Anthony Bradley reflected on his experience being in college fraternities. Bradley remembers the adventure of college of not knowing anyone. It forced him to build relationships, confront discomfort, and develop resilience. But for young men today, the sense of adventure seemed entirely absent. They are building their adult lives on one operating principle: “stay safe, stay familiar.”
If a young man is to grow, he needs an “Abraham experience.” God told Abraham, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Gen 12:1-3). In other words, “leave everything you know and enter into something unknown – something filled of uncertainty, risk, and even danger.”
Bradley believes younger men are not being exposed to enough real risk, challenge, or responsibility to mature into capable men. “We are engineering a culture that allows young men to extend the comforts of childhood indefinitely…. we insulate them from hardship with a steady diet of familiarity. safety, and predictability.” He notes that throughout history, healthy societies require young men to separate….. break from the safety of childhood into the discomfort and danger of the unknown.”
“Real adulthood,” observes Bradley, “does not emerge out of comfort – it is forged through separation and struggle.” In the Biblical narrative, God calls men out of comfort and into real risk. It is demonstrated in the lives of Abraham, Elisha, Isaiah, Paul and Jesus. “These individuals grew not because they avoided danger, but because they endured it.” Manageable adversity builds “psychological immune system” and a form of “stress inoculation” By overcoming real challenges, young men can develop the resilience to face future adversities with greater confidence and stability.
Observing Abraham and Moses we find a biblical pattern of just not brief discomfort but rather a prolonged wilderness. Character formation requires real exposure. We are then forced to fall on our knees and cry out to God for help. Bradley is very pointed when he says, “I struggle to trust any man who has never been driven to his knees in desperate need.” He quotes Michael Meade: “If the fires that innately burn inside youths are not intentionally and lovingly added to the hearth of community, they will burn down the structures of culture, just to feel the warmth.”
Bradley then observes, “We see this playing out everywhere: young men channeling their untapped need for danger and purpose into destructive outlets – addiction, escapism, ideological extremism, crime, sexually assaulting women, and perpetual adolescence.” The journey to manhood has never change. It involves, “separation, struggle, vulnerability, and return.” Bradley gives this challenge, “If we want our sons to become the kind of men who can lead, love, and sacrifice, we must allow them to suffer. We must send them into the wilderness – not to destroy them, but to make them.”
I am so thankful that my parents let me go, when I went out to California in 1960 as a young man of 20. I grew and matured as a man through the “hard knocks” of life. I remember period of loneliness, despair and great insecurity as a young man. I came to know Jesus out in California, found a wonderful future wife, and surrounded myself with fellow believers. Mentors such as Maynard Force and Pastor Hax pointed the way for me.
Those early years in California and then in college, forced me to grow up into manhood. It was difficult because of all my insecurities. I remember well the words of Eccl 12:1 “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.'”
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