Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Few relationships shape a man's life more than the one he has with his father. And when that relationship is broken or even absent, well, it can leave wounds that follow a boy well into adulthood. On today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, we open up with a recording of two young boys who sent this message to their dad shortly after he had left their family. And we'll hear Dr. Dobson's response.

Guest (Male): Dad, I went fishing when you went fishing all by mine. And I caught and I caught a turtle. Happy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day, Dad. Daddy, I love you. So Daddy, I wish you could come to our house and stay there forever.

Dr. James Dobson: If that doesn't put a knot in your stomach, I really don't know what will. Tender, innocent words from two little boys whose dad never returned home. The stories are a little different and the circumstances change, but there are so many men today who have gone through something similar when they were young.

As a result, they're still the walking wounded. They still have trouble forming relationships. They still find it difficult to reveal who they are. And they have problems with male identity as a result of something that happened many, many years ago. We're going to talk a little bit about that subject today.

Some time ago, we invited Reverend Gordon Dalbey to be with us. He has a very strong desire to help men discover their male identity and understand their role in the home and in society. He expressed some of those views in an outstanding book called Healing the Masculine Soul, and it has been helpful to many, many men through the years.

Roger Marsh: Reverend Gordon Dalbey is a Harvard-trained pastor, former Peace Corps volunteer, and a speaker. His book, Healing the Masculine Soul, helped pioneer the Christian men's movement in the late 1980s. Gordon spent decades ministering to men who are carrying the weight of a father's absence, and on today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, he'll explore why that wound cuts so deeply and how God can restore what has been lost. Here now is Dr. James Dobson to begin today's edition of Family Talk.

Dr. James Dobson: Let's start right with your title and with your purpose here. Healing the Masculine Soul implies that the masculine soul needs healing, it must be sick. Is that what you're saying and how so?

Gordon Dalbey: These days, it probably doesn't take a whole lot of insight to look around our society to see that we men are really struggling today. Whatever issue you look at, it seems like if you take an issue like pornography, for example, most of the effort at that and certainly appropriately so. I've been to a lot of rallies against pornography to picket the places that are selling it and everything like that. Marvelous, we've got to be doing these kinds of things, but very rarely do you hear anybody ask, wait a minute, it's men who are buying this stuff.

What's the wound in the men that makes a man in particular so afraid of a real-life flesh-and-blood woman? Why are we so afraid to relate to a real woman? What's that fear within us that makes us turn instead to a page of paper? But we men are really hurting around the country. Most of the time you see, unfortunately, we men are not very skilled frankly at expressing our feelings at times. We act it out more than we'll talk about it.

Prisons, for example, are just filled with men these days, and you almost have to ask at some point why are there so few men in church? The statistics are about one-third of church members are men and so many men in prison. What is it about the masculine energy somehow that we men don't know how to appropriate in a godly way? We're misusing, we're misfocusing.

I would say that the great wound there, if we want to get right to the source of it, the great wound is that we don't have relationships with our fathers to encourage us to be men. Every boy cries out to his daddy in his own spirit and his own heart, "Daddy, show me how to be a man." The great tragedy in our society today is most men don't know how to reach out to their sons because they haven't been reached out to.

So they don't know how to reach out to the boy and encourage him and draw him close to him. A boy looks to his dad like Jesus said in John 10:30, "I and the Father are one." The great question and tragic for our society today is how many men today can say like Jesus, "I and the Father, my Father, are one?" I don't hardly know any men in my generation who can do that.

Dr. James Dobson: Are you referring to a kind of wimpish nature?

Gordon Dalbey: I'm saying that we men don't know how to move in masculine strength today because we haven't had that inner confidence that comes with bonding with the father and with the male community.

Dr. James Dobson: You refer in your book to the soft male. What do you mean by that?

Gordon Dalbey: I mean that a man who's unable to move ahead with life goals and direction, who doesn't have an inner sense of his own self as a man, who knows that he belongs in this world as a man, as a man he's been given certain gifts and talents and strength that God, his creator Father, has given him and called him to put to use in this world to bring the kingdom in this world.

Most men don't know that. We're just floundering around because even a little boy, for example, needs a father. If a little boy is building a mud fort or something, he needs a daddy to come up and say, "Son, that looks good. I like that." But we don't have fathers who know how to reach out unfortunately to their sons to give them that kind of approval and encouragement.

Dr. James Dobson: Is this different, Gordon? Suppose how it was a hundred years ago. Do you think the role of men has changed? The self-concept of men has changed?

Gordon Dalbey: I think a hundred years ago, prior to the Industrial Revolution, most boys actually went to work with their daddy. Even four, five years old, you're old enough on the farm to do some chores and you're around your father all the time. I remember one man in his late 30s I was ministering to once and he was just so lost in life. I began to ask him, "Do you have any experience you remember with your father?" He said, "Actually, yes." We began to pray about it and the Lord began to reveal and draw back out of his memory.

Once he was just laying down with his father, he must have been about five or six years old and his brother was about seven or eight years old, and his dad had one of them in each arm. He says, "I can remember laying there with my daddy and it was just a wonderful kind of sunny day. We're out in the grass and we'd done some chores around the house." He said it was like there was a brown ooze coming out of my father and coming into us boys, and it just made us feel good. It was just a wonderful feeling just to be that bonded. There's a physical bond with the father.

Dr. James Dobson: I talk often about my father and my relationship with my dad. I have people write or people who see me on the street who say, "I long for what you had with your dad. I never knew my dad. My dad rejected me. My dad abused me physically or emotionally or sexually."

Gordon Dalbey: Let me give you a story Father Richard Rohr, a Catholic priest, does a lot of teaching on this. I picked up from him where a nun was ministering in a prison, a men's prison. One of the prisoners came to her and said, "Sister, can you get me a Mother's Day card?" She said, "Well, fine, sure." She went down to the local store, bought one, gave it to him. As often happens in institutional settings, the word traveled like wildfire.

Next thing you know, she had guys, hundreds of guys asking for Mother's Day cards. Well, she was a smart lady. She got on the phone to Hallmark cards and said, "Can you help me out?" They said, "Sure, Sister." They sent her 500 Mother's Day cards. She had them stacked up in the chapel. She had men lined up all through the cellblocks to get their Mother's Day card. She gave them out for long days, but she felt great about it.

Next thing you know, she's looking at her calendar and she sees, "Aha, here comes June. Father's Day is coming up." Back on the phone to Hallmark. Sure enough, Sister, they sent her 500 Father's Day cards. She said she held those cards in the chapel and she waited. Father's Day came, Father's Day went, and she waited. She said to this day, "I have every one of those cards."

Now you see, what does that saying? In the scripture in Malachi 4 verses 5 and 6, the last verses of the Hebrew covenant, the last words God has to His people before the coming of Jesus, He's saying, "This is what to look for, people. Here's what's coming. I'm going to send you the prophet Elijah and he's going to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. Otherwise, I would smite the land with a curse." Another text says, "Bring destruction upon your country."

What are we seeing? We're seeing men in prison who have no relationship with their fathers. These are the men with the God-given masculine strength misfocusing it into destructive places, you see. That's what we're seeing. That scripture is just alive and true to this day.

Dr. James Dobson: If you watch Monday Night Football, you'll see the cameras honing in on the players and invariably they say, "Hi Mom." I've never seen one of them say, "Hi Dad." Why not? Why not, "Hi Dad?" Dads are the ones that are interested in football.

Gordon Dalbey: Well, maybe Dad isn't there. Maybe they don't know who Dad is. Dad is just not there. Unfortunately, you see, where that really bears down hard on us as men is because we grow up with that longing in us to be one with the father. I believe that's given to us by God. That's part of who we are. The male child wants to be one with the father.

I believe the Father God uses that longing within us, even the brokenness, to reach us. It's that brokenness, that wound in us from my earthly father that will drive us to the Heavenly Father sooner or later if we're open to it.

Dr. James Dobson: What do you remember about your dad? Is he still living?

Gordon Dalbey: Yes. Oh, my dad is a marvelous guy. He was a career naval officer. I can remember scenes of my dad, some of the wonderful scenes I can recall are when he would come home from sea when he was stationed at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard before I went to school, about four or five years old. He would come home, you see, and he'd put his Navy hat on the table, go to hug my mom, and I would rush to pick that hat up and put it on my head.

It would come down over my ears and chin and everything, but I'd angle it just right to get this huge hat over my head. I longed to be like my daddy, a naval officer. It was a great crushing blow to me later in college when I was colorblind it turned out and I couldn't be a naval officer and I figured I'll never be a warrior like my father.

It wasn't until many years later that the Lord revealed to me that there was another battle in the spirit that He has called me to be a commander in that. We talk in my family, at least I talk about, not the Lord's army, the Lord's navy. So we talk about that.

But my father was a marvelous guy. My grandfather was a steelworker who worked 60 hours a week in the steel mills. Marvelous guy, big, strong, husky guy. I know that as a man I've had to go back to my father's hometown in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia, walk those old cobblestone streets where my great-grandfather and grandfather worked and worked in the mills and begin to sense what kind of a masculine heritage I have, you see.

Dr. James Dobson: Is there a close relationship, and are you making the point that not only does your self-concept as a man relate to how you interacted with your father, but the kind of work that you do? 100, 200, 300 years ago when labor was intense, when men worked on the farms and they were very masculine in the kind of roles, there was less difficulty with identity.

Gordon Dalbey: Of course. In that sense, the boy could go to work with the father and could stand side by side with Dad. See, there's something that can't be transmitted by words even, it's got to be by proximity. You've got to be physically close to the man somehow. I don't understand it. It's a mystery.

Dr. James Dobson: Someone said, "Tie a boy to a good man and he almost never goes wrong." That's true for my dad and myself. It was through hunting and fishing primarily that I identified with him. It's that time together when my mother and everybody else was gone and there's just the two of us out there talking and sharing ideas and then the excitement of hunting squirrels and quail.

Gordon Dalbey: That's wonderful. You and one other person would say you will never know what that means because a man who doesn't have that is in a whole different ballpark as he grows up, wondering, "Am I really admitted to the company of men? Am I really a man?" In my teachings, I have four basic role models that we men look to ourselves. We look in ourselves and say, "Am I really a man?" if a man really judges himself, and I believe we do all the time.

There are basically four roles that we judge ourselves by to see if we measure up. The world has one perspective on these things and the biblical faith has another perspective. First, am I a son of the father? Do I measure up to Dad's standard? Of course, in the world, that means, "Can you be just like your daddy?" if he's a farmer, will you be a farmer? But in the biblical faith, understanding is that Jesus has come to bring us to the Father who's called us uniquely to grow into manhood in the image of the Father God.

Secondly, lover of a woman. I'm trying to think of a nice way to put this. Every high school guy in his gym class knows other ways to put this, but it's, "Can I win the affection of a desirable woman basically?" The world, of course, has one idea. Just turn on the TV and you'll get a pretty perverted idea of what the world has in mind for that. What does it mean to be a godly and a godly relationship with a woman?

Thirdly, as a warrior. The world's perspective is, "Can you fight and win? Can you in the third-grade playground?" Every boy knows what that means. "Can you bully people? Can you punch them out faster than they punch you out?" The Rambo idea. What does it mean when the apostle says in 2nd Corinthians 10 that the weapons we use in our fight are not the world's weapons but God's mighty weapons which are used to destroy strongholds? What is a warrior of God like?

Fourthly, as a provider or as a worker. "Can I struggle at a job? Can I work hard at a job and succeed?" The world's perspective is, "Can you scramble up the ladder and burn yourself out and step on people on the way to make it?" And the scripture perspective, I think Colossians 3:23, where it says work as unto the Lord. What does it mean that God has given you a vocation, literally a calling, and called you with certain gifts to put them to use to serve Him in this world?

Dr. James Dobson: So men today assess themselves in these four dimensions and they don't like what they see. What are the characteristics of a man whose soul needs healing? What are you seeing in today's masculinity that bothers you?

Gordon Dalbey: One of the things is a man feels like he doesn't belong, not in this world even, because as a boy there's been no company of men to welcome him. Unlike other societies in the world, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nigeria and the men take responsibility for the boys in the village. Have a whole rite of passage, I call it a sacrament, to draw the boys into fellowship with the men. The father is integral to that and the old men of the village as well.

Most men today don't feel like they belong. They don't feel like they're one of the men. That kind of cripples us in a way because we're always wondering what do I have to do to make it as a man? Do I have to hit another home run? Do I have to sell another contract? Do I have to date another woman? What is it? Of course, we never get there, so we always feel very insecure in that sense.

I was teaching not long ago to a hundred young men. It turned out it was a conference and through a snafu in the scheduling only the younger men could come. We had a hundred young guys and I polled them. I said, "How many of you had a father who pulled you aside when you were 12, 13 years old and said, 'Son, you're growing older now. You're going to be thinking about girls a lot, you probably already have been. Let me share with you a few things I've learned and some important things about this that you need to know.'?"

You know how many guys out of a hundred raised their hand? Three. One of those guys halfway raised his hand. He said, "I'm not sure about this but" I said, "That's it, we'll take it. If you even have a doubt, you're in." Three out of a hundred. That's what I get everywhere I go around the country.

Dr. James Dobson: What a sad commentary.

Gordon Dalbey: Isn't that what's happening? Do we wonder then why we get in trouble with our sexuality? Anything else a man would do, if you're taking a job for a year, you'd spend at least a week having someone in the job teach you, you'd read a book about it or something and you'd have training. We think that relating to women and families, we just get married and you just do it. And we wonder why we get in such trouble when there's no older men who have walked that path.

One of the things we men have not learned to do is to fight for the woman. We know how to fight against the woman many times. We don't know how to fight for the woman. For example, had a couple come to me for help one time and I thought they were in such difficulty. Finally, I thought maybe a trip to Disneyland would help them. So I said, "Why don't you go to Disneyland?"

Next week they came back to me. The man came in my office and he flopped down. He was gritting his teeth and he was angry. The woman was just, you look at her eyes were just so sad and she was quiet. I said, "Well, Sam," that's not his real name, "how did it go?" He burst out, "It was awful." He said, "We didn't even get out of the driveway before she was on my case. She was yelling at me, go there, go there, do this, do this."

Pretty soon he was getting so angry. I turned to Sally, that's not her real name. I gave her a chance at least. I said, "Sally, how do you see this?" She sighed and she said, "It's true. I was awful." I said, "What?" And he kind of looked at her funny. I looked at her funny. What do we do now? And I'm just saying, okay, Lord Jesus, come on. What's you doing here?

I turned to Sam and I said, "Well, what did you do when your wife started yelling at you like that and coming down?" He said, "Well," he says, "I just shut up. I figured if I just stayed quiet long enough she'd quit." When I tell this story to women, you just see eyes roll up in their heads and they say, "Gordon, do men really think like?" I said, "Yes, we do." I said, "And what happened?" She said, "It got worse."

Of course, the women say of course it got worse. Women know that. I was puzzled, he was puzzled. Here was this woman sitting just crushed beside him, his wife that he loved, but he was so frustrated. Finally, I just I prayed quietly. I said, "Okay, Sally, what did you need from Sam? What did you need from him?"

And she just sighed and she looked at him and she said, "Honey, I was out of control. I needed your help to get me back into control. I needed you to stop me somehow." See, she needed strength from him. She needed him to fight for her. And his jaw dropped. "But but but" and she says, "I know what you're going to say. You're going to say if I'd spoken up I'd have jumped on you." She said, "And maybe I would have, but I needed you to hang in there with me and not give up."

Dr. James Dobson: There's nothing more frustrating to most women than to be greatly irritated and angry at their husbands and have them not respond. Just sink into silence. They'd rather he'd get up and scream and yell.

Gordon Dalbey: Of course. He abandoned her. But now you see here's the thing. As a man, see, we're raised with the macho image. What is the macho guy? The macho guy is basically two characteristics. He's violent and he's alienated. That's the Lone Ranger. I don't care how good the guys are, they usually have silver bullets or something. They're violent and they're alienated. The Lone Ranger of course even a mask on didn't know who he was. Talk about identity problems.

So the violent and alienated. Well, this guy was a Christian, so he knew he shouldn't be violent. But because he hadn't surrendered his manhood because no even Christian man had come to him and said, "There's another way," the only option open after he'd said, "I'm not going to be violent," what else is open? "I'll be alienated." That's all I know to do. And that seems to be safe. At least I'm not hitting the woman and I guess that's got to be good enough.

So he alienated, pulled the shade and withdrew. Not knowing that that was violence to the woman's soul. That was abandoning her in her moment of need. And of course, he was afraid of the woman's anger. We began to ask, I asked this woman, I said, "Now, Sally, you got to help us men. What could we do as men? What could Sam have said to you that would have communicated struggle on your behalf instead of against you?"

We kind of came up with a couple things that she agreed upon. She said he could have said, "Timeout, you're really running at high speed right now, honey." Period. Nothing else. Not, "Therefore, you're no good." No, just, "You're really running at high speed. Timeout." Or he could have said, "I see that you're upset right now," word of knowledge or something like that.

And he could have said, "Honey, I'm spending all my energy defending myself. I want to spend my energy helping you and getting us back on track together. Now, if there's something that's gone wrong, could we pull over the side of the road here and let's talk about it together? If not, could we put it aside and have a nice day together?" She said, "Yes, that would have been nice."

Dr. James Dobson: He could also have said, "Get off my back." I mean, let's face it.

Gordon Dalbey: True. That was also an option, okay. But you see, he was afraid of the woman when she got angry. Now, I don't know if I have to tell you as a psychologist, I'm sure I don't, that when I questioned him further, I said, "What was it like as a boy growing up? Did your dad and your mom fight?" "Oh, all the time." "What happened?" "They'd start to yell and finally Dad would turn and walk out the door."

And the mother was left with all this fury in her heart and her spirit and her body literally and turn upon the boy. "You're just like your father," and come down on him. And of course, he was terrified. There's a three-foot-tall boy looking at a five-foot woman. Well, now when he grows up, we have a six-foot-tall man looking at a ten-foot woman literally.

In his wife, he sees this ten-foot woman. That's what he brings into the relationship and he's looking at this giant woman over him and he's terrified. And all he can do is run away from her. And she's begging him, "Honey, be strong for me, not against me, but for me."

Dr. James Dobson: Passivity among males then is a major concern in this respect.

Gordon Dalbey: Tremendous. See, the opposite of passivity, I prayed a lot about this as a man and because I pray with men, the opposite of passivity the Lord wants to give man is a spirit of response-ability. The passive man is not able to respond. He waits and reacts. The man of God is able to respond.

He has response-ability, the ability to respond because he has the heart of Jesus, he has the Holy Spirit within him and the power of Jesus. He can say when he's in when there's a argument going on or whatever, say with a woman, he can just say in his heart, "Jesus, come on now you got to help me. You got to help us here." And he'll be battling for the marriage, for the relationship, and realizing that the enemy is not his wife, but the spirit of division or destruction that would come and destroy what God wants to create between them.

Dr. James Dobson: Well, Gordon, as usual, it's going to take us two days at least to talk about this subject. I really do like what I'm hearing from you. Healing the Masculine Soul is the name of the book. Just with the minute that we have left or so, can you give us a feeling for the evangelical community, the church community within the culture? Are you referring as much to the church as you are to the non-church or the unchristian community?

Gordon Dalbey: Yes, unfortunately, I've taught in a lot of churches of course. I remember once in a mixed group of singles, one of the women raised her hand. She said, "Why is it? You say that a man needs to be strong and God gives strength to a man in Jesus." She said, "Why is it that the men in the church," and she hesitated and everybody knew it was coming, "why is it she said the men in the church are not as strong as the men sometimes out there in the world?"

Oh, we had to really struggle with that, you see. Because what it means to be spiritual and where that comes from in our culture. But I think it's across our culture, yes. It's certainly the churches because the churches haven't dealt with men's issues. That's why men are not coming to church, you see. Because the churches are not reaching out to the men and saying, "I know where you're hurting. You're hurting from your father, and we've got good news for you."

Roger Marsh: Every boy longs to hear his father say, "I'm proud of you, son." And when these words never come, the silence can echo for a lifetime. You're listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk in a conversation featuring Dr. Dobson and Reverend Gordon Dalbey.

Now, if today's program really resonated with you, or if you know a man who's carrying the weight of a father wound, I hope you'll share this broadcast with a friend. Remember, you can listen to it again, or you can send it from our website at JDFI.net. Once you're there, you'll also find information about Gordon Dalbey's outstanding book called Healing the Masculine Soul.

And parents, don't forget, if you have a middle schooler or high school student at home, the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute is hosting a national essay contest with cash prizes of up to $2,500. Now, the deadline is just around the corner, Thursday, April 30th, so don't wait. For more information, go to drjamesdobson.org/USA250. That's drjamesdobson.org/USA250.

Every broadcast you hear here on Family Talk exists because generous friends just like you have stepped forward to make that program possible. The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute is dedicated to preserving the institution of the family, to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to defending the sanctity of human life. And that mission moves forward because of listeners just like you.

To make a secure donation, go to JDFI.net, or to speak with a member of our constituent care team, you can always reach us at 877-732-6825. That's 877-732-6825. Well, I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks so much for listening to Family Talk today.

Be sure to tune in again next time right here for part two of this powerful conversation featuring Dr. James Dobson and his guest, Reverend Gordon Dalbey. That's coming up here on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love.

This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. Hi, everyone, Roger Marsh here. At the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we believe strong families build strong communities. That's why we're committed to providing you with resources that strengthen your home. Thank you for partnering with us to support and encourage families all across America.