How should men treat women? Where do you find good models of manhood? “Being a man in the modern world” is a series of podcasts focusing on issues affecting men. Join Chet Manchester in discussion with TMC Youth staffers in part 1, “Thinking about women.”
To Subscribe (Free):
If you use iTunes, you can subscribe to this podcast
this is brilliant
Excellent! Part 2, Please!
love the ideas, the candid nature of the discuss, and just the sense of real love … real manhood being expressed in the desire to heal and overcome the false views of manhood and womanhood!
Glad to hear you guys have enjoyed listening to it! I too thought the discussion was really candid and open. I also loved some of the ideas brought forth. Putting on the whole armour of God every morning is something I look forward to doing.
Any other feedback on it?
Refreshing to hear a guys take on how they think about women from a spiritual perspective, stripping back the layers of human opinions and beliefs to just talk about Truth.
As a Christian scientist and just as a child of God it feels so freeing and right to acknowledge and speak openly about who we all express and who we are modeled upon, father, mother God consisting of both female and male qualities, complete now.
Sometimes as young women in my early twenties it feels somewhat sadly foreign in this current society to openly acknowledge God. I think it is great to do so, which is why it was awesome to hear your pod cast on the subject.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is “in all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths.” It really reinforces that God is the only jurisdiction of the world and not only did God create us all in his/her own image, perfect and complete but God is continually guiding us. “Divine Love illumines, designates and leads the way.” So if we acknowledge who we truly are as children of God, and that God is all knowing, all powerful, all acting then God directs us as to how to think, who to approach and how. Actually why do we ever need to worry? God has got it covered!
And from a girls perspective guys are far more attractive when they allow their true self, God’s perfect idea of man to shine forth. Girls can’t help but then see God’s perfect man.
This was a good podcast. I think, as boys, young men, or grown men, we all have the desire to be good. We all want to be loving and to be loved. We all want to be the best citizens. But, as most of us can attest, there are plenty of really WRONG messages about women being promoted in our society today. No matter how good your character is as a man today, you can’t really go through one day now where you are not going to be called upon to take your demonstration of manhood to a higher level and purify your thinking on the issue of our thoughts about women.
It’s interesting timing, as I had been doing a lot of praying and studying yesterday, and happened to read the following in Mary Baker Eddy’s book titled “Unity of Good:”
Page 52, line 22: “Whay are earth and mortals so elaborate in beauty, color, and form, if God has no part in them? By the law of opposites. The most beautiful blossom is often poisonous, and the most beautiful mansion is sometimes the home of vice. The senses, not God, Soul, form the condition of beautiful evil, and the supposed modes of self-conscious matter, which make a beautiful lie.”
I’ve prayed about the issue of sexuality and relationships with women a lot, as I’ve come to really hunger a better way of thinking about this as a Christian than some of the ways I’ve thought about this in the past which are really outdated now in terms of expressing real love, or even practicality.
I found myself at a concert last night at a huge football stadium, and I think I’m to the point now where I’m even questioning how much I really love seeing live music in comparison with how much I love truly expressing God-like thinking all the time. Because often, I’ve found myself in compromising situations, just being a part of some of the crowds I’m a part of at the many rock concerts I attend. While the music is often really “happy,” I’ve prayed too much in my life already to be pulled into directions of, even if it’s just subtle suggestions, relaxing my commitment to working out life from the Christian Science principles. Last night, there was one famous song by the very famous artist that encouraged some girls up front to “flash” themselves, and of course the camera caught it and showed it to the whole audience of 50,000 people on the jumbo video screens that were a back drop to the stage. When you see something like that, on one side, you might think, well, maybe that’s freeing for Americans to express themselves like that since almost every other country in the world is more relaxed about that sort of thing. But, my overiding thoughts since then have been, “Why am I even here?” Because it does lead you into greater conflict when you open the door to some of thoughts thoughts that imagery like that often suggests. While I was at this concert I kept thinking about the statements above from Mrs. Eddy’s writings. It just flies in the face of the direction that advertising and marketing seems to be taking today, that we should all strive to be beautiful mortals. Wow, just taking the time to ponder those thoughts from Mrs. Eddy are enough to throw a brake into the spokes of the wheels of the general thoughts of society today and make one question what is really desirable in life… which I think eventually would lead to the downfall of materialism (because it just doesn’t have the power to hold itself up or satisfy us).
It would be nice to expand this discussion or maybe have another podcast to include topics of how women view each other. My daughter is reading Queen Bees and wanta be’s” And that is another interesting perspective of viewing women that can easily be challanged and healed.
Thank you so much for this podcast, which I thought was brilliant, and SO helpful.
To paraphrase Mrs Eddy:
Mis 110:4-7
” Beloved (CS men), the world has need of you, ……………. it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives.”
It would be interesting to hear another podcast from the women’s point of view about how they protect themselves from being on the receiving end of the media stuff the men have talked about in this podcast. I speak as one who has never really successfully managed this. I think a lot of women wear a shroud of adiposity or drabness to cover themselves up from unwanted attention or classification and obviously, like all material attempts to solve problems, this is not really satisfactory and brings with it a whole different set of problems without solving the original one!
This podcast really was a refreshing drink of “a cup of cold water in Christ’s name” and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your honesty and healing efforts. I think you are right, this is a global issue.
Thanks for the input, Shelly. We are going to continue these podcasts with men, but we’ve got some with women coming up, too.
Very good discussion. I was really moved by the concept that we are spiritual beings by nature who have the responsibility to defend ourselves against sensuous thoughts, as opposed to sensuous beings by nature who are trying to mold ourselves into something spiritual. I’m looking forward to the second part in the series. Thanks for this.
Lust, sex trade, pornography, sex slavery etc, the list is endless! Matter disguises itself and attempts to lure us into acknowledging and supporting it in any of it’s many disguises, whether we be men or women.
Can I thank the men in this podcast for their honesty and openess, this IS the only way forward? As a Forces man I can confirm, this type of imagery is rammed down our throats, in the “mancho way”. I have struggled with it for years. However I would say without exception all men I have met in these roles would claim to have the noblest of intentions, and parallel with that of the “Knight in shining armour”. Women are our equals made by God, therefore they too are “Knights” of the same stature by Devine Decree.
Recently I have been studying an article by Dan Jensen ( C.S.B.) at The Principle Foundation 1990 Annual Meeting. We have a CHOICE, which premise will YOU accept?:
“The one that matter, the body, is real; that it has substance, life and sensation, yet is destructible in nature” OR “The premise that Spirit is real and that man is totally spiritual, eternal, perfect, and indestructible; that Therefore this so-called matter is but a mental picture, a mental picture that is unreal and illusory.
If you bear this in mind when thinking about a situation or potential situation you may find yourself in, hold tightly onto your Choice: SPIRIT…… Understand you cannot have it both ways? Thanks guys.