Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast. This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose. I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

C: So I'm really rather chuffed for this episode to be joined by Sean Kennedy. Thank you ever so much Sean.

S: Thank you for inviting me.

C: You're very welcome. So we have recorded a couple of podcasts together before we did one about Myers Briggs quite a long time ago. And we also did one a couple of years ago around attachment and our relationship with God. So Sean and I have been friends for a long time and Sean has done a number of things. He's been an engineer and worked for the YMCA and done coaching and he's a Myers Briggs practitioner. He's done all sorts of stuff and we've written a couple of books together and we used to do training workshops together which was quite good fun. So Sean has agreed to have a conversation about masculinity and Jesus. So the last podcast that I did was around Jesus and women and it felt to me like it would be good to do the other side of that really. And I thought I needed a bloke. So thank you for being the bloke.

S: I'm not particularly a blokey bloke but...

C: Well any port in the storm [laughter] Yeah but I thought you'd have some good insights actually.

S: I thought you'd be better off interviewing somebody like Bear Grylls, you know.

C: Yeah he's not on my speed dial list.


S: oh okay.

C: So actually what is quite exciting is that the last podcast I did I was letting people know that some of the material that I was looking at was featured in my new book that might be out and it is now. It's called "Finding God's Feminine Side". It's available on Amazon.


C: Part of my reason for wanting to have this conversation is that in my time as a Christian, I think culturally but particularly as a Christian, there are images of manhood and womanhood that get quite a lot of traction. And as I've been sort of writing and thinking, my observation has been that quite a lot of the stuff that I was sold as biblical manhood and biblical womanhood is harder to find in the Bible than you might think. And my observation is that not a lot of the thinking and the talking and the teaching around this stuff actually starts with Jesus. So I was thinking let's go back and have a look at Jesus and what does Jesus affirm in men and what does he encourage in men and in women and what might that tell us? But going back to those kind of messages that we get around masculinity from church and from culture, I wonder what kind of messages you found yourself picking up growing up.

S: Oh wow. I grew up in Northern Ireland, which is a very religious place. I was getting quite a lot of religious and cultural and indeed family messages and I'm not the blokiest of blokes but what people required of me, what society, family and school required of me, I just, I couldn't be.
Yeah. So church, school, they wanted me to be a leader and a controller, wanted me to be firm and authoritative, to have all the answers. And then the church wants me to be a husband and a father, to a quiver full of children, a disciplinarian to both my wife and my children. It was a bit bothersome really because I don't have, I have a wife but no children.

C: You can only be a disciplinarian to your wife. I know your wife. I don't think that would work.

S: It doesn't.
To be head of the household and the provider and to be brave and adventurous and challenging and tough. And then I think our society in the West, certainly in Northern Ireland where I come from, you know, my family, they wanted me to be a business entrepreneur. School wanted me to be sporty, a rugby player, football player. I was taught to hit back harder than I was hit, something I wasn't able to do. I was taught never to apologise because that's a sign of weakness, never to admit I'm wrong. And honestly, it's all rubbish. And it doesn't look like the character of Jesus that I see in the Bible.

C: No, no, it doesn't.

S: It's a bit Old Testament, actually, what I was brought up with.

C: Yeah, it's certainly very kind of cultural, isn't it? In my experience, Sean, you haven't been aspiring to go out and play rugby or any of those things. So I'm wondering what has helped you to find your own self and to resist some of that?

S: I think that was very hard growing up. I think there's quite a lot going on. It's a bit of a complicated story. I think sport wise, I'm mildly dyspraxic because I don't really, I struggle with hand-eye coordination. So a little bit clumsy with fast fluid movements. So I think that put a hold on sport and music playing instruments so that it didn't work. And I got a lot of slurs because I am quite a good listener. I wasn't that tough guy. And yeah, I got called all sorts of names and various homophobic things like that. But I did engineering at university and it's something I really enjoyed. I was actually really good at it. I thrived in that. But moving into industry, it was a very male dominated environment. There were no women, and something was missing. Something was deeply missing. It was all very logical. It lacked compassion. It was all about production and making money at any cost. And I just did not like that environment at all. I missed relationships. It's when I did Myers Briggs for the first time. I think that was a bit of a breakthrough. I was on a course and we did that. And I discovered actually that I have a fairly empathic type personality. And that was a real revelation. And I found that very, very healing. And ultimately I became a psychometric profiler, used a number of different tools. And again, all of that sort of affirmed me that I'm male, but actually I have these highly empathic, typically female type personality. And that's okay.

C: I mean, if we were going to be, and I know the profiler in you will protest slightly at this, but if we're going to be really crude about it, I would be more head-led first and then go with my heart and my values. Whereas you would be more heart-led and then pick up the logic afterwards. It's interesting because the figures show, don't they, that about 25% of blokes are more likely to be heart-led and about 75% of women are more likely to be heart-led. So if you have a room of people, three quarters of the men would be much more head-led and one quarter of the women would be. So you've kind of got people on both sides. And I think there's a lot of men for whom their natural, innate personality doesn't fit with the stereotype. And there's quite a lot of women, like me, who find that their natural tendency to be logical and their slight lack of intuition sort of makes them feel a little bit out of sorts in there amongst other women. And I think though that those percentages are really high and that part of what happens, I suspect is that we tend to lean into what culture is affirming in us. So if you're a bloke who tends to be heart-led and has that much softer, warmer natural personality, then you may well feel the need to develop your kind of manly, logical, strategic side because that's what everybody's expecting.

S: Yeah, you've put it brilliantly there. And I suspect, like me, that soft empathic side, heart-based decision-making, yeah, that got me into trouble quite a lot. And I was told I mustn't think that way. I was even told in the church that I mustn't think that way. And I wonder as a woman, that quite logical, principle-based thinking and decision-making, did that get you into trouble or did that get you boxed in?

C: No, it didn't get me into trouble. And I think part of the reason for that is that we have a society which quite approves of those masculine qualities.

S: In a woman?

C: Well, in anybody. If you think about the way that academic subjects are assessed, for example, they are not assessed on your intuition and your empathy. They are assessed on the sort of the logic. But what I have found is that particularly when I was younger, I found it much, much easier to be around blokes than I did to be amongst women because I felt a bit out of sorts. And what we talked about this when we did the Myers-Briggs stuff. But what tends to happen is that we tend to grow into our opposite, our shadow side. And so as I have done that, and as my personality has become a bit more balanced, I have gradually found it easier to spend time with women. And some of the journeying that I've done around exploring the feminine and the feminine divine has really helped me with that. But it is interesting because at the same time as I sort of felt like there was an ideal Christian woman looking over her glasses at me disapprovingly with a crochet hook in her hand, there was obviously an ideal Christian bloke who would quite like you to go mountain climbing and drinking your own wee and starting a business, you know.

S: I think that image of the ideal Christian woman, as somebody who's pretty much pacifist, I would like to shoot it. And I really want to shoot the image of the ideal male as well in love.

C: Yes. Should we have a look at how Jesus affirms men and what he encourages and what he discourages? The first thing that I would notice is that I think there's something going on for Jesus around power. He is very much empowering the disempowered. And I think this is what gives us a difference in the way that he approaches men and women. So whereas he is very often creating space for women to have their voices, he is quite often trying to persuade men that they don't need to be flashing their power around. You know, there are those famous passages where James and John kind of come to him to say, "We would like to be in the top spot."

S: And thrown beside God, yeah.

C: Yes. "We would like to be on the left and the right of you," which really annoys the other disciples because they...

S: It's a bit narcissistic.

C: Yeah, but actually, you say that, but then if you think about the ideal image of what the bloke should be doing, if you take that seriously, you know, it's about having confidence, it's about standing up for your own reputation, it's about being assertive about the fact that you think you deserve a promotion, you know, all of those things, "I'm going to tell you about my great business." So it's not out of bounds. And you can imagine that there would have been that kind of cultural approval at the time. If you look at the way that the religious authorities behaved and the things that Jesus challenged in them, I think that kind of cultural norm was probably there as well.

S: Jesus is challenging. He challenges the men particularly to kind of get off their throne. He's trying to bring the leaders down and then the unimportant people up. So the arrival of Christ is announced by a large choir of angels to a group of shepherds. Absolute nobodies in the middle of nowhere tending a bunch of sheep. I mean, that's not good marketing. If you want to announce the birth of Christ, go to the Colosseum in Rome.

C: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things which is absolutely missing and which I have read a lot of in terms of how to be a good Christian man is that quite often men are encouraged to be leaders, leaders in their own home, leaders in their churches, leaders of women. And there is nowhere where Jesus is telling blokes that they need to be in charge and that they need to be good leaders in their home. It just doesn't happen. I mean, he doesn't really talk about marriage very much, but he certainly doesn't say, "Husbands, you need to lead your wives."

S: It's more Paul.

C: Well, yes. And I think exactly what he was on about there is a question for another day.
But there's a really famous bit where he [Jesus] is talking to them about the way that the religious leaders behave. This is in Matthew 23, if you fancy a look. But he's talking about the way that the religious leaders behave and he is asking his followers to contrast their behavior with them. And he says things like, and it depends exactly which translation you're looking at as to what words he used, but he says, "You don't call yourself teacher. Don't call yourself master. Don't call yourself leader. Don't call yourself father." So all of those kind of titles of respect, he tells them not to use. And he says, "Amongst you, the greatest will be the servant of everybody."

S: It's an incredibly strongly worded passage. It's asking them to be a lot more humble in their approach.

C: Yeah, he basically says, "You're all brothers and sisters." Which as I say is a complete contrast to that kind of blokes must be in charge.

S: So it's more family and friends than the big man at the top telling people what to do. He's just levelled the playing field.

C: Oh, completely, completely. So all of that power play goes out the window, which is not very handy if you want to be a traditional man.

S: And it's not very handy if you want to be a leader of a traditional organization or institution. But we have seen some incredible companies and charities that actually managed to run without leaders in the traditional way. So what Jesus is saying is incredibly advanced but actually works. It really does. It takes an entirely different sort of thinking.

C: Yes. Yeah. And you certainly see that in the New Testament church, that that kind of structure that we imagine to be church just isn't really...

S: It's not there.

C: It isn't there. It's all about community. So we wrote about this in Church Uncorked.

S: We did.

C: And you can access that on Amazon.

S: Is that another plug?

C: No. As if. [Laughter]

C: But what you find is that the New Testament writers went out of their way to avoid using the word leader. They used all sorts of other things, you know, shepherds and stewards and pastors and...

S: Deacon and...

C: Yeah. Anything that doesn't actually involve the word leadership, which would be a bit of a shock. But coming back to the kind of this masculinity thing, it's not something which is prized. And then I was looking at the Sermon on the Mount and it occurs to me that Jesus systematically takes apart some of the kind of the big ticket masculine items. He just systematically takes them to pieces. So, you know, accumulating wealth is often seen as a really masculine thing to do. But he says that it's the poor who are blessed. And there's no point accumulating wealth because it will rust or get nicked. It's about seeking the kingdom first and what you need will come.

S: Give it away and empower other people.

C: Yes. Yeah. He says that it's the meek that will inherit the earth, not the people who spend quite a lot of time massaging their own reputation.
You were talking earlier about the fact that part of what you felt you needed to do as a man was not to admit that you were wrong or change your mind. And yet Jesus's message has repentance at the heart of it. And repentance is basically admitting that you're heading the wrong way.

S: And turning around.


C: Yeah.


S: Yeah. It's absolutely there.

C: Yes.

S: And actually to admit that you're wrong and turn around, say that I got it wrong and apologise. That's actually far harder.

C: Yeah. Yeah. No, it's not easy. It's not easy. And you said that you were expected to hit back harder than you hit. And yet Jesus tells people to...

S: Turn the other cheek.

C: Yes. Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek. And if somebody tries to sue you for your shirt, give them your coat as well.

S: Give them your coat as well. Yeah.

C: He's not keen on kind of flashing a sex drive around and encouraging it amongst people you're not married to. But that thing about kind of reputation, you know, the whole thing about I'm going to give money and I'm going to be charitable, but I will have my name embossed in it somewhere.

S: Oh, one of those large cheques, you know, that are about three feet wide and...

C: Yeah. And he says, do your good deeds so quietly that your right hand doesn't know what your left hand is doing. So you can't name the hospital wing after you, Sean. I'm sorry.

S: Oh, the Kennedy wing. I was...

C: Or the Kennedy Engineering Centre at the local University. You're not allowed to.

S: Can I be... have my own statue with a pedestal? You know, a hundred foot...

C: No, it depends.

S: Somebody did say to me that God invented pigeons because even the big egos that have their statues on the top of a column...

C: Get shat upon by pigeons.

S: They do. Yeah.

C: So there's a lot of things that are seen as kind of classic masculine totems that Jesus is not in favour of, which brings me to the question of, so what do we see? What kind of masculinity do we see in Jesus? I've been going through the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola and that involves sort of following Jesus through his life. And I'm at Passion Week and I just, I have always thought, but it really has come home to me that Jesus's courage is incredible. I mean, just incredible in that week.

S: Absolutely.

C: He knows what he's walking towards and he...

S: Is he even provoking?

C: He is absolutely.

S: What he's walking towards.

C: Yes, absolutely. He is strategically winding everybody up basically. So he is walking into that, but doing it with huge amounts of dignity and grace. He doesn't stop being kind to people at any point. He doesn't stop loving and he doesn't lose his wits either. You know, here is a man who is very, very emotionally mature and secure and grounded in order to be able to face all of that stuff and still be able to think clearly. I mean, if you think of some of those debates that he has, where he's being asked awkward questions in the last week of his life by the Jewish religious authorities who were trying to catch him out and he is able to answer them brilliantly.

S: Yeah, he's got his frontal cortex completely online in the most dangerous of situations and he's got his compassion completely online. Now, the night he's arrested and one of the disciples cuts off the ear of one of the folks arresting him, he heals the chap's ear. I mean, the last thing that people being arrested tend to do is perform a miraculous healing act because they're trying to fight the police off. But no, he's completely different.

C: Yes, yeah. Which suggests to me that actually if you are a man wanting to walk after Jesus, then aiming for that level of kind of emotional groundedness is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. And if you need some counseling to get there and some healing, then go for it. That's not a weak thing.

S: Yes, it's immensely strong. The flip side of that is tough it out. That level of consciousness and emotional connection, that's the very definition of strength.

C: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And Grayson Perry in his book, "The Descent of Man", his suggestion is that a real true masculine characteristic is gentleness. I think you see a lot of that in Jesus. I think when you look at the abject terror that Jesus was exhibiting in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then you kind of track that back through the week that he's just been through and his knowledge of what is coming, it blows my mind. It does. And I don't think many of us kind of reach that level of togetherness and courage.

S: But even when he's on the cross in the most excruciating agony, his frontal cortex is still online. He's having conversations.

C: Yeah. And looking after people. Making sure that his mum is...

S: Going to be looked after.

C: Yes. Yeah. Just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And yet, quite often the masculine image that we get is the person who's using their strength not to be sacrificial and to look after others, but to be a warrior. And very often that is about, well, you're going to be hard-nosed, you're going to leave your emotions behind. And Jesus absolutely doesn't. He's completely in touch with his emotions all the way up to the end, which I think is incredible and beautiful.

S: He's a tough guy as well in that he goes out on the road. He doesn't have anywhere to lay his head. Doesn't know necessarily where the next meal is coming from. And he often goes up mountains for a bit of quiet and peace. So, you know, he's a very physical guy and he was a craftsman of some sort as well. So he defies the traditional masculinity. He's a great mixture of both masculinity and femininity. And that's okay.

C: Yeah. I think it's really helpful to have our eyes on a role model that is healthy, for want of a better word. You talk about him going on the road. He's also not afraid of sort of verbal confrontation with people.

S: He's very, very gentle with the people and very empathic with the people who have had a really rough time, who need a bit of encouragement and help, but he will verbally thump the powerful.

C: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Going back to the Bear Grylls thing, I think those 40 days in the wilderness are pretty, pretty extreme. It's pretty extreme. And that would have been physically uncomfortable, physically dangerous. That's an incredible thing to choose to do right at the beginning of your ministry. There is that adventurous spirit. He's often climbing mountains, walking across water. And we see that from the sort of miraculous perspective, but I wonder if there is an element of fun in that and an element of adventure. It is stormy. And so I will walk across this water.


S: I think, I mean, one of the things I think is lost completely in translation is sense of humour. And I bet he was a bit of a standup comedian. Yeah. And actually humour is really, really important in giving a message because it kind of relaxes us and gets our defences down. So I reckon he's an amazing comedian and orator and probably people were laughing all the time around him.


C: Yeah. Yeah.


S: And great with kids as well.


C: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.


S: Yeah. And women.


C: Yes.


S: He's just constantly talking to women and talking to the sort of women that his society would suggest he shouldn't be.


C: Yeah. And in a way which is not at all about sexually exploiting people. No, it's sensual. Definitely emotional. Definitely. But not sexual. And creating those safe spaces. And I talked about that in the last episode. But yeah, so we have a very confident, grounded, rounded guy who is not following any of the kind of tropes of traditional masculinity, all those things you read out at the beginning.

S: He's bust every stereotype.


C: He has. I think it's really interesting that the disciples took his example seriously. And I think we know that because of some of the stuff that gets included in the Gospels. And we know that because the New Testament Church was not hierarchical.
Take for example, the fact that at the crucifixion, the men ran away and the women stuck around and it gets into the Gospels. Or take the fact that Peter denied Jesus and it gets into the Gospels.
Take the fact that Peter walks on water and then gets scared and sinks and Jesus kind of rebukes him for his lack of faith. I don't know many blokes who when telling that anecdote would include the sinking bit. Or when telling the anecdote of the transfiguration would include the bit where they made the daft suggestion to make huts for Moses and Elijah and then realised that was a silly suggestion and that wasn't what was on the cards. So there is a lack of defending of ego and reputation. There is just a sense of we can tell this like it is, which suggests to me that they felt safe to be themselves.


S: They didn't have a good PR team, did they?


C: I think that we are so much richer for that.


S: In fact they didn't.


C: Yes, yes, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to relate to it. So at the time I think it was just that they felt able to be themselves to be truthful about what happened, which suggests to me that Jesus was very effective in creating a no ego culture.
So any final thoughts about Jesus and masculinity, Sean?

S: Yeah, I just love the fact that he blows away every stereotype. He gives me permission to be me. And not that I'm perfect, but I'm happy being a man with quite a few female characteristics.

C: Yeah, and I would say there's enough masculine characteristics, sort of traditionally masculine characteristics in the person of Jesus that if you are more of a blokey bloke, who would be happy to spend 40 days in the wilderness and go climbing mountains.

S: I quite like that. I mean I can throw myself down a mountain or climb up a mountain. I quite like some adrenaline type sport, which I guess is traditionally male. That's okay. So no, I'm not full of contradictions. I just am a breadth of different characteristics and that's okay. And that's what I see in Jesus.

C: Yeah, which I think is really healthy and really valuable.
So there we are. That was Jesus and masculinity. And if you want Jesus and women, that was last time.


S: Oh, your new book. Do you want to tell us what your new book is called?

C: Yeah, it's called Finding God's Feminine Side. And it looks at some of the feminine metaphors and language around God in the Bible that we quite often miss. And then does a little bit of a sweep around, well, how have we ended up missing them and what impact could understanding these things have on our spiritual life?

S: It's really very good.

C: Thank you. So if you like the sound of that, it's available on Amazon.

S: I confess that I have actually read several of your manuscripts.

C: You were very patient.

S: I don't think I was. It was very good. It was healing. It was challenging though as well. I think it's a book for women and for men.

C: Thank you very much. So I think that's enough book plugging.

S: Was that a blatant book plug?

C: Yes, I'm very grateful. Thank you for that. That's brilliant.
But thank you very, very much for your time, and your insights.

S: No problem. Thank you. Thank you for asking me.

C: You're very welcome.

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Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email lovedcalledgifted@gmail.com. You can find a transcript of this podcast at lovedcalledgifted.com. And that's also the place to go if you're interested in the Loved Called Gifted course, or if you'd like to find out about spiritual directional coaching. Thank you for listening.
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