“All good things which are connected with manners and civilization have . . . depended upon . . . the spirit of the gentleman, and the spirit of religion.” 1
—Edmund Burke
“It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain.” 2
—Cardinal John Henry Newman
“A society does not run into real trouble . . . until its culture begins to adopt the unmarried male pattern, until the long-term commitments on which any enduring community is based are undermined by an opportunistic public philosophy. The public philosophy of an unmarried male focuses on immediate gratification: ‘What did posterity ever do for me?’ A society that widely adopts this attitude is in trouble.” 3
—George Gilder
Edmund Burke, the great British parliamentarian and philosopher, once said the greatest cultural achievements of Western civilization were the advancement of Christianity and the concept of the gentleman.4 He saw the two as intimately related. What Burke meant by the latter was not the stereotypical prim, proper, and emotionally distant Englishman attired in tails and a top hat, but rather something essential to the nature of humanity.
Burke believed a true gentleman made the best citizen because he made countless excellent contributions to his family, church, community, and country through self-sacrifice, personal discipline, and internal strength while exhibiting a tender heart. But Burke also knew gentlemen are not born—they are made. And he also knew faith played a major role in transforming boys into men—and ultimately gentlemen.
It has also been said a gentleman is a man who is strong, under control, and under the authority of his Master, Jesus Christ, who provided the perfect example of what it takes to be not only a man, but a gentleman in the truest sense of the word.
While not every man has been or is a gentleman, the concept was an ideal for men to try to emulate. Unfortunately, over the past several decades, that concept has fallen into disfavor. The result is men who have no idea what it takes to be a gentleman.
Much has been written about the “crisis” of boys and young men. We see that crisis played out throughout our culture as we have witnessed many boys and young men “fail to launch” into adulthood, seem directionless and unwilling to accept personal responsibility, engage in violent acts, and fall into increasing despair. These issues end up causing all sorts of societal issues such as fatherless children, substance abuse, and ever-increasing incarceration rates.
But these are just symptoms and are not the root cause of the problem. To cure the problem, we must regain an understanding of the concept of a gentleman. And as discussed in the previous chapter, the discussion starts with broken marriages and families.
Much of the lack of gentlemen can be attributed to young men lacking male role models to guide them and point them in the right direction. Because of the breakdown of the family, this problem now encompasses two generations because many men in their thirties and forties did not have these role models, and as a result have no idea how to be a role model to their boys.
Thus, these boys grow up in a world that values accomplishments over personal character, career over family, and autonomy over responsibility. What is communicated to them is the antithesis of being a gentleman—a man who respects women, loves children, and takes his role as a provider and nurturer of his family seriously.
Instead of “How much money will I make?” or “How fast can I climb the corporate ladder?” or “How can I find self-fulfillment?” the questions young men should be asking themselves are of the spiritual and moral ilk: “How do I become a good man?” “How can I make a lifelong contribution to my family and society?” and “What is my ultimate purpose in life?” These are the questions Tim has pondered and tried to instill in his sons as he sees them grow into young men.
These last questions are vitally important. When young men find their purpose in life, they become disciplined and focused. They realize their lives are not their own. They come to model self-sacrifice and unconditional love to those around them. They become what is called a “good citizen.” They become a gentleman.
When these questions are not asked and these behaviors are not modeled to young boys and men by others, young men often enter adulthood with little or no purpose. Instead of being strong, in control, and under the authority of their Master, these men are weak in spirit, prone to temptation, out of control in their actions, and bow to no authority but their own. And the results are tragic for men, but in all too many cases for women, as well.
This was seen in the last days of 2017 when it seemed every newscast, newspaper, magazine, or website was blasting news about another horrific incident of powerful men sexually exploiting and abusing women.
There is no denying there have always been corrupt men who viewed the world—and particularly women—as objects to be exploited for personal pleasure. This is, simply put, evil. No man who takes such a view of the world and of his fellow human beings can ever consider himself a gentleman. One of the most tragic misinterpretations of the term “gentleman” is so-called “gentlemen’s clubs,” which are not the venues for gentlemen.
What these stories tragically reminded us was that while there may be plenty of biological men around, there are far too few gentlemen in America today.
At the same time, there are true gentlemen who see the inherent worth and dignity—imago Dei—in every person, man or woman. These men strive to treat everyone with the utmost respect, personally and professionally, and seek to create the conditions for human flourishing for everyone with whom they interact. They do so because of the values passed down to them from generation to generation from other gentlemen.
Peggy Noonan echoed these sentiments, but added a few more of her own, in her definition of a gentleman. She wrote, “A gentleman is good to women because he has his own dignity and sees theirs.” 5 She adds, “[A gentleman] takes opportunities to show [women] respect. He is not pushy, manipulative, or belittling. He stands with them not because they are weak, but because they deserve friendship.” 6
Noonan goes on to share a story of a male columnist who gave her helpful critiques of her work and, in her words, “urged her on.” In her view, “a gentleman is an encourager of women.” 7
Unfortunately, over the past several decades, our society has energized bad behavior through such evils as pornography, graphic sexuality and violence in popular entertainment, and allowing men to find ways to abdicate personal responsibility for their actions—particularly in the area of sexuality. Meanwhile, the good values that transform a man into a gentleman are mocked—and, in some instances, vilified—as being disrespectful toward women. They are anything but.
In the days after the horrific sexual abuse stories mentioned earlier became known, some individuals started to take a deeper look at how our society empowers bad behavior.
Writing for National Review, conservative Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro cited how the rules considered standard for centuries for governing behavior—and in particular, male behavior and the relationship between the sexes—have been lost. The loss of these rules for good behavior has enabled the bad behavior of men to flourish.
According to Shapiro, those carefully cultivated rules of conduct between the sexes included the expectation that men would be chivalrous protectors of women, men and women interacted within parameters designed to protect women, and sex was reserved until marriage.
Of this last rule, Shapiro explains it is more than simply an old-fashioned moral expectation; that rule strengthens and serves society by cementing the connection between sex and commitment. In addition, it provides objective evidence before a community of witnesses that a woman has given positive consent to sexual activity, clearing up much of the haziness surrounding the idea of “consent” today.8
During the Sexual Revolution, all these rules were tossed aside. Instead of seeing them as social parameters encouraging respect for women and providing a measure of protection, the rules were perceived as patriarchal, demeaning of women, and in Shapiro’s words, “artificial barriers to progress.” 9 In the new order of things, men and women would be treated exactly the same way—a promise that, as we have seen, has rebounded badly for both sexes.
While the old rules provided mutual consent and security, the new rules say marriage allows men to throw all caution to the wind. Therefore, the institution of marriage—which governed proper behavior between the sexes since the beginning of time—must be denigrated and ultimately discarded. In addition, sexual taboos were oppressive and chivalry perpetuated the stereotype that women are weak and powerless—when, instead, chivalry was a way for a man to express how highly he valued the dignity and worth of a woman.
The result of these new rules is that society as a whole no longer upholds a code of behavior for men that expects them to maintain self-control or to be encouragers and protectors of women. Society now says “anything goes” with regard to sexual desires and people should be able to have sex as they please with no commitment required—the only requirement is the “consent” of the other party.
This amorphous standard of “consent” has turned out to be disastrously unclear, with the potential utterly to destroy a man’s life if a woman decides after the fact that she did not consent to the sexual encounter—even if she gave every indication of consent in the moment. By tying sexual behavior only to consent—and not to the commitment of the marital bond—the mutual respect between the sexes breaks down into chaos.
Far from freeing us from rigid, stultifying moral expectations for sexual behavior, the rejection of the social expectation that sex occurs only within marriage (understood as the life-long union between one man and one woman) has resulted in a mire of emotional and physical devastation.
As Shapiro writes, “Tearing down fences only lets those sins break out of their confines . . . as we’re finding out, are the wages of destroying boundaries on human behavior not freedom, but anarchy—and, for too many women, oppression by voracious men?” 10
In the mid-twentieth century, C. S. Lewis predicted the outcome of the trend toward separating sex from marriage. He wrote in The Abolition of Man, “In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful.” 11 This statement, while written decades ago, supremely sums up the state of men in early twenty-first century America caught up in the devastating wake of the Sexual Revolution.
Treating women with respect, dignity, and tenderness is a result of the honor code of a gentleman. It is also the model provided by Jesus. His treatment of women serves as the highest and best expression and model of what it means truly to be a gentleman in his interactions with women. He not only formed friendships with women, He saw them as “imago Dei”—with inherent dignity and worth. There are numerous examples of this throughout the Gospels, including the raising of the widow’s son (Luke 7:11-15), His anointing by the prostitute (Luke 7:36-50), and the death and resurrection of Lazarus (John 11).
But the disappearance of consistent, morally coherent expectations for proper behavior is just one cause of the paucity of gentlemen in our society. Another contributing factor is the lack of mentors for young boys.
For most of American history, husbands, fathers, grandfathers, uncles, coaches, pastors, teachers, and mentors understood the virtues they were expected to embody in their own person and to instill in the young men around them.
Ideally, the first and best mentor, of course, is a father. The former commissioner of baseball Fay Vincent shared that his late father admonished him to “always be a gentleman.” 12 Generations of American men heard the same message from their own dads. They knew being a gentleman meant decency, excellence in their work, and valuing and preserving the family name. It was about integrity over intellect and embodying goodwill in both the highest of highs and lowest of lows in life.
Unfortunately, many boys today—even those from intact homes—do not have a father or another man in their lives who can guide them through the critical developmental steps that transform them into gentlemen. That is because these men, as mentioned earlier, did not have fathers who—either for emotional or physical reasons (divorce, born out of wedlock are two examples)—could serve as mentors. In these situations, it becomes necessary for other men to step into the gap.
Craig’s grandfather died when Craig’s father was twelve years old, at the most critical stage of a boy’s development. In addition, it was during the depths of the Great Depression. Craig’s father did not have someone who could mentor him through the stormy seas of adolescence—a particularly challenging adolescence as he, the oldest son, shouldered a great burden of responsibility and went to work to support his mother, sister, and infant brother.
Though he learned to manage the challenges of life and ended up being a P-38 pilot in World War II, the loss of his father at a young age left deep scars. Craig’s dad was abusive, angry, and had no idea how to model being a gentleman since there was no one to guide him during his formative years.
But Craig had a dear and godly granduncle, his Uncle Chris, who modeled to him what it meant to be a man who loved his wife, guided his children, had good humor, and was a person who always put others before himself. He filled the void Craig’s father could not. That was supplemented by Craig’s faith in Christ, who completed the modeling for him. To this day, while Craig loves his father (who passed away in 1998) and especially respects his work ethic and his service to our country in World War II, he credits his granduncle with being the mentor he needed to become a gentleman.
Tim, on the other hand, was blessed to have a father who was a gentleman role model. Because of that modeling, Tim has been able to pass that heritage down to his sons, as well.
We all can play a role in helping to train boys to be gentlemen. We can do so as a father, an uncle or granduncle, a teacher, or simply a neighbor who models to young boys the traits that will make them confident, morally upright, and capable of encouraging—rather than abusing or ignoring—women. We can teach them to be firm but fair and compassionate fathers to their own children and help them become respected members of the community.
Great gentlemen make great citizens. And great citizens bring about cultural transformation—starting first in their homes, then permeating all aspects of society. We need a generation of gentlemen who will welcome responsibility and seeks to perform with seriousness, earnestness, excellence, piety, patriotism, courage, duty, self-sacrifice, and faith in God.
Let us strive to be the people who provide the necessary guidance to turn boys not just into men, but into gentlemen. If we succeed, it will wheel us away from decline and despair and toward the kind of recovery and renaissance that will bring about restoration in other areas of American society, as well.