Reject Passivity

I signed up last week for a class at my church called "Biblical Manhood."  It's a study that the senior pastor adapted from a book called Raising a Modern Day Knight, a book I have mostly avoided in the past due to its cheesy-looking cover. 

(Of everything cheesy about it, I think it's George Costanza's shirt sleeve that bothers me most.  Why is George Costanza on a Christian book cover?  What does he have to do with raising a modern day knight?  Is he giving that sword to a child or taking it from a child?  Why would George Costanza have/need a sword?)

The basic premise of the book and/or study is that many of both our societal and personal ills are rooted in faulty definitions of what it means to be a man.  The study defines a man as someone who:

1. Rejects Passivity

2. Accepts Responsibility

3. Leads Courageously

4. Expects God's Greater Reward

Since there are four major points to the study (and I have four posts to fill between now and the time it starts) I wanted to look at each one individually and come to a clearer understanding of where I'm at in each of them before the study gets going, beginning with the first.

First, I looked up some synonyms for "passivity," a few of which are as follows:

Acquiescent, Apathetic, Asleep, Compliant, Docile, Idle, Indifferent, Inert, Latent, Motionless, Nonresistant, Phlegmatic, Quiet, Resigned, Sleepy, Static, Stolid, Submissive, Tractable, Unassertive, Uninvolved, Unresisting, Yielding.

Second, I looked up definitions for "passivity."

1. Not reacting visibly to something that might be expected to produce manifestations of an emotion or feeling.
2. Not participating readily or actively; inactive.
3. Not involving visible reaction or active participation.
4. Inert or quiescent.
5. Influenced, acted upon, or affected by some external force, cause, or agency; being the object of action rather than causing action.

I particularly like that last one.  "Being the object of action rather than causing action."

I struggle a lot with this, as evidenced by even a casual glimpse at some of my old 'blog posts.  They seem to emphasize what Newton's First Law clearly states, namely, that objects in motion tend to stay in motion while objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

As a recovering addict and someone with a tendency toward depression and despair, it's easy to get caught up in that idea and resign myself to hopelessness, feeling (and, thus, believing) that I'll always be a worthless lump and I'm never going to change.

But that ignores the second part of the Newton's Law, which is that objects tend to stay in motion or at rest unless acted upon by an opposite outside force. 

To be perfectly honest, I'd rather not go through with this study.  It's at 6 o'clock on Wednesday mornings (which, I mean, that right there...) and registration is $25 that, frankly, I'd rather spend selfishly.

To do so, however, would be to cut myself off from a significant "outside force."

Rejecting passivity means deciding to do something, even if it's wrong or there's a possibility (or certainty) of failure.  It doesn't necessarily mean recklessly over-committing oneself, but I have the $25 and I can make it to the church at 6 AM on Wednesdays.  I may not want to, but sometimes being a man (and an adult in general) means doing things I don't particularly want to do.

How about you?  What are your outside forces?  Where do you find them?