Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

Some of the issues we face as men are universal. However, some of these issues are specifically related to our shared history. Let me explain. The inability to express one’s feelings will cause the individual to internalise those feelings. When they are internalised they will result in bitterness, anger, rage and feelings of worthlessness and a sense of having no purpose in life. A man, who is not in touch with his feelings, is a man who does not know himself. So how can he reflect the image of a caring loving father if he has never had one or had the opportunity to learn from one?

This is the plight of many men and in particular, those from the African Diaspora. Many of our men have bought into the theory of forming transient relationships and living large for ‘the now’. Still many father children and then leave the women to raise the children on their own. Others just go from women to women perpetuating the curse and the original plan of the slavers. This behaviour perpetuates the rage, anger and callousness, beaten into our men when they arrived in the West over 400 years ago.

The beatings, the branding, the castrations, the inability to chose your life partner or to live where you desired were all contributing factors to the way men from the African Diaspora grew up. For example, there are many of us whose fathers left the home when we were very young to go abroad to earn money to give their children a better life. This in itself caused myriad internal issues, many of which have never been dealt with. These issues and those from generations past are still affecting us today.

In this year of jubilee and celebrations, we need reparation from the Queen as the head of an empire, all be it a declining empire, that was complicit in demasculating the African male. We also need healing and deliverance from the rage, anger and fatherlessness that became our portion.  We do not need Million men marches anymore, we do not need protest marches, we need the deliverance and restoration of the African Diasporan male. How do we go about it, watch this space…..read St John 14.