..." I guess you could say that was the second crunch that was heard around the world.

Is it just a coincidence that the Lord said, "In the house of David" or "In the line of Melchizedek." These are organized structures. Not only were they organized, but these were established for all time.  He did not change his mind or say "Moses, you are not the leader of the children of Israel any longer since you struck the rock." No, Moses had to pay for that on his own, not by being replaced by another fallible leader or even anarchy. 

Christ gave St. Peter the keys, and told him that he was the rock, and Christ was going to build His church on him. First, why do you need a foundation if there is nothing going on but anarchy? Then it would be every Christian for himself, and all are free to think or interpret anyway they see fit. 

Their thought is their silver bullet or at least what they think their silver bullet is. All they have to do is invoke the Holy Spirit's name. It is a version of name dropping, or taking The Lord's name in vain. There are those that will tell people all manner of lies and historical inaccuracies and all they have to do is say "The Holy Spirit told me." They do not believe what Christ said about building His church on St. Peter. They do not believe there is anyone in charge, even though all of known and unknown history God always has a hierarchy and he does not change this even if the leader (King David, King Solomon, St. Peter, etc) are not perfect. No, they are not perfect, and yes, they are still in charge. 

Remember, King David was an adulterous murderer. But our Lord still calls himself "from the house of David." Which eliminates  any idea that The Lord would ever change his mind once he sets forth his leaders.

Summary: We know that God is consistent and God sets up visible authorities that guide His people and to whom His people must answer.