Young Kings

Becoming a Bold and Productive Man of God...

I recently saw a new book on masculinity being marketed to young men (Not Chase Davis' book). To be fair, I haven't read it, and it may be a perfectly fine book. But the marketing was so bad that it reminded me I need to finish some of the books I've been working on for years. I will.

Anyway, as I thought about it, I realized there is a book I would like to write: a book on masculinity for boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen.

The idea interests me because I already have a large amount of material written on various disciplines, virtues, and aspects of manhood that could be adapted for a younger audience. The question is not whether I have enough content. The question is how to frame it.

After spending some time walking circles around Casa Foster and dictating notes into my phone, I think I've found the framework. I want to lean heavily on the wisdom literature, particularly Proverbs, and organize much of the book around the theme of fear.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but boys are often ruled by many other fears long before they learn that lesson. They fear rejection, failure, embarrassment, hard work, responsibility, authority, pain, and being thought weak by their peers. Much of growing into manhood is learning to put those fears in their proper place by learning to fear God above all else.

So, what follows is a rough first draft of that idea. It still needs refinement. The logic needs tightening, the structure needs sharpening, and the practical application needs to be developed further. But I think the foundation is there...

Chapter 1

Fear is an unavoidable part of life. But you do have a choice about what you will fear, or better yet, whom you will fear.

As a young child, I was exposed to rated-R horror movies. I heard things and saw things that, arguably, even an adult shouldn’t hear or see. It implanted in me an irrational fear of the dark.
I say irrational because there is a logic to being scared of darkness. One of the pictures of hell is eternal darkness. When you peer out into the black, you wonder if something is peering back at you. But my fear was irrational. Even a small nightlight wasn’t enough. I slept with a light on most every night.

When I was very little, I lived on my grandmother’s farm. There was little to no light pollution and no streetlights. So when it was nighttime, and the clouds covered the moon, it was pitch black outside. For some reason, my grandmother was not a fan of curtains, so I couldn’t pull the curtains shut on my room’s window. I would stare at that window, hearing the deafening sound of crickets outside and the tick, tick, tick from the grandfather clock in the living room. And I would wonder if a monster was staring back at me.

I remember one night I did see a face. A pale white face pressed against the window, staring at me. My heart rate jumped, and I was almost paralyzed with fear until it meowed. It was the albino Siamese cat that lived on the farm.

Almost a decade later, when I was 15 or 16, I was once again at my grandmother’s farm. I don’t recall why, but my uncle was gone, and so were both my grandparents. I found myself alone in the middle of nowhere near Osgood, Indiana. I felt that paralyzing fear come over me again.

But I was sick of being scared. I decided I would walk out into the deep, dark forest in my pajamas, with muddy boots on, no flashlight, and meet my fear. So I got about 100 yards into the dark forest and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Come on! Come get me!”

Nothing got me that night. All I did was spook some owls and deer and begin to deal with my irrational fears.

But as I said, there are rational fears.

The book of Proverbs opens with one of the greatest truths of life: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. This is a hard truth for a lot of Christians. The idea that you should fear God is foreign. God has been presented as some soft, pushover, doting grandfather in the sky.

I used to refer to this as “Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a God” thinking. God is just there to give you butterfly kisses and hugs. He is a big ball of gushy emotions. He would never harm a fly. He’s simply up there to affirm you and tell you how great you are.

This, of course, is pure fiction.

Scripture says our God is a consuming fire. Our God is terrifying. He is immense. He knows everything. He is everywhere. And He is a perfect judge. He loves with a perfect love, but He also hates with a perfect hatred. He does not wink at sin. He judges and punishes it.

God is the Great Other.

Even before you know Him, you perceive His gaze. You cannot see Him, but He can see you. When you look out a dark window, you might not see everything, or anything. But God, as Psalm 139 says, sees even the darkness as day.

Such a powerful and holy God is logical to fear because we are sinners. He will not allow sin to go unpunished. Sin simply means that we have not kept His law. We have sinned against our conscience, which is an imperfect guide to right and wrong. But many of us have also willfully broken the Word of God contained in the Bible, particularly in the Ten Commandments.

And so we sense a coming judgment from the Great Other. That is a rational fear.

One reason the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge is that it helps us understand that we will be held accountable by the Maker of all things and that there is no escape. It teaches us that we are not the center of the universe.

Are you a treasured creation of God? Yes.

But the world does not revolve around your desires and purposes. It was built for His glory. Understanding that He is the center of all things and that you must give an account to Him someday makes you reconsider where your fear should rest.

Now, not all fears are created equally. As I’ve pointed out, there are both rational and irrational fears. But even within rational fears, there is a bifurcation.

While it is rational to fear God as a holy Judge, the Great Other, it is also possible to fear Him as the great Father.

Once again, this is an idea that can be foreign to many people. Even the idea that you should fear your father sounds like a bad thing. But this is a sort of fear that can exist alongside love.

For example, when I spank my younger children with a calm demeanor, they do not run from me. They run to me. They know the discipline they are receiving from me is not judgment or wrath. Rather, it is an expression of my love and my desire to protect them from the destructiveness of simple disobedience.

They know that the same hands that spank them for their rebellion are the hands that protect them, cradle them, love them, and provide for them. So they revere me as a benevolent authority in their lives.

That is the sort of fear the Christian is to have of God. Not one that makes him hide and run away, but one that allows him to live openly and humbly before his heavenly Father. It is a fear rooted not in terror, but in reverence, trust, and love.

In the Garden of Eden, our first parents rebelled against God. Eve was deceived by the serpent. Adam willfully listened to the voice of his wife instead of the command of his God. Consequently, he and all mankind in him fell into a state of sin and misery.

At the core of this fall was a fear of God. We see how this fear drove Adam and his wife to do something irrational: hide from God and cover their shame with fig leaves. But there is no hiding from God. He sees all. And there is no covering your shame with fig leaves or darkness.

God, in His mercy, called them to repentance and gave them the promise of a Redeemer who would come through their line. A Son who would be bruised but would crush the head of the serpent. Then, as a symbol of hope, God killed an animal, shedding its blood, and clothed Adam and Eve so they would no longer have to walk in shame.

This is important for you to understand because while it is rational to fear God, it is irrational to hide from Him.
But because sin results in shame and carries with it an awareness of coming judgment, you will try to clothe yourself in other things. Maybe you will try to be a good boy, keeping God’s law. Or maybe you will try to become a strong man, the sort of man other men fear. But God is so holy and powerful that none of these things can keep you from being held to account by Him.
Therefore, the only way you can live rationally before God, without the paralyzing fear that drives you to do foolish things, is to be clothed by God. Not in the blood of bulls and goats, but in the blood of Jesus.

The Christian is the person who trusts in Jesus by faith alone. Faith is not a work. It does not earn anything. It is simply the empty hand that receives what Christ has done. And when you receive Christ by faith, God justifies you. This means two things. First, He pardons all your sins. He no longer counts them against you. Second, He credits the righteousness of Christ to your account. God looks at you and sees the perfect obedience of His Son. You are forgiven, and you are clothed.

Apart from the hope of the gospel, there is no life that is not darkened by coming judgment. But in the gospel, Proverbs says, “The righteous are bold as a lion, but the wicked flee when no one pursues.”

The wicked are afraid of all the monsters that are not really there because they sense the reality of coming judgment, but not the Christian. When the Christian knows that he stands before God in Jesus Christ and Him alone, he knows that God no longer sees him as an object of wrath deserving punishment. That verdict is already settled. Nothing can reopen it. So when God disciplines him, it is never to pay for sin. Christ already paid. God disciplines him as a beloved son, for his good, better than the best earthly father. The discipline flows from his sonship. It does not earn it.
When you fear God, you begin to fear nothing else. But there is no life that can be lived without fear.

There is another kind of fear we see in Scripture: the fear of man. This is the pride and insecurity that turns you into a performer who lives for the praise and approval of others, as though their judgment were the final judgment.

The fear of man will make you a weak people-pleaser instead of a bold lion who lives for the glory of God.

That is why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding. If you do not understand who God is, what He requires, and how you can be made right with Him, you will never become the man God created you to be.

This is why King Solomon begins Proverbs this way. He is writing this collection of wisdom so that his sons will become wise, godly, and productive men. He wants them to live not as boys, but to grow into young kings who live for the glory and honor of God. He wants them to fear nothing but God Himself and, out of that reverence, become the sort of men who rule their own lives with diligence for the blessing of others.

You do not have to live your life ruled by irrational fears. You do not need to be scared of the dark. And you do not need to walk out into the woods at midnight screaming, “Come and get me!” like some crazed fool.

You do not need to be a people-pleasing pushover. You can be a bold, productive, godly man. And that starts with understanding why you should fear God.

In the chapters that follow, we will talk about ambition, money, goals, physical and mental fitness, and girls. But none of it will matter if you do not fear God. The fear of the Lord is the foundation of manhood. Without it, you cannot become the man He made you to be.