Maybe the title of this blog should have been Men are in Trouble.
A quick Google search of articles relating to the entry “men are in trouble” yields the following results:
- What's the Matter with Men? New Yorker Magazine,Jan 23, 2023
- Why men are in trouble, CNN, Oct 4, 2011
- Why boys and men are in trouble, Toronto Star, Nov 1, 2022
- Opinion | The Crisis of Men and Boys, The New York Times, Sept 29, 2022
- The trouble with men: How the modern male has reached crisis point ... and what we can do about it, The Herald, 9th October 2022
- Men are lost. Here's a map out of the wilderness, Washington Post, July 10, 2023
And the beat goes on.
It should come as no surprise that young men and boys find themselves lost. Consider the following headlines found in a different Google search:
- Male Privilege & Masculinities - Privilege and Intersectionality, Rider Univ., Jan. 11, 2023
- White Male Privilege & Toxic Masculinity, MenLiving.org, July 1, 2018
- Hegemonic masculinity: combining theory and practice in gender interventions, NIH, Nov 19, 2015
- I Enabled White Male Privilege in My Classrooms for Years, Yesmagazine.org, Feb. 20, 2019
On the one hand, men are criticized for being too “male” or for the supposed privilege that automatically comes with the fact that they’re men. On the other hand, we see that men and boys are in crisis all around us, yet we wonder why.
The diagnosis seems fairly simple: we spent the last 30 years or so criticizing men for their masculinity, and now we find young men losing their way. “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind,” Hos. 8:7.
It’s a wonderful thing that the young men of Mars Hill are growing up in a culture that values the masculinity that God has placed in them. As I said last summer during our new Summer Teacher Training Initiative,
“Boys and girls are different; treat them that way. Boys and girls are different; educate them that way. Recognize and honor the differences. Think about it, pay careful attention to it, so that our school culture becomes one in which boys and girls can grow up and be educated to honor and respect the feminine and masculine roles that God would have them fulfill.”
However, as much as we may think our children are protected from the ravages of the sexual revolution happening all around us out there, the fact is that our children—our young men—will not escape unscathed. They’re growing up in the soup of Post-Modernity, and we have to be prepared.
For this reason, our Dad’s Fellowship this year will be reading together the book, It’s Good to be a Man, by Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tenant.
I encourage all our dads to pick up a copy of the book for free(!) at the front desk, then join us for conversation and fellowship at our three Dad’s Fellowships, October 21, January 27, and April 20, all 7-9 p.m. (For locations please see the Hub calendar.)
Even if you don’t read the book, come for the conversation and fellowship.
Your sons will thank you!