Art Source: Petr Ovralov

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. – Genesis 2:24

Everyone needs a cause – especially men it would seem.

There are adventures to face and battles to fight if we will embrace them and we need them to reach our fullest manhood under God. But the first cause is the one we find all the way back in Genesis. It is the cause that is romantic and dangerous, and is the drama that fills the pages of great novels. It is the cause to leave home and be joined to a wife, to fashion out of two, one flesh and to build a home, a family, and a life together.

This is no a defense of complementarianism, whatever that is. Nor is it an argument for specific gender roles, differentiations, or hierarchy in marriage. I leave that for others to debate – at least today.

God has called us to two altars in this life.

First is  the altar of total commitment of our hearts and lives to Jesus Christ.

The second is the call to live as one with another human whose life we can compliment as they compliment ours. We me and my wife, it is to honor her all the days of that God gives on this earth. It is the call to fidelity and responsibility. It is the cause for which God created man as male and female.

He has made us to be counterparts to one another. We are different enough physically that we can appreciate the differences we have in every other dimension of life. As we study and understand more about the human brain, we see more clearly how we are hard-wired differently. We think and perceive differently. We are fearfully and wonderfully and uniquely made and we are made that way for each other.

Not just in marriage, but in all of humanity, we need these essential differences to propagate, procreate, and aggregate.

I write these words as to men because I am a man.

To some extent, women already understand them better than we do.

They apply to women as well.

Change some pronouns and examples and read them that way or any way you like. No two people on earth are wired exactly the same way.

I have to apply this to my life. As a man, my concern is that men, like me be the men we were made ton be – the way God made us to be, the kind who leave the safety of our fathers’ houses and venture into the unknown as the leaders in our own homes, with love, compassion, joy, and integrity.

For this cause, we have been made.