We are facing a crisis of masculinity in our culture.

In the heart of every man is the question,
 

”Do I have what it takes?”

Ideally, a man’s father helps him answer this important question by providing opportunities during his formative years to demonstrate that he is a man through a formal initiation process. This initiation signifies the crossing over from boyhood to manhood. 

The crisis we are facing today is largely due to the fact that the majority of men have never experienced this type of initiation. As a result, we now have multiple generations of uninitiated boys in adult bodies who are trying to prove their manhood in a variety of destructive ways like work, possessions, sexual conquests, and the like. 

This question of having what it takes has become increasingly harder and harder for men to answer in large part because culture has become more and more schizophrenic on what it means to be a man.

Through sitcoms and movies, men are given two contrasting pictures of what it means to be a man. One is the sweet, bumbling nice guy who couldn’t fight his way out of a paper sack and would not have any idea of what to do in the face of a crisis situation. The other extreme presented is the loner who rides in to save the day in a crisis and then disappears when the crisis has been averted.

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Abolition of Man, has this to say about culture’s treatment of men,

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

This castration of men at every turn has never before been so blatant and extreme. 

All that culture seems to be able to agree on concerning what it means to be a man is actually not even true, but sends a loud-and-clear message to men…

Real men don’t cry.

Men buy into this lie that emotions are somehow a feminine quality and stuff or otherwise cover-up their feelings. At the same time, men are directly and indirectly told that they are supposed to have all the answers and are supposed to be able to solve all the problems. But they are not supposed to ask for help and are often ridiculed if they do not know how to do “manly” things like fixing a toilet, replacing an electrical outlet, or field-dressing a deer.

But if a man did not have a father or other mentor to teach him how to do these skills by the age of 18 or 21, most men start to cover up and hide the fact that they do not know how to do these things and begin to carefully avoid any situation that would expose where they are lacking.

So the answer to the question, "Do I have what it takes?" , becomes a very loud “No” inside these men. Their ‘proof’ is that they do not know how to change the oil in their car, fix a leaky faucet, or grill with charcoal. To help silence this relentless inner critic, men gravitate toward activities where they are proficient.

In addition, men carry emotional trauma from their past, yet, instead of honestly dealing with their pain and getting in touch with how it is impacting their lives, men spend energy covering up or numbing their pain... believing yet again that if they were a real man this emotional stuff would not bother them. 

So pornography, sex, work, alcohol, and gambling are some of the things men go to in order to deal with the pain and help them “feel” like a man.

Frederick Douglass once said,

“It is easier to build boys than to mend men.”

While this sentiment might hold true, it can’t be an either/or proposition, but must be a both/and endeavor. For who exactly will build the strong boys? It must be the mended men. 

We do not have the option to cast aside the broken and wounded men and focus solely on boys. After all, who will build the character of the next generation if it is not the mended men?

We must create a safe environment where wounded men can effectively face and deal with past trauma and pain so that they can become whole. If not, these wounded men will continue to wound others.