Hard though it may be to believe, all great men started out as boys. Boys will be boys, the saying goes, and all of us know what that means. Most boys are by nature messy, loud, adventurous, and in short, accidents waiting to happen. Boys can be assertive at the wrong time, often forget their manners at just the "right" time, and give their parents no small amount of anxiety as they grow. But boys are like an explosive: set them off haphazardly and you've got a big problem; if you direct and focus the blast you can move mountains.
Boys need to be directed and guided. Our modern culture instead drugs them into stupefied compliance. ADHD is often just another name for "boy." Boys don't need sedatives, they need discipline. Boys must be welcomed as boys; boys must be honored for their identity as boys. Boys are not girls and they should not be made to act like girls. Boys are supposed to be dragon slayers, not dragons, and certainly not damsels in distress!
Boys must not be allowed to grow up wild and undisciplined. Boys, like the men they will one day become, cannot live without a challenge. That challenge must come from fathers and other godly men. Mature and godly men must set the bar and that bar ought to be set high. Our boys are a risk worth taking; their education and discipline is a war worth waging. Raising boys is dangerous, it is true. But the risk is nothing compared with the glorious outcome. Disciplined boyhood will yield courageous and virtuous manhood and God knows, we need so much more of that today!
Perhaps few of us can point to great male role models to point our boys toward. The pernicious anti-boy culture that surrounds us makes it hard to find mature men worth emulating. But they are there. And even if they're not, we can grow them from scratch if we try. If your boys have godly and strong fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and other men doing their part, then rejoice. If not, there is help. We offer resources to fire the imagination of young boys and to help parents to direct that fire in the right way.
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