Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we're asking the question, why don't we let boys cry? This is based on an article in The Atlantic this week called what do boys need by Joshua Coleman.

And it was looking at the cultural misconception, which, really is based in two things. One, the idea that boys do not have similar emotional range or emotional wiring as girls, and second, that growing, up or raising boys requires suppressing whatever emotional range they have, both of which, by the way, are being debunked by research. The truth is that boys are actually more emotionally fragile than girls at a young age and require more, not less, emotional nurturing, that there is no equivalent to getting boys to suppress their emotions to them maturing. And in fact, the opposite is true that studies are showing that teaching boys to suppress their emotions actually results in an inability to regulate emotions into adulthood. It it creates what's called masculine discrepancy stress, which is, the disconnect of sorts between the way I feel and my ability to articulate that feeling or even deal with those feelings.

If as a boy growing up, I'm taught to hide my feelings, then as an adult, I won't know how to deal with them. And and increasingly, researchers are linking that to violence, insecurity, anxiety as men struggle to do what they were never taught to do as boys. In essence, what research is saying is that when we tell our sons to stop crying, to be a man, to toughen up, we might be making life easier in the short term for us, but we're making it infinitely harder in the long run for them. Now I wanna say two things here as we turn towards how the Bible would have us think about this. I mean, one is there's nothing wrong with wanting to raise masculine sons.

The Bible paints a picture of masculinity that is robust and even aggressive. Some of the main heroes of the Bible story are hunters and warriors. There's nothing wrong with wanting to raise boys to be boys, wanting to raise boys to be men, men who are strong, men who are tough, men who, defend, men who work hard. Those are admirable traits. But the Bible also never equates any of those things with suppressing your emotions.

Consider, for example, that one of the most foremost warriors in the Bible story is king David, David who slew Goliath, David who they used to sing about if Saul has killed his thousands, David has killed his tens of thousands, and yet David's most significant contribution to the Bible is a collection of poems. So David was a warrior poet, a man who was fierce and yet in touch with his emotions. Let me lay some theology down for you. The Bible tells us that both men and women in Genesis one, twenty six and twenty seven were made in the image of God. That although gender is distinct and different, both bear the image of God.

That's important for this conversation because in the Bible, you see God responding to things in a way that shows where we get our emotional range from. God responds in anger. Of course, his anger is righteous. God responds in compassion. God responds in mercy.

These things aren't purely emotional, but they always carry with them a kind of emotion. You see this, by the way, in the New Testament in Jesus, Jesus who models both tears and tenderness. Standing outside the tomb of Lazarus, he weeps. He looks over the city of Jerusalem and wants to gather it the way a mother hen would gather her chickens. Jesus is often struck by feelings, a feeling of of despair as he heads towards the cross, a feeling of brokenheartedness for the lostness of the people around him.

Jesus does not display a stoic kind of masculinity. He is masculine. He's also in touch with his feelings. He even tells us in Matthew five that meekness is something that we are called to. Blessed are the meek.

Meekness isn't necessarily equivalent to crying, but it is equivalent to a soft kind of supple compliance, a a desire to be used by God and a sensitivity to those around you. The Bible even calls fathers in in Psalm one zero three thirteen to display compassion equivalent to the compassion God has shown to them. That's something that fathers do to serve their families is to actually model a soft and compassionate heart. That's pretty tough to do if no one ever taught you to have one growing up as a boy. Even the fruit of the spirit in Galatians five, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, again, isn't reducible down to pure emotion, but contains element of emotion.

Men, we have to do a better job, first, of understanding and expressing and regulating our own emotions and teaching our sons to do that as well. Next time your son cries, give him a hug. Let him cry it out. Then talk to him about toughness and masculinity. Tears, tenderness, and toughness.

Now that is a vision of masculinity. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!