How Boys Become Men

This week I discuss the necessity of reading the bible correctly, in order to rightly raise boys to become men. Too many of the worlds experts on this topic are creating false narratives that are biblically backwards. Boys must be taught to trust God's promises and gifts to become the man God built them to be. 

Episode Transcript

Ethan (00:02):
Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast
dedicated to faithful parentsnavigating their families
through a stormy culture
This is Raising joyful childrenin an angry world.
I'm your host, Paul Osborne.
This week is Reformation Week,and I want to talk today about
how understanding the biblicalideas in the Reformation one,

(00:22):
particularly, is beneficial inraising boys to become men.
This is a topic that is beingwidely discussed outside of
Christianity and what sometimesthey call the man phe.
And many non-Christian ideasfrom the world's definitions,
methods and belief I believe aredripping into the Christian

(00:44):
family.
Jordan Peterson, great speaker,has a lot of wonderful arguments
about the influence of feminism,but I wanna suggest having
listened to him and read some ofhis stuff, he has clearly missed
reformational and biblicalunderstanding of becoming a man.
And I would say the reason is.

(01:05):
Now if Luther were around, he'dsay, he reads the Bible
backwards.
What does that mean?
You say?
Well, the Reformation spokeabout a lot of things, but one
of the more difficult and yetmost important thing is how to
read the Bible and the conceptof boyhood to manhood cannot be
grasped in the Christianworldview without getting this

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right.
I would also suggest it's gonnabe hard to raise a daughter to
be a strong woman withoutgetting this right.
Luther pointed to indicativesand imperatives.
What is that?
An indicative is a statement offact, what God has declared as
true and a promise that he ismade to you and me.
They are statements like.

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I am the way, the truth and thelight.
No one comes to the fatherexcept by me.
That is an indicative promisestatement of fact.
What is an imperative?
If you love me, you will obeyme.
It's an if you do this, if youdo that, types of statements,
those are imperatives.

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And what Luther would say andwhat the way to read the Bible
is to start with what God hasdone.
Before we get to the, if youstatements, and I'm afraid what,
what many of us have been raisedin is if I do this, then God
will do that.
You start with the imperativerather than the proclamation of

(02:33):
the promise.
Rather than saying, God hasstated this fact about me.
This is what God has done forme.
Therefore, I'm empowered tofollow him.
Now we start with it the otherway around.
If I do this, then God will dothat.
And unfortunately, what whatthat does is, is it makes God
dependent on your actions andyou end up removing certainty so

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you, so you leave yourself andthe soul and the declarations of
what God has said about your sonin an anxious uncertainty.
Let me give you a simple examplethat I think makes this clear.
God goes to Samuel and tells himto anoint David as the future
king of Israel.

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Before this young boy throws thestone that slays Goliath, he has
been declared an anointed andgiven the promise by God, God
declares his kingship before hebecomes the king.
Before he does.
These imperatives.

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See, many of us, I'm afraid,have been brought up you may not
recognize Rudyard Kiplingbecause he's, uh, died in 1936,
but you, you may be familiarwith the poem.
If you keep your head when allabout you or losing theirs and
blaming it on you, if you cantrust yourself when all men
doubt you, but make allowancesfor their doubting to.

(04:02):
If you can wait and not be tiredof waiting, and it goes on
through all these kinds ofvirtuous statements.
And then it says, if you canfill the unforgiving minute with
60 seconds worth of distant run,yours is the earth and
everything that's in it, andwhich is more, you'll be a man,
my son.

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It's a whole understanding ofbecoming a man based on if you
can.
Rather than understandingbecoming a man, because God made
you to become a man, he hasdeclared you to become a man.
He has given you the power tobecome what is strong and
powerful and courageous.

(04:44):
It starts in Psalm eight.
Speaking of David, he says hehas ordained the mouse of babes
and sucklings with strength tosilence, Avengers and Foes.
See the path to manhood fromboyhood involves certainly
mastering the skills God hasgiven, trusting what God has
revealed and empowered.

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But it starts with trusting thefacts and the promises.
The indicatives, the things thatGod has set are facts.
Ephesians six, this is where weget into the kind of the
confusion on the, if you, itsays, put on the helmet of
salvation.
What is salvation?
It's a declaration of fact thatGod has saved us the breastplate

(05:26):
of righteousness.
What is it?
It's a promise that has takenour sinfulness and given us his
righteousness, the belt oftruth.
I am the truth way in the life.
It's always going back to whatGod has declared as facts and
believing and trusting thosefacts.
It's not an, if you do thisfeat, then you get the armor.

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The armor has been given.
Just put it on.
Now I, I, I think we can usethings to help build confidence
in sports and hunting andwhatever we want to do to hand
down to our sons.
But we can't put these as proofsas tests.
You know?
Yes.
Boys have to be prodded, Ibelieve, into manhood, and yes,
they need their confidence buildup, but Reformation speaking, we

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build them up and we prod themby telling them what God has
declared about them.
The world we live in I see, isobsessed in two areas regarding
this topic.
One is largely sports and theother is sex.
Now this world is filled withproof test slaying the dragon,
swimming with the sharks,climbing the mountain,

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overcoming the great odds, andthe other is obsessed in, in, in
human sexuality.
So many people parrot theseideas about sports making boys
into men without explaining howit does this or any explanation
of what we're actually seeing inthe sports world.

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This season we're seeing collegefootball looks more like a
coliseum, where fans areshouting fire, fire the coach,
fire the coach, and the coach islike some gladiator sitting
there with an athletic directorgiving the thumbs up or thumbs
down.
We even got governors of statesgetting involved with this and,

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and then we've got the NCAAannouncing this week.
The college athletes will now bepermitted to make bets on
professional sports, notcollege, of course, because
they've seen how widely this isbeing done in the recent NBA
scandal.
I mean, the concern for parentsthat are raising children is
that we can't raise kids withthis kind of view of winning any

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cost.
Fire the coach if he's notwinning my championship ring,
because that's gonna confuseyour understanding of God and at
worst it, it may ruin it.
And this world of psychologythat's so influenced by Freud
and, and new versions of Freudthat sees everything through
some line of human sexuality allthis sort of stuff that sons

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must break, some weird bond withtheir mothers in the school, uh,
takes people down these pathsand, and it really gets us off
of the biblical message in thistopic.
Fortitude, courage, altruism,whatever.
The virtues of manhood, they'renot gonna come by diving into
some twisted sexual theories byFreud.

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What we do is we explain whatGod has declared about his
people and the facts of theresurrection, and we challenge
our sons to live in the power ofGod's promises.
That is where real strengthresides and where manhood will
come alive there's, there's arecent book I think that really
points out how we get so faraway from this.

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It's a book called, you Are aTree by a young lady named Joy
Clarkson.
And she points out that we talkso much metaphorically like
machines.
You pushed my buttons, my tank'semptied.
I'm not wired that way.
And that's not the way the Biblespeaks.

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That's, that's, that'sprogramming.
That's if you do, you'll becomekind of talk.
And she reminds us, right?
You go to the first psalm and itspeaks about, you know, blessed
is the man not walking with thewicked, hanging out with the
sinful company of Mockers, whichnow looks a lot like the sports

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media in this country.
But rather this person has adelight in God's law because he
is like a tree planted bystreams of water.
That's an indicative.
God is the potter.
We are the clay.
Jesus is the shepherd.
We are the sheep.
The tree doesn't decide to beplanted.
No.
God plants you by the stream ofwater.

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God is the one that is shapingus and God is giving us his
promises.
And the reformational reading ofthe Bible is by letting those
facts of God's promises shapewhat we trust and how a boy
becomes a man.
Trust these things.
Trust what God has declared.
Do not make it something youhave to do in order for God to

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act.
Instead, believe God has actedand now trust and live in that
promise.
God has made your son to becomea man.
Feed on that truth.
Live in a world that confirmsthat idea.
Ignore and avoid all peopleteaching and institutions that
reject it.
There is no if of doubt when itcomes to what God has promised

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and what he has created your sonto become.

Paul (10:42):
The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight
for identity.
Our king invites our kids toknow who they are, what to
believe, and where they belong.

Paul (2) (10:55):
Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is
the Kingdom of Heaven.