I don’t get it. I’ve owned up to my mistake and apologized. Why can’t my wife just forgive me, get over it and let things get back to normal?” It would be one thing if Tom’s “mistake” was forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning or getting caught drinking from the milk jug. But I was sitting across from a man who’d just been caught in his third affair in two years. He was right, he didn’t “get it,” and I could hardly imagine the “normalcy” he hoped to regain in his marriage.
Tom (not his real name) was fortunate. He’s married to a woman (let’s call her Mary) who found the strength to put firm boundaries in place. She determined not to tolerate one more day of Tom’s dalliance, or his arrogance. But instead of shutting down altogether, Mary was willing to wait and see if a bridge of trust could be rebuilt between her violated heart and her very clueless husband. Indeed, Tom was very fortunate.
Seven and a half months later, we “cut the ribbon” and Tom and Mary walked on that bridge together. It continues to bear the weight of their maturing relationship, though tested by the memory of significant hurts. As good stewards of their story, Tom and Mary aren’t content to settle simply for a sweet chapter in their marriage. They’ve become characters in, and carriers of, a much bigger story. This couple is making priceless investments in the lives of other broken couples in our community. “God, increase their tribe… please!”
The time I spent with Tom proved to be as much about me as it was about him. Watching his heart change was a much needed rebuke to my unbelief. As a vocational caregiver, I’d become like the little house church that prayed for the Apostle Peter to be released from jail. I didn’t really have much confidence Tom would get free. But when he did, I was greatly surprised, and tremendously humbled.
Here are a few invaluable lessons I learned and re-learned from Tom about the journey of restoring broken men.
Relief Comes Quickly, but Restoration Takes Tiiiimmmme
Restoring is an “ing” word, not an “ed” word—a participle implying present and future work; not a past-tense verb of completed action. Indeed, restoration is an ongoing transforming story whose final chapter will only be written when Jesus returns to make all things new. But it is the promise of that Day which enables us to live redemptively in this day. In this hope, every “little” story of restoration, like Tom’s, can be celebrated as the first fruits of the complete restoration secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We need this hope, because restoring a broken man requires a lot more than a Saturday morning trip to Home Depot, a little caulk and a couple of hours of tool time. Though we wish otherwise, maturity cannot be downloaded into our lives like songs into our MP3 players. We are image bearers of God infected with a terminal disease, not programmable iPods.
When I first started walking with Tom, he didn’t desire the peace of God; he demanded the absence of messiness. One requires a lot of humility and work; the other a one-way plane ticket, a gun, or some drug of choice. As Tom continued to play dodgeball with me and his heart, it was like déjà vu all over again. I was taken back to the day my friend, Dan Allender, got in my face and said, “Scotty, as long as your cry for relief is louder than your cry for a changed heart, you’ll never mature as a man.” It took a while, but Tom came to realize how deafening his cry for relief had been most of his life. Only then could he begin to accept the degree of his brokenness.
Brokenness A and Brokenness B
Like many words in our vocabulary of care-giving, brokenness is subject to several meanings, and therefore it is important to clarify our word-symbols for one another. My first few rounds of verbal Olympics with Tom underscored the importance of defining brokenness. Tom first introduced himself to me as a “very broken Christian man,” but in reality, as he now says, “I was a very slick man, neck-deep in self-pity and lame excuses. I was broken, but I wasn’t broken.”
Tom’s doublespeak actually helped me distinguish between what I now call Brokenness A and Brokenness B. The very word “brokenness” presupposes the prior condition of un-brokenness—that is, an original state of newness and rightness (or righteousness). The Bible gives us a magnificent glimpse of the “un-brokenness” of God’s first creation world, and the beauty of the story in which he placed Adam and Eve.
The Scriptures also give us an important record of the disease and disintegration which came to every aspect of creation as a result of the intrusion of sin and death. Brokenness A, therefore, refers to the specific ways sin has polluted and distorted God’s people, God’s world and God’s story. Something is broken (A) to the degree that it does not reveal God’s original design and delight.
Brokenness B describes the degree to which someone feels and owns the implications of their Brokenness A. Brokenness B is revealed in the Scriptures through images such as “a broken and contrite heart” and “godly sorrow.” It is the prodigal son, “coming to his senses” and longing for home. Emphasizing both Brokenness A and B is critical in working with men, for we guys have a tendency to live more out of our heads than from our hearts, and we are often quite disconnected from our feelings.
Like most of us, Tom came to understand his Brokenness A much sooner than he was able and willing to move into Brokenness B. He could articulate the data of his story and the specifics of his affairs long before he was able to deeply grieve his choices and failures in love.
Restoration is a Heart Story not a Hardware Store
In corporate worship, our church family uses a profound question and answer, which speaks to the essence of Brokenness A. “What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” God has designed us to live in His story, to His glory, and with His joy. We are broken to the degree that we choose some other story, glory and joy to define us.
Therefore, a man’s Brokenness A is most clearly revealed in the life narratives he writes for himself, or in ones he accepts from others who’ve gained inappropriate power over his heart. What are some examples? Many of us aging baby boomers spend money endlessly and have become exhaustively spent in serial attempts at personal validation. Acquisition and accomplishment seem to be the storylines of choice, while others exist simply to gain the blessing of their dads or kill the desire for that blessing.
A growing number of men in the emerging generation are opting for a very different story—a story marked by cynicism, doubt and the quest for authenticity. For some guys this becomes a not-so-authentic resolve simply to be anything other than what their “modern” dads represent.
But men are created for much more than real estate and reaction. Through the gospel, we are privileged to engage with the “already and not yet” of restoring our personal lives. But, as Tom and Mary discovered, this privilege becomes the honor of living as conduits of transforming love in the broken places of our culture and God’s cosmos.
To what kind of adventures might this lead? Fly-fishing for salmon in Alaska…rafting Colorado’s grade 4 rapids… rappelling down a rock wall with your buddies… All of these are tremendous memories for men to make, but life isn’t primarily about making memories. It’s about being remembered as the husband who sought to love one woman well, one day at a time; or as the man whose recovery from some addiction led him to work for affordable housing for the poor or as an advocate for domestically abused women; or as the dad who traded in a story of self-protection and self-promotion to re-enter (or enter for the first time) his children’s chaos, hurts, and dreams.
Discerning the Repentable from the Reparable
Restoring broken men involves becoming familiar with two convergent themes in their stories: their foolishness and their woundedness. All of us are agents of loving poorly (our sin against others), and all of us are victims of poor loving (others’ sin against us). Discerning the relationship between a man’s agency and his victimization helps explain who he has become, not excuse the things he has done.
Indeed, good counseling and story-work will reveal:
(1) What is repentable in our stories— the things for which we need to take responsibility.
(2) What is repairable in our hearts—the things for which we need healing.
In either story, the goal is transformation by the power and through the love of Christ.
Conversations with Tom uncovered a story similar to mine. As an 11-year-old, my mother was ripped from my life through a car wreck. My dad’s resulting depression was so severe that, for the most part, I became an orphan in my home. Fear of abandonment and enormous insecurity defined my relationships and dictated my choices for decades. When Tom was 12, his father died of a massive heart attack at the young age of 39. Tom’s mother had to return to work and essentially abandoned her young son emotionally. Tom was a gifted athlete and a mechanical wizard, but a very clumsy friend. He developed a utilitarian self-image. “I can do a lot of things for you, but you really wouldn’t like me if you got to know me.”
Mary was drawn to Tom’s life competency skills, but his intimacy deficiency lay dormant until two years into their marriage. Mary’s health began to fail and she became quite depressed. Tom began to withdraw more and more from the relationship because: (1) Unlike most things in life, he couldn’t fix Mary; and (2) He was afraid she was going to die, and the only death he did not passionately fear was his own.
Before his three affairs, Tom developed a near addiction-level dependency on pornography. Sensual connection without the responsibilities of intimacy, and muting the thunder and threat of more loss became Tom’s life story. Diagnosis is one thing, but the cure is quite another.
The Centrality of the Gospel
We live in a day when Christians have so many therapy models and medications de jour from which to choose. For the most part, I am very thankful for this buffet of options. But working with Tom convinced me of our need to rediscover the bounty of the gospel of God’s grace for believers as the primary hope for change. The gospel is not just the means by which a non-believer enters into a relationship with God; it is also the means by which believers are liberated and transformed.
The only effective way I found to penetrate Tom’s delusions and defensiveness was to expose his heart to a much better story than the one he had chosen for himself. I cannot claim originality for this notion or strategy. I simply followed the lead of a 19th century Scottish pastor and cultural visionary named Thomas Chalmers.
Chalmers’ most well-known sermon is titled, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. He persuasively argues that the best way to help someone experience freedom from the stronghold of idolatry and foolishness is not through highlighting the ugliness of evil. Spirited exhortations about moral duty offer no power to change a man’s heart. Rather, what we need, according to Chalmers, is to have our hearts filled with “new affection” for Jesus and the wonders of his love. Competing loves will then be exposed as unworthy and be expelled from our hearts. Until a man’s conscience is brought under the reign of grace, guilt and pride will lead to even more foolishness.
Though Tom was a Christian, it became obvious he did not have a very good grasp of the gospel. In fact, his relationship with Christ seemed to consist more of a list of things he felt obligated to believe than a redeeming story he was called to live. The more we talked about God’s story of contra-conditional love and cosmic transformation in Christ, the more Tom’s heart started to soften, and his defensiveness began to evaporate. He finally saw his sequential affairs for what they really were… a futile attempt to be his own savior.
Mary now had good reason to believe that the bridge of trust could be built. It would be a construction project involving a lot of God’s grace and many of God’s people.
Restoring Broken Men Involves Community
Up to this point in his life, Tom had the relational capital of a porcupine. For his growth, and for the benefit of others, I wanted to connect Tom with a group of men, but not just any group of men. About the same time Tom was coming to “gospel sanity,” a new ministry for men was being birthed in our church called, The Samson Society.
The best way to describe The Samson Society is through a well-known story recorded in Mark’s gospel. One day, four good friends took their paralyzed friend to Jesus on a mat, each man grabbing a corner. Removing the tiles of, perhaps, a stranger’s roof, they risked lowering their friend to the One rumored to have the power to heal.
A typical Samson Society small group consists of five broken men and one mat—each one taking his turn on the mat, while the other four learn how to carry another man to Jesus. The accountability these men give one another focuses first on hearing and believing the gospel together. From that core value, “busting” each other for indiscretions and encouraging one another in important disciplines flow.
It took several weeks for Tom to feel comfortable enough to entrust his story and heart to other men. But I’ve had the great joy of watching a super-glued shut bloom of a man blossom into a fragrant life and gentle servant of his wife and other clueless men. Indeed, “God increase his tribe… please!”
Restoration Has a Claim on All Men
Sizing up Tom’s brokenness did not require a master’s degree in surveying—it was so “out there” and “Technicolor.” But just as lethal, and in need of the restoring work of Jesus, are the insufferable, judgmental, self-righteousness of a Fred; the toxic passivity of a Bill; the ministry idolatry of a Pastor John; and the manipulative niceness of a Mike. Brokenness is no respecter of persons, and restoration has a claim on all of us.
As caregivers, let’s become skilled in restoring all kinds of broken men. But we will do so the best by staying current in our own story or restoration. Praise be to the God of all grace.
Scotty Smith, M.A., is senior pastor of Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, a church he planted in 1986 and has seen its membership grow to more than 3,000. He also serves as an adjunct professor at Covenant Theological Seminary. Scotty has written five books, his latest being Restoring Broken Things, co-authored with Steven Curtis Chapman. He and Darlene, his wife of 33 years, have two adult children. Scotty enjoys fly-fishing, cross training, classic rock and roll, and cooking.
