The downside of staunch

When I left school, I entered the ‘hard man’ culture of the forestry and freezing works industry. All my life I wondered: What does it mean to be a man? But God took my heart of stone and gave me back a heart of flesh. He taught me how to be a real man.

In the culture I worked in, being a man was about being tough. Emotions were considered a weakness and you had to ‘harden up’.

I was taught that a man works hard and plays hard. He hunts, drinks and fights, but is tough enough to still turn up for work the next day.

I didn’t know what it would take to feel like a man. Did I become a man when I got my driver’s licence, shot my first deer, did a yard glass at 21, got a job? After a while, I lost my confidence. I would stutter and was often nervous unless I was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

When I got married and had children, I didn’t know how to connect with them and be sensitive to their needs. I got to the stage where, materially, I had everything—a good job where I worked hard, a lifestyle block with plenty of good sheds (even my own killing shed!)—but I had nothing in the way of love, peace or joy in my heart. That’s when I met my life coach, a Salvation Army corps officer (pastor) who became my mentor. He shared his struggles and vulnerability with me, and God used him to transform my heart.

I worked in the logging industry and competed in wood chopping competitions. I have a whole box of axes in my shed, and I think a man’s heart is like an axe. We don’t know how to nurture our heart, so we become like the axe that’s been left outside: neglected and rusty. God took the rusty axe of my heart and restored it back to its original purpose.

I had quite a bizarre experience of identifying with the woman in the Bible who encountered Jesus just as she was about to be stoned for adultery (see John 8). I had so much shame, but I felt Jesus saying to me, ‘Neither do I condemn you’. When I experienced that forgiveness and grace, it brought joy into my heart. It gave me an identity, knowing my position as a son, loved by God my father—I experienced love, grace and compassion. And it changed my heart.

Ezekiel 36:26 says, ‘I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.’ God took my heart of hardness and taught me how to make it soft and sensitive, so that I could have a healthy relationship with God, my family and others.

One of the big things for us guys is that we don’t know how to deal with offense or hurt properly. We become like an axe that has been ‘gapped’—it gets chipped, and when it cuts it drags the wood, leaving a rippled effect. It still cuts, but it has a handicap, a hindrance. My heart was gapped, and the ripple effect of that impacted all the relationships around me. God had to heal the gap in my heart, teaching me to extend forgiveness to others and to keep short accounts of my own wrongdoings.

It is still an ongoing thing—that desire to be hard is a habitual way of thinking, so I’m still learning how to have that ‘heart of flesh’ that God created me for. He is still repairing that gapped heart, keeping me sensitive and sharp.

Even within the church culture, men can be like blunt axes. We can look good and shiny, but our hearts are blunt and ineffective. We need to sharpen our axe by being vulnerable and allowing other men to speak truth into our lives. Proverbs 27:17 says, ‘As iron sharpens iron so one person sharpens another.’

Men like to boast about their strength, but Paul tells us God’s power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). We try to hide our hearts and protect people from knowing our true selves, but once we know who we are in God we don’t have to hide. Now, I boast about my weakness, I share openly with other men about my struggles. I’m the first to cry in church, and I know that I need real relationships and accountability. I need to know my weakness so that God can sharpen me.

In our Kiwi culture, we don’t have a ceremony that says, ‘you have become a man’, so we need to affirm each other as men. We need to tell our young men that they are men, and teach them what that means.

There is one axe in my shed that isn’t in the pile with the others. It is my racing axe, and it is protected in its own box so it stays in perfect condition. 2 Timothy 2:20 says that we are ‘instruments for special purposes’. Like the racing axe, God has set us aside for a special purpose. We need to keep our heart protected so that we can be sharp and effective in the divine purposes God has created us for.

Lieut Karl Foreman is a corps officer (pastor) with his wife Christine at Upper Hutt Salvation Army.