BE A MAN

“Boys play house. Men build homes! Boys shack up. Men get married! Boys make babies. Men raise children! Boys invent excuses for failure. Men produce strategies for success! Boys look for somebody to take care of them. Men look for someone to take care of!!! Boys seek popularity. Men demand respect and know how to give it!!! Repost in HONOR of all the men who DO the right thing.”

This FaceBook status got me going this morning.  We are suffering for male role models in our society generally but certainly within the Indian community.  One of my greatest privileges is to represent a man of God who is committed to his wife and family. The greatest challenge is to get across to the boys on campus that being a man does not mean who can score with the most women or father the most children on the reservation.

Within the Native American Community a father, especially one who is in a married relationship with a child’s mother, is a rarity so for some of them this idea of fidelity is new information. They see adults hooking up without any sort of expectation of responsibility for what (or who) may result from their relationship.

It can take me a great deal of time to figure who is related to who on campus because often kids from the same family have different last names, different dads, live in different homes even. It’s not unusual for there to be six or eight or ten kids in the family and there to be four or five dads among them.

While exaggerated in Native American culture, I don’t think this is unique to the Indian population by the way. The sexual revolution has brought this about in many areas of our society.  Divorce rates and lowering of moral standards society wide have led to this lack of father figures and stable male influence in the lives of children.  Women have this longing to be loved by a man, any man, having lacked this component in childhood and move from one sexual partner to another in order to satisfy that longing.

Pray for me as I represent a Christian dad and husband to the Native American teenage community represented on campus.