The Standard | 05 Carrying The Weight Of The World
Heavy weights make for strong men.
What’s up my friends? Welcome back for the fifth installment of The Standard.
The Standard is a weekly call up to a higher standard for men.
It teaches leadership, discipline, maturity, and integrity, especially in the areas of manhood, marriage, and personal responsibility.
It’s not fluffy or motivational. It’s practical, authoritative, and unapologetically masculine.
It gives men the tools and vision to lead well, build a strong household, and walk with integrity in the world.
Let’s dive in.
Carrying The Weight Of The World.
In previous writings and podcasts I’ve been discussing how masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. How that in essence, manhood is about carrying weight. And sometimes as men it can feel like we are carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders.
Check out this beautiful description of the difference between the weight that men and women carry.
Isn’t that well said?
I’m in a season where I feel like I’m being stretched in ways I never have before. Balancing the demands of family life, full-time entrepreneurship and a rigorous faith life in Orthodox Christianity is extremely demanding.
How do I give it all to God, while giving it my all in my work, while giving it my all with my family? Can you relate? What a glorious burden to carry. Too often as Christian men we fantasize about what it would look like to give our full selves to God, but then we reject the cross that he has put right in front of us. We romanticize some other struggle, some other feat of heroic asceticism and self denial… Because here’s the kicker, it’s easier to fantasize about a made up spiritual struggle than to fully engage with the one we are actually tasked with.
So my brother in Christ, what will it be? You can ask for a lighter weight, and fantasize about a different set of circumstances all you want. But this is the life God has given you, and he’s entrusted you to carry this weight.
Is this what it means to pursue holiness? To pour yourself out fully? To give all you have to give, while ceasing to think about yourself? To learn what it means to be selfless? To crucify every part of you that clings to your own egotism and self obsession?
Well I’d have to be holy to give an answer to that question, but it’s probably pointing in a better direction than whining about the weight that only you are meant to carry… and it’s probably better than carrying the weight and wanting all the glory for it too.
The paradox of the Christian life never ceases to amaze me. In our weakness we will be made strong. The first will be last, the least is the most. So we press on, wholly imperfect, striving to imitate the Perfect One who shows us what it is to be a human being.
We aren’t asked to carry the weight of the whole world, but we are asked to carry the weight of our own responsibilities within it. Are you crushed by that weight, or are you inspired by the challenge? We often hope and pray that God will bestow a special purpose or calling in our lives, yet we act like the man who leans on a shovel while praying for a hole.
What if you have already been entrusted? What if you have already been called?
So maybe we need to let ourselves be stretched, and let what needs to break, break in the process. Is it another Christian paradox, that to be healed we must be broken? A sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou will not despise.
So what are we to do other than to bear our cross, not with grumbling… Not while wishing for a different one… But in submission to the will of God, and with a gladness of heart.
I think it’s supposed to feel heavy, and it’s supposed to be hard. We are probably supposed to break under the weight of it, if only to realize our true need for something bigger than ourselves. Is this what it means to be a man? To give everything, even when you feel like you can’t, even when you feel like it’s too heavy, only to be broken open under the weight of it all?
I’m reminded of the quote, the very cave you fear to enter, there lies your treasure.
Maybe it isn’t so bad to be stretched to our capacity as men, to occasionally break in the process, only to come back anew again. What are we if we aren’t engaged with this process in some meaningful way? Who are we without the weight of our world on our shoulders? Without that weight, what is our purpose?
It would seem as though you cannot separate the weight from the man, without the man ceasing in some way to be one. If we are to follow the suffering servant, who are we to think that we are above suffering while we serve?
May we not ask for a lighter weight, but for Gods strength and assurance that we are meant to carry the very weight He has given us.
May all of my life be a sacrifice. Grant, O Lord, that I may offer all of my life unto thee!
In your corner,
Brendan.
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