My son is eight and a half and I am so proud of him (you will notice that the “half” part is very important to kids, but I find less important for adults! :). We have been having a lot of good conversations lately and its fun (and hard!) to see him grow up before my eyes. Recently, we have been laughing about a TV commercial we saw during the Sugar Bowl where the Oklahoma Sooners defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide 45 – 31 (Boomer Sooner!). I digress…If you haven’t seen this video yet, its worth a watch for a good laugh!
Yes, this is silly, but if you listen to some of the opening lines again, you will notice a very interesting phrase, “…a man just needs a place where he can be, wild and free…” Of course this commercial is a caricature, but it gets at a very important point–there aren’t many places where manhood is welcomed and celebrated in our culture. When was the last time you saw manhood celebrated? Granted, there have been men throughout history who have been abusive and not represented what God designed masculinity to be. However, the abuse of an ideal does not invalidate it. And we certainly should not abandon it; we should try to recover it. Affirming this does not and should not diminish the equal value and importance of women as co-image bearers.
I’m not the only one who has noticed. Here is the fascinating and unusual headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article: “Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues – The cultural critic on why ignoring the biological differences between men and women risks undermining Western civilization.”
‘What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,” says Camille Paglia. This self-described “notorious Amazon feminist” isn’t telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women…” (read the rest here and thoughtful commentary by John Stonestreet here).
How to Be a Real Man
In looking at today’s culture, one thing is crystal clear: manhood is in a state of confusion. Most men live lives of confusion, isolation, frustration, and quiet desperation. Time only intensifies these emotions. Our society offers little by way of encouragement for this generation of men. On the contrary, men get a healthy dose of ridicule before being dismissed as unnecessary. This sentiment is tragic in and of itself; but even more tragic when this same confusion, isolation, frustration, and quiet desperation is occurring among Christian men. Men are floundering today due to lack of vision—there is no compelling purpose in life.
This is the context in which I am raising my own son and trying to be a man myself. So what am I trying to teach him and live out? Truet Cathy, CEO and founder of Chick-Fil-A, once put it this way, “It’s better to build boys than mend men.” So how do we do that? As Christian men, our instruction manual is the Bible. The pages of Scripture reveal two prominent men: the first man, Adam, and the last Adam, Jesus Christ (Gen. 1–3; 1 Cor. 15:45–49). Adam lived life separated from God; Jesus Christ lived in union with God. As men, you and I will live in the shadow of one or the other. The following definition was derived by Robert Lewis from comparing and contrasting the lives of these two predominant men:
A real man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously, and expects God’s greater reward.
This is the vision a group of men and I try to live out as husbands and fathers. This is the vision I am (imperfectly) trying to teach and live out in front of my son. There are other great resources as well. And here is a 3-part series you can listen to which will help lay the biblical foundation for this vision. The bottom line is that we all need–and our culture needs–a place where we can be the men that God intended.
According to the ever authoritative WikiHow, “Manliness is something many aspire to, but few achieve.” Let’s work together to see if we can begin to change that. That’s bold vision…