The Gospel of Manhood According to Dad: A Young Man's Guide to Becoming a Man

By Greg Baker

Written for Christian teenage boys, young men, and their dads, this is not a child-rearing book. This is every Christian father’s prayer for the man he hopes his son will one day become.

Becoming a man in an ever-changing landscape has always been challenging. A boy must navigate the intricacies of life in a world where technology and permissiveness have become enablers of all kinds of behavior and then emerge into adulthood as a man any father or mother would be proud of. That is not easy.

Defining manhood nowadays is not like it once was. Society is challenging traditional definitions and thereby challenges the values behind those definitions. This book seeks to make clear the muddy waters of growing up and give dads and boys the insight needed to help boys become the men God means for them to become.

I grew up in a traditional, Christian family. I am a second-generation Christian. I never used drugs. I never smoked. I never drank alcohol. I never cussed. I was a virgin when I got married. And I pastored a church for thirteen years. More importantly, I am the father of four boys.

For the Christian parents trying to raise their sons in a Christian home, this book is for you and your sons. The stories in this book are normal, everyday encounters of growing up and becoming a man. It can be an invaluable tool to help guide your son into adulthood.

My hope is that you will take this book, dad, and read through it with your son. Let the stories you read spark your own memories, memories you can share with your son of your own journey into manhood.

We examine essential life situations that all young men face. Topics include:

1. FRIENDS AND ENEMIES - bullying, rejection, embarrassment, finding friends, finding enemies, and dealing with peer pressure.

2. EDUCATION, SCHOOL, AND LEARNING - The battle over the mind, important subjects in school, the difference between knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and choosing the right college.

3. GOD AND CHRISTIANITY - Finding Jesus Christ, being called by God, knowing the will of God, and separation from the world.

4. GIRLS AND DATING - It's okay to be single, noticing girls, when to start dating, how to find the right girl, falling in love.

5. FAMILY - Family should mean something, obeying parents, becoming independent, and leaving home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Baker
• Release date: Sep 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463899915

Greg Baker

Ryan Yellowlees is a Canadian clinical counselor and Christian social media content creator.

Book preview

Manhood is about the little things of life. Trauma, heavy burdens, and extreme situations are not what makes a man. A man’s character may be revealed in times like that, but the little things learned along the way are what builds a man’s character and allows him to carry the heavy loads of life.

Twenty-three times in Proverbs, the phrase, My son, appears. Proverbs is a father’s attempt to teach his son about the little things in life so that his son would be capable of handling the weightier matters he would eventually face as king of one of the most powerful and influential nations in the world at that time.

Solomon wanted to pass on to his son the lessons he had learned. He wanted to teach his son what character and integrity meant. He wanted his son to grow up into a man of decency, honor, integrity, honesty, and godliness. Being a man isn’t about how tough you are, how much pain you can endure, how well you can dominate someone physically, or how skilled you are at a sport or even a trade. You will find none of those areas addressed in the advice Solomon gave to his son in the book of Proverbs.

We tend to look at Esau and say he was a man’s man, but Jacob was a momma’s boy. Neither was true, and neither exhibited true qualities of manhood. In fact, if you examine Jacob’s deeds after he left home, he did many things that we would consider manly, but at that time of his life, I wouldn’t give you a nickel for his manhood—or Esau’s. Jesus was a man, and He let the disciple John lean against His breast (John 13:35), and that gesture was not an act of feminism, being gay, or being weak. Yet our Christian society never points to that example as one of manliness! But I dare say that both Jesus and John were incredibly strong men who understood manhood.

This is the dilemma that fathers face. How do we bring our boys into manhood in a world where manhood is often confused with gladiator-style attributes? We want our boys to be men, and well we should, but manhood isn’t about the ability to take a hit in football, but rather, it’s how he conducts himself on the field and his attitude toward his opponent. Doing your best and playing your hardest is not the same as thinking of ways to hurt your opponents or losing your temper when you think the other team cheated. I’d rather have a boy who knows how to control his temper than one that knows how to win a ballgame.

This book is about the challenges a boy must face to navigate the normal, everyday situations of life—girls, school, church, family, and friends. The stories in this book are not of death-defying situations, gang involvement, prison, or deep sin. For the most part, they are about what your son may face growing up in the United States in a Christian home.

Dad, start in any chapter you think is most needful to your son. Read it with him, for I am hoping it will inspire you to share your own stories of growing up and help you add your own lessons as you guide your son to manhood.

This book is what every father would want to say to his son, but just may not know how.

SECTION ONE

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

Chapter One

Bullied, Rejected, and Embarrassed — The Three Trials of Manhood

Our experiences will shape our lives. In many cultures, being a Christian means living under the shadow of death, and the experiences associated with them will shape the lives of those who must endure them. In many cultures, America included, a young Christian man or boy will face the following three traumatizing trials that strike directly at his ego, pride, and identity:

1. Being bullied

2. Being rejected

3. Being embarrassed

I’m not speaking of serious physical or emotional trauma as the result of a horrific experience such as molestation, abuse, or serious injury. I’m talking about normal, everyday interactions with people—the people with whom you work, the people with whom you attend school, the people who go to church with you, the people with whom you play, and the people with whom you socialize.

In these everyday interactions, a man will most likely face these three emotionally traumatizing trials. It can’t be helped. It is part of life. How a man faces them, however, can be used as a gauge to determine his overall character. For the purpose of this writing, we will call them the trials of manhood.

Jesus faced all three of these trials during His ministry, and most certainly during the time He hung on the Cross. But Jesus refused to allow these trials to alter His character, mission, or purpose. The Bible says He set His face as a flint toward the Cross.¹ Jesus despised the shame of the Cross, meaning He held it in no regard or thought little of it.² The embarrassment of the Cross didn’t detract from His purpose, so He endured the Cross to reach toward the joy that He could see beyond the humiliation.

Take any man in the Bible about whom something significant was written, and you’ll see that he faced these three trials of manhood. David was shamed, rejected, and bullied by King Saul. Daniel suffered shame and rejection by bullies when serving in King Darius’ court. Joseph suffered rejection and bullying from his brothers and shame when sold into slavery. Jacob went through these trials with his father, his brother, and his uncle. The apostle Paul went through this after he was converted, and his fellow Christians didn’t believe in him. The Bible includes many other examples of men’s suffering these trials of manhood.

In fact, Paul warns Timothy to endure hardness as a good solider.³ Paul knew that Timothy would have to face these three trials. It is part of growing up in a sin-filled world where people do not have perfect understanding, give in to sin, and easily make mistakes without intending to. A man will face these trials of manhood—you can count on it.

These trials often come together—all at once—and often make or break a man since they frequently come while a man’s character and morality are developing. As I have already stated, a man’s character can be judged by how he handles these trials of manhood. Who we are is often determined by what we take away from any given situation. For example, two people may suffer the same bullying in school. One may take away that something is wrong with the bully and so moves forward without allowing the bully to drag him down. The other may take away that something is wrong with himself and so becomes depressed and ineffectual—especially if he believes the bully.

If you determine ahead of time how you’ll react to the trials of manhood, you may take away from the trials strength, wisdom, and insight. Having a close walk with God helps immeasurably, since it is hard to become depressed or down on yourself when you are basking in the love of God and His care for you. So what you decide to take from your trials will make or break you as a man.

So Embarrassing!

We will all face moments of true embarrassment where you simply flat out don’t know what to do. In high school one day, I was talking to my partner in science class. I was trying to explain something I have now forgotten, and in the process, I flung out my arm to emphasize my point—right into the chest of a girl walking by.

My unwitting gesture came as a complete surprise to the both of us. She gasped and stepped back, and when I realized what I’d done, I turned beet red and could only stammer out an apology. I didn’t know what to do. I literally was struck speechless. The girl, of course, did not stay around to discuss the incident, so I was left feeling as if the entire class was staring and me—and judging me harshly for the accident.

Embarrassment will cause you to believe others are judging you harshly, and you become hyper self-conscious and thus sensitive to any remark or action. Taking things out of context when you are embarrassed can be so easy. And these moments leave their mark on you. If you are not careful, you begin seeing life through the lens of your own embarrassment.

A man learns to handle embarrassing moments, and these moments can range from failing to realize his zipper is down to making a complete fool of himself in front of a large group of people. I’ve done both—and much more. But a man doesn’t hide his head in the sand nor retreat into a shell, afraid to face those to whom he’s embarrassed himself in front of.

For several years when I was a kid, our church took a bunch of us to youth camp. Camp Ironwood was in California, and their signature attraction was a nearly two-hundred-foot slide that went off the side of a mountain and into a lake at the bottom. I was perhaps in the fifth or sixth grade that year, and everyone wanted to go down the slide. Mostly, you rode down on one of those boogie boards, and you could achieve tremendous speed while doing it. Some of the heavier adults could skip all the way across the lake and onto the shore using one of those boards.

There was a trick to not becoming a laughing stock of the rest of the kids. If you didn’t pull up the front of your board right before hitting the lake, you’d wipe out. I saw one kid skip three times on his head that way. But in the history of the camp, no camper had ever gone down the slide at night. A couple of us, me included, begged to be allowed to go down in the dark. We thought that would be thrilling. Besides, the opportunity to do something no one else had ever done made us feel special.

The cabin counselor demurred for several days, but then one night, he gave in. Everyone in our cabin sneaked down to the lake after dark. During the day, the guys and girls would take turns spending time at the lake. The adults were big on modesty, keeping the boys and girls separate while swimming. Since my parents had reared me with this rule, I’d sort of adopted the value. I had swam in public pools before, but I’d reached an age where girls had become a bit more interesting, so I’d become much more self-conscious about being shirtless around girls.

This night, however, the camp counselor did not feel comfortable being unable to see us going down the slide, so he asked a group of girls on their way to the fire pit to stay on the bridge that overlooked the slide and point their flashlights at those of us going down the slide. I was already at the top of the slide and without my shirt.

Understand, about fifteen girls were on this bridge, and all of them had their flashlights pointed at us. My sense of modesty was very heightened—especially sense I was a skinny kid with protruding ribs. I began to feel very uncomfortable being illuminated by these girls. I could hear the girls whispering and giggling on the bridge. I couldn’t make it out, but I felt sure they were commenting about my skinny arms and bony ribs. A couple started laughing, and I felt myself flush. This is not going to be the fun ride I had anticipated.

Three of the boys chickened out at that point, leaving only me and one other boy willing to dare the slide at night. With the girls talking, giggling, and laughing, I decided to get it over with. I’ll go first, I told the other boy.

Be my guest, he said, backing away to give me room.

Here goes nothing. I set the board down on the slide, got on, and pushed off. The experience wasn’t quite what I’d hoped it to be. The girls all had their flashlights trained on me, and I was completely and utterly blinded by the light. At least I couldn’t hear them talking what with the rushing wind in my ears as I sped rapidly down the slide. I still felt thoroughly embarrassed being under the spotlight like that, and belatedly realized I had no idea when I’d hit the bottom. I couldn’t see a thing!

I passed under the bridge and plunged into darkness, my night vision completely destroyed from all that light glaring in my eyes. I knew I had to pull up at the last moment otherwise I’d wipe out. Sure enough, I misjudged the end of the slide and hit the lake water at a bit of an angle. Water gathered on top of the board and catapulted me across the lake. I hit the water like you would skip a flat stone. The water felt like a solid surface as I rolled and skipped across the surface. I finally plunged beneath the inky surface of the dark lake and floundered to the top, gasping for breath and feeling like a total fool. Peals of laughter from the girls on the bridge greeted my ears. Feeling dazed from my crash and embarrassed by the girls, I felt my face flush in humiliation.

But if embarrassment stops you, you’ll never get far in life. Besides, I didn’t want to end with a wipeout, so I found my boogie board and trudged to the top of the slide and went down again. This time, I pulled up on the board the whole way down. When I hit the water, I flew across the lake like I was supposed to, feeling somewhat vindicated and mollified.

Embarrassment—it’s part of life. How you deal with it is what matters.

I pastored a church for thirteen years. I did enough things behind the pulpit to write an entire book on the best ways to call down embarrassment upon myself. Once, I brought one of my church members up to the platform to help me illustrate a sermon. I fully intended to slap him lightly across the cheek to illustrate a point in my sermon. The slap would clearly not be hurtful, and done right, he wouldn’t even feel it. Somehow, unfortunately, I got carried away in my preaching, and I really slapped him hard—much harder than I intended anyway, and the sound reverberated throughout the auditorium! He wasn’t hurt, but he was very surprised. So was everyone else, myself included.

I froze, my hand still in the air by his face, and the only sound I heard was a startled gasp from the man’s wife even as the echoes of the slap died away. Everyone fell utterly and completely silent. Normally composed, I didn’t know what to do. Slapping him that hard hadn’t been part of the illustration or my intention. How do you explain that your own hand got away from you? How do you justify that action—right there, right in front of the entire church?

There was only one thing I could do. I apologized and then humorously chastised myself before everyone. That’s what I get for not practicing this beforehand, I muttered so everyone could hear. Calvin, I’m so sorry about that… I paused. You didn’t forget to pray this morning, did you? God isn’t out to get you and used me to do it? I chuckled. Probably not. More likely, God’s trying to humble me.

I turned to look at the crowd. Well, my friends, consider me completely and utterly humbled! I then gave a small bow.

Everyone chuckled and the atmosphere in the room went from tense to relieved. More often than not, when you embarrass yourself, others get embarrassed for you. They will feed off the way you react. If you get uptight, unsure, and completely discombobulated, then those around you also feel somewhat unsettled and uneasy. They don’t know how to handle your mistake. But if you face it like a man, face it squarely, acknowledge it, and then dismiss it for what it is, others can relax, laugh it off, and then forget about it.

Son, what has been embarrassing and humiliating in your life? How has it affected you? What do you do when you are embarrassed?

Rejected!

As stated elsewhere in this book, I didn’t get along well with my fellow teenagers. I simply didn’t fit in. I was introverted, shy, socially awkward, and just didn’t understand their crude and immature humor. As part of our church youth group, we had a stocky teenage boy by the name of Kelly, who, for whatever reason, took a disliking to me.

I was perhaps thirteen or fourteen when Kelly began making my life at church miserable. My considerable opinion, at the time, was that Kelly was the sole reason why the rest of the teenagers practically ignored me. Kelly was my nemesis. He was vindictive, hateful, and downright mean. To add insult to injury, Kelly discovered that I had a crush on a girl in the youth group. He went out of his way to make sure we never could interact—not that she ever knew or would have cared if she did. Kelly sabotaged my other relationships with fellow teenagers and quite deliberately ostracized me from any social gatherings.

I began to hate life and came bitter—very bitter. I felt miserable, and even after Kelly left the church sometime later, I still carried around this grudge with me for many years. I didn’t handle this time in my life well. In dealing with this level of rejection, I failed a trial of my own manhood. Probably the worst thing in the world is feeling rejected. Most people can keep going no matter what difficulties they face as long as they know there are people in their corner who accept them.

I had my parents, my pastor, and God, but I wanted acceptance from my peers, and I didn’t have it. I was an outcast, ostracized from my own peer group—and I took it badly. My bitterness colored everything I did. I even did stupid things to gain attention from the authority in my life.

One time while feeling so lonely and rejected, I ditched the youth group, went out to the church parking lot, and sulked alone in my parent’s car. Secretly, I did this because I wanted to see if anyone would notice I was gone. I wanted to prove that no one cared. Strangely, I was vaguely disappointed when my youth pastor made an effort to find me. I wanted verification that no one cared for me—how dare he actually care! He was ruining my pity party!

On another occasion, after we’d come home from Sunday night church and I was feeling bad because of the situation that I blamed on Kelly, I went around to the side of the garage where the fence to the backyard was. I climbed the fence and then clambered onto the roof. Night had fallen, and all was dark. Again, I was trying to prove that no one cared. My parents and brother were in the house, and I bet myself that they’d not come out looking for me.

They probably wouldn’t have looked since none of them knew I’d slipped out of the house. They figured I was in my room getting ready for bed.

After about an hour of sitting on uncomfortable asphalt shingles without anyone bothering to find me, I decided my point had been proved. No one cared. I started to get down off the roof and immediately ran into a problem. It was dark, the roof at this point slanted sharply, and the fence I’d used to climb up to the roof was a thin landing platform about three or four feet below the ledge.

I edged over the side, trying to feel for the fence beneath me. I swung my legs but found only air. About that time, I slipped and over I went. The back of my legs hit the fence and flipped me completely over so that I landed face first in a bed of gravel. Rocks bit into every conceivable part of my face and torso. My bruised legs felt as if they were on fire. I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all! And to top it off, my parents didn’t receive the telepathic cry for help I sent out. No one heard—not even God, as far as I was concerned.

I lay there in a bed of rocks and self-pity, thinking that my entire life couldn’t get any worse than it was at that moment. I determined that all of this was Kelly’s fault. If only…. For twenty minutes I lay there becoming angrier and angrier that no one cared to come out and find me. Suddenly, I felt rejected by my own family.

Because of the rejection of one person, I was blinded to the love of everyone else around me. I was too immature to understand that I was my own worst enemy. While I was pouting and blaming all my troubles on Kelly, he was probably fast asleep in bed, not even thinking of me. I was allowing him to control my life outside of his presence and influence. But that wasn’t on him. That was on me.

When faced with a trial of your manhood, rejection is an inevitable part of life. I had to learn to let this go. Once I accepted this, I could move on. I eventually forgave Kelly—not for his sake, but for mine. Forgiving him allowed me to move on. He no longer controlled my life or emotions. Being rejected by him became only a small irritant that I could easily ignore. I couldn’t control him, but I could control me. I could accept the situation and simply look for the role God would have me play.

Again, the key to these trials is not if you go through them, but what you take from them when