Big Boys Don't Cry
by R.C. Sproul, Jr.

My son and I have a ritual. Like many other rituals in our house I'm quite confident that Campbell doesn't understand it. That's okay. He'll understand it soon enough. Here's how it goes. I stand behind my three year old boy and place my hands on his shoulders. I then lean forward and apply pressure. "Do you feel that son?" I ask. "Yes, Daddy", he replies. "Good." And that's the end. The message I am sending, that he won't be receiving for years now, is this: there is pressure on him. There are always, whether we're doing the ritual or not, obligations that weigh upon his shoulders. I teach him this now so that, like the obligation, it will be with him always.

This notion that children must play through some age of innocence, that what they really need when they are young is to be free to frolic, is, well, mistaken. Its roots come from the Enlightenment idea that we are all, at root, noble savages, that what corrupts is not our own hearts, but negative cultural influences. Let them alone to discover, and they'll turn out fine. Just don't get in the way. There will be plenty of time for children to be responsible, don't hurry it along. This lie is the only negative cultural influence in this equation, My son is playing all right, playing army. For these early years of his life are boot camp, the training he receives as he prepares for battle.

That truth is played out in another ritual we used to go through when Campbell was even younger. As I'd feed Campbell a bottle I would ask him, "Are you going to be Daddy's brave soldier boy? Are you going to fight in the Lord's army?" He just looked at me. End of ritual.

We live in a feminine age. The culture about us wants us to raise up sissies. That's not what they say of course. Rather they want us to raise up tender men, men in touch with their feminine side, men who are not afraid to show their feelings. Our models of manliness are not the John Waynes, or the Gary Coopers of the world, but the simpering Phil Donahues, and Iron John He-men who demonstrate their masculinity not in warfare, but with tears. It seems that men now want their share of the victim pie. The martial virtues are now deemed vices, and so we are told not to learn war anymore.

But perhaps one of the first methods of conducting a war is to persuade the enemy that there is no war. That is the first salvo in the propaganda war. In our home we fight back. I am indoctrinating my son, teaching him the manly art of being a man. When Campbell plays rough with his sisters he is told, "Campbell, be gentle with your sisters. Boys are to protect girls." This powerful little phrase has been uttered so often in the house that when Campbell is less than gentle with Darby she will run to me and say, "Campbell isn't protecting me". When the kids are playing at castles and dragons, it is Campbell who must go forth to slay the dragon.

This does not mean that I am training my girls to be cowards. All my children are taught that we are called to fear God and no man. Courage is a virtue for all of us. But there is an important distinction. My girls are taught to exercise a more quiet courage, to not go about life trembling like some languishing Victorian chick with the vapors. I want each of my girls to be able to dispatch a mouse or a pushy sales without disturbing her husband who is busy slaying dragons. My son, and God willing, sons, are and will be taught to exercise a more active courage. Their calling is to be leaders of their future families, to be bold and strong. To be immovable.

Well, almost immovable. Just as there is but one thing which we are to fear, so there is one thing which should move us: God. C.S. Lewis once wrote that God is so masculine that we are all feminine in comparison (but of course he wrote this before our friends with the NRSV decided better). He acts, we are acted upon. He leads, we follow. He sanctifies, we are sanctified. And before His face, courage should melt. All of us, men and women, boys and girls, ought to tremble as Isaiah trembled before God's presence. If we don't, it's either because we don't know where we are, or because we're not all there. This loss of courage is actually the source of courage. That is that my son is taught that we fear no man, that we fear no circumstance precisely because we fear God.

When my son fears God, he cannot fear anything else. For all of our choices, whether we are small or grown, come down to one choice: will we obey God here, or disobey? Will I face being mocked for my convictions, or will I face the wrath of God for ignoring my convictions? Will I wilt when the state asks for my children, or will I melt before His fury when I give them over? One could say that perfect fear casts out fear. Our sons have got to learn this. If we do not teach them to face up to the bullets of the state they will never be able to withstand the barbs of bullies.

We have a choice. We can raise up a generation of men (and make no mistake about it: children, sooner or later, become adults. The task of the parents is to make sure they become God fearing adults) that feared the giants in the land, or a generation that destroyed the giants in the land. Have the courage to raise up courageous men, while all around you your enemies raise up sissies.