Men

Yet another study shows what should be obvious: teenagers need to spend time with dad. The study tracked over 200 families and found that time with both parents starts to decrease when kids reach the age of 15. But the University of Pennsylvania study also found that the time teens spend with their dads has critical benefits.

A CNN article stated, "The more time spent alone with their fathers, the higher their self-esteem; the more time with their dads in a group setting, the better their social skills." The article also said that time with mom helps too, but there's just something special about time with dad.

The researchers conjectured that one-on-one time with dad "may develop higher general self-worth [in teenagers] because their fathers go beyond social expectations to devote undivided attention to them."

The message is clear: dads can make a huge difference in their kids' lives.

High fives, fist bumps, and words of encouragement are given freely by the Flash Dads. The Flash Dads program was launched seven years ago by Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, and there are now several dozen members. The men go to elementary schools across Louisville and line up to greet students, cheering them on and getting the day started on a positive note.

Participant Roger Collins said, The Flash Dads are "community members showing up for students who sometimes don't have anybody showing up for them." Another member of the Flash Dads, James Bogan, heard about it through his grandson, and signed up so he could surprise him one day at school. "It's contagious and I've been doing it ever since," he said.

The Flash Dads take their duties as role models and mentors to heart, and Bogan said the students know "we're not just there that day. We're there whenever you need us. It's not a one-day thing, it's a lifetime thing."

Picture this: you’re nestled comfortably in your airline seat cruising towards your holiday destination when a flight attendant’s voice breaks through the silence: “Ladies and gentlemen, both pilots are incapacitated. Are there any passengers who could land this plane with assistance from air traffic control?”

If you think you could manage it, you’re not alone. Surveys indicate about 30% of adult Americans think they could safely land a passenger aircraft with air traffic control’s guidance. Among male respondents, the confidence level rose to nearly 50%.

We’ve all heard stories of passengers who saved the day when the pilot became unresponsive. For instance, in 2022, Darren Harrison managed to land a twin-engine aircraft in Florida – after the pilot passed out – with the guidance of an air traffic controller. However, such incidents tend to take place in small, simple aircraft. Flying a much bigger and heavier commercial jet is a completely different game.

Takeoffs and landings are arguably the most difficult tasks pilots perform, and are always performed manually. Only on very few occasions, can a pilot use autopilot to land the aircraft for them. This is the exception, and not the rule.

Landing is complicated, and requires having precise control of the aircraft’s direction and descent rate. To land successfully, a pilot must keep an appropriate speed while simultaneously managing gear and flap configuration, adhering to air traffic regulations, communicating with air traffic control, and completing a number of paper and digital checklists.

Once the aircraft comes close to the runway, they must accurately judge its height, reduce power, and adjust the rate of descent – ensuring they land on the correct area of the runway. On the ground, they will use the brakes and reverse thrust to bring the aircraft to a complete stop before the runway ends. This all happens within just a few minutes.

Both takeoff and landing are far too quick, technical, and concentration-intensive for an untrained person to pull off. So, if you’ve never even learned the basics of flying, your chances of successfully landing a passenger aircraft with air traffic control’s help are close to zero.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Pride; Self-confidence; Self-exaltation – This illustration speaks to the overconfidence of the human nature. We have been encouraged to overestimate our abilities and underestimate our shortcomings in today’s culture; 2) Criticism; Pastor; Minister – This could also apply to a church setting in which members criticize the performance of the pastor and leadership and often have the thought “I could do their job so much better!”

Why are so many young men so angry online?

Men are trailing women in college and in the workplace, fewer of their relationships are leading to marriage, and many men feel masculinity is under attack. When young men turn to places like YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) seeking male solidarity, they often find more rage. “It may look like we have an epidemic of male anger, but under the anger is loneliness and sadness,” says Justin Baldoni, a filmmaker and actor behind Man Enough, a podcast about masculinity.

Often the result is depression, and sometimes worse. The suicide rate among men is about four times higher than that of women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Approximately 65% of men in the US say they’re hesitant to seek professional help for stress, anxiety, or depression, according to a study this month from Cleveland Clinic. And the respondents who expressed such reluctance were twice as likely as other men to spend several hours a day on social media.

Lew Wilcox and Bobby Rohrbach Jr. met in the summer of 1962, riding their bikes together in a small southern Ohio town.

These days, every Saturday, one picks the other up and they go out for breakfast, run errands, and talk about families, home repairs and how the world is changing. If one can’t remember a place or name, the other can fill in because they so often lived the same story. They didn’t outgrow the other or leave the other behind and still live within about five miles of their childhood homes. “I have a lot of friends but there’s something special about our friendship,” says Lew, 75, of his friend, Bobby, 73.

Yet as important as they are, people have fewer close friendships than they once did. Forty-percent of Americans say they don’t have a best friend at all, up from 25% in 1990. The best-friend gap is more pronounced for men, who typically have fewer close friends than women do. The percentage of men without any close friends jumped fivefold to 15% in 2021 from 3% in 1990, according to the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey.

Michael Addis, director of the Research Group on Men’s Well-Being, says, “We were taught for generations to focus on work, family, and productivity. Don’t share what is really going on inside with other men.”

Time together deepens bonds. Becoming a best friend takes 300 hours of togetherness, one study reported. Those fortunate enough to have friends through the decades develop a common history that fresh friendships often don’t.

Researcher and author Rodney Reeves has been studying trends in how men are faring in America. Here’s how he summarizes one of his troubling statistics:

One [statistic] stopped me in my tracks was from a 2018 survey conducted by Pew. The sample size was small, and made use of a word-association methodology, so I haven’t cited it in most of my work. But I still wonder about it. Every single respondent thought that “masculine” was a negative term when applied to women. That’s not surprising.

What was shocking was that most people—four out of five—thought the term “masculine” was negative when applied to men. (The term “feminine” was not mentioned often enough to make it into the analysis.) This finding is consistent with another survey finding that half of men, of all races, think that society “punishes men just for acting like men.”

Author Brené Brown was at a book signing where a woman and her husband approached her with books to get autographed. After Brown signed the books, the wife turned to leave and said, “Come on, hon” to her husband. “No,” he replied, “I want to talk with her for a second.”

Uncomfortable, Brown just waited. The man then looked at her and said, “I really love all this stuff you're talking about, this shame, and being perfect, and having to be someone we're not, and having to reach out. It is really powerful. But I never heard you mention anything about men.”

She felt relieved and said: “I don't study men.” He immediately responded, “That's convenient.” Nervously, she asked, “Why convenient?”

“It's convenient you don't talk about men,” he said, “Because when we reach out, when we tell our stories, when we share our shame experiences, we get the emotional s____ beat out of us.”

Brown was about to reply when he added, “Before you say anything about those dads, and those coaches, or about those bosses and mean bully friends, let me explain this to you. My wife and my three daughters, you just signed books for, they would rather see me die on top of my White Horse than see me fall off.” And then he just left.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story reveals the stresses men face today—the pressure to stay on your “white horse,” to maintain your image of strength and invulnerability, rather than to trust in God’s grace and be vulnerable in Christian community.

Men have fewer friends than women and are at a greater risk of isolation. The gap has widened in recent years. A 2021 report identified a male “friendship recession,” with 15% of men saying they have no close friends, up from 3% in 1990.

The researcher of this study concluded that in 1990, nearly half of young men reported that when facing a personal problem, they would reach out first to their friends. Today, only 22% of young men lean on their friends in tough times.

In his novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck’s character Crooks pinpoints why this matters so much to men. At one point in the novel Crooks tells another man, “A guy needs somebody … To be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody … I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”

The writer and actor Daniel Beaty recalled a childhood game he played until he was three. When Beaty’s father knocked at his bedroom door in the morning, Beaty would pretend to be asleep, before jumping gleefully up into his father’s arms. Until the morning his father did not knock, because he was in prison. Three decades later, Beaty performed his poem “Knock, Knock,” which includes the following lines:

25 years later I write these words for the little boy

in me who still await his papa‘s knock …

Papa, come home cause I miss you

I miss you waking me up in the morning and telling me you love me.

Papa, come home, because there are things that I

Don’t know and I thought maybe you could teach me:

How to shave, how to dribble a ball, how to talk to a lady, how to walk like a man …

In his book Of Boys and Men, researcher Richard Reeves notes that until around 2015, the phrase “toxic masculinity” was just mentioned a few times in academic articles. But by 2017, there were thousands of mentions, mostly in the mainstream media.

The term is almost never defined, and is instead used to simply signal disapproval. Lacking a consistent definition, the phrase now refers to any male behavior that the user disapproves of, from the tragic to the trivial. It has been blamed, among other things, for mass shootings, gang violence, online trolling, climate change, the financial crisis, and an unwillingness to wear a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lumping together terrorists and delinquents, the phrase ultimately poisons the very idea of masculinity itself. The book contains interviews from dozens of adolescent boys about what they like about being a boy. Most boys couldn’t even answer the question. One college sophomore told the author, “That’s interesting. I never thought about that. You hear a lot more about what is wrong with guys.”

In his book Of Boys and Men, researcher Richard Reeves writes, “Men are much more likely to commit suicide than women. This is a worldwide long-standing pattern.” Reeves quotes an article from 2019 in Harper’s Magazine that talked about the sense of purposelessness among modern men. The author of the article states, “Several of my male friends struggled with addiction and depression, or other conditions that could be named, but the more common complaint was something vaguer …. A quiet desperation that, if I were forced to generalize, seemed to stem from a gnawing sense of purposelessness.”

Another study on male suicides tracked the words or phrases that men who have attempted suicide most often used to describe themselves. At the top of the list were two words: useless and worthless.

In late 2021, a young man by the name of Kaivan Shroff published an article entitled, “Men like me benefit from safe abortion access.” By “men like me,” Shroff clearly means successful men, men who are too busy to care about any aspect of their sexual activity other than enjoyment, let alone take responsibility for it. Thanks to abortion, neither the needs and desires of the woman involved nor the life of the child who might come into being must enter his calculation.

According to his lengthy bio, Shroff is very important. He’s a senior adviser to D.C. non-profit and a former staffer for Hillary Clinton campaign’s digital team. Not to mention he has an MBA from Yale and a BA from Brown—and, he is about to graduate from law school. He certainly doesn’t need a child to complicate all of that success.

Shroff tells us, “In many ways, it feels like my life is just about to begin. It would be a terrible time to have a baby.” He wants to have kids someday. But he’s not in a relationship and after suffering through the pandemic, he’s ready “to eke out and enjoy every last minute of my 20s.” So, while he’s busy sowing his wild oats, any children he happens to father will just have to meet their untimely end, at least until the time is right for him.

Legal scholar Erika Bachiochi writes, “While pregnant, a woman is carrying a new and vulnerable human being within her. Unlike a biological father, a pregnant woman cannot just walk away; a pregnant woman must engage in a life-destroying act.”

Abortion, in other words, facilitates the sexual desires of cowardly, irresponsible men to abandon their unborn child and their child’s mother—while encouraging women to “free” themselves from the tyranny of their biology by committing an act of violence against their unborn child.

But what Shroff doesn’t acknowledge is that abortion isn’t cost-free. While it enables him to walk away from sex with nary a consequence, it requires much of women, much that doesn’t set them “free” at all.

Across the world, men are learning that the easiest way to cure a bout of social isolation is not by talking face-to-face, but shoulder-to-shoulder.

When Phillip Jackson moved back to England from Australia, he was 67, and immediately felt like a stray dog in his native town of Barnsley. He realized that many of those in town at his age had their own problems with social isolation. So, he launched a Barnsley UK chapter of an Australian community movement called “Men’s Shed,” which has expanded across the world, and includes more than 50,000 men.

Capitalizing on most men’s appreciation of woodworking, a Men’s Shed is essentially a support group for men with not enough friends or too much time on their hands. The original concept was to get together and make things out of wood. But in reality, it’s about plugging into the social fabric of a community, whether that’s building a park bench, or listening to the problems someone is going through in their marriage.

Jackson said, “It’s like the shed at the bottom of your garden. But all your friends are there. It’s a break from people’s weekly routines. It gets them out and talking to similar people.” 70-year-old Mike Jenn is a member of a United States Men’s Shed. He said, “We have this kind of male pride thing. I can look after myself. I don’t need to talk to anyone, and it’s a complete fallacy. Not communicating helps to kill us.”

The age range of “Shedders” as Jackson calls them, tends to vary from 22 to 87, which makes sense because anyone can feel lonely at times. He adds that the members come from all walks of life—ex-coalminers to shopkeepers.

Not only can Men’s Sheds be a great place for learning and laughing, they can literally save lives, as loneliness has been shown to shave years off of one’s life, elderly or young.

12-year-old Brody Ridder arrived home from school with a nearly empty yearbook, only managing to acquire the signatures of two teachers and two classmates despite asking for more. Ridder decided to sign his own yearbook with a note to himself: "Hope you make some more friends.”

Ridder's mom, Cassandra Ridder, had reached her breaking point. Her son's message to himself was a reflection of months’ worth of bullying her son experienced at school in a Denver suburb. Brody's hurt and pain inspired her to share a message with the parent's Facebook group for the school:

My poor son. Doesn't seem like it's getting any better. 2 teachers and a total of 2 students wrote in his yearbook. Despite Brody asking all kinds of kids to sign it. So, Brody took it upon himself to write to himself. My heart is shattered. Teach your kids kindness.

After sharing the post with the school community, Cassandra posted to her personal Facebook, wanting to keep her friends updated on what was happening. That is when the support exploded; celebrities, companies, parents, kids all reached out online and in real life to show Brody support.

Among those to see Cassandra's message was Paul Rudd, who plays Ant-Man in the hit films Ant-Man and Avengers: Endgame. Rudd FaceTimed Ridder and sent him a handwritten note: “It's important to remember that even when life gets tough that things get better. There are so many people that love you and think you are the coolest kid there is — me being one of them!" Brody also received a signed Ant-Man helmet from the actor.

When it comes to countering negative messages about women from social media influencers like former kickboxer Andrew Tate, young men are tapping into underutilized resource--each other.

In an interview with CNN, Ted Bunch affirms that relational conversations are key elements that help neutralize harmful messages linking masculinity with violence. Bunch is the founder of the anti-violence organization A Call to Men.

Bunch says, “(Misogyny) teaches men that aggression, violence, and the domination of others is somehow embedded in their DNA. It’s not. ... Part of the problem is, these men don’t listen to or respect the experiences of women. But they listen to each other. If men speak up, other men will respond to that.”

Bunch also acknowledges that positive messages from influential male celebrities also helps make a difference, citing helpful comments and campaigns from actors Benedict Cumberbatch (equal pay for women) and Justin Baldoni (healthy fatherhood).

“There are more and more men doing this, because men are realizing this way of thinking doesn’t work for us,” Bunch says. “It doesn’t feel good.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

As Christians we are called to treat each other with respect and kindness. When men in our community fall short of that standard, we can help call them to a higher standard.

After multiple fights at Southwood High School in Shreveport, Louisiana, resulted in the arrests of 23 students, a group of about 40 dads stepped up to put a stop to the violence. Known as Dads on Duty, the men work shifts, so there are always several fathers on campus from the time students first arrive to when they go home for the day. The dads are there to lift spirits, tell jokes, dole out advice, and just let the kids know there's someone looking out for them.

Michael LaFitte said he started Dads on Duty because "we decided the best people who can take care of kids are … us." Since the group formed, there have been no fights on campus, with one student explaining, "The school has just been happy, and you can feel it." Dads on Duty will have a permanent presence at Southwood High, and the group would like to see other chapters form across the country.

In a recent issue of Wired, Zak Jason writes:

In the 2003 Major League Baseball season, Oreo Queefs stood five-foot-zero, weighed 385 pounds, and, impossibly, stole 214 bases, obliterating the century-old single-season record of 138. A walrus with the legs of a cheetah, Queefs also regularly blasted the ball 500 feet to the opposite field. Over just two seasons with the Florida Marlins, he batted .680, hit 203 home runs, and was ejected for charging the mound 46 times. Then, before even reaching his super alien prime, Queefs vanished into thin air.

A few weeks ago, I received a text from the Marlins manager about what happened to the former Golden Glove winner. Queefs has fallen on hard times. The now 43-year-old lives with his uncle in a rented trailer in Nevada, where they run a failing off-off-Strip sausage stand called Queefs’ Kielbasa Kiosk. He is twice divorced, hasn’t seen his 15-year-old son in 12 years, and is on probation for attempted robbery of a bait-and-tackle shop.

In reality, Oreo Queefs exists only on a PlayStation 2 memory card, now likely corroding in a landfill. The manager is my childhood friend Chris, onetime owner of the EA Sports game MVP Baseball 2003. We conceived Queefs one summer night the only way two 13-year-old boys know how: (via) the game’s Create-a-Player screen. We chose his height, weight, speed, and batting hot zones. We watched with pride as he eviscerated the league. I haven’t played any of these games in a decade, but over the years my friends and I have updated one another on the lives of our created characters. They’ve all plummeted from glory.

The media has been overanalyzing why millennials can’t grow up ever since the oldest millennials have been legal grown-ups. Still, I can’t help but take the fact that at 32—an age when Jesus Christ was leading his friends and much of humanity to eternal salvation—my friends and I text one another during the workday about the video game characters we created when we were teenagers.

The writer Sam Anderson recently quipped that “the world of sports media is basically where American men go to avoid therapy.” As kids, we lived our dreams vicariously through video game characters record-shattering successes. As adults, we process our real setbacks and failures through their imagined setbacks and failures.

Layoffs, anxieties, illnesses, divorce, fertility issues—these are a few of the realities of adulthood that men are generally less than forthcoming about. Instead of discussing these directly, they cope through abstraction. When we talk about our created characters becoming has-beens, we’re (childishly) saying we’re not children anymore. When we bring them up, they finally open the door for us to talk intimately about struggles in our own lives. These children of our childhood are now ad hoc therapists of adulthood.

Former Boston Red Sox player, Bernie Carbo, tells the story of going from hitting a home run in the 1975 World Series to drug addiction, two divorces, and considering suicide:

I stood in the batter’s box, awaiting the next pitch. It was Game 6 of the World Series. My team, the Boston Red Sox, trailed the Cincinnati Reds by three runs in the eighth inning. And we needed to win this game to stay alive. I was sweating bullets. With two men on base, I could even the score with a single swing. I took a swing and watched as the ball sailed over the centerfield wall. A home run!

You might imagine that hitting a clutch home run in a crucial World Series contest would be the defining moment of my life. The truth, however, is that I was totally miserable. I was addicted to drugs—I had even used some before the game. I spent the next few years bouncing around from team to team until I finally washed out of the big leagues altogether. I was only 32, and my career was over.

Over the next eight years I continued to use drugs. My wife and I bought a home in Florida, hoping to settle down. But for both of us, the drugs continued to flow. Finally, I told my wife we needed to slow down, but she refused—and filed for divorce. I continued using other drugs and abusing alcohol.

(After a second marriage and divorce) I met a former major leaguer, Dalton Jones who told me about Jesus and explained the difference Jesus could make in a life as troubled as mine. I prayed that day, and I believe Jesus began to work within my heart. Even so, I persisted in using drugs, to the point of losing all hope. Sitting in my home, I was ready to take my own life. I felt like I had tried everything, and I was worthless.

After suffering a panic attack, I was sent to a hospital, where I met a retired pastor. The pastor spoke with me about the Bible and he taught me about Jesus and how true healing could happen if I would trust in him. I grew in my understanding of what it means to live for Christ every day and to rely on him for forgiveness and strength.

In 1994, I had one final relapse, which plunged me into a sea of guilt and despair. Then I met Tammy, the woman who became my wife. She reminded me about Jesus and the atonement for sins through his death on the cross. And I believed once more that his blood was sufficient to cover all my transgressions and that we can depend on him for the grace we need to overcome the strongholds of addiction or any other habitual sin.

We’ve now been married for 26 years, and I’ve been clean the entire time. I want others to know there is hope! There is a way out of the deadly seduction of abusing drugs. Not only does Jesus Christ offer the way out, but he also offers the way into a life more joyful and abundant than anyone could imagine. Truly, our God is an awesome God.

Editor’s Note: Bernie Carbo is the co-founder of Diamond Club Ministry which is dedicated to bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to young people through evangelistic baseball camps.

The never-ending months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has forced many men to recognize the superficiality of their “friendships” and see the need for something more substantial. Time with the guys was normally spent talking football and numerous other shallow discourses. Family, personal relationships, and how they were really doing was rarely if ever brought up.

Men have always avoided seeming needy and vulnerable. It is not the manly thing to do. Numerous studies have shown the only emotional intimacy for many men is with the women in their lives.

Professor Geoffrey Greif recently authored a book about male friendship. Male friendships are often “shoulder-to-shoulder” interactions, such as watching sports or playing video games, “while women’s interactions are more face-to-face, such as grabbing a coffee. ... Because of this, many men have probably had a harder time than women figuring out how to adapt their friendships in a pandemic that is keeping them apart.”

An in-depth piece in The Washington Post said,

Dozens of men shared stories about Zoom poker games, neighborhood-dad WhatsApp chains, and Fantasy Football leagues where casual chats about sports and politics have suddenly led to deep conversations — about the struggles of virtual schooling, family illness, breakups, births, wedding postponements and job losses. ... Some men said their friendships have begun to look more like those of their wives and girlfriends. For the first time in their lives, they’re going on walks with male friends just to catch up. They’re FaceTiming old college friends and checking in on neighbors — not only to talk about the NBA draft picks or their children’s soccer schedule — but to ask how they’re doing.

During the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson marched more than two thousand Tennessee volunteers from Nashville to New Orleans. With bravado they fought the decisive Battle of New Orleans. The fighting took its toll on Jackson's troops, but sickness proved to be the deadliest and most dangerous enemy. One hundred fifty soldiers became gravely ill, fifty-six of whom could not even stand.

Dr. Samuel Hogg asked the general what he wanted him to do. "To do, sir?" Jackson answered. "You are to leave not a man on the ground." It wasn't official code of conduct yet, but Jackson embodied the military motto "Leave no man behind."

Andrew Jackson ordered his officers to give up their horses to those who were sick, and the general was the first to do so. Jackson marched 531 miles on foot. Somewhere between New Orleans and Nashville, he earned the nickname "Old Hickory," the same name under which he would campaign for president fifteen years later.

Before winning the White House, the seventh president of the United States is alleged to have fought as many as thirteen duels, which explains the thirty-seven pistols in his gun collection. I'm not advocating the reintroduction of dueling, but it does reveal something about Jackson's character-Old Hickory wasn't one to shrink from a fight, especially when honor was at stake!

Jackson said, “I was born for the storm. And the calm does not suit me.” When the sea is calm, anyone can captain the ship in that situation. But when a perfect storm threatens to capsize your marriage or drown your dreams, you must play the man. A true man doesn't sit back. He steps up and steps in. He fights the good fight, even when it seems like all is lost. Why? Because a true man is born for the storm.