Like everyone else these days, I click on #BrianWilliamsMisremembers and laugh at the parodies of his runaway conceit.  Yet I find that the laughter catches in my throat.  I, too, am a man who lives “under the sun,” and my own little life also promotes feelings of insignificance and self-pity.  My little ego has also felt desires for a fiction that is more spectacular than fact.  If Brian Williams exposes the tragedy of the male ego, and mine is an ego much like his, where is the escape from the trap of this despair and deceit? 

Like most Americans, I was astonished by the brazen and inept lies told by NBC anchorman Brian Williams about his faux exploits while covering the war in Iraq.  Moreover, I find his precipitous fall (which surely is accelerating even as I write) to be sadly instructive about men in general and the male ego in particular.  Here we have a man who perched virtually at the pinnacle of alpha-dogness as measured on a global scale.  Suave, handsome, wealthy, and admired by legions.  What more could any man need?  The answer, it seems, is “a whole lot more.”

Experienced pastors will recognize in Brian Williams the tragedy of the male ego, which results in the demise of so many members from our sin-corrupted gender.  What is the tragedy of the male ego?  That in our sinful state we can never attain satisfaction, never experience significance, and never feel secure.  Pastors see the injured ego as a man betrays his wife — not primarily because of lust but because self-pity has granted permission for the emotional and sexual solace of a secretary or the wife of a friend.  We see the envious male ego cause otherwise successful pastors to succumb to resentment over preachers with greater celebrity, sullying in the process their usefulness to the Lord.  Brian Williams emblemizes the insecurity that men feel about themselves, which so easily leads to exaggeration and self-deception.  The fantasy history slips into conversation because our ego has grown sullen over our petty little lives and inglorious achievements.

Solomon was a man who knew plenty about the folly of the male ego.  He exposed in Ecclesiastes the desperate realization that leads so many to self-destruction: “Vanity of vanities!  All is vanity!” (Eccl. 1:2).  He was talking about life “under the sun,” that is, life in this fallen and falling world, with the ultimate insignificance of toil, riches, achievement, and experiences.  However much we have, it will never be enough and the feeling will never last.  Here is the reality “under the sun” that fuels the tragedy of the fallen male ego.

Like everyone else these days, I click on #BrianWilliamsMisremembers and laugh at the parodies of his runaway conceit.  Yet I find that the laughter catches in my throat.  I, too, am a man who lives “under the sun,” and my own little life also promotes feelings of insignificance and self-pity.  My little ego has also felt desires for a fiction that is more spectacular than fact.  If Brian Williams exposes the tragedy of the male ego, and mine is an ego much like his, where is the escape from the trap of this despair and deceit?  The Christian man knows the answer: the answer is to surrender our ego – our identity and sense of importance – to the glory and grace that can only be found in Jesus Christ.  The only way to escape Solomon’s life “under the sun” is to embrace the apostle Paul’s life “in Christ.”

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