There’s been a lot written lately about the crisis facing Western males in general, and particularly American men. Whether it falls under the concepts of “failure to launch,” with the notion of the 25-year-old gamer living in Mom’s basement, or “toxic masculinity,” the social pressure that falls upon males to act tough, hide one’s emotions, and seek out power or dominance, often over women, it seems as though fewer males have a concept of what constitutes authentic manhood than in past generations. As a father of 20-something women, I often hear my daughters’ peers comment that young men don’t pursue women as they did in our generation, and when they do, it’s often either in some kind of awkward, domineering way, or, quite frankly, in ways that are just pretty uninteresting.
In some senses, this isn’t a new phenomenon. In the Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis prophesied that teaching moral relativism as a predominant philosophy in our culture–having no fixed sense of truth of what constitutes the life well lived–would lead to “men without chests”. By this Lewis meant we would become people without hearts, without the well-developed sense of emotional connection, character, and meaning that allowed them to be truly human, acting as those made in the image of God, and something more than their basest human instincts.
A morally relativistic culture, where we have for generations taught people “you do you,” and that “your truth is true for you and not for me to say otherwise,” has definitely been a culprit in creating hollow, uninteresting men, but are there others? And, in a world where we as Christians actually WANT to be peculiar, to stand out as different, to be counter-cultural not for the sake of difference but for the sake of living out the gospel of Jesus and furthering the Kingdom of God in the Kingdom of Man, how can we raise our boys differently? How can we give them a vision for biblical masculinity, to make them men WITH chests?
I think there are many places to start, but Scripture is clear that one of those is seeing adversity as a shaping instrument for building godly, and manly character. James 1 encourages us to “consider it all joy when we encounter trials, because the testing of our faith ultimately makes us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Adversity is a forge that fuels character. Yet it does far more than that..
Our cultural failure in over- protecting our children, particularly our boys, from adversity has yielded harmful results. In his latest book The Happiness Crisis, my friend Jon Eckert, a professor at Baylor, notes that our children are being raised in a culture that is more prosperous and safer than any other in history (i.e.,more than ever before, they’re largely free from risk from deadly marauders or viruses, and they have living, clothing, and food stability to a degree never before attained). Nevertheless, they are unhappy to an alarming degree. One in two young women (12th graders), and one in three young men, aren’t satisfied with who they are. Four in ten report persistent feelings of sadness and loneliness.
Eckert notes that, to a large degree, the cause of unhappiness is a lack of adversity or striving. When well-meaning parents work to remove hardship or challenges for their children, they actually make them less happy, rather than more. True happiness, or joy, is durable, not rooted in circumstances, and grounded in lives lived for others, rather than self-focused. Adversity actually serves as fuel for joy, rather than starvation from it. When children face hard things and learn to work through or surmount them, they develop a sense of self-efficacy, or the confidence that they can succeed and accomplish things in life. Joy is found not in having stuff, or in all your dreams coming true, but in being strong, resilient people who live lives that are good, beautiful, and true, for God and for others–the abundant life Jesus calls us to.
This is especially true for men. In an editorial written recently for the Wall Street Journal, former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a follower of Jesus who is famously struggling with terminal cancer, encourages parents to let their boys play football, and that it’s now more important than ever that they do so. His reasoning is rooted in those cultural forces that classically molded and shaped young men. Sasse points out that, throughout history, four cultural forces have contributed to forging manhood: family, faith, work, and war. Parents raised sons to be husbands and fathers, while work forged character and grit. Faith taught them to grapple with human nature, sin, and salvation. War showed them how to harness strength as service and sacrifice.
With the face of war changing, and requiring fewer soldiers from the overall population, Sasse argues that America needs its boys to strive through the challenging, yet controlled violence that football provides, building and managing their strength in service to their players and community. It’s an interesting, and perhaps compelling argument, and it raises a good point: boys need to be challenged and pushed to become stronger. They need to learn how to be knocked down, and to get back up again. Boys (and girls, too) need to learn to fail, to learn from their mistakes, and try again, then fail some more, and to learn that life is an iterative process of growth and change.
When boys are deprived of these things and others, their growth is stunted. Author Anthony Bradley recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek article instructing parents “How to Raise a Son Who is Boring and Unattractive to Women.” He notes that, in middle and upper-middle class homes where teenaged men are raised to succeed in sports and school, they actually become very boring. When the focus of their lives is centered around college resume building and micro-managed by their parents, they rarely do anything fun or interesting for its own sake. Classes are taken for the grades they produce, rather than to learn about God’s creation. Sports are engaged in for college scholarships and “discipline”, rather than exercise and fun.
Bradley says the effect of this single-mindedness on early success is producing young men who have strong grades and low golf handicaps, but underdeveloped personalities and poor conversational skills. These turn out to be the guys the twenty-something girls I’ve heard complain about: “Nice, but incredibly boring.” In other words, not fully formed for their age. There are way too many of these guys out there these days.
Bradley’s advice to parents for raising these kinds of guys sounds like a cautionary tale. Among the tips (remember he’s saying what NOT to do): “Organize his life around resume building.” “Let one activity–like travel sports or gaming–define who he is.” “Make sure he knows that reading is only for school, not pleasure.” “Make safety, security, material comfort, social status maintenance, and ease his goals in life.”
As followers of Jesus, we know deep in our spirits that joy comes from doing hard things and either finding victory or struggling while daring greatly. If we want to raise men who are not just interesting, but prepared to lead a family, a community, and the body of Christ into the next generation, I think it requires several things.
First, our mindset needs to be centered around the idea that, whether they’re sons or daughters, they are not ultimately ours. They have been given to us by God as stewards. They are His, to be raised to love and honor Him. They’re not given to us as ego boosters, to make us look good, or even to make a lot of money to take care of us when we’re old. In this regard, safety, security, material comfort, social status, and ease are not admirable life goals. We all know lots of people we really can’t stand who have all of these things. We don’t want to be responsible for raising them. Instead, people who love Jesus, subject to righteous character and concern for others? That’s our goal.
With that in mind, all kids, but especially boys, need adversity. They need to do hard things. They need us to get out of their way and let them fail, and then work through the consequences and the learning opportunities that come with that failure. We can, and should coach them and pray for them as they work through failure, but we shouldn’t fight their battles for them, or, even worse, manipulate the consequences of failure. Honestly, we think we’re helping them, but we’re just putting a down payment on a boring fool.
Sports are a great way to help teach dealing with adversity (and I agree with Sasse; every boy should play at least a couple of years of football, if possible). But so is having a job. We don’t get boys to work nearly as hard in the summers and even during the school year as we used to, and I think there’s a direct correlation with the problems we see now. Working hard in a difficult job makes us gritty, teaches us to appreciate money, and helps develop a strong work ethic. God created us for work, and being exposed to it and learning how to do it while under our parents’ roof is a good thing.
Our young men don’t just need adversity. As Eckert says, they need belonging and curiosity. They need to know people see, know, and love them, and are for them. That doesn’t mean they’ll always be coddled, safety-wrapped, or protected from trials. That would be the worst thing that could happen to them; that’s actually not loving. Instead, they should be surrounded by people who, because they love them, want the best for them, and will encourage them through character-forming hard. Great Christian schools, great churches, and great families are these kinds of forces for belonging in kids’ lives.
Boys, and girls, also, develop curiosity by reading. Model reading for them, reading for fun, not just for school. It really doesn’t matter what you read, as long as it’s mentally, spiritually, and emotionally healthy for them. But, a family that reads together and asks good questions is a family that will have really good and interesting conversation around the dinner table for the rest of their lives. Also, expose them to art and music. Don’t let them call it “girls’ stuff”, or think it’s too feminine. A great portion, if not the majority, of the great artists, musicians, and chefs in the world are and were men. Stimulating creativity builds their minds, imaginations, and curiosities, and will make them better husbands, leaders, whatever else God calls them to be. It will make them more emotionally intelligent, which studies show is the most important quality for effective leadership, more important than IQ or communication skills. They’ll also be way more interesting.
I have lots of friends who have raised their boys in the Lord this way. These guys are peculiar; they’re cut from different cloth than their peers. But, they’re attractive leaders to the world around them, kind and strong, and they love Jesus and their families well. The world needs more men like these, like that one running around in your living room right now. Give him a chest.
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