Boyish Imagination
Douglas Wilson
Part of the legacy we have (if you want to call it that) from the Romantic movement is the idea that discipline and imagination go ill together. Creativity and imagination must burble forth spontaneously from the artistic heart, we think. However, the more we have encouraged this notion, the uglier our surroundings get. Something is wrong somewhere.
Because we think that discipline and imagination cannot be friends, we therefore choose between them. We opt for discipline, as most Christians do, rejecting imagination, or we embrace imagination, saying farewell to the discipline. It rarely occurs to us to consider the possibility of feeding, nourishing and disciplining the imagination in the light of Scripture. C.S. Lewis observed this tendency when he said of much modern art and literature that it was "mere puddles of spilled sensibility or reflection." He saw that it is often the case that greater care and work goes into low-brow art. But, he warned, "Do not misunderstand. The high-brow productions may, of course, reveal a finer sensibility and profounder thought. But a puddle is not a work, whatever rich wines or oils or medicines may have gone into it."†
Boys have a vivid imaginative life. Boys also require a good bit of discipline. It should not be surprising that one of the boyish attributes needing discipline is consequently the imagination. When this is done right, our sons will grow up into very effective culture warriors. But when this is neglected, boys drift into dangerous territory. Without instruction and discipline, a vivid imagination becomes a hothouse for all kinds of sin. A hunger for easy glory can become an excuse for indolent daydreaming, and of course, when a boy is sexually undisciplined, having a vivid imagination is the last thing he needs.
Because of this, many Christian parents have simply opted to suppress or starve the imaginative life, apparently on the theory that if there is no imagination there will be no imaginative sinning. This is quite true, but it is true in the same sense as when children aren't given any food, they will escape eating disorders—because they are dead. When discipline is chosen over imagination, the result is a disciplined life, what is left of it.
Discipline of the imagination is positive, not negative. It is not applied by spanking unimaginative bottoms. Rather, boys are taught to discipline this aspect of their hearts and minds through being taught the beauty of the gospel, the power of the gospel, and how far God intends the effects of the gospel to extend.
The story of the gospel is a glorious story. We do not tell our children about it because we think of the gospel as a set of propositions in the sky, not a series of great deliverances fought and accomplished on Earth.
We start where Christians must always start, with the story about the seed of the woman triumphing over the seed of the serpent. We tell the story of Jesus Christ, as Scripture does, with our Lord in the role of the dragon slayer. The serpent in the first book of the Bible is also found in the last book, where he is described as that ancient serpent. He is the devil, the murderer from the beginning, crushed under the heel of the great son of Eve. God destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. Christ triumphed over the principalities and powers, humiliating them deeply. Christ is the archtype of all dragon-slayers, the archtype of all giant killers. As He put it, when He bound the strong man, He stripped him of all his panoply. Christ defeated the devil and made off with his armor.
But He did not do this so that we could sit and watch. We are to watch, consider, imitate, and then take care to tell our sons the stories about the wars. We always begin with the war as won by Christ, but we remember that He commanded us, in our turn, to preach the gospel to every creature, to disciple all the nations, and throw down every enemy that sets himself against the course of the gospel.
The saints have been doing this for a long time. And this is why we tell our sons the story of Beowulf and how he killed the twisted descendents of Cain, and then how he gave his life killing the dragon. This is why we tell stories about St. George and the dragon. This is why we are to talk about great King Alfred, fighting off heathen invaders. And this is even why we read to wide-eyed boys the wonderful story of Jim, who allowed that he would blow Israel Hand's brains out. We tell the great story of Shasta, who turned back to face the lion. We must read The Lord of the Rings to our sons, more than once.
But our lack of imagination has us by the throat. We fuss and bother about this. Treasure Island is a work of fiction, we mutter. The Horse and His Boy is a work of fiction about a nonexistent world, for crying out loud. St. George is probably not a historically verifiable incident. And Gandalf is a wizard.
I can think of no better or truer reply to all this than to paraphrase that of Puddleglum when he was confronted with a similar argument. Fine. These are all works of fiction. But they tell a truer story—and far more real—than the empty, cavernous, and very dark world in which many parents want their hollow-souled children to live.
7.6.06
Word for word the best advice I ever read about raising boys.
Future Men
Douglas Wilson
As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men.
I was once leading a seminar for teachers at our Christian school and, in the course of discussion, I mentioned that many of the girls in the school would, within a few short years, be adult women and would take their place in our midst. The teachers heard all this with aplomb, but when I went on to say that within a few short years the boys they were instructing would be lawyers, airline pilots, pastors, etc. the looks on the faces of the assembled teachers ranged from concern to mild panic. Boys take a lot of faith.
This is good because the presence or absence of faith reveals whether or not we have a biblical doctrine of our future. Unbelief is always anchored to the present, while faith looks at that which is unseen. But even here we only get half the picture. Too often we think that faith only looks at unseen heavenly things, but this truncated approach is really the result of an incipient gnosticism. In the Bible, faith includes the ability to see that which is unseen because it is still future. According to the text, Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ, not the day when he, Abraham, would go to heaven. Faith conquers kingdoms, faith stops the mouths of lions, faith turns armies to flight, and faith brings boys up to a mature and godly masculinity.
But another qualification must be added. The faith exhibited by wise parents of boys is the faith of a farmer, or a sculptor, or anyone else engaged in the work of shaping unfolding possibilities. It is not the faith of someone waiting around for lightning to strike; it is the faith of someone who looks at the present and sees what it will become—through grace and good works.
Countless examples may be multiplied from any given day in the life of a small boy. Say a boy breaks a chair because he was jumping on it from the bunk bed. Unbelief sees the cost of replacing the chair. Faith sees aggressiveness and courage, both of which obviously need to be channeled and disciplined. Suppose a boy gets into a fight protecting his sister. Unbelief sees the lack of wisdom that created a situation that could have been easily avoided; faith sees an immature masculinity that is starting to assume the burden of manhood.
Unbelief squashes; faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside, and says that this part of what you did was good, while that other part of what you did got in the way. “This is how to do it better next time.”
This issue of fighting provides a good example of how necessary such distinctions are. Of course parents do not want to encourage fighting in their sons. But this is not the only item on the menu. Neither do they want to encourage abdication and cowardice. There are times when men have to fight. It follows that there will be times when boys have to learn how to fight, how to walk away, how to turn the other cheek, when to turn the other cheek, and when to put them up. If boys don’t learn, men won’t know. And boys will not learn unless their fathers teach.
When Theodore Roosevelt was at Harvard, he taught Sunday School for a time at Christ Church, until he was dismissed. A boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting, and on a Sunday too. He told the future President that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. TR told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go.
Unbelief cannot look past the surface. If there was any sin involved, unbelief sees only the sin. Faith sees what was turned aside to the service of sin and seeks to turn it back again. Sin is parasitic and cannot function without some good attributes that it seeks to corrupt. Consequently, faith must distinguish that which must be preserved and developed and that which must be abandoned as sin.
In addition, faith also sees the godliness in what many pietists have come to call sin. At the beginning of his life, a boy does not know what century he was born in, and consequently exhibits to many of his politically correct and aghast elders some of the same traits exhibited by the boyhood chums of Sennacherib and Charlemagne. He doesn’t know any better—yet. But in our day, many of these created masculine traits are drilled out of him by the time he is ten. Faith resists this ungodly process, and defines sin by the Scriptures, and not by pietist traditions.
So faith is central in bringing up boys, but it is important to remember that the faith is not faith in the boy. It is faith in God, faith in His promises, faith in His wisdom. Faith concerns the boy, and the boy can see that it concerns him. Parents are to believe God for their sons, which is a very different thing than believing their sons.
Faith is not wishful thinking; faith apprehends the promises of God found in Scripture. “The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee” (Ps. 102:28). Faith sees a son as established, and the work of faith goes on to establish him. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
God is the One who places a particular boy in a particular home. And He does so in order that those parents who believe and obey Him might come to delight in a wise son. “My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things” (Prov. 23:15-16).
Douglas Wilson
As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men.
I was once leading a seminar for teachers at our Christian school and, in the course of discussion, I mentioned that many of the girls in the school would, within a few short years, be adult women and would take their place in our midst. The teachers heard all this with aplomb, but when I went on to say that within a few short years the boys they were instructing would be lawyers, airline pilots, pastors, etc. the looks on the faces of the assembled teachers ranged from concern to mild panic. Boys take a lot of faith.
This is good because the presence or absence of faith reveals whether or not we have a biblical doctrine of our future. Unbelief is always anchored to the present, while faith looks at that which is unseen. But even here we only get half the picture. Too often we think that faith only looks at unseen heavenly things, but this truncated approach is really the result of an incipient gnosticism. In the Bible, faith includes the ability to see that which is unseen because it is still future. According to the text, Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Christ, not the day when he, Abraham, would go to heaven. Faith conquers kingdoms, faith stops the mouths of lions, faith turns armies to flight, and faith brings boys up to a mature and godly masculinity.
But another qualification must be added. The faith exhibited by wise parents of boys is the faith of a farmer, or a sculptor, or anyone else engaged in the work of shaping unfolding possibilities. It is not the faith of someone waiting around for lightning to strike; it is the faith of someone who looks at the present and sees what it will become—through grace and good works.
Countless examples may be multiplied from any given day in the life of a small boy. Say a boy breaks a chair because he was jumping on it from the bunk bed. Unbelief sees the cost of replacing the chair. Faith sees aggressiveness and courage, both of which obviously need to be channeled and disciplined. Suppose a boy gets into a fight protecting his sister. Unbelief sees the lack of wisdom that created a situation that could have been easily avoided; faith sees an immature masculinity that is starting to assume the burden of manhood.
Unbelief squashes; faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside, and says that this part of what you did was good, while that other part of what you did got in the way. “This is how to do it better next time.”
This issue of fighting provides a good example of how necessary such distinctions are. Of course parents do not want to encourage fighting in their sons. But this is not the only item on the menu. Neither do they want to encourage abdication and cowardice. There are times when men have to fight. It follows that there will be times when boys have to learn how to fight, how to walk away, how to turn the other cheek, when to turn the other cheek, and when to put them up. If boys don’t learn, men won’t know. And boys will not learn unless their fathers teach.
When Theodore Roosevelt was at Harvard, he taught Sunday School for a time at Christ Church, until he was dismissed. A boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting, and on a Sunday too. He told the future President that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. TR told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go.
Unbelief cannot look past the surface. If there was any sin involved, unbelief sees only the sin. Faith sees what was turned aside to the service of sin and seeks to turn it back again. Sin is parasitic and cannot function without some good attributes that it seeks to corrupt. Consequently, faith must distinguish that which must be preserved and developed and that which must be abandoned as sin.
In addition, faith also sees the godliness in what many pietists have come to call sin. At the beginning of his life, a boy does not know what century he was born in, and consequently exhibits to many of his politically correct and aghast elders some of the same traits exhibited by the boyhood chums of Sennacherib and Charlemagne. He doesn’t know any better—yet. But in our day, many of these created masculine traits are drilled out of him by the time he is ten. Faith resists this ungodly process, and defines sin by the Scriptures, and not by pietist traditions.
So faith is central in bringing up boys, but it is important to remember that the faith is not faith in the boy. It is faith in God, faith in His promises, faith in His wisdom. Faith concerns the boy, and the boy can see that it concerns him. Parents are to believe God for their sons, which is a very different thing than believing their sons.
Faith is not wishful thinking; faith apprehends the promises of God found in Scripture. “The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee” (Ps. 102:28). Faith sees a son as established, and the work of faith goes on to establish him. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
God is the One who places a particular boy in a particular home. And He does so in order that those parents who believe and obey Him might come to delight in a wise son. “My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things” (Prov. 23:15-16).
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