On December 5, 2025, Not the Bee published an article by Harris Rigby featuring a video with Nick Freitas where he discusses, with Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin, about what makes a good man. Nick Freitas is an inactive Green Beret and YouTube channel host. In this video, he discusses some hard truths that we had all better wrap our brains around. We had better appreciate our differences or lose what we have.

In the months before September 11, 2001, my husband and I had been living in Connecticut with plans to move to New Jersey. Instead, he resigned from his firm and we moved to East Tennessee. Beyond being grief stricken for the city I loved so much, I was struck by the change in the Manolo Blahnik wearing/Sex and the City types. Before 9/11 they wanted slick bespoke suit, Corporate guys. After, they wanted police and firefighters. They wanted the type who would run into a building to save them. “Hard times make good men.”

Except that’s not entirely true. Faith in God and good families make good men.

All women were supposed to want sensitive men who would prioritize our feelings. Dear God, those men sound exhausting. I wanted (and got) a full partner. He doesn’t think about my feelings all the time. I do that enough for both of us. We both have our own thoughts and feelings. I wanted (and got) a workmate. He doesn’t do housework. I stopped that right after we got married.

Our son went to school where boys were supposed to sit down be quiet and let the girls be the starts. It was way worse in Connecticut than Tennessee, but it was bad.

What is the message that men should get? Nick Freitas has the perfect message. This is from the Triggernometry podcast with Freitas, Kisin and Foster.

Great stuff from @NickJFreitas on understanding and reaching young men. The church needs to get this. pic.twitter.com/LFVjO7FG5o

— Nate Schlomann (@NateSchlomann) December 4, 2025

Some highlights:

Almost every single major culturally shaping institution telling young men they were crap. That’s unique. And so respecting what they’re going through is very very difficult in that sense. And yeah, they might have more creature comforts, they might have more technology, they might have more things that appear to make life easier, that we never dreamt of at their age.

But would you trade any of that for a real sense of meaning and purpose? I sure as hell wouldn’t.

Having a strong earthly father to teach you right from wrong and when to back down. The rules of the road. Speaking of the road, the Parable of the Good Samaritan is good example of the good man who does the right thing even when it is not easy.

The Good Samaritan:

You will find my text in part of the 29th verse of the 10th chapter of Luke: “And who is my neighbor?” “We are told that as Christ stood with his disciples, a man, a lawyer, stood up and tempted him, and said: “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He asked what he could do to inherit eternal life, and what he could do to buy salvation. And the Lord answered his question, “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” To which the lawyer answered: “Thou shalt love the Lord God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.” “Thou hast answered right.” But, “Who is my neighbor?” And he drew a vivid picture, which has been told for the last eighteen hundred years. I do not know anything that brings out more truthfully the wonderful power of the gospel than this story, which we have heard and read tonight—the story of the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and who fell among thieves. Jerusalem was called the city of peace. Jericho and the road leading to it were infested with thieves. Probably, it had been taken possession of by the worst of Adam’s sons. I do not know how far the man got from Jerusalem to Jericho, but the thieves had come out and fallen upon him, and had taken all his money, stripped him of his clothes, and left him wounded—left him, I suppose, for dead.

y and by, a priest came down the road from Jerusalem. We are told that he came by chance. Perhaps he was going down to dedicate some synagogue or preach a sermon on some important subject, and had the manuscript in his pocket. As he was going along on the other side, he heard a groan, and he “turned around and saw the poor fellow lying bleeding on the ground, and pitied him. He went up close, took a look at him, and said: “Why, that man’s a Jew; he belongs to the seed of Abraham. If’ remember aright, 1 saw him in the synagogue last Sunday. I pi him. But I have too much business, and I cannot attend to.’

He felt pity for him and looked on him, and probably wondered why God allowed such men as those thieves to come into the world and passed by. There are a good many men just like him. They stop to discuss and wonder why sin came into the world, and look upon a wounded man, but do not stop to pick up a poor sinner, forgetting the fact that sin is in the world already, and it has to be rooted out. But another man came along, a Levite, and he heard the groans: he turned and looked on him with pity, too. He felt compassion for him. He was one of those men that, if we had here, we should probably make him an elder or a deacon. He looked at him and said: “Poor fellow! he’s all covered with blood, he has been badly hurt, he is nearly dead; and they have taken all his money, and stripped him naked. Ah, well, I pity him!” He would like to help him; but he, too, has pressing business, and passes, by on the other side. But he has scarcely got out of sight, when another comes along, riding on a beast. He heard the groans of the wounded man, went over and took a good look at him.

There was a great, high partition wall between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews would not allow them in the temple; they would not have any dealings with them; they would not associate with them. I can see him coming along that road, with his good, benevolent face; and as he passes, he hears a groan from this poor fellow. He draws in bis beast and pauses to listen. “And he came to where he was.” This is the sweetest thing to my mind in the whole story. A good many people would like to help a poor man if he was on the platform if it cost them no trouble. They want him to come to them. They are afraid to touch the wounded man; he is all blood, and they will get their hands soiled. And that was just the way with the priest and the Levite. This poor man, perhaps, had paid half of all his means to help the service of the Temple, and might have been a constant worshiper; but they only felt pity for him.

This good Samaritan “came to where he was;” and after he saw him, he had compassion for him. That word “compassion”—how sweet it sounds! The first thing he did on hearing nim cry for water—the hot sun had been pouring down on his head— was to go and get it from a brook. Then he goes and gets a bag, that he bad with him—what we might call a carpet-bag or a saddlebag, in the West—and pours in oil on his wounds. Then he thinks, “The poor fellow is weak;” and he goes and gets a little wine. He has been lying so long in the burning sun that he is nearly dead now —he was left half dead—and the wine revives him. He looks him over, and he sees his wounds that want to be bound up, but he has nothing to do this with. I can see him now tearing the lining out of his coat, and with it binding up his wounds. Then he takes him up and lays him on his bosom till he revives; and, when the poor fellow gets strong enough, the good Samaritan puts him on his own beast. If the Jew had not been half-dead, he would never have allowed him to put his hands on him. He would have treated him with scorn. But he is half-dead, and he cannot prevent the good Samaritan treating him kindly and putting him on his beast. ~

Good men should do the right thing all the time – no matter the times. Praise the good man.

Featured Image: Franciszek Sobiepan: The Good Samaritan/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/Public Domaingood