It’s intriguing to see that a cohort of young men who have long been told they are not only privileged for being male, but are problematic for, well for being male, has started turning up at church…People are moving from death to life, darkness to light, not because of our programs or our agendas or our ways of structuring our churches, but because the Spirit is moving them.

Boys To Men?

The so-called whipping boys for our cultural sins these days are actual boys. We hear and read it all of the time. Boys are failing and men are wrong. So go the headlines. And there is much handwringing by the powers that be as they seek to address this.

Yet what if the solution is hidden in plain sight?  For every forced “consent class” that young men have to attend to in a school, it would seem there is another solution running parallel, but unremarked upon by the culture. So far at least.

Yet the anecdotal evidence is lining up with the stats. Failing boys and wrong men are turning up at our churches in increasing numbers across the West. As Jesus said, he didn’t come for the well, but for the sick. Those are the types that need a doctor.

And everywhere in the West for the past two decades, men – young men in particular – have been told that they are not simply sick, but that they are the disease.

Now it’s true, there’s terrible porn and there’s violence and what not. But there is terrible suicide and deep addictions and a “checking out” lifestyle that has seen young women streak far ahead of young men in a Western culture that is protected from much of the historical harshness that required young men.

Besides all of that, I meet many great young men, both Christian and non-Christian who are bombarded with this “you’re the problem” message almost every day. It’s as if we no longer believe the psychological reality that words spoken over us shape us in ways that we cannot imagine.

And then we put a smartphone in their hands in a way we would not put a rifle in their hands, and they subsequently put that phone to their heads and pull the trigger.

Yet if the Quiet Revival is true, then it would appear some sort of tipping point has been reached. So many articles in every major newspaper about how men were the problem, and about why men had distinct advantages over women was written in the context of middle class, inner city lawyer-land.  And very few solutions that actually work.

And if your mantra as a young man at school is that foundationally you are the problem, yet there is not grace or empowerment given to you other than to get in touch with more feminine qualities (whatever that actually means).

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