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[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Today I was thinking about adventures with friends and began getting excited for more.  I find it so hard to be cooped up in the office at times.  I want to break free and explore.  These thoughts reminded me of an essay I wrote my freshman year of college for an english course.  I hope it opens your eyes to things you never thought of before or reinforces your notions of how God has wired man.  Enjoy.

Growing up as a young boy at the base of the Whittier hills in Southern California, I distinctly remember walking through alley ways with my childhood friend Alec, just looking for junk by trashcans that we could break, crush, or tear to shreds.  I as a homeschooler would wait for him to get home from school and we would then immediately start our adventures all round our five-block radius we were allowed to rule.  We were the kings of that territory, and there was no one who could stop us from breaking computers left by trashcans with baseball bats, ripping old couches apart to get the springs out, or rolling old tires down the alleyway in hopes of hitting something.  Our bikes were our steeds, our sticks were our swords, and we would ride around all day searching for adventure.  There is no denying it; boys were made to like violence and adventure, and anything that involves blowing some toys to smithereens or bravely fighting off the foes of your territory is bound to excite them in a way God meant it to.

Author John Eldredge states in his book Wild at Heart, “If we believe that man is made in the image of God, then we would do well to remember that ‘the Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name’” (Exodus 15:3) (Eldredge 10).  According to Eldredge and more importantly the Bible, boys and men have a hardwired warrior in them, dying to attack, fight and defend.  Unfortunately, society has attempted and in large part has succeeded to suppress this warrior and tame it to being a “good boy” that doesn’t start trouble or stir controversy.  This starts from boyhood.  If boys are always told not to play with guns, not to throw sticks and to be little angels, then we shouldn’t be surprised when years later our world is full of passive, empty and unfulfilled men.  Pro-life advocate woman and speaker Gianna Jessen says to men, “Men, you are made for greatness, you are made to stand up and be men, you are made to defend women and children, not stand by and turn your head when you know murder is occurring and do nothing about it.  You are not made to use women and leave us alone. You are made to be kind and great and gracious and strong and stand for something, because men, listen to me. I am too tired to do your job” (Jessen 2008).  Gianna Jessen perfectly understands the passivity in men.  Far too many men aren’t willing to stand up and be bold and be the warrior that society needs them to be.  Oddly enough, the very society that wishes more men would stand up and be more active also causes the problem.  Many modern educators will link the boyish tendency for violence with a psychological disturbance or from too much violent television, causing parents and adults to think there is something wrong with their boys if they are breaking things and being aggressive.  C.S. Lewis understood the problem when he said, “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 then bid the geldings to be fruitful” (Lewis).  Why is it do you think that most men will choose to watch Gladiator over The Notebook, or why boys would rather play war than sit down to tea?  Men are hardwired in a way that reflects God’s nature, and when we ask them essentially to be women, we are destroying and smothering the very core of who they are and are called to be, which is a warrior, and if we discourage their very identity than we end up with the description that C.S. Lewis so eloquently paints.

It is important though to point out that boys shouldn’t necessarily always be encouraged to be violent.  As they grow into men, they need to learn and understand what it means to love and to understand how deep God’s love for them is and how their lives should be a reflection of that.  God showed the deepest love ever by dying on the cross for the sins of the world so boys definitely need to be taught to love as well.  The real problem lies in men’s inability to rise to the occasions that do demand something fierce, such as reactions to abortion, human trafficking and the injustices that are lacking male confrontation.  This widely spread problem has also culminated in the male problem of involvement in churches, schools, and communities at large.  By simply look around, there are way more women going to college, getting involved in clubs and participating within the community.  If men are to truly live again, they must find their heart and live out the lives God meant for them to live.

As my childhood friend Alec and I continued to wage war on the alleyways in our neighborhood, we would often get bored and therefore seek the next biggest adventure.  We would light extremely loud firecrackers and throw them into the girl’s restroom by the tennis courts a block down from our house and sprint as we heard the shrieks and squeals, which of course made us laugh all the harder.  If we ran out of firecrackers, we would come up with some other brilliant plan like playing air-soft gun wars on our block and running through our neighbor’s yards, which on one occasion led to us being shouted out their gate.  On the oh-so-sad occasion when we would run out of bb’s, we would fill up water balloons, hide behind the bush in my front yard and throw water balloons at passing cars, which luckily my mother never found out about.  The stories of adventure go on and on, some more foolish than others, but all with an element of suspense and adventure.

Now, I am in no way encouraging some sort of manly-man competition for who does the stupidest thing, eats the most disgusting food, or has the biggest muscles.  As Eldredge puts it, “I am simply searching, as many men (and hopefully women) are, for an authentic masculinity” (Eldredge 13).  Much of this authentic masculinity is revealed in scripture and can be seen through God’s righteous anger at injustice. In Isaiah, God puts “on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.  According to what they have done, so will he repay wrath to his enemies and retribution to his foes; he will repay the islands their due” (59:15-20).   God is flexing his righteous power and dealing with sinners appropriately, for he is perfect and thus demands the same.  His anger is evident in this passage, but it is righteous anger.  Authentic masculinity should manifest itself in ways such as this.  Men need to be ready and willing to stand up against injustices and be bold and fearless, for if they don’t, our world will continue to be filled with empty men wondering what their purpose is.

If boys are to grow up and be the men that God meant them to be, then parents and the nation at large must allow and dare I say encourage boys to be themselves.  Let little Johnny shoot the pellet gun at the rabbit, wrestle with his brother and climb the tree.  To once again quote Eldredge, “When boys play at war they are rehearsing their part in a much bigger drama.  One day, you just might need that boy to defend you” (Eldredge 11).

Works Cited

-Eldredge, John.  Wild at Heart.  Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001.

-Jessen, Gianna. Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, Victoria Australia, Speech. 8 September 2008, Sponsor: Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee

-Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. London: Macmillan, 1969

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