How to Raise Masculine Sons — Stu Weber

This message was given at the building strong families conference held in Dallas, Texas March 20th through the 22nd of 2000. This conference was sponsored by the Council on biblical manhood and womanhood and family life ministries.

Following the message there will be information on how to order additional materials on building a strong family.

When I was in the I was a sophomore in high school and I'd heard with my buddies that there was an eighth grade girls softball game going on down the road. I wanted to see the girls more than I did the softball as did all my cronies and so we went down to watch the softball game and and this really hot grounder went down the third baseline and This little gal playing third base stepped in front of the ball and took all the velocity off of it.

Just like you're supposed to and right out of the crouch peg it to first place first base with no. No roundness in the trajectory just went pop into the first baseman's glove. And I said that you know, I'd love to spend my life with a woman like that.

So this is Lindy back here. Yeah, she's a delight and as Steve mentioned God's given us three boys. We absolutely love them all. I get emotional even thinking about having three boys we deserve none of them.

The Grace of God and the Calling to Raise Masculine Sons

The grace of God has been strong and good in our home. And he has salvaged them in spite of me and us and I have learned as much from my son. Or more than they have learned from me along the way and much of that is because of the woman who has stood beside me.

Not being a man not being masculine. She has helped me read the hearts where I couldn't see them right away. So I I'm here speaking on the topic that if we can raise masculine sons anybody can and there there is hope for all of us and Let me just ask this how many of you in this room?

Are either pastors or pastors wives, could I see you? Oh. We're we're largely pastors or pastors wives and therefore I assume you have some boys probably. May I just. I almost felt when Robert was speaking like We should close in prayer and go home.

Because it was so well done. It was so choice. The principles were so real. The need was so obvious the the cause was so compelling and Really what we're talking about here is more of the same. I want to work on some things with you a little bit about this raising masculine sons.

But before we get there, I'd like to walk through a bit of a long driveway if you will allow me. Because I really want to not only affirm everything that Robert said this morning, but affirm everything that dr. Grudem said last evening.

Especially his last point about how huge this gender thing is. You and I understand that to one degree or another or we wouldn't be at this conference. But let me just share with you a few things. It'll hopefully be the driveway that will get us to how to raise masculine sons.

Some years ago actually I was staring out the front window of our home. Steve mentioned we live in Oregon. It's always gray wet drab and depressing on the western side of the state. That's where I live.

So I was looking out the window gray drab and depressed and Linda said to me What is it with you? You have been sort of that way lately and it's not like you what's happening for you? And I found myself saying words like this.

I said, you know, honey. I was a soldier a Long time ago when it wasn't cool to be a soldier. In fact, you couldn't wear your uniform in public. That was hard on me. I'm a pastor in a day and in an area where it is not cool to be a pastor.

We're about a hundred and fifty years behind in terms of community respect at least in the Northwest and you may feel that in other places. I mean all the anarchists in the world live in Oregon where we are and We we have you know, our only contribution to our culture as a nation is Tanya Harding you know who will break your kneecaps if you don't if you skate against her and say it really is kind of a Dark area, you know at 49th and 50th, Washington and Oregon and church attends per capita.

But it was that wasn't what was bothering me. What was bothering me with the things Robert was talking about last hour. I was a soldier when it wasn't cool. I'm a pastor way behind in terms of community respect and the one that really hurts me the most in our culture is I'm a man when it's politically incorrect to be masculine.

Robert was right on when he said it's time that we get together. Lock arms with one another enjoy the calling of God in our lives and know that it's not only okay to be a man. It's critical that we be a man.

Men’s Ministry and the Need for Biblical Manhood

I Was working on a little deal. Let me just reaffirm what he said about the need for men in your churches. It's just overwhelming and you'll be Pleasantly shocked and wonderfully surprised with how men will respond to your leadership when you were talking about manhood.

Denny Devaney one of my cohorts on the pastoral staff is here with me today. Denny's the pastor of our counseling ministry. He will tell you that men will respond immediately when you're working on manhood.

Some years ago. We were doing a series on the family. I don't. I'm not a very creative guy. So I thought well, let's see family. We got a man. We got a woman. We got some kids. I'll start with the man and so we did a little message on manhood.

And we did a second message and a third message and you could feel it in the auditorium. Remember that Denny back about 1991 or so just you could feel it. There was connection, but you can't talk on men forever when you're talking about the family.

So I just said as an aside during a message one time. I'm not nearly as organized as Robert. He knows details. I'm not sure what if I saw one what it would look like. So I just said as an aside in the message guys, we got to kind of move on next week to the ladies.

But if you'd like to talk about this. What it is to be a man. I'll be here at the church Saturday morning at 9 o 'clock and we can talk. I figured six eight ten twelve guys might show up on the basis of an aside several hundred showed up.

On a simple aside from a sermon the need is there and you can do this. Yes. The beauty of the computer spell check worked out fine ran it through the grammar check and the computer alarms went off and up on the screen pop these words.

Masculine which was the word he'd used in the text of the question to gender specific. Try to use another word such as. And then it threw things in like courage and bravery. No, we wanted to talk about masculine.

See there was a virus in the computer. It was a feminist virus that started somewhere in the software back when and it said it's not okay to talk about being masculine. It's the PC bully that Robert was talking to about us.

Garrison Keillor said some time ago manhood once an opportunity for achievement now seems more like an obstacle to be overcome. Have you ever felt that guy? Feel it all the time. That's what he was saying our guys.

We need it. We need a noble compelling vision to call ourselves and our sons to their biblical manhood, and it's so glorious. When it happens when you can see it coming, it's just beautiful. I'm 54 years old pushing 55.

I Never thought I'd live to be that old people that old were really really old in my mind and now I are one. But in my little 54 years some things have happened in our culture and I just want to share a little bit of my story.

Because our sons don't know this. Our sons have grown up in a completely different world than some of us who are 50 years old grew up in. I'm 54. I grew up in a little coal mining town in Central, Washington, Cle Elum, Washington little Bunch of coal miners where we had a bunch of funny names in town.

My friends names were Klobuchar and Gullivich and Osmanovich and Catalan itch and Spansky and I'm any and Aragone and Capiletti. We were all little European enclaves that ended up smart enough to learn how to dig holes in the ground to get coal out of them and we ended Up in this little coal mining town.

It was a beautiful little town. It was kind of October sky. I'll know it was on the west coast the dads went off to work in the morning and and moms were moms and Everybody kind of knew what a man was and a woman was at least in terms of Taking care of each other and watching out for each other and it was a small town and divorce wasn't rampant and everybody knew everything.

Which had its advantages and disadvantages, but we had dinner together around the table at night. We knew each other. Television wasn't constantly pulsating and throbbing in our temples for one. There wasn't television very much in those days.

My kids asked me when you were growing up dad. Did they have electricity? Yeah, we had electricity. But we only had TVs every so often in the neighborhood and dad would let us go on Tuesday night down to the barber's to watch Victory at sea because that meant something to him and he would let us every once in a while.

If Ed Sullivan would behave himself consistently watch a little bit of the variety show on Sunday night. But that was it the rest of the time. We were pretty much together in our homes and when we went out of the doors of our homes what we learned in school and what?

We saw in the culture. Reinforced what we were learning in our home. That's the way I grew up. I didn't know any other way. I thought that's the way it was. Every little boy knew what every little boy wanted to be and every little girl knew what every little girl wanted to be and there.

We understood distinctions and it was okay. It was all right. All of us who were little boys were raised by Walt Disney when the televisions became a little more popular. You remember and they gave us Davy Crockett hats.

Do you remember those some of you guys old enough? We all had little Davy Crockett hats. He said be very sure and go ahead. Isn't that what we heard in the last hour there was something to that. We learned from from Davy Crockett that that a man Probably should be willing to go a long way from home at his own expense.

Maybe even the cost of his life. To help the little people in the world that were getting the slaps kicked out of their lives by the totalitarianism of their day. That's the way we grew up. We didn't know.

We thought that there was a place for strength and and a warrior spirit in a man when we were growing up and so Along came a young president when we were in junior high by the name of John Kennedy. And he said, you know, let the world know.

There's another generation grown up of Americans who are willing to go any distance and bear any burden and pay any price in the cause Of Liberty and of course, you know about Vietnam and that sort of thing and some of us went and some of us didn't.

My Own cousin went to Canada. He's still there but I went a Few years ago when I was working through these things about a soldier when it wasn't cool and a pastor with no respect and a man when it's Politically incorrect.

I came across a book that began to touch my soul. It was written by a guy named Hal Moore who was a battalion commander in the 1st Cav in Vietnam. It's called we were soldiers once and young and I read this little paragraph to you because of The point at the end of what's happened to our culture.

It's not about Vietnam. It's about America. Okay Now says we were children of the 1950s and Kennedy's young stalwarts of the 1960s. We went to war in Vietnam because our country ordered us to go because our president ordered us to go.

But more importantly because we saw it as our duty to go as soldiers. We held each other's lives in our hands. We learned to share our fears our hopes and our dreams as readily as we shared what little else good came our way.

We were the down payment on John Kennedy's costly contract. But the man who signed it wasn't there when we fulfilled his promise. He waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery. The class of 1965 came out of the old America a nation that Disappeared in the smoke that billowed off the jungle battlegrounds where we fought and bled.

The country that sent us off to war. This is what I want you to hear. The country that sent us off to war was not there to welcome us home. It no longer existed. When I read that statement at midnight in my home, I had been developing some emotional awareness in the few years prior.

Like standing at the back of a Veterans Day ceremony and leaving because I needed to suppress my emotions. Germans don't show them especially in public. But this was working on me and when I read that paragraph it was at midnight in my home.

We were in bed. Linda was asleep beside me and I read the country that sent us off to war was not there to welcome us home because it No longer existed. The profundity of that statement Penetrated my chest and I began to cry.

I Began to weep. The weeping became sobbing and my chest was heaving so dramatically that it shook the bed. That woke Linda up and when you wake your wife up at midnight, it means you will talk. You know what?

I'm saying. We began to work through some things. But I want to just help us for a moment as we talk about raising masculine sons. Help us realize we're not raising them in the same worlds in which we grew up.

The world is changing like this all around us and it's the foundations that are being destroyed in our day those 1960s the days of of our high school and college my high school in college those days were unbelievable.

Horowitz and Collier a couple of leftist radicals from those days that were with the back Black Panthers in San Francisco. Now converted to a more conservative a political posture. They wrote a book called the destructive generation about the 1960s.

They said some strong things. They said it's the only decade to last about a half century. That's really true. The 60s was a far-reaching American Revolution. There was an American Revolution in the 1960s that was far more far-reaching than the great American Revolution of the 1770s.

That's the one we tend to look to because that's our origin. That's our heritage. But in fact that basically changed it changed some things but it by and large changed where we sent our tax checks every spring.

But the revolution of the 1960s changed everything. There was a whirlpool of cultural confusion in the 60s. The Vietnam War was not what was it was about it was just a convenient vortex for Val rallying around and when the war was Over people didn't know what to do because there was no cause anymore, you know.

But the war really wasn't what it was about. It was about me. I say it our sexuality. Yes, there were civil rights struggles. Yes, the Black Panthers were real. Yes drugs were real. Homosexuality was emerging.

Yes, there was a race issue and there were gender issues and the Vietnam War. There were all these issues in the whirlpool. I think the bottom line issue was what we call the sexual revolution. Which has everything to do with our personal identity who we are.

Gender issues are at the core of who we are the 1960s. Yeah. The things change like our clothing and our music to be sure but so much more change. The way people relate to one another change the legal system change the workplace change the media change the way we raise children change the educational system change the textbook change the military change the language change the.

And today we're even thinking about changing the nature of the Trinity all. Related to our personal identity and who we are as it relates very close to sexuality and gender issues. They're foundational.

How have we been doing since the revolution of the 60s? How have we been? Progressing in our evolution as a race. Well, not particularly well in this country, you know that since the class of 65 graduated.

The SATs are down about a hundred points so much so that we've recalibrated the way we score the test. So there's no direct correlations there. You know that kids on welfare have tripled that eating disorders have soared.

We never heard of them in the little town where I live. The only thing is we knew we had to eat. We didn't know anything more than that. Kids are killing regularly kids in schools today. It seems illegitimate births have quintupled since the class of 65 graduated and that in a society which regards itself is so sexually Sophisticated with not only abortion available, but all kinds of contraceptive devices.

It's an unbelievable revolution and we haven't accomplished a thing even in terms of sociological factors like illegitimate births up five times. Juvenile violent crime is up six times. And these statistics were all compiled long before any of the school shootings began to develop.

Erica Young Was one of the radical feminist leaders of the 60s. Gender and sexual revolution. She turned 50 here a year or two ago USA Today had an interview with her and quoted her in the newspaper. Here's what she said.

We were always feeling we were in the wrong always struggling to make sense of our lives. Each of us felt alone. With one foot in the past and another in the future. We hobbled through love and parenthood and marriage and divorce and careers.

Never knowing what or who we were supposed to be. We never had an idea of What a woman was or what a man was. We thought whatever they were they were the same and we never had an idea of what we were supposed to be.

Consequently, here's what she says at 50 in her supposed maturity. We're now staking out new emotional territory at every turn still and at age 50 the anger of midlife is a ferocious anger. All that to say the revolution of the 60s didn't do anything except hurt us.

By and large never knowing what or who we were supposed to be. And the young sons and daughters of today. They don't know any of this. They don't know anything different. They didn't grow up like I grew up as a old man of 54 years of age today I'm really concerned about the the gap not in the generations.

But in the understanding of time and space and history and truth. Carl Sandburg said when a society or a civilization perishes one condition can always be found. They forgot where they came from. That's our country today.

Did you know that 86 of Americans alive today are too young to remember the end of World War two? 86 73 of Americans are too young to remember the Russians launching Sputnik. My kids don't get it when they watch the October sky.

What are they all looking up at? Oh now it comes to. Did you know that the kids today going to college last fall have never lived when there wasn't blue M &Ms. That's how our culture is changing. It's just rapid and you and I need to help them understand where we are and When the foundations are being destroyed and at the heart of the foundations being destroyed.

Is our toying with the image of God and its maleness and femaleness. So I want you to understand that these issues we're talking about today, particularly in raising masculine sons feminine daughters, too.

But particularly in masculine sons because that's where the that's where the pressure is coming today. It's the heart of the battlefield. It's the scrimmage line of spiritual warfare. It's it's so critical.

Gender, the Image of God, and the Spiritual Battle

Let me read you a statement from Richard Halverson the former president or chaplain of the US Senate who's now with the Lord. He said this where could the enemy attack God most strategically? How could he most effectively destroy?

God's relationship with mankind. Satan's masterpiece is to deface the image of God. Image is indispensable in our Madison Avenue, Hollywood culture. It's the stock in trade of the public relations firm.

Selling image is big business billions of dollars worth bad image in our day is extremely costly. Which is therefore precisely the point at which Satan makes his most strategic attack. I believe that's true.

God created man male and female as his image in history. Anything the devil can do to destroy the male-female union will mar God's image. Anything that will alienate man from woman contributes to the destruction of a high view of God.

Could I say that again. Anything that will alienate man from woman contributes to the destruction of the high view of God. The enemy has a multitude of tactics. Premarital sex extramarital sex sexual deviation divorce male chauvinism.

Feminism as an end in itself and on and on and on. Satan's effectiveness in destroying God's image through male-female alienation. By whatever means has been incredibly costly to the human race. So raising masculine sons in our day is critical because we have this gender free androgynous culture.

Which actually takes the image of God defaces it mars it reduces the value of masculinity and femininity by making the same. Destroys the uniqueness that God intended there to be. Chuck Colson some years ago was watching the Clarence Thomas hearings.

And he was watching a man being tried for alleged accusations that related to his harassing a woman. Chuck was watching this program while he was in a men's prison and While he was watching a man having his life more or less dismantled in public for the use of a few words allegedly.

He was standing in a male prison watching a female guard walk into the toilet block with no barriers and Order a male prisoner to stand on the from the toilet and report to the cell block immediately.

He said something's wrong with this picture. What's happening here? Here's his summary. A Fundamental pillar of our society the family has been under assault and it's crumbling has long been a vital concern to Christians.

But don't miss the progression. The artillery are escalating against something even more fundamental than family. The very notion of what it is to be a man the very notion of what it means to be a woman.

That's where the battle is and if you and I are not faithfully professing Christ at that point said Martin Luther. We're not professing Christ at all for it's where the battle rages that the soldier proves is metal.

So you and I need to be alert and that's why you're here. So I'm just trying to help us understand that these gender issues are not primarily political or social or economic or sexual. They're primarily spiritual and theological and you and I need to help our people understand these things.

Gender is primarily Theological it's there at the heart of creation. It's tied directly to the image of God. It's somehow central to the glory of God. It's really Where we live and where the battles are.

The Four Pillars of Masculine Character

So let's work with that now. Let me transition to raising masculine sons a little bit with that long driveway. This is from the crisis of manliness by Walter Newell. He says in the recent Gen X novel by Chuck Paul knew it.

Do you think I'd be able to pronounce it being from Cleo? Yes, speak louder. I'll speak louder. Or turn it up or whatever, I don't know where it turns up, but maybe Jeff you can work on that. Thank you.

I'll try to talk louder. It's not usually a problem. In the recent Gen X novel by this gentleman who must have been from Cleo. Um makes me think of the old I charts you remember. The rumor had it when the guy came to third grade and said cover your right eye.

And can you read that bottom line son and the kid said read it. I know the guy he lives just two houses down. You know. Well Chuck's last name looks like the bottom line of the I chart but he wrote a Gen X novel called Fight Club.

A group of men in their 20s stuck in their jobs as office temps and couriers relieved their boredom by meeting in the basement of a bar after hours and beating one another senseless. Sometimes they show up for work with black eyes and stitches of the Warriors badge of honor aside from their jobs.

White collar. But holding out no clear career prospect. What these young men have in common is that they are under fathered. The product of divorce and of fathers who had no time for them. I'm a 30 year old boy says the novels protagonist.

I knew my dad for about six years, but I don't remember anything. What you see at Fight Club is a generation of men raised by women. That's a pretty profound statement from a secularist as far as I know.

Let me just share about the women in my life for a moment. Linda whom you met a moment ago Was raised by a single mom. Her dad in his case though unmasculine so unmanly it was probably good news for the family when he abandoned the family.

My firstborn son's wife Carolyn a magnificent woman Was not raised by her father. My my second son's wife Jamie is the only one whose father was at home throughout her life. And my youngest son's wife Jessica Was raised by her mom alone.

And that's just in my family. Three of the four women that I know and love didn't have a dad at home. That's what's happening in our culture. I'm gonna run by some of that. But let me just read to you another statement that he makes the gurus of sensitivity have tried to convince men to become open fluid.

Genderless beings who are unafraid to cry. But little boys still want to play war and shoot up the living room with plastic howitzers. And we can't give every one of them Ritalin. He said We we have a little lady in our church Donna Chaney.

Who's a wonderful woman and she had a little son named Ryan and she said I don't know what to do. I've taken all the plastic guns everything we've ever thought about. We've never had them in our home.

They're not allowed and he came out of the room the other day shooting the legs of his teddy bear. Psychologists have begun to express concern about our educational institutions readiness to pathologize what once would have been regarded as boyish high spirits.

Rough housing things like disliking girls and locker room ambience and to treat ordinary immaturity with powerful drugs. Now, let me say this. I am a boy. I grew up as a boy. I became a man of hope so anyway.

And I remember with three sons in our home how many times did I have to encourage my Lindy? She would say we're racing juvenile delinquents and we would have to say no, they're just boys. Now we would stop arrogance in its tracks.

We would stop disrespect in its track. We would stop dishonesty in its tracks. But roughhousing and wrestling around and having a good time and pulling each other's ears. That was just part of growing up as boys.

You know what I mean? So How to raise masculine sons. Robert. Robert I'd recommend this to you raising a modern-day night. He's going to do a seminar on it later on this talks about Three things that are essential to raising masculine son.

He talks about a definition. He mentioned that last hour. He talks about a process and he talks about a ceremony if we were doing that in the military. We would say you need a target. You need the training and you need a tab army ranger school is that way?

Here's the target. We want to build this kind of a soldier in nine weeks. Here is the training process that we will go through in those nine weeks and of the 287 guys that started in my particular class at the end of it all about 90 got the ranger tab pinned on their shoulders at the end of it a target the training and the tab or a definition or a clear vision and the process in the company of other men and Then finally the ceremony.

I'm going to kind of work on the clear vision. Kind of work on what we're shooting for because that helps me more than anything else. I'm not always really good at remembering 45 things. But I can remember three or four and if I have a picture of those three or four things in my mind.

Then I can help my boys grow and we can help each other grow up. So what I'd like to work on is the target primarily in this hour and let me just say this. What we'll work on is primarily out of this book.

Four pillars of a man's heart for the target and the training is primarily out of this book locking arms. We probably won't get to a lot of that this hour. These two books are available back there for five bucks apiece or two for $10.

That's less than I paid for some of them, but you guys and they're not they're not the greatest Books in the world, but they'll help because we're just about a time. No. So let's work on the target a little bit.

Genesis 2 and the Masculine Call to Provide, Protect, Teach, and Connect

I Want to read from what I consider to be a passage that is a target passage for masculinity. As Wayne mentioned last night the elements of manhood or masculinity are whispered in some passages. And they're shouted in others and they're reinforced their echo throughout scripture.

But let me just read to you some of the whispers that I see this is in Genesis chapter 2. The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.

The Lord God planted a garden toward the east and even and there he placed the man definite article specificity whom he had formed one guy. We know his name to be Adam. Okay verse 15 says then the Lord God took the man still the definite article of specificity and put him singular into the Garden of Eden.

To cultivate it and keep it. I think there is something of a provisionary Pillar in every chest of every man. These are of course generalizations, and they're not Absolutely exclusive to gender. But I think there is an emphasis in masculinity about providing for those that are his own who are near and dear to him.

I call that the king pillar for want of a better term. I can Robert talked about a noble vision a noble picture to drive toward. I think of pillars that way in my son's life. We're right now protected by these pillars.

These pillars are magnificent because they're in balance and they're standing straight and they're holding weight. We tried to teach our boys. God made you to bear weight. You don't have to go down with it.

You can bear weight. But I'll tell you what if you lean in your character one way or the other you won't hold anything up. In fact, if you lean you don't protect anybody you don't care for them. If you what are pillars good for when they lean absolutely nothing.

All they do is crush the people around them. So we got to keep our pillars straight guys. So the first pillar I see is the king pillar. Let's read a little further and the Lord God commanded the man saying From any tree of the garden you may freely but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

There is whispered there something about a man's responsibility to teach or to communicate the way life operates. I like to call that the mentor pillar. There's something of a mentor in every man's chest.

It expresses itself differently by gifting and wiring and personality and temperament but that pillar stands strong a responsibility to communicate life wisdom, okay, and Then we read a little further.

For in the day that you eat from it. You shall surely die. I think there is a whisper there of the warrior pillar that's in every man's chest. He's saying Adam you need to know that there is a vulnerability here.

There is a threat here. You could get killed here in this garden. You need to be alert to it and I want you to know that there is something in you as a man that should be protective. There is a king pillar to provide there is a warrior pillar to protect.

There is a mentor pillar to teach and Then finally this passage then the Lord God said it's not good for the man to be alone in any Context really. Robert was talking about that last hour and of course the Zenith the Zenith of fighting aloneness is the magnificence of marriage and the magnificent connection Interpersonally between two human beings made in God's image as male and female.

But I like to think of that pillar it's usually in the Jungian culture called the lover pillar and it's always Prostituted by eroticism and those kinds of things so I like to call it the friend pillar.

There is Sun in your chest. God made a friend in there to connect your best friend will be your life partner. And you need to learn to connect with her and with all those who are near and dear to you emotionally.

That doesn't come naturally that's part of the reason that God created I think the relational genius of the human race the feminine half. They're much quicker and more adept at relationships generally speaking than the male half of the race.

So we've got a king a warrior a mentor and a friend so throughout the process of growing together. We try to Take this picture in our little home and develop balance pillars in our boys now. The tendency is to think of them as primarily physical traits.

Providing is how to handle money, and you want to teach your boys how to do that. I asked my son the other day my youngest son. I said are you ever going to get a new truck? He's still driving the old truck that that that we bought when he was seven years old.

Which we'd sold him for a dollar. So are you ever going to get a new truck? He said nope. I'm building capital. So he's begun to understand some things about money and provision that way. His wife is a nurse and a very effective one.

They don't spend a nickel of her salary. They're putting it away for some critical elements that they want to see in their future. It's a very strong thing physical provision, but the physical side of it is the least important side.

It's the little side. It's the it's the most basic side. We all understand some of that, but what what a king is is not. We're not talking here about About Caesar we're not talking about King Tut. We're not talking about ordering people around.