We live in an era when it can be fashionable to be unsure what a man or woman is. It depends, the theory goes, on how you identify.

But theologians talk about something called common grace. Because God created humans in his image, we possess some innate knowledge of who we are. The Bible says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Throughout history and across cultures, great similarities exist in the characteristics of men (no less than in women). Certainly in cultures influenced by Christianity, like North America, good men are recognized by qualities like bravery, self-control, kindness, ambition, responsibility, honesty, selflessness, industriousness, humility, generosity, and skillfulness. Traditionally, women sought such men for husbands. Boys looked up to such men as models.

In today’s climate of male-and-female confusion, how can we raise sons into men who escape becoming fragile or soft or lazy or endlessly distracted? While parents cannot guarantee the character of their children, there are some ways to encourage positive outcomes and discourage negative ones.

My wife and I raised two sons (now 40 and 34). The following contains a dozen considerations from my experience raising boys to men.

1. Get right with God.

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3). A son is a gift you can nurture effectively only with divine aid. Do you know this Lord yourself? Are you trusting and growing in Christ? The best fathers know the guidance and discipline of the heavenly Father in their own lives (Hebrews 12:5–11). They learn to transfer those same dynamics in gracious ways toward their sons.

2. Look in the mirror.

What kind of man are you? Sometimes sterling men arise from perverse home settings, but it is folly to sin while hoping for grace to abound (Romans 6:1–2). If you are bitter, critical, and angry, do not be surprised if a son mimics your bad habits. Fathers need to be humble enough to accept correction (from Scripture, from their wife, from a friend or pastor or even a child) and dedicate themselves to self-improvement. Many a son has learned self-righteousness from a hard-hearted, self-important dad. Teachable dads often cultivate teachable kids.

3. Love your wife.

She is your helper and sometimes mentor in the childrearing process. God says to love her as Christ loved the church and as you love yourself (Ephesians 5:25, 32). Sons (and daughters!) need to see and deeply sense a strong and steady affection from their dad for their mom. The security of marital ardor creates a forcefield that fortifies (and in the long run can help purify) the souls of sons. They rest in the joyful overflow. They observe how to express the love and respect they feel, but that their sinful souls can tempt them to neglect or withhold (boys can be real pills toward mom).

“Sons (and daughters!) need to see and deeply sense a strong and steady affection from their dad for their mom.”

I remember hugging my wife one evening, a rug rat at our feet. He tugged on my jeans at the knee to be picked up. I did so and the hug became three-way. Then my son announced, “Kiss fight!” and began pecking left and right. How could we not join in? Boys can turn anything into a war. It still makes me laugh to think about.

4. Check your loves.

The pastor who baptized both my sons joined with us at a church retreat one summer. He bought me a bait bucket to encourage me to fish with my sons. Then he said to me, “Bob, your sons will grow up to love what you love.” It was friendly counsel from a man with a bit more experience with his own sons. It was priceless guidance. If I love myself more than God, my wife, and my children, if I neglect my sons as I chase career glory or disappear on weekends playing golf and drinking beers with buddies, I shouldn’t be surprised if my sons end up chasing the twisted and unenviable life.

5. Learn from your via negativa.

A via negativa is a wrong path, a negative example. Experts know that bad parenting patterns often get handed down and replicated. If your dad beat you, you will be inclined to beat your kids. A man who is right with God and his wife (see the first and third points above) can break this cycle. Be alert to the danger of replicating nasty patterns under which you suffered. Pray and strategize so you can turn the dark paths you knew into sunlit trails for sons.

6. Set aside more time as boys get older.

I expected that babies and toddlers would take a lot of time, and I was right. In our case, my wife quit her job as a nurse to be with the kids at home; she bore the brunt of childcare. But over the years, she went back to work, and I tried to spend as much time as I could with our sons.

I was not prepared to discover that the older kids get, the more they need you around. And you may be surprised to find they want you there! This trend may slack off some during the teen years, but not necessarily. Creative parents may find ways to make common cause with sons so they are in proximity without smothering them. One of my sons had baseball talents. This drew me into ten years of coaching, including some time-intensive seasons. He took far less time as a toddler! But the rewards for our relationship — his character development and enduring family memories — were simply incalculable.

7. Read to and worship with your kids.

Remember, kids will love what you love. If you love Scripture and times of prayer and singing hymns, your kids will learn and feel that. If your “Bible time” (or “Bible tible,” as it came to be called in our home) is daily, not sporadic and haphazard, you can cover a lot in just ten or fifteen minutes each morning or evening over the course of weeks and months.

We ended up combining this with reading (out loud) classics like C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia or Ralph Moody’s epic Little Britches. I also dug up old poems like “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Casey at the Bat,” and many others. Combine this with discussion that runs where kids lead it, along with time for prayer, and you have ingredients for some soul-searching exchanges.

8. Teach them to work by working alongside.

Households survive on chores getting done, whether inside or outside. You can always do them faster without the “help” of young kids. But slow down and make them part of the crew. Teach them how to crack an egg if you are baking or turn a screwdriver if you are putting up a board fence. Get sweaty splitting and stacking firewood. Rake the fall leaves and ambush each other in the leaf piles. (We had a German shepherd who would bury himself in the leaves and wait for someone to jump on him. That’s the spirit!)

“One of the most valuable gifts a father can give a son is a robust work ethic.”

One of the most valuable gifts a father can give a son is a robust work ethic. Figure out what you can do together, and then create space for it to happen. Sons who know how to work with confidence, skill, and maximum effort are not apt to fail when they are out on their own.

9. Model Christian consumption of culture.

Mass and social media can dominate our consciousness. Christian husbands and wives should not be cyber-junkies or television addicts. Following Jesus calls for other emphases and pursuits. As they limit themselves, they have moral authority to help their children set their own limits — like no devices after a certain time in the evening, or time limits for online gaming. The easiest way to address bad habits is to prevent their onset. Help sons find richer, more productive horizons than excess Internet use. (Internet employment or online research for academic assignments, of course, is something different.)

10. Keep it physical.

Fathers, talk to your sons even while they are in the womb. They will know your voice when they emerge. Then hug and snuggle them. Hold them when you read to them and pray for them and sit with them in church. Carry them on your shoulders, roughhouse on the living-room carpet (“rassling,” I called it). Let them carry the feel of one last hug into their night’s sleep. Dads and sons alike need this expression and reinforcement of the love God has granted.

11. Teach them successful risk-taking.

We want our kids to be safe, but not at the cost of cowardice. You want sons to be risk-savvy, not risk-averse. Help them learn to swim as they overcome their (well-advised) fear of drowning. At appropriate ages, teach them to climb rocks, walk across a log spanning a ditch, befriend the neighbor’s barking dog, scale a fire tower, carry a box heavier than they thought they could, and sustain some scratches as they help clear land, prune trees, or repair the deck.

Boys that don’t learn bravery descend to knavery. Life is full of danger, and it can’t all be avoided. Figure out risks you can manage and surmount them as father and son. This parallels working side by side with them. Some tasks, like cleaning out gutters, can be two-men operations. Let your 12-year-old son shoulder the responsibility of steadying the ladder — or even climbing aloft if he’s ready (monitor closely, of course).

12. Show them how to care for others.

All the attention to sons prescribed above could leave the impression that to raise boys, you need to dote on and spoil them. Nope. If your home and marriage are trending Christ-centered (we never fully arrive in this life), sons will learn that God is the center of our lives, not us, and our daily prayer is for his kingdom to come and his will to be done. This also means we love and care for neighbors near and far. It means that part of our family income goes to the church, our family table is open to those God brings into our lives to be cared for, and we plan our futures with God’s call and will at the forefront of our thinking.

The list above is representative, not comprehensive. But with prayer, a lot of effort, perceived self-sacrifice (it’s actually a privilege), and God’s grace, parents and especially dads can increase the odds that the boys they rear will rise above the indolence, insecurity, and fear that studies say bedevil too many younger males at present.

Audio Transcript

So many of our emails ask about how to overcome the fears of life and how to overcome personal insecurities as well. We all want to live with a fearless confidence in God. And for many of us, that fearless confidence is hard to find. On this theme, I found the following sermon clip from Pastor John, back in 1983, looking at the ministry of the apostle Peter and his fears and insecurities recorded in Scripture.

The apostle Peter was Jewish, of course — and Christ changed his life. Peter experienced a radical transformation in his thinking about God’s plan. He came to discover that the Messiah had come not only for Israel, but for all the peoples, all the nations. That’s basically the point of his vision in which a tablecloth full of unclean animals descends from the heavens (in Acts 10:9–48). The gospel was for the Gentiles too. That was the point of the vision. So Peter should have known better than to fall into a fearful insecurity when he met others who contradicted this point. Galatians 2:12 explains what happened, where we read that, “before certain men came from James, he [Peter] was eating with the Gentiles [non-Jews]; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party [the Jews]” (Galatians 2:12). This context sets the stage for an important life lesson about overcoming fear and insecurity. Here’s Pastor John.

In other words, God has shown me that redemptive history teaches that there are no preconditions for the receiving of the Holy Spirit but one: hearing the gospel with faith. Isn’t that what Paul said in Galatians 3:2, when he said, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” That’s the gospel. That’s the good news. And that means that when Peter in Antioch was eating with Gentiles in all freedom, he was walking in sync with the gospel, and Paul was happy. “Way to go, Peter. You’ve come a long way, brother.”

Fear and Hypocrisy

Then something happened. Even though he was honoring the all-sufficiency of Christ, walking in love, trusting the Lord — free — here come the men from James. Now we can only speculate as to what was their relationship to James. Was James endorsing what they were going to say? We don’t even know what they were going to say for sure. We don’t know why they came, but one thing is made very explicit. Peter was afraid of them.

Why? Maybe they were capable of violence. He had really offended the conservative party in Jerusalem. Maybe it was simply that he would be called upon to give a theological justification of how he could neglect Leviticus 11 — it’s the word of God! — and he would come off poorly before the Christians in Antioch, and he doesn’t want to. Or maybe — and this seems to me maybe more likely — if he gets in bad with the conservatives in Jerusalem, he’s going to lose his status and his respect as the leader in that church, which he still possessed. (And in fact, that happened, because James, by the end of the book of Acts, is the leader of the church in Jerusalem.) We’re not told. But he was afraid, and in a moment of weakness, he cut himself off from those Gentile believers.

This is a great lesson in leadership here. You see what happens when a leader goes wrong: everybody goes wrong. The whole Jewish contingent in the church fell into line with Peter and Barnabas — son of encouragement, lover of Paul on his first missionary journey among the Gentiles (Galatians 2:13). The pressure was so strong he went with him and left all the Gentiles alone.

Drumbeat of the Gospel

Now, put yourself in the position of a Gentile believer in Antioch. What would that have meant to you? According to Galatians 2:14, Paul says that Peter and Barnabas and the others are, to use the words of the RSV, not walking “straightforward about the truth of the gospel” (Galatians 2:14). A better way of saying it may be this: “They’re not walking right with the truth of the gospel.” They are out of sync with the gospel.

Now, do you see what that means? That means that it is true that the benefits of the gospel come on one condition alone, hearing it with faith. But when the gospel comes, it changes your life, so that there is a life in sync with the gospel and there is a life out of sync with the gospel. That’s why Paul, even though he was standing up for the complete freedom in grace of the gospel, could say, “You’re out of line. You’re out of sync with the gospel.”

You don’t attain the benefits of the gospel by doing a little moral cleanup job on your life. You obtain it — forgiveness, cleansing, joy, peace, power — by faith in the gospel. But when the gospel so grips you, when you begin to hear and believe the drumbeat of the gospel, the rhythm of your steps changes.

And so, Paul took Peter to task, and we need to see three things that were out of sync with the gospel here, in closing. I was teaching a Bible study on this text to a group of men yesterday. And I asked them, “What are the three things out of sync with the gospel here?” And they nailed every one of them right on the head: (1) fear, (2) hypocrisy, (3) legalism. Let’s look at those together, because we don’t want to be out of sync with the gospel when we leave this church, do we?

Gospel Removes Fear

Fear is out of step with the gospel. The gospel does not beget fear. Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:7, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” If you come this morning afraid (and I’m sure in a crowd like this, there are many), maybe of something very specific that’s on the way, or maybe (as sometimes happens to me) just a cloud of anxiety — you can’t put your finger on what in the world it is. You just feel tense and anxious and that something’s going to go bad today. If you come like that this morning, you know what you need more than anything in the world? You need to see the gospel.

You need to see that the gospel says something about God’s intentions toward you this week. When you look at the death of Jesus on the cross for your sins, you know what that says about God’s intentions for you? It says, “I am for you and not against you with all my might this week.” Paul put it like this:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:31–34)

“If you see and believe the gospel, you know what your heart cries out? ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear.’”

If you see the gospel and believe the gospel, you know what your heart cries out? “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:6; see also Psalm 27:1; 54:4; 56:11; 118:6). So I hope that if you are burdened with fear this morning, the Lord will grant the eyes of your hearts to be opened to see the gospel.

Gospel Eliminates Hypocrisy

Second, hypocrisy is out of step with the gospel. Galatians 2:13 says, “The rest of the Jews acted hypocritically . . . so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.” Peter and Barnabas and the Jews were being two-faced. They were saying, “On the one hand, in my heart, I really believe that I am free to live like the Gentiles and not keep the ceremonial dietary laws anymore. But with my behavior, I will say, to avoid the censure of the Judaizers, ‘Well, I’m really living like a Jew up here in Antioch. I’m keeping the law.’”

Why were they doing that? Because they were so incredibly fearful of the persecution or criticism or censure or something they were going to get from these people. Isn’t it true? Test your own experience and what you’ve seen in others. Isn’t it true that all hypocrisy is rooted in fear or insecurity? And that’s out of step of the gospel. Insecurity is inconsistent with the gospel.

I don’t know how many in this room are insecure this morning, just really insecure — no root and stability and firmness and strength in your life, so that you have no confidence and boldness as you walk through your days in God. Do you know the battle that you are fighting when some people or circumstances approach you? They demand, if you have integrity, that you stand up for your principles. But instead of standing up for your principles, you put up a front; you commit hypocrisy to avoid their censure.

“Every day, the walk of faith is a battle to believe the gospel, that God is for you and not against you.”

Do you know what battle you’re fighting at that moment? A battle to believe the gospel. Some of us sort of divide our lives up and we say, “Well, the gospel was what I had dealings with when I was a little child and walked the aisle or when I was humbled by the Lord and converted, and now my battles are something else.” That’s not true. It’s all in the gospel, and every day the walk of faith is a battle to believe the gospel — that God is for you and not against you, as was declared in Jesus Christ when he died on the cross.

And there’s a second way, besides that great statement of God being for us, that the gospel helps me avoid hypocrisy. I picture Jesus in the gospel, facing the cross (a worse threat than I’ve ever faced or ever will face), having the option to play the hypocrite. He could have denied before Caiaphas that he was the Son of God and saved his skin, as Peter and the Jews denied their principles and saved their noses. And he didn’t for me and you. He laid himself down on that cross, without playing the hypocrite, that I might have life. And here comes a temptation for me to play the hypocrite and avoid some little criticism or persecution, and shall I not be shamed by the cross, the gospel, if I play that game? Center your life on Jesus Christ and his gospel, and the root of hypocrisy will be severed.

Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Pastor John, we have over fifty questions piling up and waiting patiently for us in the inbox, all on cigarette smoking, vaping, and nicotine addiction — topics not addressed on APJ to this point. Our questions include things like, Is cigarette smoking a sin? Is smoking a “deliberate” sin, a willful sin, like what we read about in Hebrews 10:26? Is it sinful for someone to smoke indoors, thereby endangering the health of non-smokers inside a home? And of course, we have several emails from parents watching their teens get addicted to nicotine by vapes. Should they be concerned? There’s a lot to cover. In our first venture into these intertwined themes, what thoughts come to your mind?

The United States Food and Drug Administration has been requiring health warnings on cigarette packages since 1969. As of May 2021, there are eleven approved warnings. Here are six of them. (I just got them off the FDA website.)

Smoking causes head and neck cancer.
Tobacco smoke causes fatal lung disease in non-smokers.
Smoking causes cataracts, which can lead to blindness.
Smoking causes bladder cancer.
Smoking causes type 2 diabetes.
Smoking during pregnancy stunts fetal growth.

It’s not a debate anymore whether nicotine is a harmful drug and whether smoking causes numerous diseases. That includes nicotine in cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes (vaping), and chewing tobacco. Nicotine is harmful — whatever form you choose to put it in your mouth or in your lungs.

When Risk Is Wrong

The Bible is very clear that taking deadly risks is a noble and beautiful thing when you do it by entrusting your soul to Jesus and for the purpose of rescuing other people, especially people in eternal danger.

But the Bible has no praise for those who risk their lives or their health for private pleasure. The Bible calls this a deceitful desire (Ephesians 4:22). It’s a desire that promises one thing and then delivers another. It’s not rooted in or governed by a desire to show that Jesus is supremely desirable to us. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

“The Bible has no praise for those who risk their lives or their health for private pleasure.”

So smokers need to ask, Is my decision to damage my body, and probably others’, by smoking governed by a desire to make God look glorious with my body, or does it merely make me look self-indulgent? So yes, parents should be concerned, and yes, it is wrong to use a deadly drug to calm your nerves.

From the First Smoke to the Last

But let’s do this. Let’s name seven steps from the first cigarette to the grave and see whether they fall short of biblical righteousness. This might be something parents would walk through with their 13-year-old.

1. Many people, especially younger people, take the first step into smoking because it’s “cool.” When I say cool, I intend three elements in coolness:

Coolness includes a feeling of liberating independence from authority. That authority might be a fuddy-duddy, fundamentalist, blowhard podcaster like me, or it might be parents, or it might be traditions that you’ve grown tired of.
Coolness includes the feeling that you now have an image of attractiveness, for whatever reason.
Coolness generally includes a sense of belonging to a group that you admire.

So step one into smoking is often motivated by a strong impulse to be cool in these three senses.

2. The desire to be a part of a cool group provides the necessary psychological power to deny, at the outset, that you are damaging yourself or others. Coolness empowers denial.

3. After the initial nausea or coughing or dizziness — if you get through that phase — there is the nicotine buzz, which feels, in the context of denial, like a justifiable reward. It feels good.

4. Now comes the pull of the buzz. As it becomes stronger, the desire passes from a chosen pleasure to the craving of a perceived need. This is sometimes called addiction. But I am usually hesitant to use that word because it creates the impression of helplessness, when we all know that if someone puts a blowtorch in front of your face, you will be able to put down the cigarette.

5. As one grows accustomed to the habit, there can easily grow a sense of indifference as to how it negatively affects others, whether at home or in public.

6. After enough time passes, then comes the negative health effect (or effects): lung disease, heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, eye problems. The body eventually signals, with the help of physical pain, the foolishness that we refuse to see in rational or moral argument.

7. Death may come earlier than it would have otherwise, or perhaps more painfully.

Bad Habits and the Bible

Now it doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see that each of these steps involves an inclination or inclinations and actions that are contrary to the Spirit of Christ.

When the desire to be cool overcomes the call to wisdom and humility and freedom and self-control, coolness has become an idol; it has become more precious than the way of Christ. This is the main root that parents should address as soon as their children can talk: What will be their treasure and their guide — Christ or the crowd?

“What will be our children’s treasure and their guide — Christ or the crowd?”

The second step — the one that denies the harmfulness of nicotine — is simply self-deception. The Bible calls us over and over again not to be deceived: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

The third step elevates the physical buzz above moral claims of wisdom and holiness. When Peter said, “I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11), he meant that there are soul pleasures and soul commitments that should govern the desires of the body and keep us back from self-harm.

In the fourth step, we’re falling into the bondage of a drug. Paul said, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be [enslaved] by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

In step six, as with most bad habits, they’re not just a problem for us, but they begin to be a problem for others. Our indifference to that is simply a lack of love: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).

Finally, death is appointed for everyone, yes. Hastening it by means of self-pleasure, hastening it by means of selfish pleasure, is not submission to providence but the failure to value a precious gift.

Built into Your Kids

I would say to parents: from the earliest years, with prayer and a thoughtful use of the Bible, build into your children

a freedom from the herd mentality of needing to be cool;
a love of the truth;
a passion for self-control and self-denial for the greater joys of righteousness;
a deep commitment never to be enslaved by anything in this world;
a strong concern for the interests of others, not just our own;
a proper stewardship of the gift of health and life; and
a fearlessness in the face of death, but a refusal to risk it for the sake of personal pleasure.