FUTURE MEN by Douglas Wilson (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
A FAN AND FLAME book review of FUTURE MEN by Douglas Wilson, an excellent roadmap to train boys (of all ages) to be the men God designed us to be.
Douglas Wilson. Future Men: Raising Boys to Fight Giants. Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, original 2001, revised 2012. 199 pp. $15.00.
Sometimes I am proud of myself. I’m proud because in the morning I woke up on time, put on my pants, read my Bible, and went to work. Then after work, I come home to the same woman I left in the morning—the woman I love and that loves me. Also, I played with my children and we ate dinner together. I’m proud because throughout the day I was—by most standards—a decent citizen, father, and husband. From pants on to pants off, I did a few things that are commendable.
Then I re-read Future Men by Douglas Wilson, and I remembered that the bar is higher, much higher. Biblical manhood is like a book on the very top of a giant bookshelf in the library—you know, the shelves that need a ladder to be reached, and when someone actually does reach them, the books are dusty through neglect. That’s like biblical manhood.
Yet I should be clear: it’s not just Wilson that sets the bar high. In the best possible way, Wilson and Future Men are derivative. In Future Men the Bible sets the ideal first. And just as in the Bible, Future Men is not merely full of unattainable ideals. The book is also full of empowering grace—a ladder, if you will—to reach up to the top shelf.
However, just because I’ve likened Wilson’s vision of biblical manhood to an old, dusty book, don’t expect old-fashioned, prudish advice. In fact, Future Men offers scriptural counsel that is hard to label, hard to classify. Let me give an example of what I mean. In the chapter on “Christian Liberty,” Wilson underscores that liberty is not merely freedom from something. In other words, because I have “liberty,” now I don’t have to do X, Y, or Z. Rather, true liberty is not only from something, but also for something, and in the Christian context, Wilson says, liberty is “for holiness.”
The end or purpose of Christian liberty is not to smoke or drink; liberty is given for the pursuit of holiness. Those who wave the banner of Christian liberty so that they might do whatever they might want to do have not understood the doctrine at all. The point is not to drink or smoke or dance according to your own whims, in the light of our own wisdom, but to do whatever we do before the Lord, with the increase of joy and holiness obvious to all. (77, emphasis original)
Okay, Wilson, liberty is for holiness; I get it.
But then, however, this same chapter concludes with a quote about parents teaching their children to drink alcohol:
But with all this said, wine was given to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15), and one of the duties a father has is that of teaching his son to drink. (81, emphasis original)
See what I mean? It’s hard to label, hard to pin down. Liberty is for holiness, but fathers should teach their sons to drink (in a way that brings glory to God, no doubt).
Thus, Future Men is a lot of things, but one thing it is not, is predicable. (As an aside, a few years ago, I was at a Desiring God Pastor’s Conference where Douglas Wilson was a keynote speaker. In one Q&A, do you know what Wilson told John Piper that he would like to see more of at Desiring God and more of in Piper’s theology of “Christian Hedonism”? Answer: Wilson said, I’d like to see more “beer and bratwursts.” The more familiar you are with these two men, the funnier that quote is.)
Future Men covers topics from sexual sin to money; and doctrinal meat to friends; and formal (Christian) education to effeminacy. Throughout the whole, readers will find zero footnotes and only passing references to other sources, which is actually a fresh treat to those that read a lot of non-fiction. But this (i.e. having no footnotes) doesn’t mean Wilson is not listening to the conversations of the world; he is. He’s simply not telegraphing it.
If I was to offer a critique of the book, at several points the topics seemed packed more tightly than the space allowed. This was especially true of Chapter 15 (“Fighting, Sports, and Competition”), which felt rushed and crammed.
One other thing to mention: Wilson is feisty, and at some point in the book, I promise you’ll be offended. It might even happen several times. That’s good; it means you hold your opinions strongly enough that you can recognize when they’re being critiqued. The real question, however, is a fundamental one: What do we do with our offenses? Are we humble and honest enough to investigate the scriptures to see if we are wrong? Or are we only looking to books, any books—the Bible included—to merely see our own convictions reaffirmed?
No surprise here, the echo-chamber approach has problems. But, for those who need a reminder that “the bar” of biblical masculinity is high—and reaching up to it is always a supernatural endeavor through the grace of Jesus Christ—Future Men provides this kind of reminder.
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A Favorite Passage from my Favorite Chapter
“In C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we are given a good example of a boy who was brought up poorly. Eustace Scrubb had stumbled into a dragon’s lair, but he did not know what kind of place it was. ‘Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair, but as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.’
“It is a standing rebuke for us that there are many Christians who have an open sympathy for the “true” books which Eustace read—full of true facts about government and rains and exports—and who are suspicious of great works of imagination, like Narnia stories, or The Lord of the Rings, or Treasure Island, because they are “fictional,” and therefore suspected of lying. The Bible requires us to be truthful above all things, they tell us, and so we should not tell our sons about dragon-fighting. Our sons need to be strong on drains and weak on dragons. The irony here is that the Bible, is the source of all truth, says a lot about dragons and giants, and very little about drains and exports…”
“Christians are a race of dragon-fighters. Our sons are born to this. Someone ought to tell them.” (Wilson, Future Men, “Giants, Dragons, and Books,” 101, 107, emphasis original)
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A Parsimonious Worldview
It’s always nice to hear different types of people affirming the same basic thing. Here is an extended passage from a book about writing (WORDSMITHY by Douglas Wilson) where the author echoes something I shared last week from author Anne Lamott in her book BIRD BY BIRD.
“Parsimonious” means being frugal to the point of stinginess. It means you believe that if you open your hand to give something away, then you’ll never get it back. So you keep the fist closed—nothing gets out. But there’s a negative flipside—nothing gets in.
A parsimonious worldview is like when my youngest daughter insists on going to bed with multiple pacifiers—a backup for a backup for a backup for a backup. The other day, I saw her walking around the house with one pacifier in her mouth, two in one hand, and three in the other. That’s six pacifiers! Just in case, I suppose. But don’t laugh; adults do the same thing, it just looks differently.
The world God has made is not a parsimonious world. Christians, of all people, should know this. God created the world not out of need, necessity, and deficit—but overflow. God didn’t need, he overflowed. And believing this (or not believing this) affects how you live, which in turn, of course, affects how you write.
Therefore, if you think of a gem of a phrase, metaphor, sentence, or paragraph, then give it away. Don’t go walking around with one pacifier in your mouth and five others in your pocket—just in case. Yes, storage and planning are commendable things, but when we hoard, we say something about our view of the universe and the God who created it.
Last week, I shared some writing tips from Anne Lamott, and one of them touched on this very point. She wrote, “If you give freely, there will always be more.”
This week, I thought I’d share an extended quote from Douglas Wilson, a favorite author of mine. In the quote, he says a similar thing. Enjoy.
Excerpt from Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson
“If a striking expression hits you, don’t hold back just because you are writing an email to your sister. If you think, ‘I need to save that kind of thing from my memoirs,’ you are a stingy writer with a heart like a walnut and you won’t have any memoirs to save it for. Who wants to read the Memoirs of Old Walnut Heart?
“Writing ability is a developed and honed skill, and the more you develop and hone it, the more that you will have. Writing as well as you can in every setting is the way to have reserves to draw on when it comes to writing for publication. Pianists don’t have a limited number of C major chords they’re allowed to play in the course of their lives. They aren’t afraid of running out.
“Writing is not a zero-sum game, and so you shouldn’t be afraid of using up all of the colorful adjectives. Extending yourself in any situation is the best way to be able to extend yourself in every situation.
“Zero-sum thinking is the result of people thinking that God is parsimonious. A bigger piece of pie here means a smaller piece of pie there. But our world is a world in which pies grow and those who give are those who receive back again…
“There are two basic approaches to life—one in which the world is a world of scarcity, given to us by the skinflint god, and the other in which the world is a world of endless possibilities, bestowed on us by a loving Father. Guess which world is more conducive to works of real and lasting imagination.” (Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life, 83-4, emphasis original)
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Fresh Words, Fresh Language, Fresh Blood
Not stale, not rehearsed, not clichéd language—we need fresh words, fresh language, fresh blood. In these, there is life. And in the pursuit of these, I launch a blog.
For some time, I contemplated starting a blog. When I made the decision to move forward, an unanticipated question arose: What shall be my first post? You always remember your first. Recently, while listening to an episode from Tony Reinke’s podcast Authors on the Line, I found my answer.
In the episode, Reinke interviewed Pastor Douglas Wilson (also posted on desiringgod.org here). The main talking point was the use of metaphor; but a subtheme, as least as I heard it, was how to communicate effectively.
Early in the interview, Reinke asked Wilson this question:
Was there an ‘ah-ha’ moment in your life or ministry when you discovered the importance of non-fiction imagination to communicate divine truth?
Here is Wilson’s response:
The first resolve was when we were first establishing Credenda as a magazine. I grew up in an evangelical household; I’ve been around missionary newsletters my whole life; I’ve seen Christian magazines and publications and books, etc., for a long, long time. And one of the things that they all had in common, or seemed to me to have in common, was their boringness, their blandness.
So in the acceptable world of evangelical discourse, you have the bland leading the bland… When we were first setting out with Credenda, this was a central resolve… I wanted to write about theology, and history, and doctrine, and culture in a way that was engaging and interesting—not boring. It might be infuriating or it might be exasperating, and you might be tearing your hair out, but you don’t want to put it down. (emphasis added)
Pastor Wilson’s point: Christian writers are [on the whole] bland and boring, and I do not want to be either.
It’s not my place to say whether the appraisal was accurate then or if it remains true today. I have not been around Christian publications long enough or broadly enough to say either way.
And part of me wonders if Wilson, if asked, would say his critique of a few decades ago still holds today. Perhaps he would say that it is still true, at least broadly, though there are many great exceptions. This would be my evaluation.
But to Wilson’s own takeaway (namely, to move beyond bland and boring), I feel a strong resonance. When he says, “I wanted to write about theology, and history, and doctrine, and culture in a way that was engaging and interesting—not boring,” I say, “Amen. Preach it, preacher.”
I see this as a sensible and timely pursuit, not simply because I personally like to read the type of writing Wilson wants to produce, but also because of the cultural shift away from the historic message of Christianity.
Two Ways to Lose the Christian Message
There are two ways to lose the historic message of Christianity.
On the one hand, we can lose it by cutting ties with the actual historic message—the centrality of the announcement of the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This is the death of severing the veins from the heart. Blood will not flow when the pathways are disconnected from the source. And of this type of ‘death,’ I do feel that I know enough to say that it is rampant today—a lifeless Christianity, not lifeless because Christianity is lifeless, but because it’s not Christianity. As an example of this ‘death,’ consider how often Christianity becomes mere rule keeping devoid of the gospel. That’s not Christianity; it’s mere religion disconnected from the source of salvation, the foundation of forgiveness: the person and work of Jesus.
However, on the other hand, we can lose the historic message of Christianity by saying the message in the same way that we have always said it. This is the death of recirculating oxygen-depleted blood.
I was reminded of this recently when I asked my young children what made someone a Christian. Their first answer: “Ask Jesus into your heart.”
Well, okay, I guess that could mean something helpful, but what does this phrase even mean? It’s an example of language that has lost meaning because it’s expected; it’s been recirculated too many times.
Not stale, not rehearsed, not clichéd language—we need fresh words, fresh language, fresh blood. In these, there is life. And in the pursuit of these, I launch a blog—a first I want to remember.
May God use it to “fan into flame” (2 Timothy 1:6) the craft of speaking and writing the historic message of Christianity in accessible and riveting language. May God use it to pump fresh, oxygen-rich blood into the body.
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