My wife and I are about to have our first-born child this week. Maybe even tonight. Her contractions are a few minutes apart, and we've already had one false alarm a few days ago. She's a little girl, named Lily Paige. I've never even met her... I've only seen her on a sonogram. But she already has my heart. Friends of mine know I'm already kind of a sensitive guy. (I get choked up when Goose dies in "Top Gun". And Bubba's death scene in "Forrest Gump". And "Armageddon." And any movie with Meg Ryan.)
Now, I'm about as calloused and grizzled as a chenille throw blanket.
Because of my newfound smarmy gooshy sensitivity towards my beautiful little girl, I now view every human male between the ages of 11 and 19 with thinly veiled, skeptical, contemptuous distrust. They are animals, seething with unbridled lustful fury, and they must be stopped.
Joking aside, I have been thinking about the state of young men in our country and in our cities. How we view them. How we educate them. Our hopes for them and fear of them. Much has been made of the capacity for our young men to cause damage to property and harm to people. I've lost count of the faces of young men that I've seen on the 11 o'clock news... most of them in mug shots.
Obviously, I care about every student with whom I work. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a particularly strong desire to teach, shepherd, and love the young men that walk through my classroom every day. Given our relatively short time together, I'm desperate. I will only teach most of them for a semester -- a year if I'm lucky enough to have them in my Fundamentals AND Geometry classes back to back. Knowing the crossroads at which many of them stand brings a sense of urgency to our relationship, even if they don't know it.
Mostly, I want to help teach them how to be good men. To use their anger and passion to effect change in their lives and the lives of others. To love selflessly. To reject passivity, accept responsibility, and lead courageously. To expect God's greater reward. I agree with an author named John Eldredge. Eldredge says that, while the strength of men can be harmful, it is also the foundation of much that is good, profitable, and loving. Young men can defend, build, learn, teach, work, and provide. In young men exists an Imago Dei that wants to show itself.
In that spirit, I wanted to refer readers of this blog to a website for an organization called "Invisible Children". This is a group whose mission is to bring change and aid to child soldiers in Uganda -- young men forced into military service from as early as 5 years old. This is a major battlefield in the war for young men's hearts and souls, and I hope you'll give it a look.
http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php
On a related note, another organization close to my heart is Stop Child Trafficking Now, dedicated to ending the worldwide trade of child sex slaves.
http://www.sctnow.org/
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