Luke Taylor- Free Write #3: Man’s Curse Revealed in Noah

“You are not a man until you can prove yourself”

That statement alone is what a man wrestles with almost all of his life, and it is a curse that leads to brokenness that a man ever believes it. All a man’s life he is constantly told how to be a man and is constantly manipulated to what it truly does mean to be a man.

As a boy in high school they are quickly told what it means to be a “man.” To get all of the girls, to always be in control and play with their emotions, to be hooking up and constantly being a ladies man. They are told to ignore authority and be their own boss, to make fun of the peers who are not as ‘cool’ as them. They believe the lie that it is cool to get drunk on the weekends and to get high before school.

As a young life leader I see all of this going on, and as a high school some of it very well proves true to me. It is a sad misconception that boys believe these are things they must doing to prove their manhood but it is a truth that one must confess and accept as true because it happens daily.

In the film Noah we see ham go through this curse of trying to understand what it means to be a man and what he must do to fulfill that mission. The enemy is real and he does all that he can in order to make these boys believe a lie. One that tells them they are not good enough; that they must do all of this ‘bad’ in order to really be men. The antagonist tells Ham he must rebel against his Father in order to really be a man and that being a man means he must be able to kill. That very misconception is what all boys going through in their lives today. Usually not as intense as killing a man but even then, some lies get so twisted that it comes down to that.

It is a sad curse that so many boys seem to believe and the film, Noah, does an excellent job of portraying that through Ham’s desire to truly become a ‘man.’