Soul Wounds, “Big boys don’t cry,” and the 3rd Lie about Manhood

Invulnerable is what society expects males to be. They’ve been led to believe that if they express any kind of hurt, especially due to emotional abuse or pain, they are effeminate. We’ll take a look at this deception, its consequences and answer the question: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

This series of articles exposes the three major lies taught about manhood and uncover what true manhood is. The three major lies are these:

1. Manhood is validated by your ability to compete with other men and win.
2. Sex with different women and the favor of women validates manhood.
3. Any acknowledgment of weakness, pain or hurt is effeminate.

We’ve already covered lie number one and two, now we’re off to the last. This one is the most hampering.

Lie 3: Any acknowledgment of weakness, pain or hurt is effeminate

This lie is based on the false idea that manhood is about strength and invulnerability, so crying about pain or acknowledging a breach in ones “armor” is showing yourself to be weak. But no man is invulnerable. No man is Superman. Even Superman was wounded and killed.

So we have males from a young age told not to cry when they get a cut or a bruise. And because they experience scorn from coaches or other males for shedding tears, they quickly learn to stop the flow.

What’s more damaging is emotional cuts and bruises. These are pains that can’t be physically repaired by humans. So there are males who have been abused, molested, rejected, and disrespected; and instead of crying about it, talking about it, and seeking healing, they bury it deep within their souls. To make matters worse, some parents or “guardians” minimize or disregard the trauma by telling boys to “just get over it” and “be a man.”

So young males learn: that to acknowledge a breach in their soul is to acknowledge their vulnerability. So weakness is something they shouldn’t have, they reason. But yet, their armor has been penetrated, signifying they aren’t the superman they are supposed to be—what a dilemma. Therefore, they bury traumatic experiences for fear of ridicule, and this causes a number of problems.

1. Prevents healing and destroys physical health

If a man can’t acknowledge that there was a breach in his soul, he won’t seek healing and will never be healthy. Doctors have discovered that suppression of emotional pain causes physical illnesses and leads to an early death.

This is why wives often outlive their husbands because the husband never cries and deals with his issues properly, while the wife may cry, talk it out, and eventually get over it.

I encourage you to visit this article on the correlation between negative emotions and physical illnesses. The spiritual realm (where emotions live) really does affect the physical body. Remember, it was the spiritual that existed first, before the physical, and it is the spiritual that is responsible for the physical realm coming into existence—the two are connected.

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. (Hebrews 11:3).

Here’s some excerpts from the above article if you don’t have time or access to read it. It comes from www.FamilyDoctor.org:

Poor emotional health can weaken your body’s immune system, making you more likely to get colds and other infections during emotionally difficult times.

Also, when you are feeling stressed, anxious, or upset, you may not take care of your health as well as you should… Abuse of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs may also be a sign of poor emotional health.

If feelings of stress, sadness, or anxiety are causing physical problems, keeping these feelings inside can make you feel worse. It’s OK to let your loved ones know when something is bothering you.

However, keep in mind that your family and friends may not be able to help you deal with your feelings appropriately. At these times, ask someone outside the situation, such as your family doctor, a counselor, or a religious adviser, for advice and support to help you improve your emotional health.

FamilyDoctor.org

Here’s another interesting find from www.Psychologies.co.uk:

When you bottle things up … When it comes to venting our anger or holding it in, the jury’s out as to which works best or worst for us. A long-term study in Michigan looked at women who suppressed their anger in confrontations with their partners and found that they had twice the risk of dying from conditions such as heart attack, stroke or cancer.

Yet giving in to impulses to shout abuse could cause problems, too. Angry outbursts may last only a few minutes, but they can cause surges in blood pressure and heart rate, raising the risk of heart attack by 19 per cent, concludes a study at University College, London. Subtle forms of anger, such as impatience, irritability and grouchiness, damage health, too.

Psychologies.co.uk

Below is a body map showing areas where subjects reported feeling various emotions. Emotions have a definite effect on your physical health.

I want to be clear as to not steer people into psychology for a remedy, but to point out that even secular science sees a connection between negative emotions (which are spiritual) and the physical illnesses. Men must accept the fact that their emotional wounds can very well be the reason behind their physical ailments.

If you’ve been burying negativity and not dealing with it, it will cause all kinds of issues, on top of sinful behavior. The remedy is going to God who can completely heal you. While a psychologist can diagnose the problem, he/she can only prescribe a bandage that only helps you cope with the bleeding—but you’re still bleeding. No, go to God for complete healing. He’s the only one who can fix your soul. He made your soul and understands it.

Visit this article on how to pray to God for healing.

2. Sinful coping mechanisms

If a man doesn’t want to take his wounds to God, he’ll subconsciously manage them on his own. Even if a man seems to be dealing with his past abuse through so-called “healthy” means, he’s still unhealthy. Though he may not be destructive, or harmful to others, he’s still relying on himself instead of the Spirit of God. True healing can only take place through the power of God.

With that said, emotional wounds are one of the main reasons why so many men chase the “pride of life” (1 John 2:16). The pride of life is the pursuit of honor, praise and elevation among men. We’ve seen this expressed in the competitive arenas, but often times, men use their dance, musical talents, and even spiritual gifts as a ticket overcome their past.

I’ve often seen something I call “projected masculinity” when a man’s expression of manhood is just too flamboyant. It’s as if he’s trying to hard, while he’s saying, “Look at me, I’m a man, I’m a man…” as he constantly repeats it with his body language and conversation. These kind of men are often bathed in competition, weight lifting, martial arts, and/or boasting about their accomplishments.

I’m not fooled by men like this, for the Spirit often reveals that they were molested and they’re now projecting an image of what they think manhood is because they don’t feel like one inside. Every time they look in the mirror they see that little boy that was sexually abused.

Broken men everywhere are hiding their pain behind the honor and glory. Yet they continue to feel like that little, weak boy that was molested, beaten, humiliated, or rejected.

They believe if they can achieve those heights in life it will elevate them beyond what happened to them. But it never does. And so they still feel sick, small, vulnerable, dirty and whatever other thing the enemy has now attached to their souls.

They’ve become fools, and unknowingly, tools of Satan because they’re willing to do whatever it takes to gain the praise and honor of men. Their pursuit of fame is usually at the expense of other people be it exploitation, domination, manipulation (witchcraft), deception, molestation for satanic power, murder, thief etc.

Whatever it takes to be gain glory and honor, these men will do it. They will sell their souls to Satan if they have to. These are your men in authority and leadership positions of today, not all of them, but a great majority of them. And do they rule with kindness, respect and love? Of course not. They are the cruelest people to be under all because someone was cruel to them.

Yet the temporal praise of men, the domination, and the mistreatment of others makes them feel, for those moments, in control, superior, strong and invulnerable. So continue their pursuit of honor and glory like a drug that never satisfies.

3. Wounded men become abusers

These glory-addicted men become the most proud and arrogant among us mistreating others to feel a sense of strength, belittling others to appear bigger. They have, in-turn, become the victimizer just like the person who originally stabbed them.

Satan has killed two birds with one stone. All the enemy has to do is cause one male to be hurt, and he knows they’ll go out and hurt another, and that person may go out and do the same. Like a house of cards falling, Satan can bring down an entire generation of men, a society and even a nation.

Slavery and racism has had a definite impact on black men today.

From these abusers’ standpoint, any signs of humility in others are viewed as weakness, and so they prey on them, oppressing them, hurting them and bullying them to make themselves feel strong. It’s pathetic that they only go after the males who they know won’t return the favor.

But these abusers fully understand this lie about manhood. They know that, if they’re careful, none of those males, after being disrespected, or molested and sexually assaulted, will seek justice or revenge. What’s evident is, it becomes all the more difficult and less likely the older they get.

This is why this lie must be destroyed among the saints of God and especially its taboo on sexual abuse in the black community. If young boys knew that they are not the ones that should feel ashamed, but rather these predators, it would be a whole lot of exposing going on and a lot less victimization.

Therefore, God is giving men courage in these last hours to expose these shameful crimes. Five male victims of the once prominent Atlanta Bishop, Eddie Long (now deceased), came out and told their stories about how he molested them. While they settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, the preacher never admitted, nor repented, and therefore died in his sins.

Afrika Bambaataa, another leader, titled the “God father of Hip-Hop culture” was also exposed by a courageous man after decades of silence, and more men came forward as well. Bambaataa issued a statement denying the allegations, but a month later, Bambaataa was dismissed as head of The Zulu Nation.

Child actors in Hollywood and multitudes of former members of the Catholic Church have blown the whistle on these sexual predators.

It’s important to understand that the refusal to deal with emotional wounds can lead a man to become an abuser himself—if not sexually, emotionally. These men’s frequent mistreatment of others is used to mask their feelings of insecurity as they try to forget they too were rejected and vulnerable. There are husbands beating their wives or belittling their children all because of their own pain.

4. Hating the humble and the vulnerable

These men now believe that all men must be made to be “strong,” like they think they are. They despise humility and vulnerability because that’s what got them hurt in the first place. So they seek to toughen up those they perceive as weak, or they may outright reject them. We see this sometimes expressed through parents and coaches.

Often, the humble are often targeted for abuse just for fun. Humility, being a characteristic of God, is punished by Satan through these men just to spite God. The devil is communicating that the attributes of God will not be honored and that men better “shape up” and become like the proud, hardened souls who bury their wounds behind a wall of arrogance.

Therefore, the man who trusts in God’s strength instead of in his own strength is hated. Men who talk about healing while leading other men to God for the same are hated. These righteous men are hated but they’re the one’s who are truly healthy and strong.

So Satan fights to keep a man wounded so he can use that man to offend others. Sadly, Satan has gotten his way with the majority of men today. Covered wounds sit in the hearts of many of our religious leaders, fathers, coaches and others in authority. They believe this deception about manhood and teach others the same.

The truth

Expressing hurt and vulnerability, and bringing it to God is what true manhood is. This is not girlish. One of the very reasons Jesus came was to heal our souls. He said:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. (Luke 4:18)

God designed tears to release the negative toxins created by emotional pain, so let them flow. Men have feelings too. No man is invulnerable and all men are weak. Every human being is weak apart from God (John 15:5).

Humanity was designed to be extensions of God, not self-sufficient gods unto themselves. Being your own god is the thinking of Satan which is the root of mankind’s problems. With everyone trying to be their own god, while disconnected from the true God, they don’t have sufficient resources to repair themselves, and they’ll never express the attributes of God, but rather the opposite. Therefore mankind destroys himself because he doesn’t want to connect to his creator and let him reign.

Now back to the “projected manhood” scenario. No real man of God attempts to showcase his strength to validate his manhood. Real men of God are just strong simply because of their submission to God. And this is what offends men who are walking in false masculinity who hate God and rely on their own puny strength.

This is why the Pharisees couldn’t stand Jesus and envied him so much because he had real power. Jesus was a real man—but they were only faking it. This is why when the Son of God walked the earth demons feared they’d be cast into eternal torment before the time (Matthew 8:29), because Jesus was a true man who walked in the power of God.

Why does God allow abuse to happen?

People continue to ask the question: If God is a loving god, why does he allow bad things to happen to good people? Why does God sit up in heaven and watch a young man be molested by his pastor, father or coach? Here’s why:

1. God gives free will to all men. God doesn’t control people. While he’s all powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere; and can intervene and prevent tragedies, he still allows men the choice good or evil.
2. God allows offense to expose flaws in the heart, or false beliefs one was harboring; and/or to transform the man into a deliverer of other people who were once like himself, becoming an ambassador for the kingdom of God.
3. God allows offenses to show the contrast between his kingdom and Satan’s. Then his message to that man is: Repent, chose my kingdom and receive healing and protection, or reject me, and stay in bondage to this perishing world.

In the end, God is using the breach in men’s souls to draw them to himself and his kingdom. If nothing ever happened to anyone, no one would ever come to God. So God allows the natural sin of the world to take its course and see who will join his kingdom or remain in the world.

PS: I’ve seen the sin of this world and want nothing to do with it. Therefore I joined his kingdom and promote it to others.

Take action

The proper response to wounds in your soul is to cry out to God to be healed. You don’t have to cry publicly, or on someone’s shoulder, but you should get away privately and tell God what happened and ask for healing and restoration.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:6)

Understand that he has a better kingdom, one not like this horrible world, full of pain, dishonor, competition and mistreatment; but one of joy, peace, purpose, love, honor, and righteousness. Seek God’s kingdom first and everything you ever will need, including your healing, will come (Matthew 6:33).

I once was a man wounded by racism, family, and the false Church, but God healed me and restored me. And he continues to as offenses try to come my way. He’s teaching me how to wear his spiritual armor—his breastplate of righteousness—which blocks the attacks of the enemy (Eph 6:11-20) so I don’t even feel it. He’s the keeper of my soul and my salvation. I’m healthy and whole because of Him; and I know he can do the same for you.

But if you allow pride to prevent you from going to God, you will be destroyed in the end. On top of that, God will never be able to use you as a holy vessel (2 Timothy 2:21). So we all need God, and must rely on him in a world that pricks us through racism, persecution, sin and just bad circumstances. But in response, true manhood is remaining humble and walking in the power of his Spirit.

This ministry is no longer in service. I left the Christian faith and no longer agree with some of the content posted here. However, this website will remain available for archive purposes. Read the details in my last post.

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