Chapter 1 is titled, Manhood: Don’t Let Your Son Leave Home Without It.
The chapter starts out discussing that moment when a son is leaving the house, likely for good, to start his own life.
The question is asked, what does he leave with? What did you as a father give your son to live life with? Does he know how to be a man?
Which then led to the question, when does a boy become a man? Puberty? When he leaves home? Marriage? Truth be told if you asked 10 guys you would probably get 8 different answers.
Robert Lewis then stated three ways in which fathers have failed their sons in defining when they become men. This is the basis of the book.
1. We have failed to deliver to our sons a clear, inspiring, biblically grounded definition of manhood.
2. Most fathers lack a directional process that calls their sons to embrace the manhood they should be able to define.
3. A loss of ceremony.
Finally the chapter covered how Robert Lewis and his friends came into the concepts raised in this book. How their own needs as fathers bore the fruit of this book. I really liked one section where he compared the definition of manhood to nailing Jell-O to a wall. During this journey they stumbled across using the knighthood as a model from raising boys to manhood.
The process to be a knight was well defined and set a great precedent in raising boys.
First, the knight embodied a well-defined set of ideals.
Secondly a knights life also outlined a well-defined process. There was no second guessing of a man was a knight. You knew when you made that change due to the process around it.
Finally, ceremonies. part of that well defined process was marked with ceremonies. Nights that a boy can look back on to know when he became a man.
[Initially Written 2.15.2009]
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