The Measure of a Man – Temptation

The man whose measure of his manhood is based in his sexual conquests is a pitiful example of masculinity. When the benchmark is something wild animals rush to, and rodents and reptiles, for survival, rather than those qualities and characteristics that place humanity on a different plain from brute beasts, the mark is set very low. Is manhood exclusively about copulation, or is there not something more powerful, more noble, more worthy of recognition in the character of the male human? Where is honour? Where is courage? Where is integrity? Where is goodness? Why when there are many laudable and beneficial qualities of which only humans are capable, do so many limit their consideration of value to something that requires no strength, no passion, no brains?

Are these men such simpering cowards that they will not engage any struggle that might test their strength, inflict pain, or toussle their hair, that they flee the challenges life requires, limiting any basis for self-assessment to the most mundane of all possible measures: self-satisfaction?

Or are they such sissies that the only occupation of value in their eyes is the ardent pursuit of self-pleasure. Like an infant bawling for their mama, they demand to be served:  Feed me. Love me. Comfort me. Amuse me. Watch me. Listen to me. Please me.

Man was created for far greater pursuits than self-satisfaction. When man was created in God’s image, he was endowed with great and noble characteristics of intellect, reason, compassion, passion, invention, and discovery. He was enabled to desire, to consider,to know, to plan, to process, and to love. These characteristics are limited to humanity; no other living creature possesses these abilities. By very virtue of their exclusiveness to human identity, it behoves us as humans to exercise them abundantly for the good of humanity for the betterment of creation to the glory of God Who endowed them.

It takes neither skill nor brains nor character to behave sexually; there is nothing laudable about an activity requiring nothing of value from those engaged in it. Do we praise a good breather, a good eater, or someone who successfully scratches an itch? Why would one’s measure of manhood be based on an equally natural and self-focussed pursuit?

This world needs real men; men who are neither too fearful nor too selfish to ardently pursue what is good, whatever cost to themselves may occur. Men who stand, strong and courageous in the face of self-sacrifice and even pain, so that others may be strengthened and encouraged to likewise stand.

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