(FOR THE HUSBAND-TO-BE)*
Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
JOSHUA 1:9
In 2003, Hurricane Isabel slammed into the East Coast of the United States, first lashing North Carolina and Virginia and then moving northward all the way to Canada, leaving 16 dead and cutting power to six million homes.
The edges of the hurricane passed through Washington, DC, prompting the president and members of Congress to find safer quarters. That was not the case at Arlington National Cemetery, where guards have relentlessly stood vigil at the Tomb of the Unknowns every hour of every day since July 1, 1937. When the hurricane hit, the soldier on duty at the time remained at his post, even though he had been given permission to seek shelter.
Like that soldier, a husband is called to stand and do his duty while staring down the very storms that seek to rob him of courage, taunting and tempting him to neglect his duty and abandon his post as a man. And the storms a man faces pack as much (if not more) power than Hurricane Isabel did:
I once met a man who grew up in a remote section of our country. He admitted that the only advice he received as a boy from his father regarding women was, “Get ’em young. Treat ’em rough. Tell ’em nothing.”
I wonder how that advice worked for him in his marriage.
You could say this is a legacy of the “strong, silent, tough man” image often passed down from father to son. This is the type of misguided training in manhood that has corrupted so many men as the leaders in their homes—selfish, repressive men who control their wives and children so that their own needs are met.
And that’s just one part of the problem. Many boys grow up with fathers who are distant and passive. Fathers who rarely engage their families, and when they do, their half-hearted attempts to train their sons may promote irresponsible, or even immoral, behavior.
Too many men today were raised by fathers who didn’t step up to their responsibilities. Is it any wonder we have a generation of men who feel lost and aimless, not knowing how to face their fears or think rightly about themselves, women, and their own passions?
The relentless, ruthless winds of a culture of divorce have uprooted the family tree, and with it at least two generations of men. With our high divorce rates and the increasing number of births to single women, the number of children in the United States who live in a single-parent household has more than doubled since 1978.
Children are the innocent victims of this raging storm. The bottom line: Dad is AWOL in far too many homes today.
One of the greatest challenges any boy could endure is trying to become a man without a father to show him how. How can a boy know what it looks like to behave as a man, love like a man, and be a man in the battle if the main man in his life has abandoned him?
My friend Crawford Loritts works with young men to build their skills as leaders. In his book, Leadership as an Identity, he writes that the issue of courage keeps coming up in their conversations:
Many of [these young men] grapple with fear. . . . I think that the dismantling of our families over the past 50 years or so has almost institutionalized fear and uncertainty. . . . So many of our young men grew up in homes in which they had limited or no contact with their fathers, or they had dads who were detached and didn’t provide any meaningful leadership. We are left with a legacy of men who in varying degrees have been feminized. They are uncertain about who and what a man is, and how a man acts and behaves. They are fearful of assuming responsibility and taking the initiative in charting direction. So they take the “road of least resistance” and become passive men.
My son came home one weekend from his university and told me that he had been taught in class that there weren’t two sexes but five: male, female, homosexual male, homosexual female, and transgender. No wonder young men are confused and young women are left wondering where the real men are! Male sexuality and identity have become a bewildering array of options.
Think of what it must be like for young boys growing up today. Media outlets and educational elites attack the traditional roles of men and claim that a man who seeks to be a leader in his family is actually oppressing his wife and children. Our culture is permeated with sexuality, where children are exposed to explicit messages and distorted images at a far younger age than their parents were. The educational system doesn’t seem to know how to teach boys, and as a result, girls are leaping ahead in test scores, college enrollment (60% are women), and graduation rates. Boys are increasingly medicated because their parents don’t know how to channel their masculinity, adventure and drive.
Is it any wonder that boys grow up so confused? Many have no idea of what it means to be a man and especially a man who cares for a woman in a lifelong marriage relationship.1
Discuss Note
1. Adapted from Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood by Dennis Rainey (Little Rock, AR: FamilyLife Publishing, 2011). Used by permission.
* While the husband-to-be works through this devotion, the wife-to-be should work through devotion 36. When each of you is done, come together and share what you have learned.