I just read a really great book.  It is called No More Christian Nice Guy - When being nice instead of good hurts men, women, and children.  I think there is a real problem in the Church with men being men or even knowing what it is to be a good man.  Do yourself a favor and pick up this book.   Take a look at the excerpt from the website below or download the first chapter for free to see if you like it.  There is also a test on the website just incase you don’t think you have a problem.  ;). 

• Free PDF of the first chapter.
• Free online test.
• Buy the book at Amazon.

This is an excerpt from the website: 

You can live with purpose, meaning, integrity, honesty, love, and faith. It's time to be who you were meant to be.

Paul Coughlin lived the nice guy lifestyle—until it blew up in his face. He wishes now it would have blown up sooner. Less damage would have been done.

He calls himself a "former Christian nice guy," someone who hid behind popular Christianity with its incomplete and dangerous caricature of "gentle Jesus meek and mild."

His book, No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice—Instead of Good—Hurts Men, Women, and Children, exposes three common forces that encourage passivity in men:

1. A cultural prejudice that shames men for being men.
2. An incomplete portrayal of Jesus as passive and weak.
3. Childhood difficulties that create a passive mindset that are brought into adult life, often undetected.

These forces conspire against men and ruin their lives. The psychology of passivity leads to a life controlled by fear, which shuts down our emotions. When your life is controlled by fear, you can forget about obtaining a purpose-driven life and the abundant life Jesus has to offer. Fear saps you of emotional energy and power, the very qualities necessary for romantic love, successful careers, healthy parenting, and loving God and your neighbor as yourself.

"Nice guys," he says, are often secretive and manipulative in order to avoid conflict. Christian nice guys are pleasant, not because they care about others, but because they want others to leave them alone. Nice guys are often fearful and selfish, he says.

Our society mistakes niceness for goodness and kindness, and this is a big mistake, he says. Think of the nice people in your life? Do they do anything meaningful? They are far more interested in avoiding conflict than actually being good and helpful to others. And such people aren’t honest. When life has them down, they hide behind a deceptive smile.

No where in this book will men find an excuse to be a jerk, he says.

Though No More Christian Nice Guy is written for men, women find the topic arresting and extremely helpful.

• Thank you for your words of encouragement...I appreciate that someone finally put this issue into words!!! I knew and saw things, but couldn't explain it. My husband tells me all the time he is just a Nice Guy. He isn't, and he isn't nice to be married to either.
• Thanks! It's great to find men speaking out and talking about real godly manhood, not just the soft, passive counterfeit we're offered all to often in the Church...
• My husband is weak. It is hard to respect him, he has no backbone. Why can't men see this in themselves? Why can't they be protective?
• My single Christian girlfriends and I believe that the ideal Christian man to marry has only been in the church two years. This way he'll still have some of his masculinity left.

If what you just read rings true for your life or someone you love, don't hesitate. Pick up a copy and read it right away. It may be one of the most important decisions you'll ever make.