Dreyer refers to learnings from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was a dissident of the Soviet communist regime. Solzhenitsyn wrote to his fellow countrymen before he was exiled from his home in Russia in 1974 for exposing the inhumane repression of his fellow countrymen, particularly by its repressive Gulag system. In his open letter, titled “Live Not By Lies”, he urges his countrymen not to accept the lies of the government. Solzhenitsyn equates “lies” with ideology, the illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications. And his last word before leaving his homeland urged Soviet citizens as individuals to refrain from cooperating with the regime’s lies.
For decades, the elites of feminism and academia have undermined fatherhood and manhood through the mainstream media and entertainment industry.
Their attack on men has been so successful that masculinity in many western nations is now deemed toxic. Many psychologists today have endorsed this diagnosis by claiming that the innate characteristics of manhood — risk-taking, stoicism, dominance, aggression and competitiveness — are ‘harmful’.
These are the qualities in men that have defended our nations in war, led rescue missions even in the most dangerous situations, designed and built cities, explored the depths of the earth, ocean and sky, and developed, invented and innovated endlessly.
This attack on manhood has morphed into what I call the “fatherlessness pandemic,” giving the natural affection between boys and fathers a death blow.
Even the natural affection of women has turned against men, so that our relationship has changed from being complementary to competitive.
Feminist Destruction
Via a complicit Hollywood and an unquestioning mainstream media, the feminist movement has led the charge to destroy motherhood and womanhood. Women are increasingly the working backbone of our western societies, and in the US they now outnumber men in the workforce, filling childcare centres with our little ones.
The way that many women in our nation are fighting for the right to kill our unborn children is a sign that the natural affection between mothers and children has been gravely weakened.
In addition, it is astounding how many young women I encounter today who have tense and bitter relationships with their mothers. This should not be the case amongst Christians, but from observation, there appears to be little difference between them and those from outside the faith. There is a clear, and increasingly obvious increase in the lack of natural affection between mothers and daughters.
Thanks to the worldwide pornographic epidemic, natural affection is being broken not only between men and women, but also between sons and their mothers and their sisters — resulting in the objectification of women.
My response to young people when they ask how they can live out their Christian faith in the current culture is that we need to take our faith seriously and live counter-culturally, that is, refuse to emulate the world’s narrative and empty philosophy. Having strong families that display genuine natural affection is the key to leading the way.
Sadly, today’s generation has little respect for their parents’ generation. They see them as developing and sustaining the institutions that are the source of so much perceived ‘oppression’ and ‘racism’. They have embraced the lie that the ‘patriarchy’ is an oppressive structure that must be destroyed. Allegiance to the family is looked on with scorn.
One writer, a former high school teacher, observes of young people, “They dismiss religion, are not interested in marriage and family and are not patriotic.” In fact, today’s generation in general could be described as without natural affection, the natural instinctive love between family members. And this characteristic is listed in 2 Timothy as a last-day phenomenon.