Raising Future Men, and Meme vs. Reading Culture
We need fathers who are willing to recover the lost arts of presence, discipline, and instruction.
We need a new reformation for men. Men in our day are growing older without growing up. Men are forsaking their responsibilities and raising boys who have absolutely no sense of the old Puritan work ethic. Young boys and teenagers amuse themselves to their mental deaths in front of the latest Netflix series. The expectations for our sons have diminished. We have a generation of sons growing up who have never sung a hymn, never memorized a catechism, never read a classic, and never sat through healthy biblical instruction. At what point do we begin to collectively post theses on church doors? At what point do we begin to despise worldly wisdom and set our eyes on kingly words? Training sons to be kings is our aim. We need a reformation of sonship.
As Andy Naselli observes in his new book, creation itself teaches us something about reality: “Gravity is a law that you can’t break… Unless you have a way to counteract gravity… gravity will win. Every time.” In the same way, God has built order into creation, including the reality that men are designed to wield strength, responsibility, and authority. When men refuse this calling, they are not becoming enlightened or evolved; they are fighting against the grain of creation itself. Naselli reminds us that when men are dominant in a good way, they build civilization and fight against what would tear it down. When they are dominant in a negative way or abandon their duty altogether, civilization decays. A manly man is a godly man, one who uses his strength in the service of God, family, and neighbor.
We need fathers who are willing to recover the lost arts of presence, discipline, and instruction. Fathers must open the Scriptures at the table, must teach their sons to pray out loud without embarrassment, must put tools in their hands and Psalms in their mouths. Boys should grow up knowing how to work, how to speak with gravity, how to honor women, and how to carry responsibility without complaint. The home must once again become the first academy, the first chapel, and the first proving ground of masculine virtue. If fathers will not catechize their sons, the world will gladly disciple them into softness, confusion, and perpetual adolescence.
