The Weekly Word: We need more men

By Robert Williams, Lead Pastor at The Bridge Church

In the beginning, when Adam and Eve sinned, many believe that it was all Eve’s fault. “When Adam was away, Eve was led astray,” is what some might think, but it’s not true.

If you’ve ever cracked open the spine of a Bible and read this story (Genesis 3), then you’ll come to find out that when Eve was tempted by the serpent, Adam was right there with her.

They both sinned simultaneously — Eve, by eating the fruit, and Adam by doing nothing. His inaction was his mistake. And after all of this went down, God called out the man, “Where are you?”

I think many of us are left asking men the same question today. Where are you?

For the first time in our nation’s history, there are more women than men in the work force, college and in the church by over 10 million people. For the first time in our nation’s history there are more women than men that have a driver’s license.

For the first time in our nation’s history, the majority of children born to women that are 30 and younger are born out of wedlock. Forty percent of children tonight will go to bed with no father in the home.

I would go so far to say that a good portion of the children today either have no father, or they have a bad father that they have not forgiven.

I don’t know about you, but I think this is tragic. Worse yet, I think it’s a crisis.

Too many young men are living on their phones, sucked into video games and fantasy football, downloading pornography, putting stupidity on social media and dinking around because they are being coddled by their mothers in homes where the Father is absent. So much so that they aren’t even attempting to get a driver’s license.

I’m not against football or video games, I just think they’re terrible religions. Am I saying that a driver’s license is a mark of a man? No, but it tends to be a small sign in our culture of the fact that the boy wants to start living on his own, has put away childish things to stand for himself and grow up.

We have a generational epidemic on our hands. The “men” we have are actually just boys who can shave: guys who are anatomically men, but are mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, boys.

Let’s just call it what it is: a crisis. How many more fatherless children, broken families and dysfunctional homes is it going to take for us to recognize this?

1 Corinthian 13:11 says, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”

The question to men is, “Are you a boy or a man?” A boy has others taking responsibility for them and picking up after them. A man is about taking care of himself, and leading himself well, and living and breathing and dying for God, his wife, his family, his children, his church, and his community. He’s put away childish things.

We need more men. We really need more men.