Episode 6: Affirming God’s Design

Joy McClain: Do parents need to help their children discover their sexual identity? Here’s Erin Davis.

Erin Davis: Our boys need to understand that their identity is in Christ. It’s not something they have to try and find or discern. They have an identity, and their identity is in Christ, and God made them uniquely in His image.

Joy: I’m glad you’re back with The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Joy McClain.

We’re in a series called “Lies Boys Believe.” We can’t address that theme without getting into topics that regularly makes it into our headlines. So many voices are swirling around with different opinions on gender. Thankfully, we can trust the bedrock truth of God’s Word. Erin is going to open it for us.

Erin: As I was preparing to teach this series, I received this text from a friend. She has two children. Her oldest is a little girl, and by her own description, that little girl is content to play quietly in her room. I don’t know what that’s like, but she said her daughter would do it. She said sometimes that little girl would sit on the floor while her mama read Scripture, and she would color—get this—inside the lines of the coloring book!

Now, her second child is a boy, and in her words that she texted me, “He pretends to be a firework and sprints in circles through the house, pulling out toys every five minutes.” And then she wanted to know, “How do you raise a boy?”

Well, I have four fireworks of my own, and thus began an ongoing dialogue with this friend of mine about raising our boys who, if we’re honest, can often feel like alien creatures to us. We want to do it in ways that affirm rather than squash their God-given design.

So, I pointed her to a study that’s had a pretty significant impact in the way I see and respond to my boys. Maybe you’ve heard of this study.

It was a global study done years ago in all different kinds of schools, so it wasn’t just one type of school, not just one location. But all around the world these researchers would go into these schools, and they would give boys and girls each a bag of crayons.

Now, the girls, almost universally, would choose a variety of colors. I think the study found that girls chose eight colors, plus or minus two.

And if you know girls, you probably can predict what they drew. They almost always drew a scene. There were people. There were families. There were pets. There were flowers. There were trees.

The boys, on the other hand, almost universally, everywhere they went, would choose three crayons, and almost always black, brown, and gray. And they would draw something at a point of impact. It was a monster smashing a planet, or a gun being fired, or a bomb going off.

They watched what happened in these classrooms. And very often the teacher would say something like this to those little boys, “Why can’t you draw something more like Sally? Is something wrong? Why are you drawing something so violent?”

As they studied those children long term, they realized that those seemingly benign interactions have far-reaching and long-lasting implications in the lives of our boys. Our boys become our young men, and our young men become our older men.

So something as silly as who draws what can have a big impact for a long time.

This isn’t going to be shocking to you, but I do want to say it. We are raising children in an era where many believe gender is fluid, and children should be free to determine their own gender. There’s also a belief that femininity is best expressed through power. You’ve probably heard the saying, “The future is female. Like, women are going to take over.”

And in contrast, we’re being taught that masculinity is toxic if it is being expressed through power. There’s the idea that strong men are responsible for the ills of our society.

Now, it’s true those are simplified versions of the sentiments that many are expressing, and they are expressing them loudly. But it’s also true that those are no longer fringe ideas. Increasingly, that is the norm.

And because gender and sexuality have been weaponized for political and cultural gain, there is a temptation among us to just hunker down, to stay out of the fray, and to hope and pray that that deception won’t seep into the hearts of our boys. And I understand that.

But let’s face reality. Conversations about these issues have made their way into almost every facet of our lives. It’s on our television shows. It’s in our commercials. It’s in our public libraries. It’s on our billboards.

For many generations, teens have been on the front lines of the spiritual battle. But what we must face right now is that our littlest ones, the ones that we probably don’t feel areeven ready to talk to about sexuality yet, they are receiving the shrapnel of this battle for truth. It is our children who have become guinea pigs in a doomed gender experiment. And the weapons of this war are puberty blockers and pronouns. But actually, the weapons of this war are lies engineered by the evil one.

Experts are watching this all unfold, and they are predicting an unprecedented mental health crisis among our young men, which scare us because our current young men are in what they are calling “an unprecedented health crisis.” (We talked some about that in our first episode of this series.) And sociologists (I’m not even talking about those with a Christian worldview) are looking down the road a ways, and they are realizing, “Our boys are in big trouble.”

Now, this should not make us want to run and hide. It should make us want to stand and fight.

It reminds me of the Hebrew mothers of Egypt when they were supposed to discard their boys. (Another widespread era of deception.) They were supposed to throw those baby boys into the Nile River. And yet, some of them stood and fought.

 

And what’s true is that if we do not prepare our children now, they will become a part of a very sickly generation without the ability to speak truth and life and healing into others. Or, they will fall prey themselves.

So, with a commitment to fight back with the Sword of Truth, where do we start? Where do we always start? Let’s go back to Genesis 1. Let me read Genesis 1. I’ll start with verse 27, but we’re going to go all the way through the end of Genesis 1 together.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:27)

Think about this. You probably read that verse many times. I’ve read that verse many times. But one thing that hadn’t really jumped out at me before is that there are lots of things that make us like God.

• We have language. 
• We have complex emotions. 
• We have relationships. 
• We can be creative—God is the Creator. 
• But here, as God was introducing this concept that people are stamped with His image, the one thing He describes is our maleness and our femaleness.

I love to take a passage and break it into a list—that’s the Type Double-A in me. There are three foundational truths in just this single verse.

1. This is as obvious as the nose on our faces, but it’s really important: God created mankind. And as the Designer, He gets to be the Definer.

2. God created men and women from the beginning distinctly different.

There are those who would argue that manhood and womanhood is a social construct. We say it can’t be a social construct because we see it here in Genesis 1:27 when there was no society. Boys and girls are not interchangeable. That’s God’s design from the beginning.

3. God created males and females—men and women, boys and girls—in His image. This means that God-given masculinity and God-given femininity are supposed to paint a picture of who God is to a world that does not know who He is.

Let me pick it up at verse 28: 

And God blessed them. [Here He’s blessing Adam and Eve, of course. God blessed them.] And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.

Verse 31 probably isn’t bolded in your Bible, but maybe it should be. 

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Now this is not the first time that God looked at what He had made and called it good. Genesis 1 is filled with that idea that God’s creation is good. God’s creation is good. God’s creation is good.

But men and women are set apart as distinct from the rest of creation in many ways, and one of which is so obvious. It’s just one little word right there in verse 31. Men and women are not just good, they’re very good. Men and women are made distinctly. Each distinctly bearing the image of God, and that is very good.

Your boys need to know, they really need to know God’s design is very good. This really is where we, as a society. We have untethered from our anchor, and it’s why we’re careening headlong toward disaster.

God is good, and everything He made is good. That means manhood and womanhood are good and to be celebrated.

As much as it might seem on the surface that the ongoing conversation our boys need from us (and by us, I mean the Church; we certainly don’t want them getting this information from the world), is not ultimately about body parts. It’s not ultimately about roles in home and the Church, although those things certainly matter.

But what they need is rooted right here in Genesis, these opening chapters of Genesis. They’re not optional. There are no throw-away verses in God’s Word. And that’s because they establish a vital foundation for everything we believe as Christians, everything that Scripture teaches about sin and redemption. It assumes the literal truth of what we read here in these first few verses in Genesis.

Even Jesus, when He talked about hot-button topics (you know there were plenty of those in His day, too) He turned back to this foundational truth. Listen to what Jesus said in Mark 10:6. 

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

So, let’s be like Jesus. Let’s go back to the beginning to understand what lessons our sons need to understand their own hot-button topics. We’re not going to be able to just hide them in a bubble. We’ve got to equip them, and they need Genesis 1:27 to be equipped.

What does this mean for our boys specifically?

Well, first, in a time when the conversation about identity is paramount . . . That’s really what the conversation that’s happening in the culture is about, it’s about identity. It’s about those who are trying to find who they really are.

Our boys need to understand that their identity is in Christ. It’s not something they have to try and find or discern. They have an identity, and their identity is in Christ. God made them uniquely in His image.

Rosaria Butterfield is a former lesbian professor. She’s now a mother in a traditional marriage. I have seen her with my own eyes teach passionately from her desire to see God’s people understand God’s truth about gender and sexuality. She knows how real the struggle can be, and she talks about it from a place of her own identity. She knows that for those who are struggling to define their identity, there is a temptation to latch on to sexuality as an identifier.

In an interview with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth on Revive Our Hearts, Rosaria said this, and this is profound: 

Sexual orientation as a category was invented by Freud. No one had ever talked before about a person who was a homosexual or a person who was a heterosexual. Prior to the nineteenth century, sexuality was understood as something that was a verb. It was something that you did, not something that you were.

One of the reasons this is important for Christians to realize is that God has already given us an identity. We are born male or female with souls that will last forever. Our identity is exclusively as a male or a female image bearer of a holy God, and that is true for all humanity.

It’s powerful stuff. Your boy has an identity. And he is going to search for his identity, as all of us will. We want to find it in what is true. And what is true is that he was made by God to glorify God, and his identity is in Christ.

Second, in a time when our sons are being told, “Strong is bad,” we must root them in the truth that what God created is in fact very good.

What is good? Is it relative? No. God is good. God’s goodness is a bedrock truth of Scripture. It’s an inseparable part of His character. But they can be good because God is good, and they’re trying to bear His image.

So the ultimate reasons to raise our boys to be good is not because they become trophies on our shelf, (“Look how good my boys are!”) but because it reflects the character of God.

God’s goodness is the bedrock truth of Scripture. That really is what the culture is debating. Is God really good? Is God’s design really good? And it is! The goodness of God is inseparable from His character.

I remember so clearly having a coffee-shop conversation with a college friend of mine. And she was really struggling.

I said, “Do you believe God is sovereign?”

And she said, “I do.”

I said, “Do you believe God is good?”

And she said, “If I’m honest, I don’t.”

She was having a really hard time tethering her life to a God that she wasn’t sure was good. But He is good.

And if our boys are to be image bearers of Him, if they are to have their identity rooted in Him, they must possess goodness, God’s goodness—no goodness on their own.

If you’ve been listening to this whole series, again, you know the gospel tells us there are no good boys. There’s no good people at all. The Scripture says, “No, not one.” That’s certainly true in our flesh, but remember Romans 8.

A boy rooted and grounded in God’s truth will be seeking to show God’s image, not his own image. God is good to us, and God is good for us. And so raising sons who bear the image of God are boys who do good toward others, and boys who do good for others. And let me tell you, that requires some strength.

Let’s think about for just a moment what a difference it makes when men seek what is good for others.

I happen to be married to a man who is a sheep dog among sheep dogs. He is always out to protect us. And when I am separated from him because I’m traveling alone or something, I’m suddenly aware of how scary the world is. I don’t have to think about that when he’s with me because he does good for me. He takes care of me.

It makes a huge difference when godly men seek the good of others. In fact, I would argue that men seeking the good of others in God’s name is the moral compass that keeps our world safe, happy, and working.

Imagine for a moment if all the good men were removed from our world. It’s hard to think about.

The goodness of God is the force that moves us away from our own desires and toward the destiny of meeting the needs of others. That’s what our boys need to hear.

I’m okay with my boys being good at basketball. I’m okay with them being good at school. But that’s not the good I want for them. The ultimate good I want for them is that they would be ambassadors of the goodness of God in the world.

There’s a cycle my husband Jason has taught our boys. It’s not original to him, but I think it’s powerful.

Strong men create easy times.
Easy times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.
Hard times create strong men.

History students can trace this loop. Of course, that loop doesn’t go outside of the sovereign plan of God, but what if He created boys’ strength for the good of others?

Consider Paul’s words in Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Don’t we need men who will overcome evil with good? Now, Romans 12 is for all of God’s people. It’s not just that men and boys are good and women aren’t. But put it in the context of God-given masculinity and God-given femininity, and we need those who will be strong for the good of others.

It’s interesting, yes, that passage is for all of us. “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for instruction,” but every text is part of a context. And if you look at the context of Romans 12, Paul tells us who he was writing it to. “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers.” He was writing to the men of the Church, and was saying, “Don’t be overcome with evil. Don’t let it overrun you. You’ve got to push back the evil with good.”

How does that work when our boys are firecrackers? Well, the Bible is full of good men who fought for what was right, and they used strength to do it.

• Moses stood up to Pharaoh in Exodus 3.
• David fought Goliath in 1 Samuel 17.
• Nehemiah gathered men, and he gave this very brave-heart speech. I love it. They have a shovel in one hand and a sword in the other, and he said, “Fight for your families!” And they did.
• Joshua believed God when He told him He would cut off the waters of the Jordan so His people could cross in Joshua 3.
• Joshua, who led the Israelites around the wall of Jericho and watched it crumble at the sound of the trumpet.
• Joshua, who led the Israelites to conquer city after city after city, finally entering the Promised Land.

How could we look at Joshua and say he wasn’t a man of strength?

Do you ever wonder if these men were firecrackers when they were little boys?

This is how I counseled my friend. I said, “Okay, Girl. Open your Bible. Find the men that God used, and then try to imagine being their mama.”

I have a feeling they were strong. They might have been loud. What were their mamas like? Did they let them play rough? Did they let them be rowdy? What formed these boys’ courage to step up to the plate when it was time? Something did. Certainly God empowered them, but I don’t think that came out of nowhere.

That friend who texted me, I asked her to think through all the men she could recall in Scripture and honestly answer this question: does God use the wild ones? Of course He does.

Perhaps the best way to help our sons understand and embrace the goodness of God’s design is to help them understand the goodness of living for God.

First and foremost, that requires us to override our own obsession of living for ourselves. Your boy has that in him. He’s a born sinner. And his flesh is going to tell him, “I’m going to live for me. I’m going to look out for number one.” And I’m not sure we need any more men willing to look out for number one and not be good for others.

It’s time to stop teaching our sons directly or indirectly that their identity is a list of do’s and don’ts. It’s time to call and rise up and live for Christ.

These are some of the don’ts:

Don’t be loud.
Don’t shoot that gun.
Don’t burp.
Don’t color with black and gray crayons.

Now, those things matter, and don’t blame me if your son burps in church next Sunday. But we also have these list of do’s:

Do sit still.
Do be quiet.
Do color nice things with purples and blues and oranges and reds.

Let’s think about, critically, for a moment, just how much our do’s and don’ts are often driven by the fear that we offend the feminist agenda (and that’s what it is) to conform them to something nice.

We need to start teaching them that manhood is not a list of do’s and don’ts, nor is womanhood. It’s about living a life to glorify God and to do good for Him, to do good in His name.

I rarely teach a series without a peek into Genesis 1 because we can never get far from those Genesis 1 principles. Here they are again:

• God created mankind.
• God created men and women.
• God created males and females in His image.
• And God’s design is very good.

Maybe as you’ve been listening to this you’ve been nodding vigorously. You’ve been saying,

 “Yes, Erin! God designed men and women distinctly.”

And, “Yes, this is the message the world needs to hear.”

And, “Yes, God’s design is very good.”

And, “Yes, departing from it is very dangerous.”

But it’s time for some real talk, mom to mom, because it’s possible to affirm Genesis 1 in the public sphere and live functionally opposed to it in our homes. It’s possible to shake our heads at the toxic masculinity message when we see it in commercials, and subtly communicate it to our boys at the dinner table.

I’ll avoid giving a checklist here. We’re talking in generalities because that is so rarely helpful in this conversation. But here’s the bottom line:

• Your son is made differently than you are.
• Your son is made differently than your daughters are.

Which means your son may see things differently than you do.

• Your son may communicate differently than you do.
• Your son may have interests that you never dream of.

And as you parent and teach and correct and shepherd and guide him, do you celebrate that God made him a boy in an increasingly girl-shaped world? Or do you subtly, or not so subtly, communicate that, “There’s something wrong with your boyness. You should be more like me”?

• God created your boy to be good. And that’s true, even if he’s a firecracker.

As I was thinking about this idea, I remembered a story about my Pop. His name is Roland Baber. When he was just a teenager, he enlisted in the United States Army, as so many men in that generation did. He was a boy, really. And he was soon shipped over there to fight the hellacious evil of Nazism that threatened to envelop the whole globe.

One day my Pop was out on a walk. If he was in his twenties, he was barely in his twenties. He was young. He went out on a walk on his own, and he found a unit of Nazi soldiers. There were seven or eight of them. They were hiding, and they were starving. 

And he was good. He was good to those enemy soldiers. He didn’t hurt them. He didn’t berate them. He did march them back to his camp, and they surrendered as prisoners of war. I’ve always loved that story. But probably because I know my Pop.

My Pop was a good man.

• He wasn’t just a good man because he captured Nazis, though he did.
• He was a good man because he loved one woman for fifty years.
• He was a good man because he raised three daughters with her—one of them was my Mama.
• He was a good man because he loved me my whole life. He’s one of the few people in my world that I have never had a nano-second of doubt about his love for me.
• He was a good man because he served as a deacon of his church into his nineties.
• He was a good man because from a very young age, as a little boy growing up on a farm in Iowa, he trusted and believed in the goodness of God.

A good man may be hard to find, but they exist. And we want to raise them up.

My Pop’s generation is called the greatest generation. I think we need the goodest generation—that generation that will do good and be good because God is good, and He made them to showcase something about Him.

So wherever good men exist, we can be sure they’ve encountered the love of a good God. Let’s pray.

Lord, we love You. You’re good, and You do good. I pray that You would raise up a generation of boys who are willing to do good in Your name. Help us as women to celebrate it even when we don’t understand it. Help us to validate the Genesis 1:27 principle that’s true. You created men and women in Your image, and that means we’re different. Help us to live it out. It’s in Your name I pray, amen.

Joy: If you ever wonder whether godly men still exist, Erin Davis has been giving you good news. Our hope is in the Lord, and He is still redeeming and calling men into His kingdom.

Would you join the Lord in that mission and pass biblical truth on to the next generation of boys? You can do that by sharing the brand-new book by Erin and Jason Davis. It’s called, Lies Boys Believe and the Epic Quest for Truth. This is an adventure story written just for boys, and you can get a parent’s guide to go along with it.

Now, Erin, I’ve got to ask: earlier in the episode you told a story about a girl who sat quietly in her room for long stretches of time. I can imagine her reading a book. But you also talked about this girl’s brother who ran around the house, wouldn’t sit still. I cannot imagine him sitting and reading.

How would you share this book with a son who isn’t even interested in reading?

Erin: Well, I have four boys in my house. Some of them voracious readers. You can’t give them enough books. They love to read. I tip toe up the stairs at midnight. I think they’re asleep. They’re under the covers with the flashlight, enthralled in the book.

But they’re not all that way. For some of them, reading is a challenge or they’d rather be doing anything other than that. So I understand that.

Yes, I love read-alouds. I love that you mentioned that. Part of the reason we wrote it as fiction is because I’m not sure there is a boy who can’t be drawn into a grand adventure.

So if your family wants to read it out loud, that’s a great way to do it. If you want to break it up into chunks and have him tell you the story back as he’s reading it, that’s a way to do it.

I wouldn’t force him to read the book as you’re going to get some resistance there. But my hope is that there’s enough creativity in the format of the book that he’s going to be drawn in.

But we read it aloud. This has been a fun part of the process. You know, when you pick up a book off the shelf, it’s done. But for the writer, that’s a very long process. I had never written fiction before, so it was a discovery process for me. I would write things, like, the character would be in the car on this page, and on the next page he was suddenly transported somewhere. So I needed a lot of help thinking through character development and all that.

So, we read the whole book to our sons many times in process. A lot of time in the car when we were going, and they would give good feedback. And so that was just a fun family activity. “Hey, we’ve got twenty minutes from A to B. Let’s read a chapter, and let’s all talk about it.” So that’s another way maybe your family can ingest it. They had a lot of good input. It led to a lot of good discussions and some changes in the book that needed to be made. So, they were great first editors.

Joy: I love that. It sounds like you had your own grand adventure trying to achieve the grand adventure for other boys to read.

Erin: We certainly did. And Judah, our third, I call him the Davis family hype man. I mean, everything is so exciting to him. And he’d be, like, “What if at this point they got in a rocket, and they discovered a new planet.” He would have these way-crazy ideas, which were so fun.

And there actually are kind of stops along the way in the book. We call them, “Tag, you’re it.” So it’s the idea of, like, “Okay, we’re going to jump out of the story now, and we’re going to talk about what we just read.” So maybe you read a little bit, and then you play, “Tag, you’re it,” and you have a little family discussion, and then you move on.

You know your boys, but I’m sure, reader or non-reader, there is a way to get them into this because the principles of the book are based on God’s Word. We know that’s timeless, and Scripture tells us that it’s all useful for our instruction. So I feel, like, as long as you’re giving your kids God’s Word, you can’t go wrong. And there’s a lot of that in this book.

Joy: I know a lot of listeners are saying, “I want to engage with my boys like that.” How do they get a copy of Lies Boys Believe and the Epic Quest for Truth?

Erin: You can visit ReviveOurHearts.com anytime and order the book, Lies Boys Believe and the parent’s guide.

But one unique feature about The Deep Well is that we drop all the episodes of a series at once. So we’re releasing the entire “Lies Boys Believe” series in November 2023. And this month we want to send you the new book as our thanks when you support The Deep Well podcast with a donation of any amount.

The Deep Well is produced by Revive Our Hearts. So when you support Revive Our Hearts, you help make The Deep Well possible. I hope you’ll visit ReviveOurHearts.com. Click on “Lies Boys Believe.” When you make your donation, you’ll be able to check, “Yes, send me the book!” Again, that’s ReviveOurHearts.com.

Joy: It’s time for Erin Unscripted.

Erin Unscripted

As we were recording Erin’s teaching, someone asked about this idea of toxic masculinity. We want to be careful not to communicate all masculinity is bad. But at the same time, some men truly have done horrible things to women.

How do we hold men accountable while affirming God-given manhood? And how do you teach your sons to respect women?

Erin: Toxic masculinity exists, but wherever toxic masculinity exists, sin exists. And the problem is not God’s design. We would say, “Because men have done harm . . . And, men have done harm; women have done harm. But it’s said that because men have done harm, the problem must be men.”

And the problem is misunderstanding of who they were created to be and how they were to live that out. So, no doubt God’s design can be warped and misapplied. And when that happens, the results are disastrous.

So I actually think that is an argument or a point (I don’t want to debate this) or the reason to cling to Genesis 1:27 so tightly. Which is, in our own devices, we mess up manhood and womanhood royally. And instead of working together to show the image of God, we hurt each other through generations.

So those young men, or men of any age, who are truly toxic, what they need is the Lord. And what they need is to understand who God created them to be.

Helen: I’m a nana to nine grandsons. A lot of them are little. I have them at my house a lot. We do have firecrackers, which I’m glad for. But one thing I keep saying over and over to them is, “Use your muscles to help people, not to hurt people,” because it’s so easy for them to hurt people.

And then, when I see them do that, like when they help me with something, they’re like, “Wow! This is so cool.” 

I tell them, “You’re using your muscles to help me. I’m so glad. This is really helpful.”

It’s so good. It’s just fun to see them just starting to think.

Erin: That’s so good.

Yes, everything about them, including those muscles, is meant to do good to others and for others because God is good. So those are things that we can encourage. A word that I use with my boys a lot is capable. “I can’t move the wood pile.” They have to move the wood pile twice a year—closer to the house, away from the house.

“Errr . . .”

“You are capable. You can. You have what you need to do this.”

And then to really celebrate. “Wow! That was not a fun job. You had to move a lot of wood. And it took a long time. But that’s really a blessing because when the snow and ice comes, it’s right outside the door.”

So part of it is affirming that when they do use the way that they are made for good, that’s to be celebrated.

Portia: So, I don’t have any boys, but I have a sassy firecracker girl.

Erin: Yes you do!

Portia: I’ve just found your teaching to be very helpful and insightful as a mama of a girl who is in relation to boys. And what I mean by that is, I think we often don’t think about how we can start helping our girls at an early age to affirm godly masculinity, to affirm who a boy is, who a man is created to be.

I think this has been helpful for me to take back with her and to explore more how she views boys. The coloring crayon example was perfect. I just wanted to say thank you for that and helping this mama of a girl to be a better mama to her girl.

Erin: I love sweet Emmy. I love her. And part of the reason is I myself am a firecracker. Emmy is a firecracker. I don’t apologize for that. That’s how the Lord wired me. So I don’t want to communicate that it’s only boys that can have a lot of energy, or it’s only boys that have to bridle their own strength. I’ve had to learn some of those lessons in my own life—I’m still learning some of those lessons.

But I love that thought: what would it look like for little girls and little boys being raised in Christ to treasure the differences in each other? Because it can be quite alarming to little girls at times, I think.

Joy: As we continue Erin Unscripted here on The Deep Well, I have a few more questions.

Erin, what if a boy isn’t a firecracker? What if he does like to sit quietly? What if he chooses the pink and purple crayons? What if he colors neatly inside the lines? Should we be worried?

Erin: I actually think that speaks more into this cultural conversation that we’re having, which is that we want to define manhood and womanhood as do’s and don’ts.

I have a friend whose little boy is probably five or six. He’s kind of a sensitive type of kid, very artistic. Cool kid. But we had a conversation recently, and she said, “In any other era, he just would have been seen as a sensitive male. But in the era he’s growing up in, is he feminine? Is he gay?” And she’s, like, “He’s a little boy! He’s just interested in art.”

And so I think that’s where we need to be so careful about ascribing things to masculinity or femininity that Scripture never assigns to them.

So, yes. The crux of this episode was about “Your boy might be a little wild.” He might be a firecracker, but he might not. His masculinity is about what he has to show the world about who God is, not about the color of crayons he likes.

It’s not really about his temperament. It’s about something deeper than that. It’s about his identity, how God’s made him to be. And we really want a checklist. Even I, as I’m saying this, want a checklist. I want it to be, like, “This is good masculinity, this is bad. This is good femininity, this is bad.” And it’s just trying to paint things with way too broad of a brush.

So I would just take us back to the fact that maleness is good. Femaleness is good. They’re a part of God’s design. And the pathway to understanding our identity is understanding the God who made us.

We get it backwards. We look at the things we do and try to form an identity out of those things. And instead, we need to look to God who’s our identity former, and let that shape who we become.

So, yes, maybe it’s not as linear or it doesn’t fit into as tidy of boxes as we sometimes want to put Him in (although, culturally, it feels like there’s no boxes anymore). It’s just crazy. But this is not about your boy being a certain kind of boy, but in realizing that the way God made him is meant to point others to who God is.

Joy: I love that. Your boy is unique and an image-bearer of God.

Well, here’s another. It might be a little confusing. You talked about your Pop and how he was a good man. And yet, we were sitting in the teaching where you said there are no good boys. It doesn’t exist. There is no good, no not one.

Erin: Right.

Joy: So, dissect it. Unpack that a little bit better for us.

Erin: Rather paradoxical.

Joy: Yes. It could be.

Erin: The “No Good Boys” episode is just the idea that on our own, none of us have any good to offer. That’s straight from Scripture, and that can be a bitter pill to swallow because we think, Yeah, I’m good compared to . . . someone else.

Scripture works like a mirror, or like a magnifying glass, or both, and points out, no. Actually, in your heart—it doesn’t always come out in your actions—but in your heart, you’re rebellious, you’re self-seeking, you’re angry, you’re a liar, you’re a manipulator, all of these things. So, no true good exists in us, especially when compared to God.

But God is good. And so in emulating His character, and seeking to be His image bearers, we can be forces of good in the world.

So my Pop, who is one of my favorite people of all time . . . This is hard for me to accept, but I know it’s true. God’s Word says it’s true. Pop didn’t have any good on his own. Even if he seemed to have some good things to offer the world, his heart was just as wicked as the next person.

But because I knew him as a man, by the time I came along, he had been walking with the Lord for fifty years, maybe longer than that. And so God had been transforming him for a very long time into His image. So he was good because he reflected the goodness of God.

Really, do any of us have any good on our own? We don’t. But God, when we come to Him, we wear His robes of righteousness. We don’t earn them. But we wear His robes of righteousness, and we showcase His goodness to the world. So, I admit. It can be a paradox.

Joy: What a blessing, though, to have such a man of character of God to give you that example because your father sometimes failed you. He did fail you.

Erin: Absolutely.

There was a woman in the audience as I was teaching this series, and she kind of pulled me aside. She shared with me that it’s been challenging for her to accept that God’s design for manhood and womanhood is good because she’s been so harmed by men. And that is real. I would not belittle that at all.

But we also talked about one bad man does not mean the whole design is flawed. And even a bunch of bad men doesn’t mean that God’s design was flawed. God’s design was that we would be perfect image bearers and reflect Him perfectly.

So that’s where it can break down, because there are men who aren’t good. There are women who aren’t good. But I would encourage us not to throw out the baby with the bath water, proverbially, and just say, “Oh, the whole thing must be bad!” No. That’s sin taking its course in the life of a man, or in multiple men.

I do want to acknowledge as we’re talking about all of these things, that’s real. And that can be really confusing. I’ve experienced some of that confusion, but I also had Pops in my life and men who I could go, “Yes, God’s design as evidenced in his life is good and good for me.”

Joy: And you also had God’s Word, which tethered you even in those questionable times.

Erin: Absolutely. There’s no substitute for that. I mean, if you’re going to look around for men who perfectly emulate God’s design for manhood, you won’t find one. And if you’re going to look around for women who perfectly emulate or showcase God’s design for womanhood, you won’t find one. And you won’t be one.

We can’t do it perfectly because we’re sinful. But God’s Word is ever drawing us back to that shalom that God’s intent was a perfect, peace-filled world. God’s intent was not for us to reach for the fruit that He’s forbidden but for us to reach for Him. He’s ever moving. We were talking about this this morning, Joy. He’s ever moving the world back to that place of perfection that He designed for us. It really is the Word that shows us the way things ought to be.

Joy: Amen. And there’s only one perfect man, and His name is Jesus.

Erin: Amen.

Does your vision of your son’s future include risks? Erin is going to challenge every mama bear with that question. That’s on the next episode of The Deep Well.

The Deep Well with my mom, Erin Davis, is a part of the Revive Our Hearts’ family. We’re calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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