I don't really care whether someone is conventionally masculine or feminine. But plenty of people do. I get told again and again that there's a masculinity crisis and we need to think about men even if we've got much better things to do. All right then, let's think of what makes a good man.
When I think of a good man, I don't think of masculinity influencers. I don't think of preening men who wax their chests and flex their oily muscles in front of a camera. I do not think of an influencer who dresses like a bad caricature of a pimp and berates his audience all day. I don't think of some guy in a beanie who spreads conspiracy theories and I don't think of some guy in a sweater vest who rants about the Latin Mass. Those men aren't masculine and they're not good. They're just annoying.
When I think of a good man, I tend to think of a soft-spoken husband in flannel who chops the wood for his wife and fills up the stove before going out early to hunt a white-tailed deer for the freezer. If some professional masculinity influencers had to figure out how to do that, their wives would freeze to death before they had a chance to starve.
I think of a fireman who rescues six people from a burning house and doesn't forget to pick up the kitten as well as he's fleeing the building.
I think of a dad helping his daughter learn to throw a softball, and then cheering the loudest for her at her softball game.
Maybe a pastor who is a leader in his old church community in a bad part of downtown, mentoring the children nobody cares about and visiting the elderly parishioners at the nursing home, organizing food drives, not letting anyone give up hope.
Those would be some examples of a good strong man, if you care about that sort of thing.
That got your attention, didn't it? Well it's true. I know of a man who saved literal millions of children over the course of his life.
His name is James Harrison, and he passed away two weeks ago at the age of 88.
Mr. Harrison lived in Australia with his wife, a daughter, and two grandkids. He was inspired to start donating blood as a teenager, when he needed a major surgery that required a lot of donor blood. When he started giving blood, it was discovered that he happens to have a rare antibody called Anti-D. Anti-D can be used to make a medication for pregnant women with a complication that causes their immune system to attack the unborn baby's blood cells. Before the development of the medication, about half of the babies with this complication died in the womb or as newborns; with treatment, the survival rate is well over 90%.
Harrison made it his life's work to donate as much blood as he could to save babies. He donated plasma more than once a month for 63 years, a total of 1,173 times, and only stopped because Australia has a law against people over the age of 81 donating blood.
Harrison's blood donations were used to make medicines that are credited for saving the lives of more than two million babies, including his own grandchildren. He has been dubbed "the man with the golden arm." He held the world record for the most blood ever donated in 2005. In 1999, he was awarded the Medal for the Order of Australia. He died peacefully in his sleep on February 17th, at the age of eighty-eight.
A good man is not a showoff. A good man, a good person, is somebody who takes whatever they happen to have- whether it's a skill, a talent or an antibody- and uses it to help as many people as he can.
What a great example to think about at the beginning of Lent: a man generously using his blood to save a multitude of people.
Let's all do what we can to be good men and women this Lent.