Manhood at the University of Minnesota and the House of Commons

As I write this afternoon, I am at Wilson Library at the University looking out across the plaza. People walk, cycle, and "blade" to their next class or appointment. Like some others here at the library, I watch them between keystrokes and paragraphs.

I see students and faculty, visitors and administrators, men and women. Some of the men look like they might be athletes; others are clearly not athletes at all.

But what an error I would be making were I to “measure a man” by his physical appearance!

Two days ago I finished Amazing Grace, the biography of William Wilberforce. If you are unfamiliar with him, he led the fight in Parliament to abolish the slave trade. The man was a true warrior. Though he never wielded a sword or a pistol, he confronted the evil practice of rounding up Africans and shipping them to the West Indies to labor on a plantation. If they survived the trip, the slaves faced a life full of difficulties that are beyond my comprehension. Amid death threats and great opposition, Wilberforce and the abolitionists prevailed, though the political battle lasted decades.

The author provided a brief physical description of Wilberforce early in the book:

“Wilberforce was universally described as tiny and stood just over five feet tall with a child-sized torso. His chest was measured in later years at thirty-three inches.” (p. 43)

This “tiny” man was a spiritual and political giant who led the fight to secure the personal freedom of hundreds of thousands of slaves. I’ll say it again – what an error we make when we measure a man by what we see on the outside!

How, then, do we esteem the physical strength of a man? There is a certain glory to it, is there not? "The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendor of old men is their gray hair." (Proverbs 20:29) But what a fleeting glory it is! And how trivial in the sight of God! Recall what God said to Samuel when he was selecting a king:

“Do not look on his appearance or the height of his stature . . . For the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

Think about that, next time you overlook the plaza at a University.

His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor is his pleasure in the legs of a man. Psalm 147:10