Where are the men? That is a cry we are hearing with increasing regularity in society, the church and the home here in the 21st century. Since at least the 1960s there has been a growing spiritual leadership void -- left because men seem to be abandoning the traditional roles that had characterized them in the past. We need to look no further than the newspaper or evening news to see the result of this abdication -- crime is on the rise, illegitimacy is ram-pant and the fabric of society is badly frayed. Yet my purpose is not to point an accusing finger at the men and say shame on you. Rather I would like us to understand the reasons for this masculine leadership vacuum and then offer a biblical solution to this most vexing concern.

I am convinced the spiritual leadership void is a result of wounded men who have become unable to deal with their woundedness in constructive, biblical ways.

In his best selling book, The Road Less Travelled, author M. Scott Peck opens with this telling line: "Life is difficult." And because we live in a difficult, sin-scarred world, people are going to be wounded by life. That is true for all of us, but I want us to focus on the men this morning. Because life is tough, men will be wounded.

Ted Dobson writes: "There is a tear in the masculine soul -- a gaping hole that leads to profound insecurity." That wound may be caused by a myriad of things -- a realization that he will never become all he has dreamed he would be; a realization that his marriage is not a storybook fairytale (Cinderella wakes with morning breath); a nagging fear that he will be unable to provide for the needs of his family; the sinking awareness that his physical condition is growing weaker; an awareness that life is not turning out the way he planned. Compound this with individual wounding -- divorce, lose of job, heart attack or cancer -- and suddenly the strongest of men realizes that no one gets out of this world alive. "Consequently," observes Dobson, "men do not know who they are as men."

Woundedness is part of what comes with being a man. Life will wound us all to a greater or lesser extent. The problem is not the wounding but how we respond to it. There was a time when we were better equipped to travel along the healing road, today various factors are conspiring to exacerbate the wound and keep men from finding the way through the wilderness. I would highlight just three.

First is our upbringing. We have been raised with the notion that men don't cry. We have been led to snuff our emotions; to bury our pain and to deny our hurts. As a result many men are walking emotional volcanoes. Secondly, our sexuality is under attack. The advent of radical feminism has left many men confused about the way we should relate to the opposite sex. Should we be strong or sensitive? Passive or powerful? Society is sending us mixed messages and we aren't sure how to behave anymore. Finally culture itself seems to be working against us. Society is changing far too rapidly. And as one observer writes: "Men...have not developed the needed spiritual and psycho-social support systems to deal with the rapid rates of change in our society." We don't know sometimes which end is up.