“It is a standing rebuke for us that there are many Christians who have an open sympathy for the ‘true’ books which Eustace read–full of true facts about governments and drains and exports–and who are suspicious of great works of imagination, like the Narnia stories, or The Lord of the Rings, or Treasure Island, because …
Bread and Growth
“Often, young people are kept back from the Lord’s Supper because they are not yet spiritually strong. This is refusing to give your son bread when he asks for it–and, being too cheap to give him a stone instead, we give him air. When asked why the bread was refused, the reply is that he …
Tough and Tender
“This can, of course, be easily misunderstood. No one is saying that a boy with a severed limb should yelled at for bleeding on the carpet. Nevertheless, instilling toughness in boys is extraordinarily important. A masculine toughness is the only foundation upon which a masculine tenderness may be safely placed. Without a concrete foundation, thoughtfulness, …
Passions Growing Up
“Another important principle is that of seeing small boys as future men. The way boys learn to deal with their various immature “passions” will generally be the way they deal with adult passions. A boy who is not obviously learning self-control with regard to his temper, his stomach, his video games, or his school work …
Liberty and Law
“But liberty always implies a standard, and this standard always brings with it an antithesis. This means that he who says ‘free from’ must also assert a specified ‘free to.’ A man cannot turn away from something without simultaneously turning to something. Liberty always assumes an appeal to law” (Future Men, p.76).
A Response of God to Laziness
“A boy who is allowed to drift downward into this sin [laziness] is also being prepared for a life of poverty . . . (Prov. 6:6-11). God does not just promise poverty to this young man, He promises that it will come upon him like a thug with a gun. In the good providence of …
Cranky Discipline
“Related to this, a wise father rejoices in the fruit of his discipline. This is why many ‘disciplinarians’ are not disciplinarians in the biblical sense at all. They discipline because they are annoyed or irritated; they are almost impossible to please and they go through life like a crate of crankcase oil. But a ‘wise …
Accepting Responsibility
“The opposite problem to effeminacy is that of embracing, enthusiastically, a truncated view of masculinity, what I call counterfeit masculinity. This problem ‘glories’ in masculinity, but has a view of it that no wise observer should consider glorious at all. There is more to masculinity than grunting and bluster . . . True masculinity accepts …
False Masculinity
“There are two basic directions a boy can take in departing from biblical masculinity. One is the option of effeminacy, and the other is a macho-like counterfeit masculinity. With the former, he takes as a model a set of virtues which are not supposed to be his virtues. With the latter, he adopts a set …
Dragons and Pruning Hooks
“And this is why it is absolutely essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle. And to beat the spears into pruning hooks prematurely, before the war is over, will leave you fighting the dragon with a …