Every Sunday in our churches countless men are marginalized because they don’t arrive with the right portfolio, bank account, academic pedigree, social status, or passion for books. If 70% of human beings trafficked are women and girls, then a staggering 30% men and boys are trafficked for sex, forced labor, and as soldiers-roughly the population of New York City proper. As I studied stories of women in the Bible, I kept encountering incredible men whose stories have been overlooked, downsized, or distorted-men who battle the malestrom and emerge to display a gospel brand of manhood that can only be described as “other worldly.” They give us hints of what Jesus meant when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”Īlso, as I researched what is happening to women and girls globally, signs of the malestrom were already surfacing. Ironically, the women I’ve written about in my earlier books were the ones who led me to write about men and the malestrom. But there is also lot at stake for women and for men if we don’t have an equally robust discussion of what is happening to men and how the Gospel speaks with power and purpose into their lives.
Men have a lot at stake in the discussion I’ve been having with women and (as I have argued) are beneficiaries of what God is doing through his daughters. We can’t adequately understand or fulfill the one without the other. His vision for humanity includes both men and women.
God doesn’t have separate visions for women and for men. Malestrom isn’t starting a “different” discussion, but expands that original discussion about women to include men. There is a profound connection between my earlier books and this one. I actually didn’t “switch gears” to write a book about men. What caused you to switch gears and focus on men? Your prior works have focused on women in the Bible, the world, and the church. The repercussions of such devastating personal losses are not merely disastrous for the men themselves, but catastrophic globally as the world is depleted of the goodness and gifts men were originally designed to offer.
#Freing fman full
But these currents also come in subtle, even benign forms that catch men unawares yet still rob them of their full humanity as God intended. The number of male casualties on the giving and receiving ends of the violence is beyond epidemic. These currents can be overt and brutal, leading to the kinds of atrocities and violence we witness in the headlines-wars, school shootings, ISIS beheadings, and the trafficking of men and boys for sex, forced labor, and soldiering. “ The malestrom is the particular ways in which the fall impacts the male of the human species-causing a man to lose himself, his identity and purpose as a man, and above all to lose sight of God’s original vision for his sons.” A slight alteration in the spelling, and Malestrom was born. The maelstrom-a powerful whirlpool in the open seas that threatens to drag ships, crew, and cargo down into the ocean’s watery depths-offered the strong image I needed to represent the power and seriousness of what men and boys are facing. She shares with us today how Jesus’ gospel liberates men from the strictures of patriarchy and restores them to their true calling as God’s sons. In Malestrom, Carolyn explores how our culture’s narrow definition of manhood is upended when we consider the examples of men in the Bible and Jesus’ gospel. She is the author of six books, including Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women, and Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World, which is scheduled for release this month. She is also the founder of Synergy Women’s Network, a national organization for women emerging or engaged in ministry leadership. Carolyn Custis James is president of the Whitby Forum, a ministry dedicated to addressing the deeper needs that confront both men and women as they work together to extend God’s kingdom in a messy and complicated world.
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