As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men. When Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school for a time, a boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting and on a Sunday, too. He told the future president that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. Roosevelt told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The stodgy vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go. What a loss.
Unbelief cannot look past surfaces. Unbelief squashes, but faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside and tells him that this part of what he did was good, while that other part of what he did got in the way. “And this is how to do it better next time.” As we look to Scripture for patterns of masculinity for our sons, we find them manifested perfectly in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who set the ultimate pattern for friendship, for courage, for faithfulness, and integrity.
