My earlier post about men’s ministries in the local church has set me to thinking on some surrounding issues, particularly relating to families. Asou may or may not know, I have three sons so many of the issues raised about men being men in the home have particularly challenged me. As some friends continually remind us, what an awesome opportunity to raise the next generation of men, but what a challenge as well.

One of the things that my wife and I try to instill in our boys is a respect for women. We try to teach them that they need to be gentle with girls, they need to protect women, open the doors for them and think highly of them. In short, they need to be gentlemen. I recently used a sermon illustration. Rather than try to paraphrase it, I’m going to include it in its entirety:

Jay Kesler writes of an experience he once had while preaching at a summer camp in Ohio: After one of the services some kids had come forward to the altar. One young woman was having a difficult time, so the counselors asked me if I would speak to her. We sat down in the front of the chapel, and through many tears her heartbreaking story began to unfold. She’d been molested by her own father about three times a week since she was four years old. She’d never told anyone about this and carried a great sense of guilt, as though she were to blame for her father’s actions.

As she told me the story, I noticed that both of her wrists were scarred. (If you work with youth today, you see those marks often). “Tell me about your wrists,” I said. “Well, I tried to kill myself.” “Why didn’t you do it?” I asked. Killing yourself is a relatively simple thing if you really want to do it. If it is just a bid for attention, the attempt is usually feeble. She said, “Well, I got to thinking . . . we have a youth pastor at our church –“

Oh no, I thought, now I’m going to hear an ugly story about her getting involved with some youth pastor. But that wasn’t it at all. She said, “He’d just gotten married before he came to our church, and I’ve been watching him. When he’s standing in line in church behind his wife, he squeezes her. They look at each other and they hug right in church. One day I was standing in the pastor’s study, looking out the window, and the youth pastor walked his wife out into the parking lot. There was only one car in the lot, nobody was around; nobody was looking. He walked around the car, opened the door, let her in, then he walked all the way around and got in himself. And no one was even looking!

That was a nice story, but I couldn’t make the connection between that and her problem of incest or attempted suicide. So I asked why this seemed significant to her. She said, “Well, I just got to thinking that all men must not be like my dad.” I said, “You’re right. All men are not like your father.” She asked me, “Do you suppose my youth pastor is a Christian?” “Yes,” I said, “I think he probably is.” “Well, that’s why I came tonight, I want to be that way when no one is looking.”

I want my sons to be this way, even when no one is looking. However, I’m afraid that many men aren’t this way even when many are looking. I’m afraid that our society is quickly losing the art and practice of chivalry. Growing up, one of the things that I could always say without hesitation was that my Dad treated my Mom well (and still does). But as women buy into feminism, they try to say that they don’t want to be treated “special” out of one side of their mouths, they’re complaining about not feeling “special” out of the other.

Meanwhile, not only has the feminine ideal been distorted, so has the masculine image. Gone are the days when little boys dream of being knights rescuing damsels in distress or protecting a lady’s honor. Instead, they play video games in which they actually beat up women along with men and they idealize rock stars, sports stars and the like who idealize the mistreatment of women. We have lost the biblical ideals of biblical femininity and masculinity.

The Bible certainly speaks to these issues for those with ears to hear. But the sad truth is that it seems that many professing Christians have not only lost their biblical ideals, they don’t even know what those ideals are or how to find them. The loss of biblical gender roles is only a symptom of the deeper cultural shifts away from God’s standards to our own.

This is only part of the task I face as the father of three boys. But I am convinced that these are battles worth fighting and I pray that the day does not soon come when I no longer hear my three year old son say “You’re beatiful Mommy” or my five-year old no longer says that he wants to go to the grocery store with his mommy to help her carry things because boys need to always try and help.

• Read Future Men by Douglas Wilson
• Read Bringing Up Boys by James Dobson