{This just in! Clay Clarkson has agreed to give away two copies of his popular book, Our 24 Family Ways to help celebrate our launch! See details on how to enter below.}

What is a boy?

As a “BoyDad” I’ll just tackle that question right up front. I once was a boy, and I’ve had two as a dad, so I should know at least a little something about boys. Maybe.

Snips and Snails??

The first thing I know is that I really don’t like that awful but oft-quoted eighteenth-century nursery rhyme, “What Are Little Boys Made Of.” Not at all. I don’t know what snips are, I never liked snails (except to pour salt on them), and my puppy dogs’ tails were all clipped (snipped?). Not helpful. And, really, I find the notion of being “made of” those things just a little creepy.

And yet I think modern culture holds to a boyish idealism born partly of that English ditty’s spirit. If you uncover the underlying Jungian archetype of American boyness (OK, there isn’t one, but that just sounds important), it somehow involves dirt, critters, fishing, weapons, baseball, swimming holes, bicylces, pretend and real fighting, tents and/or treehouses, and scrappiness (whatever that is). I think of it as a kind of early Opie Taylor vibe, only more so.

Godly Macho??

That’s the secular version of boyness. Some popular Christian writers also promote a kind of  “godly macho boy” image as part of God’s design, claiming for it the mantel of divine imprimatur. They might play the Pinocchio card about being a “real boy” rather than one shaped by our feminized culture. Some might even exhort Christian dads to get with the testosterone program or risk emasculating their boys. It’s muscular masculinity in a boy-sized box. The theory goes that any boy can be helped to fit in that box, and the box is a good thing.

But that’s the problem.

The whole concept of being a boy these days seems particularly vulnerable to boxes and stereotyping. I’m afraid if a large sample of random folks were asked to free associate on the word “boy” they would come up with mostly semi-pejorative words like wild, hard to control, loud, stubborn, and physical. Some would offer up positive words like fun, curious, and adventurous, but those would be the exceptions, not the rule. You can probably trace some of that back to the influence of media images and portrayals over the past fifty years, but I think in general we are simply conditioned to a zeitgeist of boyness.

So then, back to the question: What is a boy?

It seems to me that if we want to get a handle on what a boy really is, we should not be looking to culture. We should be asking what God thinks a boy should be. After all, God the Father did have a son. He should know something about it. No maybe about it. We talk about God becoming a baby, and God becoming a man, but what about God becoming a boy? He did. Shouldn’t we be looking at Jesus to answer the question? We would look to him, the perfect man, to discover the essence of man-ness, so why not boyness?

Well, only because Scripture doesn’t have that much to say on the topic. However, though there is precious little there to answer the question, there are divine hints and intimations that can help us piece together some insights. Some might suggest, in the absence of hard content, that we read biblical manhood back into boyhood, kind of a spiritual backward masking. But I don’t think that’s a good idea. They are different stages of life.

In my next post, I’ll uncover some of the hidden biblical clues to get at what boyness is all about. Here’s my take before I do that: When God does not provide a lot of content on a subject, it may not be because it’s not important, but because it’s so important that he does not want to create a false legal standard that will rob the Holy Spirit of his role in finding answers to our questions. We’ll see where that takes us next time to answer the question, “What is a boy?”

What about you? What do you think makes a boy?

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We’re giving away two copies of Clay’s popular devotional for families, Our 24 Family Ways! All launch giveaways end 1/31/13. You’re welcome to enter as many times as you like.

To Enter: 

1. Subscribe to Boy Dads in a reader or by email.

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