I grew up in a small town in NW Missouri,
playing in the creeks, fishing with night crawlers I caught myself by
flashlight, and playing lots of baseball.
My life as a
young boy consisted of school and sports, punctuated by hot summers whose days
ended when the streetlights came on or someone needed medical attention,
whichever came first. Oh yeah.. most of us had to go to church too – usually.
I remember in particular the adventures I had
with my friend Jamie and his little brother Matt. During the years we spent together, I am
pretty sure we only came inside to eat, sleep, or – on the hottest summer days
– avoid heat stroke. We caught countless snakes, crawdads, bull frogs, and fish, but our favorite prey was
danger.
I’ll
never forget climbing to the top of the tallest Oak trees we could find,
looking down onto rooftops from 4 stories in the air. Or exploring the creek and woods on the forbidden
lands owned by the Bear’s family, who were reported to shoot salt-shot at
anyone who came onto their land – somehow the trails are so much lovelier in
the mind of a young boy if there’s a chance of running into real danger.
Or the games we invented to explore the limits
of our bravery whose names alone would send any mother into therapy for PTSD –
Banzai Bicycle Dodge Ball, Tree Climbing Races, Hedge Chicken (played on bikes
at high speeds and involving large shrubberies), and stormwater drain
spelunking. The one that broke my arm
was the contest to see who could drop from the tallest tree branch without
getting hurt. Most of this would have
been before my 10th birthday, which I suppose I was pretty lucky to
make it to.
People often wonder what it is about kids and
this penchant for danger. For me, it was
the thrill of pushing my limits, of seeing what I was made of; of seeing what
was there at the edge of the horizon. It
was about what fears I could conquer, and if I had what it took to go out into
that wide, awesome world and come out alright.
Even from
that young age, we were asking questions of resilience and seeking out the
extent of our identity. Will I be able
to handle the world out there? Will I
have what it takes? Will I succeed? Who will I become when I am a man? What does a real man look like?
I wonder how many of you can remember those days
when you thought about what you wanted to be when you grew up? Who were your heroes? Why did you choose them as your heroes? What qualities did they have?
When we look at the scripture for today, we see
another boy in the throes of his identity as a man. But before we get to David, let’s just
remember something about Goliath – he was listed at 9’6” in his sandals. His armor weighed 150 pounds, and the tip of
his spear weighed about as much as bowling ball. If The Land of Judah were a video game,
Goliath would have been the boss you have to beat at the end to win the game.
Keep that image in your mind as we go along here.
David, for his part, was 15 at the oldest,
probably, the youngest of Jesse’s 4 sons.
He was given the less than glamorous job of tending the sheep and taking
supplies to his older brothers at the front lines. But there was SOMETHING about David, wasn’t
there? Because now we know that he would
one day be King. But what was that
something? What “it factor” did he have
that would become the stuff of such legend?
What is the writer telling us about being a man? And, by the way – what a GREAT story
huh? This little guy having what it
takes to take out the biggest baddest bad guy from the opposing team – it’s
almost innate for us to love this story – because it speaks to questions
lingering deep inside all of us.
We’ll come back to David in a minute, but first,
I want to tell you about what happened after I left the sunnier days of my
boyhood and became a youth.
We’ll start with 7th grade, because
that’s when the trouble started.
Switching schools from the college lab school, where my 6th
grade class had 25 students, most of whom I had known since kindergarten, I
entered the town’s only Junior High. As
well as I had mastered my fears of outdoor dangers when I was a younger boy,
these giant halls inside this unknown social labyrinth of Junior High scared me
to death. There might as well have been
9 ½ foot tall, spear-wielding philistine at the door each day I went to school.
What was I afraid of? Rejection? Ridicule?
Shame? Awkwardness? Being labelled as any one of those awful names I heard kids
call other kids in the halls – wuss, fag, nerd?
God help me – I did NOT want to be called one of those. I learned how to fit
in, but at a great cost – when the ringleaders started in on Corey, who had
been one of my best friends my whole life, I did nothing to support him and
laughed along with the others. I made
lewd jokes about girls, or shamed weaker boys – the guys thought that was cool
enough. I was in. I was surviving at the next stage of my road
towards “manhood”.
Except, the truth is, I wasn’t surviving at all
– I was completely tormented inside, racked with guilt over all the shaming and
demeaning and tearing down I was doing to kids as part of the “in crowd”. Many of the people I was making fun of, like Corey,
were clearly being hurt by this, and by tearing them down, I was tearing myself
into two. In the end, I didn’t have what
it took to be “one of the guys” in this crowd, and I stopped playing along with
their rules. I became more of a loner,
and wasn’t easily manipulated into the will of the crowd like I had been before
– there were even times where I was seen being nicer to the “dorks” and
apologizing for the behavior of the other guys.
That didn’t make the in crowd guys very
happy. Within a few weeks, they had
orchestrated a fist fight between myself and one of the guys in the crowd. I
had no friends left. The old ones I had
hurt no longer trusted me, and the new ones I had worked so hard to join had
brutally ejected me from the in crowd. I
remember that incredible amount of loneliness, despair, and fear leading up to
the fight in the Alley behind the church where we had the weekly teen club
youth dances. It was not a fear of
getting physically hurt. It was not a
fear of getting in trouble for fighting.
It was the terror that came with the thought of punching someone.
As mentioned before, I played baseball with some
skill. As a center fielder, I could
throw on a line to the catcher from about 200’ away as a 7th
grader. I wasn’t a big guy, but I wasn’t
weak either. I couldn’t imagine taking
all the power of my arm and fist and hitting someone in the face. I could really hurt them.
Of course, what the in crowd was doing at the
time is a rite of passage that will probably be familiar to many of you. They were saying “prove yourself as a man” in
the only way they knew how – through asserting power over another person with
physical violence to demonstrate your worth.
Everyone seemed to want the fight except me – here they were, opening
the door for me to become a man and be welcomed back into the group with opened
arms. All I had to do was go and punch
another kid in the face enough times to show I was a man, but my most vivid
memory was standing by the foosball table with tears welling up in my eyes at
the thought of throwing even one of those punches.
The fight itself was uneventful – a lot of
dancing around each other with fists up, followed by a black eye, a fat lip and
a lot more dancing around each other with fists up. Neither of us really wanted to be there. I could have hugged that chaperone who
finally came and broke up the fight.
I was lucky to have parents that I could talk to
later about what had happened, but we all still had to endure the pain of the
ostracism and turmoil that followed for me.
It would be a year to a year and a half before I really had someone to sit
with in the lunch room again.
As I got older, up through high school, I would
have more of these struggles to endure.
As an athlete, and especially as a football player, I had a front-row
seat to the locker room culture of young men.
I learned to be a wallflower, quiet, in some hidden corner of the locker
room as the other guys talked boisterously about who they were going to beat
up or take advantage of. I
won 3 varsity letters in football, but I can’t remember a single word I ever
said in the locker room. It was hard for
awhile, but sometime around 10th grade I settled into a new and
less-lonely identity. I found my friends
in youth group, honors classes, and with the other forgotten kids at the
corners of the cool kids world.
A few years ago, my hometown of Maryvllle, MO,
made national news for all the wrong reasons.
From that same football locker room I grew up in, a 17 year old football
player had gone out and lured a 13 year old girl out to “hang out”, got her drunk, and raped her. Two lives,
damaged forever, all because of a malicious code of “what it means to be a man”
that had been allowed to spill out of the locker room and into real life.
Let me first say that I am implicated in this culture of violence, not only in Maryville Missouri, where I played football and grew up,
but also that which prevails across our country. And I owe an apology to all
those who have been a victim of violence, which includes both men and women.
Because I was there - literally - in that locker room. Not during the time of this incident, but years earlier. And when people were called a" skank", or a "fag", or talked bout who they "did" that weekend, or whose ass they were going to kick, I didn't join in. But I didn't speak up, either. For my own reasons of fear and insecurity, I didn't speak up when I could have. I didn't just put a foot forward in that room and say something even so simple as "hey guys.. come on! I don't really want to hear that stuff." and I could have. I am very sorry that I didn't do more, because clearly the culture didn't change - or didn't change enough to prevent a horrible thing from happening. If it had, we wouldn't be having to read about stories like this.
What I wish I had remembered is a statement someone else from that town recently posted on the facebook page for this incident
We
in Maryville bask in good feelings about our town and our university and their
successes, but we have failed to protect our young people...our silence
condemns us...the criminal justice system in ANY community reflects the power
structure of the community...too few people in Maryville take leadership when
something bad happens...because parents were not vigilant and failed to hold their
children accountable, the lives of all the young people involved are
permanently damaged...the kindest gift you can give your children is to hold
them accountable for their actions...stand with them, but make them accountable. ....it takes a village to raise a child, and
we are all responsible...
And I really should have taken more of that to heart
when I had the opportunity to hold my peers to that standard of accountability.
It's a responsibility guys have as teammates, school peers, brothers,
parents, teachers, coaches, and parishioners. It's a responsibility I had
- to lead - and allowed fear to get the best of me. And, like I said, I
really should have known better, because the above statement was written by my
father, who taught me more than enough about respecting and standing up for all
people.
And this, my friends, is what it means to be a man –
allowing your love and compassion to ignite your passions for justice. Standing up for those who are being hurt,
standing up to those doing the hurting, and being brave enough to accept the
consequences.
See, if we get back to David and Goliath, we can ask
this question again. What was that “it
factor” that David had? He wasn’t bigger
or stronger or overpowering. I believe that the key detail in this whole
passage is that David, unlike his brothers, is a tender of sheep. His courage came from his love of those he
cared for, and that love and faith is more powerful than the mightiest foes.
David did not mask himself with armor, but was clothed only in faith. He had learned to fend off the lions and
protect the weak, and he defended others strongly – not because he wanted to
overpower anybody with violence – but because he wanted to lovingly attend to
his flock. And David himself, after
killing Goliath, reminds all who are there what it means to be a real man or,
in his case, a future king:
1
Samual 17:47 - All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or
spear that the Lord saves.”
What does this all
really mean? For me, it comes down to
the most important question of all:
How, then shall we raise our boys?
The boys we’re raising
today will be the fathers of tomorrow, and there are many challenges laying in
the way. The rules of boyhood are harsh,
and often violent. Hoping to promote the important survival skill of
independence, we leave them alone, and vulnerable. Instead of telling our sons
that the fear and sadness and uncertainty inside of them are real, we instruct
them to suck it up and ignore their own humanity. We then isolate our young men
from each other and themselves by plunging them into competition with each
other and dressing them up in the mirages of manhood – bravado and independence
and dispassion – teaching them to fight, but not to solve their problems.
Too many people who do
this let fear, rather than faith, guide how we prepare them for this world. And
we are abandoning our sons in the process.
There is no shortage
of research that suggests that the most successful people are the ones who have
good self-reflective and interpersonal skills, and know how to work with others
to solve problems. This is true in
business and in relationships, but is particularly important if we want to
raise or sons to go on and become good dads.
We need to emotionally engage our sons, and give them our love in
addition to our expectations, and thus teach them how to emotionally engage and
love others.
Consider one last time
the stone in David’s hand, trying to aim true to take down a giant. It would seem impossible - foolish even. Now, imagine that giant, at least
metaphorically, as standing over your child getting ready to step on him or
her. Imagine that you throwing that
stone true would save the life of someone you love more than anything in the
world.
Can we, like David,
learn the faith to stand up for all of God’s flock - the strong and the weak?
Can we channel our love, instead of our fears?
If we can, it may save our sons. In
fact, this love will probably save quite a bit more than that.
Indeed, with faith,
and love, all things are possible.
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