I Need Daddy (And So Do You)

What if one generation blessed the next?

“Where Have the Good Men Gone?”  created quite a stir when Kay Hymowitz posed the question in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial.  (Feb. 19, 2011) Her basic thesis is that lack of responsibilities and an entertainment culture gives today’s young man no reason to grow up. 

The observant person knows that our boorish culture does not produce the best in men or women.  The best people I’ve ever known have been people with religious conviction of the Judeo-Christian sort.  These days, that kind of talk can get me branded as a hate-monger or bigot, and indeed has elicited such descriptors from members of my own extended family.

This got me to wondering what is “out there” to call boys into manhood, much as in the days when rites of passage were the norm.  In most cultures across time, boys have been separated from their mothers at a certain age in order to live as men and learn what it is to be a man. 

Then I saw a video that provided a clue.  It’s at www.achosengeneration.org, and there on the left is a series of videos called “Show Me How.” Each one is about 4 minutes long.  Click on  “A Father’s Blessing.”   There is a real blessing being done there, and the men are not acting.  It’s real.   

Now, the interesting part.  That crying man being told that he is a child of God, that this substitute father figure loves him just the way he is, that he is already sufficient, and a valuable member of his household.  He is told that his role in this world is vital and that he is absolutely part of God’s master plan.  That grown man is crying like a baby and receiving something he has needed for a very long time, because this man is already middle-aged.  What he is receiving is affirmation.  A call to manhood.  You don’t see any titillation, crude talk, or entertainment here.  It’s all basic to life, like food.  Love, the kind that sees your best, your potential, your true purpose in life. 

This is the ministry of Rev. Chuck Stecker, a man who experienced this for himself. Always trying to prove he was good enough, but never feeling that he was, Chuck  lived in a way that left him unfulfilled.  One day, also in mid-life, Chuck saw a man receiving a father’s blessing, and he knew he, too, needed this in his life.  So he asked for it, and received it.

This led him to develop a ministry specifically for our age, in which entertainment is our god and our souls are empty.  A Chosen Generation calls us into adulthood, empowers us to be sons and daughters who can then be fathers and mothers who freely give love (with dignity and respect, the healthy kind) without reservation.  The book of Titus in the Bible tells older women to instruct the younger women, and the older men to model manhood to the younger men.  This intergenerational living has been lost in the contemporary church, where the young are separated from the old, to the detriment of both.  It isn’t biblical, yet it persists in the church.

From www.achosengeneration.org website:

“What does it mean to be an "adult"?  How do you know when you become an adult?

Our culture says adulthood is the right to consume alcohol, watch "adult" movies and use "adult" language.   We have an entire culture of young people that crave significance, yet live in a time of confusion, violence and immorality.  How do they find their way out of "teenage never-never land" to become Godly adults, able to lead the church of the future?

… it is common throughout the Bible for people to receive their life calling and accomplish great things for the Lord while they are in their teen years.  It is clear in Scripture that young people are a vital part of the church's present and future effectiveness.”

So, it turns out that the answer to Kay Hymowitz’s question of where the good men have gone is this:  our culture has encouraged the damaging, the destructive (divorce, abortion, gender confusion, unwarranted feminization, hopelessness disguised into entertainment, for examples) and left the good men bereft of purpose.  A Chosen Generation has the solution, and I thank Chuck Stecker for his time on the show March 3, 2011.