Strength in Numbers
If you’re a red-blooded, Y-chromosome carrying male like myself, we share many things in common – one of which is an innate desire to be independent and self-sufficient. I avoided study groups all throughout school (even law school where everyone, girls and guys alike, formed study groups); I sometimes refused asking to join a group, for fear of being perceived as needy. In fact, I recall very few times growing up when I sought out the help of others if I was struggling with something. After all, the superheroes that I admired growing up – Superman, Spiderman, Batman – all worked alone to “save the world,” so why should I need any help?
This inherently differentiates us from women, as God intended, who like to do everything in groups, including going to “powder their noses.” Women are gathers and do so in groups. Men are hunters and needing help is a sign of weakness. However, we do like to do things with other men – primarily, playing sports or talking about sports. These team-sports play a significant role in the development of growing boys into men. I started playing team sports at age five and haven’t stopped. Also, like many other dads, I think team sports are an invaluable tool for teaching children life lessons and cannot wait until my children are old enough to join a team of their choice.
Despite my love for team sports growing up, it never controlled my desire to do most other things on my own. It certainly never dawned on me that my faith was an area where I needed someone else to help me – besides God and the Saints. It wasn’t for a lack of close male friends, either. My cousin, who’s four months older than me, is like a twin brother to me and since birth and we’ve always talked about everything, except faith.
Years later when I was coming back to my faith my spiritual director suggested that I talk to one of my male friends about my struggle to practice chastity and desire to grow in my faith, and I thought he was crazy. In the end, he was able to convince me to talk with my friend. I still recall the first conversation. I was sitting at the basement bar on campus and my friend was behind the bar. Luckily, it was relatively empty; I was as nervous as a schoolboy asking a girl to dance – it was not every day that I started off a conversation to talk about God and not “hooking up” with girls. After I got over the nerves, my friend and I had an hour long conversation that became the first of many. It also led to my friend introducing me to three other guys at school, who were all going through the same struggle. The five of us spent many nights deep in conversation about practicing our faith and the struggles we were facing. Still, we were guys at heart, so the conversations usually took place at a bar over pitchers of beer, nachos and wings.
Ten years later, I consider those four guys to be like brothers. I’ve also really grown in my faith and now have no problem discussing God, life struggles, love and all of the other issues that can affect being a godly man of Christ. I’m not a preacher or even the type to push God into conversations, but I’m no longer shy when it comes to sharing my faith. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that my faith and God are the most important part of who I am as man and I’ve learned that talking about God and faith with other men makes me stronger (even superheroes are stronger when they have their friends, as I learned watching Justice League, X-Men, and Fantastic Four).
It’s not just about strength in numbers, because we can gather with other men and do many stupid things. Its strength in numbers in the name of Christ, because the real strength comes from Christ as He taught us in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” It took me about twenty-two years to learn it, but we don’t have to struggle alone to be manly.
