My mother used to say it was a man’s world. She was outnumbered by four to one, and felt she had to assert herself to be noticed sometimes. Men, she would say, can go out and enjoy working and develop friendships, while women bear and bring up children painfully at home.

The ‘men’s movement’ doesn’t agree. These modern under-fathered, over-mothered sons of modernity feel undefined, ill at ease, reactive, alienated. They are overly compulsive and many are irresponsible. Feminists have asserted their (new) roles, and men don’t know how to cope. (As a man in his thirties said to me this week, ‘The real test is not how many dragons you can slay, but how you handle an angry woman!’).

How do men discover the ‘real man’ inside? Short answer: model your life on Jesus, the best-put-together male who’s ever lived.

Jesus – King, conqueror of everything, lover and wise man I’ll follow you wherever you want to lead me – even into the recesses of my inner self. Amen.