Men at the Crossroads, Beyond Traditional Roles & Modern Options

Jack Balswick

ISBN 0-8308-1385-3

I didn’t attend the Sunday School elective given by Jack Balswick at church, I was beginning to lead “Lamppost” at the time, but when he brought his books around for autographed copies I bought one. That was 1992 November 22. I then read the book from December 92 to March 93.

In essence, the problem is this: Society and the societal norms are changing. There is a strong women’s movement but what about men? We’re not welcome in the women’s movement. The message accompanying the glares is, “get your own act together and quit abusing us!” So, “who stole my script?” We can’t any longer follow the scripts we grew up with (politically correct or otherwise) and some of the new ideas seem worthy of adoption. The real question for the Christian male, however, is, “how am I to live.” This era of change brings about an opportunity for, and perhaps an obligation to change to what is correct in God’s sight, forget the tapes of the past or the political correctness of the present.

As an aside, Dr. Balswick now offers a men’s group bi-weekly in his home, that I’ve been attending since the beginning of the year. There are many acquaintances from church in the group and Jack works to make it useful to us, but we’re just now getting into real issues that have us all worried, and opening up to talk to each other at all.

In the book he addresses the four roles of males, in any age: King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover. Having dealt with these in detail, he shows Christ as a male with strong female characteristics as well, the model for the Christian radical alternative.

In section three, Balswick discusses the issues that face men these days in particular, things like inexpressiveness, power, sexuality, and life stages. Under relationships (section four) he talks on fathering, friendships to men and friendships to women, spouse and non-spouse. To his credit, a Christian model of sexuality only within monogamous marriage is held as the ideal.

This is an excellent text by an intelligent author of deep and true concern about the issues. He is a leader in the modern men’s movement, gives frequent retreats and lecture series, and always tries to be in or even host of a support group. He also teaches at Fuller. Now that I’ve read it, I’m going to take this book to Lamp Post to display among the optional reading material there.