Chapter 1 – What is Passivity?

Fear and the amount of work required to complete a task together rendered me passive. The energy required for a project, a conversation, a teachable moment seemed insurmountable. I would overanalyze requests and go straight to the scenario of failure and exposed weaknesses. It was easier to escape or make excuses not to do the task requested. I quickly learned I was not alone in this.

Pastor Steve had a lovely wife of thirty years and four daughters. He was an extensive reader but as he grew older, his reading time diminished. He worried about getting home and not having any time to read so he stayed a work an hour or two longer just to read. Soon his workload at the church began to increase and infringe upon his reading time. Instead of reading in that extra hour or two, he continued to work. After about a year, he was confronted by his family who missed him at home. It was only then that Steve realized what he had done. He asked for forgiveness from each member of his family and then of God. He started to go home, even with the fear lingering, and with the help of his family was able to carve out an hour of reading time each night as soon as he got home. In working with his family to rearrange his schedule, Steve was able to overcome both his fear and his passivity.

The final reason why I would go passive is my lack of knowledge. If I had not been taught how to act in a scenario, I would be passive. How to be a husband to a wife is modeled for us by our father. How to be a parent to our children is modeled by our father. How to be the head of the household is modeled by our father. How to be the spiritual leader is modeled by our father. Basically, how we are to be at home should have been modeled by our father. However, many of us grew up without our father as a permanent part of our family.

Unfortunately passivity can have some roots in a generational curse. As Christian men, we need to break this cycle. Our fathers may not have been able to teach us anything different than their fathers taught them but our Heavenly Father is willing to father us and help us regain a vision for what fatherhood needs to look like in our own families.

Knowing what passivity is and how it is operating in my life is a great start, but there is so much more to it. It is my intent to rid it from me, but I need to know about its roots. Where in history does it come from? I turned to the only book I know of that goes back before mankind, the Bible.