{"id":46,"date":"2013-09-05T07:47:28","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T14:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/searchingfortomsawyer\/?p=46"},"modified":"2013-09-05T07:47:28","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T14:47:28","slug":"the-short-sighted-battle-to-tame-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/timwright\/2013\/09\/the-short-sighted-battle-to-tame-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"The Short-Sighted Battle to Tame Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Is (Aslan)\u2014quite safe?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSafe?\u201d said Mr. Beaver; \u201cdon\u2019t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? \u2018Course he isn\u2019t safe. But he\u2019s good. He\u2019s the King, I tell you.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

During a men\u2019s retreat a few weeks ago one of the older men complained: All women want to do is tame men!<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a loaded statement!<\/p>\n

I offered a couple of responses:<\/p>\n

On the one hand I said, \u201cCan you blame them?\u00a0 When you look at the way men and boys have been behaving, and the destruction they are leaving in their wake, why wouldn\u2019t we want to tame them?\u00a0 From Tiger Woods to Anthony Weiner to \u201cdead beat dads\u201d to the Boston Marathon Bombers to the boys who shot the Australian, if this is what boys and men do, then yes, we ought to tame them.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, while it seemed to be the gripe of an old man, I had to admit that he has a point.\u00a0 I told him a story I wrote about in my book, Searching for Tom Sawyer: How Parents and Congregations Can Stop the Exodus of Boys from Church:\u00a0 <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

I was watching a cartoon with my granddaughter designed for young preschool children. Each episode teaches a lesson about getting along with others. The main character is a girl and she has three male animal friends.<\/p>\n

In this episode one of the boys was expressing his testosterone. He was a bit rambunctious. He wanted to move\u2026to play\u2026to make noise. The other two boys were having nothing to do with it. \u00a0Each time he splashed them or ran a circle around them, they would whine and say, \u201cHe\u2019s being rough!\u201d<\/p>\n

The girl character taught them a new song: Don\u2019t be rough\u2026be gentle. <\/em>Each time the boy got rough (and he was never really rough, just a boy moving and playing) the other boys would whine, berate the \u201crough boy,\u201d and sing the song, Don\u2019t be rough\u2026be gentle. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Seems fair enough.\u00a0 But consider how a little boy might internalize that message: Could it be\u2026<\/em>that what he might hear is: Boy behavior is always bad!<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Rather than helping the rambunctious boy harness his energy in appropriate ways, the lesson essentially said that boy behavior is always wrong. Never be rough. Always be gentle. Never once were the whining boys encouraged to stop their whining. Instead, their whining led to the rough boy being told to stop acting like a boy!<\/p>\n

One blogger asked this question in her post on boys: What are you doing to raise kinder, gentler boys?<\/p>\n

Listen to the way men are talked about and you hear again and again this desire to tame men, to make them kinder and gentler.\u00a0 (Bromance, anyone?)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>There\u2019s nothing wrong with men being kinder and gentler.\u00a0 But do we really want to tame our boys?\u00a0 Do we really want to program out of them the dynamic, risk-taking, get it done, competitive, spirit God created in them?\u00a0 Have we really thought through the unintended consequences of a generation of boys who grow into tamed men, stripped of their male energy?<\/p>\n

Every strength is a weakness.\u00a0 And the great strengths of males become great weaknesses when misused.\u00a0 But God created men in his image as males for a reason: the world needs men willing to take risks, willing to sacrifice their lives, willing to dive in, get it done, and change the world.<\/p>\n

Imagine, for example, a kinder, gentler Jesus.\u00a0 There\u2019d be no cleansing of the temple.\u00a0 No battle against demons.\u00a0 No in your face subversive teachings.\u00a0 No decisive move to the cross.\u00a0 No world changing vision.\u00a0 Because tamed boys usually, not always, become passive men.<\/p>\n

The better option, rather than taming our boys, is to build character in them; to give them the tools they need to harness their male spirit for good and noble purposes; to mentor them in courage, honor, goodness, compassion, forgiveness, grace, and yes, kindness and gentleness, in order to shape their dynamic, testosterone-charged spirit.\u00a0 Giving boys a world-changing purpose, a vision to follow, a deep understanding of what it means to be a good man, will forge boys into honorable men who at times will be gentle and kind, and at other times ferocious and fierce in the cause of fighting for life.<\/p>\n

Taming boys is not the answer.\u00a0 Shaping boys into good men, men who follow the Lion Jesus, is.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is (Aslan)\u2014quite safe? \u201cSafe?\u201d said Mr. Beaver; \u201cdon\u2019t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? \u2018Course he isn\u2019t safe. But he\u2019s good. He\u2019s the King, I tell you.\u201d During a men\u2019s retreat a few weeks ago one of the older men complained: All women want to do is tame men! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1621,"featured_media":1038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[323,2,324,325,14,326,58,138,49,28,9],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boys","tag-aslan","tag-boys","tag-bromance","tag-gentle","tag-jesus","tag-kind","tag-male-enegry","tag-male-spirit","tag-mentoring","tag-raising-boys","tag-searching-for-tom-sawyer"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Short-Sighted Battle to Tame Boys<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is (Aslan)\u2014quite safe? \u201cSafe?\u201d said Mr. Beaver; \u201cdon\u2019t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? \u2018Course he isn\u2019t safe. 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