On the heels of Father’s Day, I reflect on the enormous impact of fathers on their children and grandchildren. Something has happened to fathers in the last several decades–a death of real men replaced by boys who never grow up, who forsake their real duties for the pursuit of their own desires, and the trickle down, as those boys raise more boys, is a horrible blight on our culture.
The following article, posted at The Art of Manliness, is so encouraging and I pray that God would be pleased to renew in our homes, an understanding of what it means to raise real men; men who would return to their obligations of leading strong homes and families.
“…it isn’t the simpler times I long for so much as a return to the distant days when a man rose alongside the sunrise and was expected to give the daylight his best. Clothes were sharper, adolescence shorter, and the word man still deserving of the first spot in the word manners. Now it seems as if there is something missing, something stripped from today’s men, besides their buttons and blazers. I peer at photographs of my grandfather in his prime, and ponder the polarity of our worlds. A dozen decades have hurtled by with such speed; it seems they have left our populace with a case of collective amnesia. I look past the creases of my curling photographs, grateful that I can still teach my son what I believe it means to be a man….
If I were to stare in my son’s eyes, and explain what it is that makes a man, I would not breath a word about how much that man might bench, or in which athletics he may excel. My inventory would be different; a list our grandfathers would surely approve.”
Read the rest of Teaching Your Son to Be a Man
6 comments
Nicely put.
After having just spent time at VBS this week, and seeing how many woman teachers and leaders there are and the fact that there are so many boys running around getting into mischief…there needs to be man options for church things… just sayin’… where boys can learn from men how to BE men…
Laura –
I lead VBS at our church for 3 years in a row. After the first year, which we held during the day I realized the exact same thing. So the next 2 years I changed it to have VBS at night. It opened up the ability of men to be there to help. We ended up having some of the best VBS’ that our church had ever hosted because so many single mothers couldn’t stop praising having male role models for their boys. I also know of some churches that do “neighborhood” VBS where it is held at individual hosues and the host family is all involved in leading the program, which makes it even easier for men ot be invlvoved. Just a few ideas to help next year!
I don’t understand this. If there are real men, there must also be fake men. What makes someone a fake man? Who gets to decide whether a man is a real man or a fake man? The topic “real man” always leaves me confused. If a man considers himself to be a real man, who am I to tell him that he is not? Or if I consider it common decency to open a door for strangers, who has the right to tell me that I’m doing it wrong cause I’m a woman? Who decides that men must open doors and women should wait for them to do so? Where exactly is that rule written? I have had men get angry with me when I didn’t hold the door for them and instead let it shut right before them.
Lo-
I’d start by reading the Bible. It gives plenty of examples about men and what makes them men. You can always Google about it to fidn the info quicker. I think if we each get into the little debates about what makes a man a man it just leads to arguments and debates about just what is a man? I think the Bible should be our best course of discovery of what God says a man should be. It is the standard we should hold all boys/men to when asking ourselves if a male is a man or not.
THANK YOU KELLY for this posting. Too many boys don’t understand things like :
– a man’s word is his bond
– please & thank you aren’t just wors you hear on Leav It To Beaver
– treat women with respect (what if it were your sister/mother/grandmother?)
I could go on and on. My DH didn’t have a father to teach him. He latched onto my father (not the ‘best’ example but certainly better than the guys he grew up around!). Now he’s beginning a Bible study done especially on being a Dad and teaching your boys how to be men. You have NO idea what a blessing it is to me to see him actually using what I got him for Father’s Day instead of just putting it on a shelf to collect dust. I feared that he would turn up his nose because it is so Christ focused, but God is opening his heart more & more everyday! I’m going to keep up those prayers!