Beth Cavete:

“Men are made in the image of God, 

and their sexual desire, while it CAN be utterly profane, 

is not nearly as disconnected from the rest of their psyche as the narrative goes.

Respect, acceptance, downtime, being understood, being treated as adequate, comforting human touch, being heard…

things that they often have less language to express than women do…

are needs that too often get funneled into one easily identified channel: sex.

Men are not Neanderthals or animals, 

though the devil seeks to reduce them to that thru sin.  

Men are whole, brilliantly deep, glorious beings, 

and ASTONISHINGLY 

come alive, multi-dimensionally, through the faithful love and kindness of women.

  

I was amazed to see what my boys needed from me when I became a mother, 

amazed at the tenderness of these fierce, tiny souls.  

I was dumbstruck by the deficit they would carry if I couldn’t afford to feed their hearts—how my encouragement and delight and awe and joy was what they thrived on.

The longings of a man’s heart are so far beyond being merely sexual, 

but sin deadens and dulls to nothingness and profanity, 

making foul what is holy.  

Sin, not manhood, is the problem. 

A man who has given up on everything else and whose heart has hardened to rock, 

is still stuck with biological urges. 

That’s not all he is, 

it may just be all that’s left.

So many men have never been treated like they’re holy, worthy of attention, 

an unfolding mystery, glorious, laden with mysterious potential and capacity.  

But they are.

  

If you know my writing, you know I HATE sexual sin and the denigration of women.  

But I believe ALL of it starts with profanity:  despising the glory of God in His image-bearers, 

and while lust obviously profanes the image of God in women, 

so does reducing men down to their basest form, their greatest vulnerability, 

agreeing with the devilish lie that their sexuality is merely selfish, singular, vile:  

that they have no hearts to break or needs to be met, 

and forgetting whose image they bear.

  

Men are whole beings, and their Savior KNOWS them, 

having been in every way tempted (not just by lust but by rejection, loneliness, derision, boredom, futility, terror…) as they are, and yet without sin.  

I have never seen chains broken by the lash of a whip. 

Jesus, who understands ALL, is the answer to the cries of desperate souls."