Introduction
As my boys grow into men, it is helpful to have some rubric which can give direction and focus to training. There are many books out there like Future Men, It’s Good To Be A Man, and The Manmaker Project, all of which are very good and describe masculinity and the path to it differently. Like constellations, they use the same bright principles but draw lines differently.
Constellations are groups of stars that tell a story, with the brightest stars connecting to make a shape. There may be a scattering of other stars with varying degrees of brightness nearby, and another may come along and draw the lines differently, incorporating others, and seeing other shapes. In our sky, the same seven stars are imaged as a giant bear by some and a big ladle by others (though I’m not exactly sure what kind of story a sky spoon is meant to tell). When I look at the points of masculinity, the brightest ones take the shape around one word: gravitas.
I was introduced to the word in the excellent book It’s Good To Be A Man by Michael Foster and Bnonn Tennant, and gravitas was the title of one of the chapters. As the authors describe, gravitas is a very old concept and was a central concept to the men of the Roman Empire. The idea of gravitas echoes through the centuries in either direction but is a foreign concept in our generation of simps and willows. No judgment here, I have been one of those simps, and at times my spine is as solid as an overripened banana, as soft as it is yellow.
In other words, these thoughts do not come from some tribal chieftain with a bone through his nose laughing at all the thin-legged men. Or to change the metaphor, I am not an eagle demanding pigs fly, but a sparrow talking to other sparrows, fluttering its wings and wondering what was the intentions of these strange gifts.
The definition of gravitas lies right on the surface. It is the weight, the solemnity, the seriousness of how a man takes himself; it is the indentation he makes on spiritual spacetime. Like the Sun whose gravity pulls the planets into its orbit and flexes space, so a man ought to bend the world around him with his gravitas. Different men have different gifts, and some men have a natural gravitas more than others, but nonetheless, every man ought to have a bit of neutron star in his heart.
I would like to tease apart gravitas and list ten ways in which I believe a young man -any man-may take on this weight and the destiny of what it means to be masculine. In general, these will be in descending order, at least the first few. But towards the end, it is more of a list than anything. Of course, there could be more on the list but I kept it to ten so that I may have a manageable number.
1. The Moses Glow
It is a stone-chiseled law of the physical universe that we occupy that a man will turn into what he beholds. All of the weighty things in this life are older than the universe- love, joy, peace, identity, the Word, truth, beauty, goodness, etc. When a man abides in weighty things, he takes on the nature of that thing; that alien nature will be infused into his being. Or else, if he has intercourse with vapid, temporal things he will become increasingly weightless. “They followed after vanity, and became vain” (2 Kings 17:15).
Moses received the commandments from God on Sinai amidst raging fire and plashy lightnings. When he descended double-fisting the Law of God, his face glowed with terrible glory. The Hebrew word implies a light source shooting out rays from within. His skin did not phosphoresce like some cheap glow-in-the-dark face paint. It sent out rays as lit from deep within. His friends begged him him to wear a veil because of the otherworldly light on his face. A beacon was lit in his soul because he had absorbed a bit of the divine identity and that heavenly tonnage burdened his soul and displaced the world around him. What we worship we will become. What we gaze upon will become our strength or the source of anemia.
No man can pull more weight than the power of his will can muster. When a man gives his life to heavy things, he will himself become heavy, he will take on the weight of what he worships. Vapid begets vacuous; tepid turns to tedium; and the perennially breastfed become milksops. A man’s gravitas is directly proportional to the amount of Yahweh he beholds. The kingdom belongs to violent men, and violent men take it by force.
Your world is full to bursting with emptiness. Everywhere people snack on themselves, hoping to weigh themselves down with the accumulated likes of strangers, ever a finger to the wind to stand on the knife’s edge of fickle public applause. This makes a man fat with praise and therefore buoyant, ready to be tossed to and fro by every wind of change. May it not be so with you.
Thus says the LORD: “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?
Jeremiah 2:5
There is no greater tragedy than worthlessness, to strive and spend your life for forgettable meaninglessness. Upon the spot of earth where he lives, even the blades of grass stand erect, unbent by his trivial soles. On his deathbed, he will look with envy at the grasshoppers that so easily bend the flowers.
Knowledge that a man is a son of God is the most weighty thing he can possess. I say again: the heart in which the spirit of Sonship has illuminated with experiential alacrity gives a man an unnatural density. It gives him a boldness before thrones, that of God above and the gods below. A teaspoon of neutron star weighs ten million tons. The single, glowing grain of knowledge of a man’s sonship of God the Father would throw that spoon into a happy far-flung orbit around itself. There is nothing that confers more weight than this. All the following points combined cannot add up to the weight this confers when rooted in the heart.
True weight of character is kept on the condition of keeping close to God and beholding him in his sanctuary. The eternal fountain is open for drinking. See to it your souls tarry thither.
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18
2. Conquer Worlds
I do not mean by this that a man is to lay claim to his neighbor’s patio. A man must prove himself to the world, but he must also prove himself to himself, and he does this by putting his hand to the plow and becoming an expert in something – conquering a world. This may be as a car mechanic, a chef, a butcher, a refrigerator repairman – it doesn’t matter, so long as he is pursuing excellence and expertise in the task he puts his hand to.
Now, I say it doesn’t matter, but in this day in age, I must clarify. It does not mean becoming an expert in theology, cultural criticism, Grand Theft Auto, or which strain of marijuana yields the longest-lasting euphoria. It must be something productive and useful to the world. Is theology not useful to the world? Not when it is coming from some thunderpuppy nine-teen-year-old with very strong opinions on pedobaptism, but hasn’t the slightest idea where to check the oil in this car. He must earn the right, so to speak, to speak. One of the ways he earns this right is to get dirty with life, not blog-snipe from the armchair in his mother’s basement, nor own the libs in the YouTube comment section.
A young man must be fruitful by using his strength to bring forth real fruit from the ground, to marry knowledge and experience. He earns the right to be heard when he can show he can produce. This doesn’t mean he has to be a master electrician before he is recognized, but only that he is on the track, showing in good faith that he is seeking his fortune and owning a few shares of stock in life.
God tells us to work for six days and rest on one. This means regardless of his work schedule he is meant to be industrious, productive, and laboring in some capacity with projects, creative enterprises, service, whatever.
But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.
1 Corinthians 4:19-20
I am a nurse. On the face of it, not the most manly of vocations. It engenders visions of brow-furrowed females holding a patient’s pale hand, applying damp cloths to fevered foreheads. I am an emergency nurse, which I tell my boys means that I know how to take someone’s life and how to resuscitate them afterward. It adds street cred. When I was a new nurse, I prayed to God to make me good at IVs – intravenous catheters. I practiced a lot and put myself into strenuous situations where if I was unable to get venous access, no one would be able to. I sought out the difficult “sticks” and fiddled about with dodgy veins on three-month-olds with the sobbing and irate parents breathing down my scrub top. Now, I am the guy. This is because I placed myself in situations to be the best.
Young men must aspire to excellence. Before they get medals they must have a chest to pin them on. A man’s gravitas is given specificity, and through practical excellence, he gains the respect of other men; he is a doer, not a talker. Through this, they find themselves in a position to do what many others cannot do yet needs to be done.
Freud said a boy cannot become a man until his father had died. Jung agreed but that the death could be symbolic. Now, Freud was a grade-A weirdo and Jung was a sucker for dinner parties and seances, but they have a point. Through gathering expertise in an area of his life, the young man, in a sense, outpaces his father whom he had relied on to explain his world, to answer his questions, to fix his broken toys. Part of attaining gravitas is to be seen as a man in your own right.
If a young man feels ghostly and untethered to the world, let him find a task or job that he is even remotely interested in and let him work towards expertise. This will weight him down and take his mind out of the fog of purposelessness. Callous palms are at least a partial cure for floaty men.
3. Authority Through Responsibility
Here we find another iron-clad law of the universe: authority flows to the man who takes responsibility. Through assuming responsibility a young man gains mass and the items in his trust orbit around him. Objects with higher gravity pull lighter things into their orbit. If Saturn sidled up to Earth, our moon would switch her loyalty and be pulled into the orbit of the planet with greater gravitas.
But true gravitas authority must be earned through responsibility. One of the worst things that can happen to a young man is that he is given unearned authority. If he does well with little, he will be given more. Woe to the one who is given great authority without a track record of actualized responsibility; but greater still is the woe of those under his authority. Giving a toddler an Abrams Tank would be bad for the kid but worse for the neighborhood.
Authority must be earned. A man must come upon it honestly. Why does it have to be earned? Because authority is the exercise of strength over others, and a man must show that his strength is used to the benefit of others. He is strong, but strong for others. Not only this, but true responsibility also means he accepts the fate of others. He does not orphan failure but claims it as his offspring along with his success.
This calls for wisdom. Everyone has authority over something and entry-level authority is granted or assumed and not earned. You have to start somewhere. A young man has authority over his body and that was granted to him by God, just as the master gave talents to his servants seemingly arbitrarily. How they exercised those talents was proof of their ability to govern cities of men. And they were given that authority to govern the wills of many men because they proved they could govern the will of one man, themselves – the hardest man to govern in all the nine realms.
Taking responsibility onto his shoulders weighs a man down. He is seen as a man who can be trusted. Conversely, the one who conspicuously is absent when volunteers are required is reviled – or worse, forgotten.
One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?
Luke 16:10-12
4. Know What Strength Is For
Gravitas does not belong to gym bros. The dudes with biceps the side of baby heads, who do nothing with them but puff them up in the mirror, do not know what strength is for. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the biggest beefsnack of them all. Muscle begetting muscle is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Strength is for dying. I will take the 97-pounder who knows how to die any day over the hulk who is the apple of his own eye. Civilizations are built by men dying daily so their wives and children may live. Men are endowed with greater physical strength because they are given greater physical tasks.
On average, men have 57% greater grip strength, 65% more leg power, and 90% more power in their upper bodies. They can punch 162% harder than the average woman. Ninety-nine percent of women are less strong than the average man. These statistics ought to hint at purpose. This strength can be used to dominate other women, which would be easy to do, dominate other men, which only a few can do, or dominate bad men, which is part of what a godly man is called to do.
Men will always be dominant. Always. There is nothing a woman has that a man cannot take by force. This is the story of much of human history. Male strength can either be used for good or evil, and the only protection women have against toxic masculinity is the good patriarchy.
Muscle does not give a man gravitas; the will required to push the body does, and muscle growth and tonicity is a happy consequence. All young men ought to be developing muscle mass or tone to some extent, within the parameters of their genetic makeup. This doesn’t mean they are all going to the gym and drinking protein shakes, it just means they are active. Boys need to compete against other boys to test their mettle in whatever sport is appropriate to them. Darwin was wrong, on the whole, but there is obvious truth to survival of the fittest and laws of attraction, and the confidence that comes from mastering your own body.
In developing his strength through physical efforts he is learning to say no to himself when his body says to stop. This is not the same thing as dying to self that Jesus commands, but it tames the will so that when dying to self is required, he has prepped his mind to use his strength for others. Physical training acts as John the Baptist preparing his will for the Lord.
5. Know Your Enemy
Enemies abound without and within.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Young men, as a rule, do not know how delicious their souls are, nor the unbending will of Satan, nor how easily the mighty fall. Every step off the path, if not corrected, is the first step on the path to destruction. Don’t be stupid; the enemy is not.
A friend once came to me seeking counsel for his rocky marriage. He had been hanging out with a female coworker and was stirred by budding emotions towards her. Meanwhile, his marriage bed was cold but everywhere else in the house was hot with relational friction. Though unsure of what to do, he reassured me that he “would never f-ing cheat” on his wife. That was very chivalrous, I told him, but reminded him that he is a man and has a penis and suggested he reevaluate his risk assessment of the situation. He took the point.
Gravitas isn’t served by cloistering weaknesses, but neither is it diminished by their presence. The heart is a desire factory that shoots out grappling hooks as we go about our day looking to snag some delight. This is not a bug but a feature. Jesus did not condemn the thirst of the woman at the well, which five husbands could not slake, but offered to satisfy and fulfill it.
Paul talks about these desires which are like weapons that are used against us if not properly submitted. The enemy within, the Flesh, will want to place the world on a dessert platter and sample everything. The enemy without, Satan, will use these desires to imprison the young man within the dungeon of impotence. The World wants to put the young man himself on the dessert platter to serve to others. We are made to be accomplices of our own emasculation through rampant desires. Shame sucks strength.
Peace with Sauron is achieved either by the way of Saruman or Aragorn. Subjugating himself to his enemies and making a god of his stomach, a man finds that he is no longer under attack. He is at peace with the enemy because he has become his servant. Taking up arms against the world, the flesh and the devil, and defeating them through mortification and joy is the only other option for maintaining peace.
Know your enemy, be a navigator of your world. Know the mechanics of your soul and what gums the cogs. Know the swarm of ugly, slithering things under the stones in your soul and all the other evils that still buzz and sting and poison your blood. Which nuisance lusts are free to have their way with you whenever they fuss? What passions have you shackled yourself to in exchange for life? What would be the easiest way to incapacitate you? Think like a serpent.
Sins practiced blunts conscience. Its greatest weapon is its deceit, its trickiness, its tendency to normalization; sin longs for status quo. Your soul can acclimate to any mephitic atmosphere and learn to breathe its poisonous air. Frost-bitten fingers do not ache. Pluck eyes, sever hands.
Put your members to use in ways that bring you joy and in ways that serve others. As vital as it is to fight sin, that is not the point of life. Our purpose is to enjoy God, to live out of joy. Hacking away weeds is necessary, but only so that we can plant good trees that bring good fruit.
6. Do Not Give Your Strength To Women
Samson, Solomon, David, Adam…these men submitted their strength to women
Do not give your strength to women,
Proverbs 31:3
your ways to those who destroy kings.
I imagine Solomon either wrote this as a young, erstwhile king with the words of his father white hot in his mind or at the end of his ragged life looking back over the carnage of a fractious empire sold to harem women and their foreign gods.
The highest and noblest of men will away their kingdom for a passionate night of carnal pleasure. If Solomon, Samson, and David, – the wisest, strongest, and kingliest men in history- were all demolished by women, you do not stand a chance on your own.
And now, O sons, listen to me,
Proverbs 5:7-11
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
Keep your way far from [the forbidden woman],
and do not go near the door of her house,
lest you give your honor to others
and your years to the merciless,
lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
and at the end of your life you groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
Solomon tells his son to not even turn down the road that runs past the mailbox of the long driveway that leads to the harlot’s house. Paul tells us to flee from sexual sin. You may be strong, you are not strong enough. Of all sins, lust is the most leavening. It steals strength, honor, and years. Shame, of all its symptoms, weakens the grip of your sword hand.
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6:17-18
Paul uses the imagery of the Temple with its outer and inner courts and the inner sanctuary – the Holy of Holies. The holiness gets hotter as one moves within. All other sins, he says, happen in the outer courts, but sexual sin penetrates its foulness into the Holy place. No other sin can extinguish the fire of the affections for God like sexual sin because sexual sin is one of union. It uses the body to kill the body; it is the most suicidal of sins while leaving the body still breathing.
Porn is the kill box of masculinity. I would rather a son of mine be addicted to meth than porn because at least meth isn’t antithetical to masculinity. It makes zombies of men, who lose all sense except the taste for flesh. Women become food.
It is normal and right for young men to be attracted to young women. It is normal and right to want to unite themselves with one woman in the bond of marriage. Do not give your strength to women. But do give it to a woman. Find a girl who loves God and children, ask her her name, and marry her. Then spend the rest of your life and strength pulling bacon from the ground and providing it for her to simmer. Have lots of sex.
Samson, dizzy from his debauch and clean-shaven of the heavy locks, finds his strength has left him because the Spirit of the Lord had left him. God had left him because he has left the Lord, and exchanged it for a night of slick flesh on flesh. Like him, a man’s strength is tethered to contact with God. Ignore this tie and strength ebbs until it erodes through repeated neglect, stretches, dries, and breaks. The Spirit of God will never leave a true child of God, which is the point of Paul’s admonition to not “take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute.”
7. Know when to bow the knee
The greatest man bows the deepest. He knows what it means to be in authority because he himself is a man who gladly takes his place under the rightful authority of another. Every man is a lesser of someone. The gravitas of a man is augmented by humility to honor rightful authority. People learn to trust him as an authority when they see him honoring the authority above him.
The centurion of Matthew 8 understood authority. As a representative of his household, he went to Jesus to ask for him to heal his servant. Jesus agrees to follow him back to his residence. The centurion demurs, recognizing the power pent up in the Lord, and knows that with such power all that is needed is the word of Jesus that will span space and heal his servant.
But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
Matthew 8:8-10
Jesus marveled at this faith and hadn’t seen its equal in Israel. This means that the centurion saw more clearly than any other person in Israel the reality of this man’s power. He was more in touch with the reality of who Jesus was and because of this, he was more real. The centurion was heavier than any other because he knew and submitted to the Name.
At the same time, the man of gravitas will be thrown into a furnace before bowing the knee to usurped authority. Nebuchadnezzar had the kingly authority to demand a great many things, but when he donned the divine and made claims for worship the weighty men stood their ground and did not prostrate themselves.
Knowing the difference between which authority is which requires knowledge of history and of the Bible. Start reading. It takes wisdom to know who has authority and where that authority ends. Covid woke many up to realize our spheres of authority were poorly drawn and the jurisdictions were jacked. It is best to do the studying before the test.
8. Be Bombadil
Men are made for dominion. Our first task, our first command, was an unfallen invitation to grow the garden of the world. It still stands today. But before a man bothers loosing himself on the neighborhood or the nether regions of the earth, he must take dominion over himself.
Practically, this is stuff within his reach – brushing teeth, homework, taming the garden of an unruly room. This doesn’t mean hospital corners and t-shirts folded with navy precision, just an awareness of the wake he leaves. Is there a trail of detritus behind a man? Can his location be tracked by following the trail of Cheetoh bags? The man strategizing statecraft lessens his impact if he isn’t picking up his socks.
“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.”
Luke 16:10
Tom Bombadil is master. One of the oldest and most mysterious characters in Tolkien lore, Tom shows up for a few chapters in the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, saving the four hobbits from Old Man Willow. After taking them into his home, which is carved out of the wild and dangerous Old Forest, he has Frodo show him the One Ring. Tom puts it onto his finger – his little finger – and he doesn’t disappear. Then he flicks it up into the air and makes it disappear with some sleight of hand magic. In Tom’s domain, he is the master, no matter what kind of evil walks through the door.
God gives each man his domain and his mastery of it gives him strength, weight, and glory. This may be his body, his room, or his eight-hundred-acre ranch, but it has been given to him for the purpose of mastery. God holds him accountable to how well this is done. As a young man actively orders what is given to him, he is growing up into his purpose for which he was made. But it all starts small, with his own belongings.
9. Hate
Nice is a four-letter word. May it never be said of my sons that they are nice boys. Kind, merciful, compassionate, sincere, honest – yes and amen. But not nice. Nice men hate nothing. God hates things, and to be a man with weight he must hate the things God hates. Jesus did not flip temple tables to be a jerk; “brood of vipers” was not a term of endearment; he did not politely hang on the cross. We are commanded by our Creator to hate.
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good
Romans 12:9
Nice men are airy, they can be shooed away like a housefly on a hamburger bun. They do not grow roots to defend what is theirs from niggling and meddling incursions. Nice men do not storm the beaches of Normandy. They do not defend the battlements of Tours.
When the Lord stood at Lazarus’s gaping tomb, he was deeply moved with anger at the havoc and pain that unnatural death unleashed through sin that had infected his creation. He wept.
Men with gravitas hate wickedness, first within themselves where they cut off leprous hands and gouge lecherous eyes, then in concentric circles outward. They hate wickedness because God their Father hates wickedness. There are way too many heinous and unjust happenings on this earth for a man to be a stranger to hate. There is evil. Eradicate it.
Hate, like love, is a transitive verb. Value cannot be assigned until we know what is being hated or loved. Love is not a positive good unless we know what is loved. Same with hate. Do not love the world, the Bible says. Do not love father or mother more than the Lord. Do not love your own life and seek to save it. Loving pornography is not good. Hating it is good.
Yard signs sprout on the front lawns of many homes in America saying such tripe as “Hate is not a family value” or “Hate has no home here”. Do you hate child pornography? Do you hate injustice? Do you hate that the image of God is being hacked apart in the bodies of the little ones in the womb? Good, you are meant to. This passion reveals an equal love for the things of truth, purity, goodness, and life. It makes you real and gains purchase on muddy ground and can give us direction for our purpose in life.
When dealing with young men, whose wisdom grows slower than their muscles, it must be said that this hatred only very rarely erupts in physical violence and most often necessitates sharpening the mind and wit instead and load the heart with Biblical truth. This is a love-fueled hate. Godly hate manifests in loving actions that protect others, magnify God, and make the world better to live in.
10. Envy Honor
You will now be subject to Shakespeare. Brace yourself.
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
Henry V, Act IV, Scene III
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
On the brink of war and outnumbered, you have here a man begging that not one more man join their happy band of brothers, for if they should happen to survive the gloomy night the cut of honor will be lessened. He declares himself guilty of the sin of coveting honor if it is a sin. Which it is not.
Winning the immortal glory of a Greek hero is not the honor in mind here. I am not talking about being valedictorian or being prom King or getting the high score in Space Invaders. I am talking about the envy of honor that will not suffer someone else to take up their own responsibility or rest when others are working or cowering in the kitchen for the silly reason that there is a lion outside. Loathe safety. Weep if excluded from battle. Abhor pajamas and warm beds while brothers are winning honor on the battlefield. Don’t play up injuries for a ticket home. Want to be there; live to hear the words of your Father that Milton imagined Him speaking to the brave angel Abdiel, who opposed Satan and his hordes:
Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought
Paradise Lost, John Milton
The better fight, who single has maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms
It is no sin to want to win honor for your king, and a man who is good at being a man is doing just that.
Curious absence of Heart
Not one of the above points speaks about the heart of a man. Seeing as the Bible describes the heart as the wellspring of life, the seat of the affections, and the instrument by which we receive the salvation of our Lord, perhaps I should have included it as one of the points of gravitas.
This is because the heart is the fuel for gravitas; its fusion forces create the external drive and heat by which a man pursues life. If gravitas is the force that gives a man the weight of masculinity, the heart is the explosive, blazing heat that ushers outward. It is the light of each star in the constellation. The brightest stars have the greatest pull.
So the desire for honor and mastery, the drive for dominion and excellence, the pugnacity towards sin and evil, the will to push the body and die daily for a woman, all of these things spring from the heart.
Conclusion
Jesus had the most gravitas of any man. We could simplify the whole thing by saying look to Him and become like what you see. As a man does this he will grow in masculinity because he is coming into the image of the Original he was created in. This is true for a woman and femininity – she will become more feminine as she gazes on and attends to Jesus.
Gravity is soothing; it quietly assumes an up and down. In a time when many somersault through empty space, a man with gravitas gives direction, hope, and confidence to those tumbling with nauseating inertial spin. The world is wanting for weight.
In all of these things listed above we make our Father proud as we strive after these things. Perfection is unnecessary, which is good, because it’s impossible.
Thought Butter 