Becoming Men In Our World Part 2

The topic of manhood is being discussed in the framework of criticizing feminism, and the removal of masculinity in the culture. This podcast I want to avoid the accusation culture and provide what Genesis the first book of the Bible tells us about boys becoming men in the real world. How do boys become productive, sexually responsible and competitive members of society. Anthropology points us to design, Genesis reveals the purpose of the designer. 

Transcript

Ethan: 0:01

Raising joyful children in an angry world, a podcast dedicated to faithful parents navigating their families through a stormy culture

0:08

This is Raising joyful children in an angry world. I'm your host, Paul Osborne. Today I want to go into part two of Boys Becoming Men, and I want to talk about it in what I would call real world terms more practical. If you read David Gilmore, who has a book called Manhood in the Making, you're going to discover a lot of what. He has seen from anthropology, in other words, the study of cultures around the world and what it says about this topic, boys becoming men. He has studied places like New Guinea, the Mediterranean, the Native American tribes in North America, and he points out there are three, what I wanna say, similar pockets of manhood that are in each of these cultures. And I would call them productivity, sexuality, and competition. These three things show up in every culture. And the reason I started off on this podcast last week with this emphasis on trusting the promises of God having created your son to become a man is because when we look at the practical things that are described in this book and by many other people on this topic. We are gonna find that Genesis informs us around these three pockets, productivity, sexuality, and competition in the understanding of boys becoming men. And I wanted to emphasize that because if you don't believe Genesis, then as a Christian, you're really not gonna have a basis as to what it reveals about this subject. And I know unfortunately in this subject, people spent all kinds of time debating about the age of the earth and all this stuff. And they miss what God is teaching us about ourselves and in particularly what is teaching us about our sons becoming men. And so that, that is what I wanted to get into. Let's first talk about Gilmore's anthropology. Why are these things of productivity, sexuality, and competition? Why are these things showing up in every single culture all around the world as he has studied it? I would suggest to you that this points to the designer, God made men this way, and regardless of where they live and what. Culture they're in. There's always this basis of, am I productive? In other words, can I produce something, a provision for my family? What is sexuality about, in other words, creating and sexuality involving family and, and reproducing itself, and then competition. And the Bible, I believe, addresses all three of these in the Genesis story and beyond. God creates the world. If you understand the Genesis story, if you just read it in chapter one, I'm not gonna read you every line of it, but he gives man dominion. Over the creation for the purpose of being productive. He, he talks about trees that produce and, animals and all this productivity. And he puts us, he puts the man in charge of this. And, and women have a different role in this. And I don't wanna get into the, the difference of that today, but I wanna focus just on, on. Men. So boys becoming men must find what gifts God has given them that allows them to be productive. This is much easier in an agricultural or hunting and fishing kind of gathering economies. But this must be mind. It must be prayed for and must be developed. In our modern world, productivity is about work that generates provisions for oneself and a family. It's that simple. So maybe your son is a builder. Maybe he's a teacher, organizational leader, but you and your son need to prayerfully seek his calling. So he must understand that God has made him with unique skills, but those skills have broad application. In other words, don't get caught up in some narrow understanding of God's will when it comes to productivity. God's creation demonstrates a big, wide world that we are, we are given to be productive in. And then God commands men. I want to get into the sexuality piece. God commands the man to be fruitful and multiply. Also sexually speaking for this purpose in the story. He gives Eve to Adam. This is the section about leaving and cleaving as it is explained, a man leaves his family to cleave to his wife. Boys must be taught why their body is made the way it is, what the sexual organ is for, and to seek God who is the giver of the wife. To the son. This sexual relationship is spelled out in Genesis. It is reaffirmed in Proverbs only. God can give them understanding wives, and this must be explained early to boys because they're going to discuss this subject earlier than you might expect, and so. These are the first two pockets of understanding what is my son capable of doing? What are the skills that God has given him to be productive? And then, this is what sex is about. This is the purpose of it, and this is how it works, and these are the boundaries that God has put around it. I now want to talk very quickly'cause these, these are short podcasts, but the most difficult of these three pockets is the understanding of competition. And here again, Genesis is going to show the right understanding and the wrong understanding in the story of Cain and Abel, right? Where they're. Kind of competing. There's this competition. There's this, who's gonna give the gifts and in, and what competition is made to do is to strengthen one another's gifts. It's not a means of destroying the other person, which is what happens here. Right. Competition should demonstrate respect for the opponent with two understandings. One, ultimately you perform out of gratitude to God for the gifts that he has given you, and you compete to bring glory to God and you view competition as the means to sharpening what God has given you, as well as what God has given the other people that you are competing with. Proverbs say iron sharpens iron. That's competition. There is no place for envy and jealousy and the outcomes of competition do not define you. Here's the main trap of competition. You start to see your value, your identity, your relationship with God by your works. Instead, win, lose, or draw. You see it as trusting God's promises by faith. In other words, you trust him for the ability to compete and you compete for those things. Competition gets really tricky because we have to work to be productive and be successful, and yet at the same time. We're told not to trust in the work itself, but trust God by faith to bless the work. So, so there's a paradox here. Yes. If you're gonna compete in something, if you want to be productive at something in which you will compete in this world with, you have to work hard at it. But you don't trust in the work. You trust God by faith to bless the work. And so both of those things are happening. Competition can drive us to trust in ourself and our work, or it can drive us to trust God and his gifts. Trusting God is not passive. It is active because God tells us we are more than conquerors and, and this concept is something that takes time and patience to explain, I'm productive because God created and gave me the things to be productive over. I am designed for sexual reproduction and I trust God to give me the woman he has chosen for me to be sexually productive with. I compete to sharpen the skills that God has given me, as well as sharpen the skills that God has given to my competitor in a mutually beneficial and respectful manner. Here's the goal with Psalm 1 44. I will close with this. Psalm 1 44. Verse 12 says, may our sons grow as strong plants. Man, think about trying to grow a strong plant. You've gotta tend to it. You've gotta understand what is this plant about? How does it grow? What does it produce? And David starts the psalm by praising the Lord who trains us to be strong. And this is the essential difference between understanding these three pockets of manhood. Anth anthropologically, oh, I've gotta be productive. I've gotta reproduce and have children. I've gotta be competitive. Versus understanding this theologically and anthropologically. I am a man. Therefore, I've gotta discover what God has given me to be productive. I am a man. I am created to reproduce and have children with a woman, and God will provide the woman. And I enter into competitions to sharpen the skills that God has given me, and I also entered them to help my competitor sharpen his skills. That is the essence of manhood from the Book of Genesis, and what I believe is, is the pragmatic, practical side of boys becoming men. And it isn't easy, but this is the way that the scriptures have instructed us to do it.

Paul: 10:57

The ultimate battle for the heart and soul is a fight for identity. Our king invites our kids to know who they are, what to believe, and where they belong.

Paul (2): 11:09

Until next time, let's remember the words for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.