Real Men Pee on the Toilet Seat


"And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his
throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that
pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends."1
Kings 16:11 (*emphasis mine) Click Here!


Real men pee on the toilet seat!

I am not sure my wife would agree with that statement, at least, that isn't
what we teach our son, but I'm sticking to it.

It was 1989. I was a sophomore in college, the same college in fact that
Laura Engles Wilder graduated from approximately a century prior. It was my
second year away from home and I was officially lonely, frustrated, and
listless in a sea of ideas and culture that is the modern collegiate system..
It was a place where professors were looked up to as though they were the
gods of academia. In fact, you knew they wanted you to think of them as gods
by the way they held your grade point average in the palm of their hands
with every whim of emotional fancy, odd rules and regulations. The setting
may have been different, but the attitude hadn't changed. It was pretty much
like High School, except you didn't have a parental curfew. Instead you had
a dormitory curfew where they locked you out after Midnight.

Despite the propaganda to the contrary, we were encouraged to look at the
professors as our intellectual masters, from whom we would learn the truth
about the world and everything in it. If we had a different opinion, we were
not free to share it. If you were a Christian, you had better check it at
the door. However, if you happen to be a follower of WICCA (witchcraft), you
were more than welcome to share your views, because the teacher was probably
one of you.

I wasn't doing well in college.

My grades were quite low, I had some friends trying to reach out to me in my
depression and frustration about the emptiness of life.

One of my biggest frustrations, however, wasn't the course work it was
having a clean toilet to sit on.

Yes, you heard it. I said it. You read those words correctly. I lived on the
same floor as half the baseball team. For some reason it was considered
manly to pee on the toilet seat. Let me tell you, it is a rude awakening
when you're mostly asleep at 3:00 AM. I can't tell you how many times I
cleaned toilet seats that year. I really should have gotten paid some big
bucks for being the daily janitor!

I would gripe, moan and complain to my best friend about it almost everyday
it was so disturbing to me. We even wrote a few songs about it together. I
honestly couldn't think of anything more disgusting and disrespectful than
peeing on the toilet seat.

My best friend was my next door neighbor. He was a Christian who saw the
struggles I had and decided he was going to take me under his wing. We've
all heard it said that a dog is a man's best friend. I think whoever said
that never met my best friend, Thane.

The truth is I probably wouldn't have made it through those days if it
hadn't been for that man. He became an older brother to me, sometimes
father. He had a good head, had real common sense, knew right from wrong and
there was no way you would ever beat him at any game, especially trivia
games.

Thane was older than most of the other guys on our dormitory. He really
challenged me to give up my heathen ways, and along with several other guys
that year, I think they did a pretty decent job. By 1990, I was actually
taking them seriously when they spoke to me about Jesus. They were even more
encouraged to keep annoying me about Jesus when I told them I'd received
Jesus as a child. In February of that year I recommitted my life to Jesus
while watching a popular Christian television show.

It was a real moment of change for me.

I had a whole new world of Hope to explore, where people would do the right
things, help each other when there was a need. I was reading my Bible, I saw
how believers shared all things in common in the early Jerusalem church. Now
that I was a recommitted, born again, on fire for Jesus Christian, I was
really looking forward to experiencing the camaraderie of that kind of
Christian life!

I was really looking forward to spending time with people who only looked
after the needs of others, where people really lived what Paul said, “love
your neighbor, it is better to give than receive, and what Jesus said,
"give and it shall be given."

I was in for a rude awakening about the continuing condition of sinful man
after salvation, and the moment came at church.

*In the Men's room.*

I had to use the toilet, not the urinal, mind you. The actual toilet, and
guess who came out of the stall leaving a Pee covered toilet seat in his
wake?

Yep, it was my best friend.

Turns out it was him all along, and it wasn't done out of spite or as a
practical joke, either. He really believed he had a right to pee on the
seat! "That's what men do,' he said.

For a brief moment I had to wonder what it was that was hanging between my
legs. Then I stopped and thought for a moment, took a deep breath and said,
"Wait, I am a man and that thought never entered my mind."

In that moment I was forced to confront something I hadn't considered and I
didn't want to do it. I had to consider my own expectations about being a
Christian.

I actually believed that Christian men wouldn't and shouldn't pee on
toilet seats.

It was a critical moment for me. I realized in that instant that
recommitting my life to Jesus didn't make me automatically perfect. It
didn't make anyone automatically perfect when they received Jesus as Lord
and Savior!

Christian men still peed on toilet seats! They are still inconsiderate,
smelly, rough-housing Men!

I was devastated. Honestly.

It took me a couple years to get my head around that concept in the Bible
that goes, "He called us while we are *yet* sinners."

One day, Thane and I were reminiscing about college, and the topic came up.
By this time, I had reconciled myself to the fact that I would always have
to clean a toilet seat before sitting, even in church. I just couldn't get
myself to over the idea that it was okay for me to sit on someone else's
pee, but I finally got to a place of forgiveness and understanding that some
people just have a little more sanctification to go through than the rest of
some of the rest of us.

It was in explaining this little thought to my friend that he said something
that hit home for the first time.

"Tov," he said, "Jesus didn't come to castrate us men. He came to make us
authentically Manly."

It took me a moment and I probably looked like the proverbial deer in the
headlights, so he continued.

"Jesus came to restore manhood to men. Jesus was above all else, a man. He
didn't win back this world from sin and death as the Son of God. He did it
as the Second Adam. He did it as a Man. He did it as MAN reborn."

I still must have had a blank look on my face, so he kept talking.

"Maybe it is about marking territory. Maybe that's why men pee on toilet
seats. I don't know. Maybe it is because they hate themselves and want to
share their self-hatred with others. I really don't know."

Then the microbiologist in him came out (and this explains why you could
never beat the guy at trivia), when he added, "You know, urine is more pure
blood plasma than anything else. It doesn't take much to purify it enough to
put back in your body. Jesus marked his territory with the ultimate
fountain — His own blood."

I finally croaked out a lame, "Wow. That's deep," as he continued.

"The Bible is supposed to be our guide for being men, as much as it is a
guide for women to be women, Jews to be Jewish, Gentiles to be Gentiles, and
for believers in Jesus to be believers."

Has anyone one else ever felt like just giving up on trying to figure out as
a Christian, how to be a man of God, or is it just me?

Unfortunately, there's so much cultural entanglement and our own
preconceptions clouding what the Bible actually says about the subject, that
we get bogged down. We can't see the forest for the trees. Some of us get so
completely overwhelmed we figure we'll never learn what we need in order to
be what we're supposed to for God.

I get the feeling I'm not alone. I will be honest, I don't have it all
figured out. How often do you hear preachers say that? Becoming perfect like
Jesus probably won't happen until that moment He returns. Until He does,
maybe I will just have give up and start peeing on toilet seats like a real
man.


*Excerpted from Tov Rose's upcoming book. Copyright 2010.*


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