Some friends have asked why I chose an elephant as my logo.  Contrary to popular surmise, it’s not a political statement, but there are characteristics of elephants that I thought compared favorably to the state of contemporary masculinity;

Live large, live long

Elephants are among the largest and longest lived land mammals.  We were created to live forever.  I don’t believe this broken world does well when men live small lives or cut their lives short through self-destructive behaviors.

This is serious

Strength

It would be difficult to be a 15,000 pound bull elephant and not also be strong.  As John Eldredge said, a man reflects the image and likeness of God as a man through his masculine strength.  The knowledge that we are supremely loved by God — C.S. Lewis referred to it as the weight of glory — is enough to enable us to live up to and into our peculiar strength.  And like an elephant, it’s hard to conceal or overlook.

Wisdom

To go with their large mass, elephants have large brains that confer on them the ability to learn and remember, and even to grieve over missing or dead members of their herd.  Elephants are able to communicate with one another and to inculcate norms within the herd.  Men are made to receive wisdom and pass it along — remember, wisdom is knowledge put into practice.

Social Structure

As I was considering how to represent the main idea of this blog, this mission, I encountered in two different situations the story I’m about to tell you.

In the late 1990’s, a South African wildlife preserve had too many elephants for the territory available to them.  For logistical purposes, well-intentioned rangers relocated adult female and adolescent male elephants to another property, leaving the mature bulls where they were.

Shortly thereafter, the adolescent elephants began killing rhinos — becoming the pachyderm equivalent of juvenile delinquents.   As it turns out, the younger males needed the guidance of older males to learn how to sort out the hierarchy of the herd, as well as how to resolve — short of bloodshed — the odd confrontation with a rhino.  Nearly as soon as the rangers introduced older bulls into the colony the young males stopped killing rhinoceroses and normal patterns resumed,  The mentored males even passed on the traditional norms to the young males in successive generations.

We’ve talked before about the ways that fathers and older men have retreated or allowed themselves to be marginalized.  I intend to use this platform to help pass along something valuable to young men, and perhaps to encourage some older men to do the same.

Threatened/Endangered

Although the ivory trade has been outlawed since 1989, poachers still hunt and kill elephants for their tusks.  What a waste!  If you have a strong stomach, you can see pictures online of elephant carcasses abandoned with their faces removed.   As we’ve discussed in an earlier post, there has been a decades-long process underway to destroy men.  Unfortunately, it has been only too successful.

Men seem to be valued not for their strength and leadership, but for their economic output — the human equivalent of killing an elephant for its tusks.  We are meant to be more than a means to an end — more than inseminators and wage serfs.  The Christian worldview holds that people have intrinsic value because they reflect the imago dei — the image and likeness of God.  Elephants are noble creatures, but how much more noble are men?

But he looks angry…

When my older son was a toddler and learning what facial expressions meant, he would sometimes say, “Daddy, don’t be mad.”  More often than not, I wasn’t angry at all, so I’d say to him, “I’m not mad, son, just serious.”   The elephant in the logo may look angry, but he’s just serious.  If you’re at all aware you know why.

So how about you?  Who taught you what it means to be a man?  How are you living into your masculine strength?  Add your comments below.