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A Call to Manhood
Guest: Dennis Rainey
From the series: Stepping Up (day 5 of 5)
Bob: As a husband and as a dad, Dennis Rainey has not always done it right. He remembers times when he embraced his role to lead courageously.
Dennis: I remember one time when our daughters came downstairs ready for church, and one of our daughters was wearing a dress that was immodest. Instead of telling her to go change I was wimpy. I didn’t engage her because I didn’t want to experience the pain of the conflict, and so I was a good man who did nothing.
All of us make mistakes that we can look back on and have some regrets about, but the key is, as we look forward, how are you going to protect your family today? How are you as a man going to take responsibility and not give evil a chance to triumph in your family?
Bob: This is FamilyLifeToday for Friday, March 11th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I’m Bob Lepine. We’ll talk today about what it means for a man to be on the alert, to stand firm in the faith, to act like a man and to be strong, to let all that he does be done in love.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. You think those who have been with us all this week have been kind of feeling the – smelling the testosterone as we’ve been talking about what authentic manhood ought to look like?
Dennis: Calling men to step up. In fact, a call to courageous manhood is what we have been talking about. You know, here’s the thing, Bob: We watch TV. We watch a sporting event. We watch the golfers, the football players, the baseball players, basketball, doesn’t matter what season it is, and you hear somebody say, “He stepped up his game.”
Bob: Yes.
Dennis: We’re used to using this phrase, stepping up. It is used all the time. Now I know I am sensitive to those two words because that’s the name of a book that I just finished, that I’ve been working on for more than 10 years. But I do feel like men today need someone in their lives calling them to step up and out of boyhood and adolescence and step fully into manhood and to be the man God made them to be.
Bob: Well, and we’ve already acknowledged this week that this is a theme that God seems to be stirring in our culture today. We talked about the movie that’s coming out in the fall that the folks at Sherwood Baptist have put together called Courageous. It’s around the same theme.
Dennis: It is. In fact it’s interesting that so many different Christian organizations, groups, and churches are all raising the same issue. The guys at Sherwood seem to have their fingers on a pulse that I believe is something God wants to do in the church. I think this movie is going to stir individual Christians, and I hope men to step up and be courageous in their most fundamental callings in life.
Bob: Give me a definition of courage. Can you do that? I mean, how do I understand what courage looks like biblically?
Dennis: Well, courage is doing your duty in the face of fear. Doesn’t mean you don’t have fear. In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask at a dinner table – I think you’ve probably been at a few meals –
Bob: I’ve been the victim of this question before, yes.
Dennis: You get at a table that’s a round table and has four or five couples at it, or ten people at your table. You hate to bore one another with yourselves, you know. Life is too short. Let’s cut to the chase; let’s talk about some stuff of meaning, you know? So I like to ask the question, “What is the most courageous thing you’ve ever done in all your life?” It’s been interesting to look at how people have answered it.
People have talked about a decision at work to push back against deceptive business practices where it could have cost them their jobs, maybe stepping away from their existing job and pursuing a dream. Others have protected an unborn life. I’ve heard young men answer this question talking about stepping up and away from pornography.
But the most frequent answer to the question, “What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?” usually involves the person’s father, where they stepped up and either took another job and didn’t go to work for the family company – recently I was at a dinner table and a man said “It was my decision to not go to work for my father but go to college. I was the first person in our family to go to college.”
There’s something about our parents, standing up to our parents and taking a stand for what we believe God wants us to do that calls upon a bedrock of courage from a man’s life.
Bob: And not to do that disrespectfully; to do it in the context of honor, but there is something about declaring, “I can navigate life apart from your guiding me.”
Dennis: I actually think it is a form of a rite of passage, as you’ve said, to adulthood, where we take a stand and we go, “You know what? I’m my own person. God has a plan for me. I’m fulfilling that plan, and I will honor you, but I am going to be obedient to the God who has called me to do this thing.”
Bob: What you’ve done in the book is kind of chart the trajectory a man follows from boyhood, which dads can help make more intentional for their sons by pointing them in the right direction and calling them onto the right path, and then adolescence, which is full of all kinds of traps that a young man needs to be navigated through so that he can get to mature manhood.
Dennis: And one that every man needs to understand that his son desperately needs him to engage him during this period of time and not just kind of wipe his hands and say, “It’s done. He’s a teenager now; he’s 16, 17, 18 years old. My influence is over.” No it’s not.
There will come a time when your influence will be lessened substantially, but until that time we’re charging men to reach down to those young men in adolescence and call them fully up to the manhood step. Step on up to what it means to be a man, and step away from, well, the lure of childishness and acting like a boy and prolonging youthfulness too long.
Bob: Well, if a guy is going to call younger man to step fully up onto the platform of manhood, he’s got to be there himself, and to be there he’s got to know what it looks like. And as we’ve already said, a lot of guys just don’t know what it looks like.
You’ve said it looks like taking initiative rather than just drifting into passivity, and one of the places where that initiative starts is in the area of spiritual initiative: being a spiritual leader in a marriage relationship and in a home, in a community. A single man can still be a spiritual leader in his community, whether he’s exercising that in a home setting or not. But it goes beyond spiritual initiative, doesn’t it?
Dennis: It does. It goes to the area of protecting, protecting your own life, your own heart; protecting your wife; and protecting your children and your family. I believe, for a number of men today, Bob, I believe they are being called to protect their community. They are being called to make a difference where they live, in their church, in their neighborhood, perhaps in a larger span of control in their community or state. But I believe men are called to protect others who could be preyed upon by evil.
One quick quote here: it’s a familiar quote by Edmund Burke. He said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” I actually spent a good bit of time in one of the chapters of the book talking about how good men, really good men, can easily do nothing. In fact, from my own life I wrote about some of the things that I wish I had pushed back against.
As a single man, I didn’t push back against peer pressure, and I went with the flow. I’m ashamed of the evil that I encouraged and participated in. As a married man, early in our marriage I didn’t protect my wife when we had six kids in ten years, for example -- all the demands and expectations of others who had no idea of the load she was carrying. I should have protected her.
I remember one time when our daughters came downstairs ready for church, and one of our daughters was wearing a dress that was immodest. Instead of telling her to go change I was wimpy. I didn’t engage her because I didn’t want to experience the pain of the conflict, and so I was a good man who did nothing. And then there was a time when a teacher at school really wasn’t being very fair or kind to one of our children, and I allowed it to go on too long. I finally did step up, but I should have stepped up sooner.
All of us make mistakes that we can look back on and have some regrets about, but the key is, as we look forward, how are you going to protect your family today? How are you as a man going to take responsibility and not give evil a chance to triumph in your family?
Bob: You know, I’ll never forget hearing an essay on the radio. This was more than a decade ago. The essayist is a woman named Frederica Mathewes-Green. She was talking about her daughter working at a pizza restaurant, and her daughter was a delivery driver for the pizza restaurant. And she said, “My daughter told me that one night at work an order came in and they read it out. She was the next one to take out pizzas, and they read out, ‘Okay, here’s your order. It does to –‘and they read out the address.” She said, “The guy standing next to me grabbed it out of my arms and he said, ‘I’ll take that. You’re not going to that part of town.’ “
And Frederica Mathewes-Green said, “You know, we live in a culture that talks about gender equality and gender neutrality, but,” she said, “everybody can resonate with the idea that there are parts of town that you don’t let young women go to by themselves. They go accompanied by someone who will protect them.” This idea of men being the protectors, I think goes bone-deep. I think it resonates in the hearts of men and in the hearts of women.
Dennis: It does, and I’ll give you an illustration from our own marriage and family recently. We just had our 17th grandbaby born, a little girl, Alice Pearl, six pounds, four ounces. We’re excited to welcome Alice Pearl to the family. The question was, was Barbara going to go visit our daughter and son-in-law and celebrate the birth of the baby, and was she going to do it alone, or was she going to do it with me?
My schedule was such that I had a good excuse not to go, and yet, as I stepped back, I was actually thinking along the lines of the story you just told, about the wrong part of town. I just don’t like the idea of my wife traveling by herself, and if I can travel with her and get the car and get the bags and get the hotel room and get there safely, that just seems more prudent, rather than allowing my wife to go by herself.
She’s gone by herself on occasion. This particular occasion I could have stayed home. But I chose to go with her because I wanted to see my granddaughter for one thing, and my daughter, but I also wanted to protect my wife.
There are a number of principles that I write about in the book Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood that I just want to list here, Bob, just in terms of coaching men on how to protect their wives and their families.
The first one is protecting your marriage. I don’t meet with women alone for lunch. I don’t have lunch with any other woman other than my wife. I don’t travel alone in a car with a woman other than my wife. I don’t meet with women in my office unless the door is open, or there’s a window there, clearly evident, where everybody can see what’s taking place in there.
As a man, you have ways that you communicate to your wife that you’re protecting and preserving your marriage and your relationship. Some of these things might seem like small matters, but to our wives it builds thirty-foot thick walls that are a hundred feet high around your marriage relationship, and it lets her know that you’re the man, you’re taking responsibility for her, and you’re going to protect your relationship.
Bob: So as men we need to take initiative to establish concrete ways that we protect our marriage. What else does protecting look like for a man?
Dennis: Well, there’s one more way, too, that I forgot about, Bob. We have date nights, a standing date night on Sunday night during the child-bearing and child-rearing years of our marriage. Now we’re empty nesters, so we can have a date any night. But we took the time to preserve and protect our marriage in the midst of raising kids. A lot of our listeners are in the midst of some of the most challenging days they’ll ever experience as couples.
I just encourage the dads listening; find a way to discover a babysitter. If you want to give your wife a great gift some of your wives would – they’ll go crazy. They’ll say, “You found a babysitter so we could get away, so we could talk, so we could have some time together?” That’s really important in terms of protecting your marriage.
When it comes to protecting your family and your children, one of the most exciting ways that we’ve come up with here at FamilyLife is Passport to Purity. There are a number of families that are taking their 11-, 12-, 13-year-olds through a weekend getaway called Passport to Purity.
There’s nothing better than a dad getting away with his son and listening to those CDs and talking about issues of peer pressure, of self-esteem, of who God is in the young man’s life, of moral boundaries, and also talking about sex and how far you’re going to go with a girl prior to marriage, and helping that young man establish spiritual and moral boundaries in his life. A boy at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13 really needs a daddy to talk with him honestly and frankly about this, and doesn’t need him to back out of his life and allow the world to educate him.
Bob: Well, and you’re up against some pretty stiff competition as a dad, because –
Dennis: Tell me about it.
Bob: -- the peer group, the culture, the impulses of your child’s heart and life.
Dennis: The media that has access to your child’s life. If there has ever, ever been a time for men, and I’m going to use an old, agricultural term here – I know that, but the imagery is good – Jesus used it. If there’s ever been a time for a man to have both hands on the plow, looking straight ahead, knowing where he’s going and how he’s doing, it’s today, especially with his marriage and with his children. Helping your sons grow up to be young men who understand the sex drive and what’s about to happen to their bodies before it happens, so they’re not caught off guard.
Bob: Right. You’ve got to be alert, you’ve got to be in the game, you have to know what’s coming, and you have to be involved. And that’s not just during the pre-adolescent years. That’s all through adolescence.
Dennis: Yes. And Passport to Purity will give you a great weekend with your son. It also is a great weekend for a mother-daughter. But what it does, is it will establish a foundation of knowledge and experience with your son so that, from that point, as you go through 13, 14, 15 years of age, all the way through adolescence, you’ll be able to revisit those themes with your son. And you’ll be able talk with them about a simple illustration of how close to the edge of the cliff are you going to go with the opposite sex, son?
Bob: Right. Right.
Dennis: So when you say that, instantly he knows exactly what you’re talking about, and you can re-engage with him. Our sons need us to engage with them, and especially around issues like pornography, not asking if they’ve seen anything, but what have they seen?
If you have a child who is 13, I’m sorry to report to you, but more than likely they have been exposed to some kind of pornography. I would much rather my son, at the age of 13, 14, or 15 share that he had seen it and what he had seen and talk with me about it, than bury it and screw the lid down tight and hide it and be confused by it, and never talk to me as a father or his mom about it.
I would much rather that he talk with me and have the conversation and get it out in the open so we can talk about it. And we can talk about the enticement, and we can have a discussion like you find in Proverbs chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, where the older father is advising and admonishing the young man about the harlot, the prostitute, the one who entices with her dress, her look, and her invitations.
Bob: What does it look like for a dad to be protecting his daughter through the adolescent years and beyond?
Dennis: Well, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I think a Dad needs to interview his daughter’s dates. I said plural, didn’t I? They will have multiple dates, more than likely. Many of our listeners have heard me talk about this, how I interviewed, I don’t know, somewhere around 30, 35 young men. I actually wished I’d had a t-shirt made that said, “I survived Mr. Rainey’s interview.”
(laughter)
But, you know, Bob, young men today really need dads to engage them and expect them to treat their daughters with dignity and nobility.
I got an email from a dad who had ready my book, Interviewing Your Daughter’s Date, and he had interviewed a young man, and he talked about what he wanted to be when he finished growing up and was in adulthood. The young man said, “I might like to be a fireman.” And the father said, “That’s good. That’s good.”
They finished their conversation, and evidently the young man passed muster because he allowed his daughter to go on a date with this young man. And when the young man arrived at the door to pick up the father’s daughter, the father stepped forward with the daughter, and also with something unusual in his hands; he had a fire extinguisher.
(laughter)
He sent the fire extinguisher with his daughter and the young man --
Bob: You want to be a firefighter, here’s a tool, son.
Dennis: -- on the date! That’s a true story. Happened to one of our listeners and they wrote us to tell us about it. Here’s the point: As dads, we need to engage life where it’s happening with our kids. One of the big areas is a relationship with the opposite sex.
I haven’t written this book, because I haven’t finished interviewing all the guys yet that I have to interview, but I also think that dads need to have some heart-to-heart conversations with the young men who come to ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage.
I’ve told the young men who have come to me asking for my daughters’ hands in marriage that they could ask for the hand, but they couldn’t have it until they meet with me and have four conversations around issues I know they’re going to face after they get married.
Now here’s the point, Bob: After they get married, these conversations are off limits unless the young man invites you in to have these conversations. But until he gets the prize, as a father –
Bob: The door is wide open.
Dennis: -- I’m telling you, it’s not only open, it is our responsibility as daddies to protect our daughters before these young men get the prize, because after they get the prize, they may not be quite as teachable from you as a father as they currently are.
Bob: Well, and of course we’ve got copies of your book, Interviewing Your Daughter’s Date in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. And then Voddie Baucham wrote a book that’s like the one you’re talking about writing; he wrote a book called What He Must Be. . . If He Wants to Marry My Daughter, and we’ve got that in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center as well, so if our listeners are interested they can go online and get copies of those books.
But I think the big point you’re making here is that there’s a role that men play as protectors, and it’s a part of what authentic, courageous, mature masculinity looks like. And you cover that in the book that you’ve written called Stepping Up—A Call to Courageous Manhood, and I want to encourage our listeners to get a copy of that book this week.
In fact, if they can help us with a donation this week to support the ministry of FamilyLife Today, we’ll send the book to them as a thank you gift. All you have to do is go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and made a donation.
When you do, type the words “STEP UP” into the key code box on the online donation form, and we’ll send a copy of Dennis’ brand new book, Stepping Up—A Call to Courageous Manhood. We’ll send that out to you as a thank you gift for your donation. Or, call 1-800-FLTODAY, make a donation over the phone, and again, ask for a copy of the book, Stepping Up, and we’ll send it to you.
If you’d like to order multiple copies, those are available for sale. You can find out more online or when you call us, but we want to make the book available this week to any of you who will help support the ministry. We appreciate your financial support. We are listener supported; without your donations we could not continue on this station and on our network of stations all across the country. So thanks in advance for whatever you are able to do in supporting FamilyLife Today.
And with that, we’re going to wrap things up. Hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend. And I hope you can join us on Monday. Kay Arthur is going to be here, and we’re going to talk about the problem of pain and about what the Bible has to say about it. She has just written a new book called When the Hurt Runs Deep, and we’ll visit with her on Monday. Hope you can be here as well.
I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
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