There is a generation of Christian boys being trained to apologize.
The training starts at home.
It accelerates at school.
The church baptizes it.
By twenty, he will not stand up for himself, his sister, his wife, or his
faith.
And his father will be proud he was “non-threatening.”
We made non-threatening a virtue.
We did it in the church before anybody else did it in the school.
We sit our boys in pews. We tell them to be gentle. We tell them to be kind.
We tell them to be quiet.
We tell them Jesus would not hit anyone.
Then we wonder why they cannot stand up.
The wolves are not impressed by his manners.
The wolves are deciding whether he can be eaten quietly.
David was not non-threatening.
“And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead.” — 1 Samuel 17:49 KJV
David was eight years younger than the men in armor.
His rocks were sharper than their swords.
The Sunday School teachers love to draw David’s slingshot.
They forget to mention what it did to a man’s skull.
The cost of a non-threatening son.
He comes home from school. He says nothing.
A boy twice his size took his lunch. He let him.
The teacher congratulated him for using his words.
The teacher does not have to live with him.
The teacher does not have to teach him at fourteen what he should have known at eight.
Your daughter is watching too.
She is watching her brother decide that the world is something to apologize to.
She is making notes about what kind of man she will marry.
She will marry one who looks like her brother.
And she will resent him for the same reason she resents her brother.
Here is the part most men do not want to read.
The father raising a non-threatening son usually does not know the Bible
himself.
He can quote John 3:16.
He cannot tell you what book Phinehas is in.
He cannot explain why Christ braided that whip.
He cannot walk his son through the doctrine of the Holy Ghost without
Googling.
He never learned.
His father never learned.
The pulpit watered it down because watered-down sells tickets.
So now the man who should be teaching his son how to stand has nothing to hand him.
He has a few verses he memorized as a child.
He has a worship playlist.
He has guilt.
That is not a weapon.
That is a confession.
This is why I wrote the book.
Most “study Bibles” are written by professors for other professors.
Most “systematic theology” requires a Greek lexicon and a decoder ring.
Most men in the pew have neither.
And the men who could teach them have quit trying.
So I wrote the doctrine plain.
135 pages.
Salvation. The church. Prophecy. The Holy Ghost. What God expects of a man at home.
No Greek word studies. No seminary jargon. No charts that need a decoder ring.
Plain enough for a working father to read at the kitchen table after his kids
go to bed.
Strong enough to put in his son’s hand when the boy turns twelve.
Pay what you want. $10 minimum.
If $10 is what you have, that is the book.
If the Lord lays more on your heart, that gets it into more hands.
Christ braided the whip.
He braided it Himself.
He walked into the temple.
He flipped tables that other men were sitting at.
He drove men out with a weapon He made with His own hands.
You will not find this Jesus in your son’s children’s church curriculum.
You will not find this Jesus on your wife’s coffee mug.
The Jesus they sold you was a soft Jesus.
The Jesus they sold you would not have flipped the table.
He would have asked the room for consensus.
That Jesus is not in the Book.
That Jesus is in the marketing.
So what does the father do?
You teach him to use his words.
And you teach him what to do when his words are not enough.
You teach him to be patient.
And you teach him that patience has a limit, and the limit is set by Scripture,
not by the principal’s office.
You teach him to forgive.
And you teach him that forgiveness does not require him to extend his throat.
You teach him, David.
You teach him Phinehas.
You teach him, Samson.
You teach him Christ braiding the whip.
You teach him what the Bible actually says about manhood.
Not what the pulpit reduced it to, so the offering plate would stay heavy.
If you do not know what the Bible actually says about manhood, that is the
first thing to fix.
Not for him. For you.
He will not learn it from you if you have not learned it yourself.
Paul wrote it to the church.
“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” — 1 Corinthians 16:13 KJV
He did not write that to the army.
He did not write that to the prison.
He wrote it to the church.
To men sitting in pews.
He told them to act like men.
He did not tell them to be gentle and quiet.
He told them to be strong.
Teach him.
You teach your son to be strong.
You teach your daughter what to look for in a husband.
You teach yourself that the wolf is not impressed by manners.
The world will eat what you refuse to fight for.
You will not get to argue your way out of that.
Your son is not safer when he is “non-threatening.”
Your son is in a herd.
The thinning has started.
Quit you like men.
Be strong.
— Adam
P.S. The Plain Bible Manual is out this week.
135 pages. Bible doctrine plain enough for a working father
to read at the kitchen table. Strong enough to hand to his son.
Salvation. The church. Prophecy. The Holy Ghost. What God
expects of a man at home. No Greek word studies. No
seminary jargon.
Pay what you want. $10 minimum. Every dollar past the minimum
gets it into another father’s hands.
→ The Plain Bible Manual
