God's Young Warriors

Choir practice. The chapel auditorium. It's below freezing outside but the ancient heater system in Old Main has kids jumping off the stage to open the battered stained glass windows marching along the walls. This semester at my college, my school's choir has been closing out our spring program with the well-known hymn "For All the Saints." I'd gotten used to the routine of rehearsal and yawn as our director runs the same line with the basses for the fourth time. I'm standing between the same two people on the top of a rickety riser and pray I don't lurch backward into the wall. My tenor friend beside me reaches his cheap mechanical pencil over my folder to scratch a smiley face on my sheet music. 

"All right, let's run that with everyone," the director says, to the basses' relief. "Sopranos and altos,  measure twenty-eight." 

A collective breath and the piano and women are off. "O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle; they in glory shine. Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine. Alleluia!" 

"Gentlemen!" the director yells, baton punching the air. 

I've always had a thing for male voices. Perhaps growing up going to presbytery meetings and in churches with strong male voices is why. Regardless, I usually get swept off into these few measures where the men in my choir (all of whom I at least know casually and many personally) sing alone. 

But that day, the words and the sight struck me just as much as the sound. 

"And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, steals on the ear the distant triumph song, and hearts are brave again and arms are strong. Alleluia!" 

For a moment, the eighteen to twenty-something young men whose voices filled my ears were not just college boys to my eyes, but young warriors in the kingdom of the Lord. All of them, whether in the home, the church, the pulpit, or the workplace, will be future spiritual leaders. These "boys" will pick up the pieces and follow in the footsteps of the men before them, everyone from David and Paul to Clement and Athanasius to Luther and Wycliffe to Jonathan Edwards and Jim Elliot and R.C. Sproul as well as their own fathers, pastors, and the other mentors around them. And it hit me hard. 

Here's why.

I feel like oftentimes we focus too much on the lack of masculinity, potential, work ethic, conviction, enter the word in the blank, when it comes to the demographic of young men, especially we young ladies hoping to marry one of them. While I recognize that is a real issue in the church, this article is not going to focus on that topic. Plenty of digital ink has been spilled on that score. Point made, I can safely say that there are many excellent young, godly men in my life that seek to excel in those areas. 

But we girls get caught up in the details. We reduce young men to potential mates (which is a serious position in life but not the only one young people are called to), nitpicking away at the young men around us according to our personal preference lists and how closely they match up to our favorite fictional heroes and what color their eyes are and how big of a paycheck they could bring in. But young Christian men are so much more than potential boyfriends. 

They are the future leaders of the church. 

They are future fathers, authority figures, counselors, law enforcement, medical personnel, soldiers.

They are future cornerstones to their own households as Christ is the cornerstone of the church. 

They are young men who are trying hard to strive in godliness in a world that hates them more than ever before.

They are young men daily slammed with the oversexualized, over-stimulating world we lived in that believes men, especially young white men, are always wrong, have no say, and only want to satisfy their own lust. 

They are young men who will someday raise their own young men to not make the same mistakes that they did, who will love and cherish a wife till death does part them, who will work hard and suffer for the sake of their homes and of Christ. 

They are not immune to weakness, emotion, sin, and temptation, and they are still young, but pressure from girls' fathers, from their own parents, from society, can force them to choose to grin and bear it. Girls have lots of places on the internet that assure them that they are enough, that they are perfect (another can of worms for another time), but young men are almost always told they are not man enough. 

True, not all of them have had a whiff of the gunpowder of the spiritual battleground yet, but all of them will in God's providence, and some of them have. They likely will not tell you either way unless they choose to, because they are young men. 

But they will hold the door open for you, among other things. After my rehearsal epiphany, I kept an changed eye out on my choir guy friends as we all packed up for our spring break tour. I discovered there are many platonic and simple ways that these godly young men will ensure that the young women around them are safe, cared for, and made to feel special, whether agreeing to cross a busy highway for a particular fast food restaurant, helping to fix my pearl necklace when it snapped on the bus, searching frantically for my missing jacket before we went out into snowy weather, giving me and the other girls hugs when we melted down at the Flight 93 September 11 Memorial, carrying our bags, making us laugh, asking how we were doing, listening to us, anything. 

It showed effort. A lot of times, it was effortless effort. They jumped to the occasion even over seemingly minor things because that's what they do. They're young men. And if they put such effort even into the mundane details, maybe we girls should stop expecting them all to be Instagram boyfriends and worrying about carat sizes on our future rings and give them at least the benefit of the doubt. If the good godly young men around us naturally put that kind of effort into little things, they are likely putting effort into the serious things. And they must. It is their calling as men of God, part of which is to care for and provide for the weaker vessels around them. 

Instead of looking at young Christian men as future lovers, ladies, let's look at them for what they really and truly are: young Christian men. Their hearts will not always be brave and their arms not always strong, but God has raised them up for the plan He has for them and for the church. 

The least we owe them is encouragement, gratefulness, and prayer. Encouragement is a balm against the world's tearing fingers shouting at these young men that they are unintelligent, messy, unmannerly, lustful pigs. Gratefulness for their efforts when directed towards you is a form of encouragement. And prayer, to quote John Calvin, "is the most powerful and practical way we can express our love for {our brothers}." 

And why should we do this? Because there will be many days for these young men where the strife will be fierce and the warfare long. They are just setting foot on the battlefield, and their ears are ringing with words from the world, the church, and from those around them that they are silly weaklings. While they are not fragile and in need of babying (they will need correction but it is not our place to correct them), they are being assailed from every side, and do need prayer and encouragement. 

They are expected to show us chivalry. Perhaps it is time for us to expect ourselves to return the favor and be the support we are called to be by God. 

Let us be a voice of encouragement to our young men who are striving to follow the Lord as they take their place in His ranks.