Here's our guys playing marching band! Luke thought up the hats and our neighbor Pete gave us the feathers.
I hear the phrase a lot: ”well boys will be boys”. It almost always refers to boys doing something foolhardy or violent. I had a conversation with a pastor about why his pre-school sons play with fake guns, knives, and swords. He said, “boys will be boys, if we don’t give them guns they will just make them out of sticks or something else”. It is a cultural assumption that boys only want to play with weapons and be violent. All because our culture only offers violent role-models to our boys and churns out innumerable ways to make-believe violence does not make it right or pleasing to God.
Is violence okay?
I’ve already written about how God hates violence. Let me reiterate: God HATES violence. Read the first six chapters of Genesis. Chapter 1 screams out like a beautiful symphony “it is good!”. God loves his creation and saw it as “very good”. But then 6 chapters later God DESTROYS all of it. With a great flood He kills all the birds. animals, and people he said were “good”. Why? It tells us plainly: ”Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.” (Genesis 6:11 ESV).
God hates violence so much that he is willing to decimate his entire beloved and “good” creation in order to wash away that corruption from the earth. (Oh what must God think of the world today! Thank the Lord for the covenant symbolized by the rainbow!)
How should we instruct our boys?
I think Bibically we should instruct our boys like Solomon instructed his son:
Do not plan evil against your neighbor,who dwells trustingly beside you.Do not contend with a man for no reason,when he has done you no harm.Do not envy a man of violenceand do not choose any of his ways,for the devious person is an abomination to the LORD,but the upright are in his confidence.(Proverbs 3:29-32 ESV)
Rather than allowing our sons to pretend “planning evil”, mimic “contending”, and role-play being the “man of violence”, we should be instructing them in ways of righteousness. We want our sons to be “upright” men, not “devious persons” who are an “abomination to the Lord”. We wouldn’t let our boys make-believe playing “rapists”, “prostitutes”, or “idol-worshippers”, why would we let them make-believe playing murderers? Yes it is just make-believe, but their imaginative play informs their real life and we cannot forfeit the opportunity to help shepherd them in that.
Our son loves playing with swords. He especially liked to pretend to be David fighting Goliath. We let him for quite awhile, as I bought into the “boys will be boys” lie that Satan has sown among God’s people. Now we instruct him to be a peacemaker and talk about how Jesus is the “Prince of Peace”. We talk about loving our enemies and returning evil with good.
A Better Vision for our Boys
I think we should both instruct and model a better vision for our boys. A vision of trusting God and loving our neighbor. A vision of being men after God’s heart who work hard, are responsible, are respectful, serve heartily, listen graciously, honor others, share Christ boldly, and put God as first in their life. We need to instruct our boys on the reality of eternity, teaching them to tell the “bad guys” about Jesus so they can go to heaven rather than trying to kill them (which would just send them to hell).
By God’s grace, we’re trying to paint this vision for our son. Instead of role-playing being a warrior, he now most often chooses more constructive make-believe professions like worship leader, preacher, construction worker, bus driver, and restaurant owner. As I write right now he’s in the bath playing fisherman, imagining he’s out fishing with Jesus and Peter.
Let’s together point our boys to a better vision for our boys, a vision of being like Jesus Christ.
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