(Editors Note- This is the Foreword to the book written by Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield’s book of Manly Men: An utterly invigorating guide to being your most masculine self. I can’t add to what General Boykin wrote. I agree wholeheartedly with his words. This book is a must read.)
Lieutenant General William G. Boykin (retired) Former commander, Delta Force
FEW PERSONALITIES IN THE BIBLE ARE MORE RECOGNIZED FOR their manly qualities than the “man after God’s own heart,” the great King David. He was an extraordinary warrior, an accomplished musician, a skilled author, a man of great wisdom, and, as important, a dutiful shepherd over his father’s flocks. He was also courageous, passionate, and certainly flawed. David was a manly man who achieved greatness in his lifetime, a man all men today should study for the lessons they can learn.
David knew what it was to be a man. As he lay dying, he called his son Solomon to his bedside and gave him final instructions: “I am about to go the way of all the earth. So be strong and show yourself a man.” These are the last recorded words of one of the greatest kings to ever live. Of all he might have said to his son with his final breath, he chose to instruct him to be a man. They are words we should never forget.
Today the concept of being a manly man is something every American male should contemplate. The truth is most men are not at all clear about what it means to be a real man in American society. The feminist movement has severely re-worked the image of manhood, and this has damaged the self-esteem of many men. Likewise, the constant intrusion of government into the family structure in our nation has contributed dramatically to confusion about what God intends men to be. When a government perpetuates the myth that its programs are more important than fathers in the home, men will naturally suffer a crisis of identity.
Men also face the popular but false notion that women can do anything a man can do. This, too, serves to emasculate men, just as it ignores God’s highest and noblest intentions for men and women. It has given our nation a plague of gender confusion that masquerades as trendy gender neutrality and leaves us everything from unisex dress to mixing the sexes in frontline combat units in our military. This is one of many signs of America’s deepening gender crisis, a crisis that is devastating American men.
Sadly, most Christian churches offer little help in this cause, and it is because they fail to articulate the true nature of the greatest man in history, Jesus Christ. Many churches portray him as meek, weak, and almost effeminate. This leads to men who are much the same.
It is a picture far from the true Jesus Christ. Consider for a moment. Jesus was a carpenter who worked with his hands and lifted heavy stone and large chunks of wood. His hands were calloused and scarred from the everyday wear and tear of carpentry. Yes, he was the Son of God, but he was also a man’s man. He even told his disciples to sell their cloaks and buy swords as they set off to do his work and build his church. He was establishing for their understanding that there are things worth fighting for, even things worth dying for as men.
He is our highest example of manhood, particularly in the magnificence of his courage. We should never forget how he entered the temple in Jerusalem one day. Seeing conduct that showed disregard for the honor of God, he made a braided whip and drove moneychangers and merchants out of the temple courts. You can bet that those who saw him do it never forgot how he flipped over tables and fiercely prevented strong young men from carrying merchandise through God’s house. This is the true Jesus Christ. He was tough and rugged, but also the epitome of love and compassion.
What about American men today?
Most modern men do not reflect the image of the best model for genuine manhood. Society suffers as a result. For example, many men are convinced it is somehow manly to produce children yet unmanly to take responsibility for them. This is why there are American households teeming with children but absent a father.
Consider also the domestic abuse statistics in America. What kind of degenerate thinks it is manly to beat a woman—that he is somehow affirming his superior status in the world through violence against those he is intended to protect?
I could ask the same question about men who have extramarital affairs. What kind of man breaks his vows, destroys lives, and violates the laws of God for false love and brief pleasures? It must be the same kind of man who allows pornography—a kind of fictional intimacy of the imagination—to destroy genuine intimacy with a loving wife. Certainly men who do these things are not modeling themselves after the ultimate man, Jesus Christ.
It is no wonder so many people are asking these days, “Where are all the real men?”
Manhood is suffering today. Men seem to be confused about what God wants them to be and about how to live out their manly calling. I often get this question from the men I meet: “Are there any examples of real men that we can emulate?” I answer, “Yes!” Let me tell you about just one.
My dad was a manly man who was a fine role model for my brother and me. Gerald Boykin grew up on a tobacco farm in eastern North Carolina as one of ten children. He was the sixth son of a sharecropper. Gerald dropped out of high school three months after his seventeenth birthday so he could join the United States Navy during World War II. His four older brothers were already deployed to combat zones and Gerald refused to stay behind. He simply had to join his brothers in upholding what they all believed.
Knowing my father as I do, I’m sure he also did not want to be left out of the war stories that would be told at the family gatherings in later years! His passion to serve his country like a man landed him in the middle of fierce fighting on June 6, 1944—D-Day. Gerald was severely wounded and left blind in his left eye. After his discharge from the navy, he returned to the tobacco farm, married his sweetheart, and started a family. When the Korean War began in 1950, he returned to service in the United States Army, which had a program for disabled veterans who could still function. After the war, he was discharged a second time. Upon leaving the army, Gerald accepted a job with the United States Marine Corps, where he served for thirty-two years as a federal employee. This service included a year in Vietnam and multiple deployments into dangerous areas.
Gerald never expected America to give him anything but an opportunity. He served his nation with devotion all his life and raised his family to love God and to love the nation that he had so faithfully served. His sense of justice and his moral courage were his cornerstone characteristics. Gerald knew what he believed, what was important to him, and what he was unwilling to compromise. He had a servant’s heart and the strength of character to stand by his convictions. He had transcendent causes in his life. They can be summarized in three words: God, country, family.
Though he had little education, Gerald was a man of wisdom who took his responsibilities as a father and mentor seriously and always stood on principle. His sense of right and wrong gave him the moral compass that guided his life. He never blamed others for his own failures or shortcomings. He accepted responsibility for his actions and lived with the consequences. He was my hero—a real man, a manly man.
Some readers probably expected me to characterize him as a skilled hunter or fisherman or outdoorsman or even an avid golfer. After all, isn’t that what we think of when we talk about manly men these days? Well, he was all of these things, too, but they were not what made him a manly man. Instead, it was his willingness to subordinate his own desires and aspirations to greater causes: his God, his nation, and his family. He put the welfare and security of others before his own. He knew he was blessed by a sovereign and loving God to be an American, and he believed his family was a gift from God for which he was responsible.
Some readers might also have expected me to brag about my father’s physical strength. Yeah, he was a powerful man, too, with enough strength to impress other men. Yet this did not make him manly either. Physical strength is never what makes a man manly. Rather, it is moral strength that identifies the true man, and my father had plenty of it. He was the kind of man King David called his son to be.
What about you? Are you a manly man? Can you call yourself a real warrior, a protector of the flock, a man with a transcendent cause in your life?
Sadly, too many men in America cannot identify with the characteristics of a real man. The ideal of the warrior, for example, is too high for them. What makes a man a warrior is his willingness to place himself between what he holds dear and anything that threatens it. Honor is the chief motivator for the warrior. Dishonor is unthinkable. He does the right thing without expectation of reward because honor is an intrinsic value that, when manifested in one’s life, provides its own rewards.
The protector of the flock will risk his own life just as King David did when his father’s sheep were threatened by a lion and a bear. Although David certainly feared the strength and aggression of the bear and the lion, he overcame that fear because he knew the power of his God was greater. We should remember this. A manly man is not without fear; rather he overcomes his fear by enduring difficulty and hardship. Also, like King David, he knows the source of his own strength: God himself.
Each man must determine what is dear to him and what is worth sacrificing for. A transcendent cause must exist in a man’s life if he is to reach his full potential as a man. Few men today have done a thorough self-analysis to ascertain what their transcendent cause is—or even if they have one. It is time, though: time to determine what we hold dear and what is worthy of sacrifice. As men, we cannot wait until the later years of our lives to make this assessment. I urge you: do it now, and bring meaning to who you are as a man.
I was privileged to serve for thirty-six years in the United States Army with some of America’s finest men. Because I was in Special Operations, I served with people who were selected because they were the best in their fields and were totally committed to their beliefs and values. I have seen them do extraordinary things, often at the risk of their lives.
During the Blackhawk Down events in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October of 1993, two of my Delta Force men, Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, sacrificed their lives to save four comrades who had crashed in a helicopter in a hostile part of the city. Knowing there was no one else who could save their comrades at that moment, these two men volunteered to go alone into what they knew was almost certainly a fatal situation. After asking three times to be allowed to save the four men in the crash, they were finally granted permission to go.
Ultimately, only the copilot survived to tell the story of how these incredible heroes jumped from a hovering helicopter and fought their way into the crash where they removed the crew from their seats and then defended them until they were killed. These men were motivated by more than self-interest. They were patriots. They were men.
They, and many like them, are still the core of American manhood. I am actually optimistic today because there are other men like Shughart and Gordon who are not only serving in our nation’s armed forces, but are serving in numerous ways in communities across the nation. Some are professionals, but many are factory workers, farmers, and average citizens who have settled the question of what they care most about and are prepared to make sacrifices for the things they value. These are the leaders of the future.
Stephen Mansfield has provided an extraordinary blueprint for every man to determine how he can be the man that God has called him to be—a manly man. Stephen uses his knowledge of biblical principles combined with his incredible understanding of men—and the influences and distractions that they are facing today—to show us how to grow into the kind of man that King David wanted Solomon to be.
This book is a must read for every American male. We must restore the understanding of what it means to be a manly man. The nation’s future depends on men getting back to the fundamentals of being men of courage and values. Read this book and discover what it means to be a manly man. What you find may surprise you. You will be changed for the better and inspired to be the man you want to be—the man God intended you to be.
