Jesus: The Man

A few weeks ago, I recorded an interview with "The Catholic Conversation" with Steve and Becky Greene.  It was hilarious and fun.  I've been anxiously waiting the release date, and, alas!  Today is the day!

One of the things I've been mulling over in my mind, and vamping on with some of my roommates, is a concept that Steve mentioned on air:

Woman can feminize anything, but man cannot masculinize everything. 

My gut reaction, when I reheard that on the recording was, "Wow, that might just be a gross over-generalization."  But then I thought about it a little more...

Last night I was tired from a long, but wonderful weekend, working the Feast Day weekend for my parish, and yesterday cleaning my office and finally getting to the mountain of work that needed to be put on hold for the concert weekend.  I got home last evening from the grocery store, pulled my hair up, immediately changed from my business professional to a pair of basketball shorts and a giant (XL - I'm 5 feet tall, so anything above Medium is basically just a dress on me) fishing-brand sweathshirt, and grabbed a beer from the fridge.  My roommate and I talked for a few minutes over the concept of woman feminizing everything, and I suddenly realized that I still made the look of basically a lounge outfit for a man with a beer (pronounced brrr in my house, fyi) in my hand seem feminine.  I was still womanly.

Conversely, my roommate brought the point about that a man, wearing yoga pants and a work-out tank could not rock that as masculine.  No matter who he is.

The general idea of what Steve was saying was not necessarily that every woman can make everything feminine.  No, the idea of woman, in general, making things feminine.

What does this mean?

I said in my interview, and I believe it still to be true, that it seems like our Church is often female-dominated.  I had a discussion with a friend one time about how to get men more engaged by the Church.  He said, very wisely, "When we stop trying to feminize Christ."

Here's the thing, we try to fit Jesus into this happy, peaceful, hippy kind of box.  He wore long hair because He was Jewish, not because He liked the way the wind whipped through His hair when he surfed the waves.  Jesus wasn't nice; He was kind.  Jesus wasn't nice; He was loving with the words one needed to hear (comfort or truth), not with what one wanted to hear.  Jesus wasn't womanly; He was a carpenter's adopted son.  He was strong, masculine, wonderful.  Stop trying to make Him out to be some hippy teacher who simply preached love all the time.  The love He preached was strong, faithful, bold, and (be ready) difficult.  Jesus wasn't a stereotypical 1960's rock star; He is the Savior.

All of these things add up to this: Jesus is a man.  None of this is to say that women can't be strong, or leaders, or kind.  I often need to remind people that affirming someone is not insulting another, so, ladies, calm down.  Simply this: Jesus IS loving and kind, and still says what we need to hear.  But the important thing for me (and all of us) to remember is that He is not a woman, and He is not feminine.