Masculinity is a gift; masculinity is a calling; masculinity is a journey. What is the difference?
The “gift” emphasizes that we ought to feel amazement as we think about being made a man. There is an unmerited greatness that comes with the gift, and this ought to stir our hearts with a sense of gratitude. The “calling” highlights the inescapable responsibility that is attached to the gift. Men are not born for freedom, career, or fun; we are born for service. The height of our calling is the mature and responsible strength that ought to be the defining mark of fatherhood. The “journey” adds a sense of progression to the calling of a man. Men are not born; they are made. The fact that a male has reached the age of 20 does not make him a man – at least not an authentic one. Manhood is as much of an ideal as it is a fact. A quest must be undergone, even suffered.
The aim of this article is to outline, in brief, the five stages that make up the “journey” of becoming a man.
The first stage is boyhood. This is a time of exuberance, energy, wildness, and freedom. Boisterous play and loving discipline are the standard curriculum of these years. Much of the education is simply about inhabiting the world and learning what it means to have a father, a mother, a sibling, and a friend – and also what it means to be stung by a bee, scrape your knee, and fall off a bike.
The second stage occurs with puberty, usually around age 12 or 13. Almost universally, boys at this age have undergone a rite of passage to indicate a new location in life. In most cultures, this is a transition from spending the majority of time among women to being initiated and integrated in a community of men. Boys undergo a kind of graduation, even symbolic death. In tribes across the world, a boy ventures out into the wild to perform a feat. He comes back forever different. The boy is gone; a young man stands in his place.
With this change of status comes a change of curriculum. Free play and authoritative discipline give way to deliberate training and self-control. On the horizon are now the future responsibilities of being a husband, a father, and a member of the community. With these things in sight, youthful strength is not to be squandered by sowing wild oats or reenacting the folly of the Prodigal Son. Rather, the late teens and early 20s are a time for preparation. In the insightful tract, “Thoughts for Young Men”, J.C. Ryles says, “What young men will be, in all probability, depends on what they are now”. Youth, Ryle tells us, is the seedtime of full age.
Now, there are two ways in which this second phase of a man’s life can be highjacked. One is a failure to detach sufficiently from a mom. Becoming a “momma’s boy” is a sign of disfigured development. Men that permit themselves to be trapped under the suffocating blanket of coddling love never attain the independence and strength needed to become future leaders.
A second trap is graduating into a community of peers (i.e. teenagers) instead of a community of men. One of the strange features of modern life is that, instead of being integrated in an intergenerational fraternity of men, most adolescent boys spend all of their time in a silo of other youth. This can be morally stunting. Wisdom is not transmitted horizontally, but vertically. Boys who are not under mature men will not develop the character of mature men.
The third stage in the journey is a man separating from his family to go and start a family of his own. Genesis 2 lays down the blueprint of this: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (2:24). Here we learn that manhood is oriented to marriage. Finding a wife is, for most men, is a critical aspect of self-fulfilment. As Genesis indicates, man was not made to be alone. His life is completed by finding a woman who is “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.”
Again, there are dangerous, counterfeit scripts for this phase of life that must be avoided. One is the failure to adult. A lot of men are brainwashed by pop culture to think that high school and college are the prime experiences of life. They are not. The glory of masculinity is not found in a bar on a Saturday night; it’s found at home with a wife.
A connected danger is to refuse to leave home - at all. We live in a strange society where it is not abnormal for men to live in the basements of their parents throughout the duration of their 20s, even into their 30s. Home is feathered too comfortably to leave. Men tempted by such ease need to realise the following: prolonged adolescence is wasted existence. The virtual thrills of hourless gaming are an insubstantial dream. Men are called to go out and make a positive difference in the world, not to stay home and eat the leftovers of someone else’s refrigerator.
Stage four of the journey begins when a man becomes a father. This, for many, will be the most challenging thing that they ever do. The assignment is nothing less than to introduce a new human being to God, the world, and the society of other people. The difficulty of the task is not weighed by sleepless nights or an ever-increasing food budget. It’s measured by the depth of the impression left by a father’s love on a child – a mark made by presence or by absence. On the one side, there is nothing more liberating to a child than to exist in the security of being loved well by a dad. On the other, there is nothing more debilitating than suffocating without such love. Father wounds are real, and each man needs to be brought to his knees as he ponders the impact of his care – or disregard – on the infant he will one day hold.
Here again we run into a specific danger to be noted. It is the risk of prioritising career above family. We live in a culture that measures self-worth by achievement. For a lot of men, this means that they find their significance through influence in the office, not at home. The Bible summons us to think differently. A godly family is of much greater heavenly worth than a successful career. God doesn’t tell us to go out and win the respect of colleagues and clients; he does tell dads to raise their children in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).
The final stage of the journey of manhood is becoming what the Bible sometimes refers to as an elder. Men need to recover the sense that there is honour attached to the latter years of life. Proverbs says, “Gray hair is a crown of glory” (16:31). This is true, but it comes with a caveat. Such a crown is not given by right; it must be earned. The glory of age is not the years counted, but the wisdom accumulated. This means that men must set their hearts to earn their age. Rather than the years 40, or 50, or 60, being a mere measure of time, they are should be viewed as benchmarks of character. As men look ahead to new decades, they need to ask a probing question, “Is my character worthy of the years that have been allotted?” Time cannot be redeemed, and men need to feel accountable, not just to fill their days, but to be full of wisdom.
If such character is attained, the greyer years can be golden years. Rather than wasting them on endless trips to the golf course or vain travels abroad, they can be used for something of eternal value: investing in the lives of future generations. In the end, a life lived well is a life lived sacrificially for others. Men who are true elders are those who transmit what they have learned through mentorship and discipleship.
There is no greater glory than for an old man to be surrounded by spiritual children and grandchildren. Such a legacy earns more than the praise of men; it is validated by the “well done” of Christ himself.