And I'm not talking about teenage boys.
I'm talking about grown men who act like teenagers. I'm talking about men who have never grown up- men who are ruled more by their hormones than they are their back bone. I know this is not a new problem, but I do think that it is at least a growing problem.
Consider the headlines of the past few weeks:
* June 21: South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, husband and father of four, leaves the state over Father's Day weekend without telling anyone where he is going. After at first saying he was hiking in the Appalachians, he later admits to flying to Argentina to hook up with a girlfriend.
* July 4: Former Tennessee quarterback Steve McNair is shot four times while in bed with his girlfriend in the apartment he provided for her. Although McNair had a wife and kids at home, it is now known that he had more than one girlfriend. A Minneapolis newspaper has reported, "McNair had been a frequent visitor to a local strip club and had an intimate and extramarital relationship with an exotic dancer for about six years. 'She liked money and athletes,' the former business manager said on condition of anonymity. 'She went out with athletes before. She was one of those girls who said, 'You're married? You have kids? So what?' Lets have fun.'
* July 9: Nevada Senator John Ensign, the only Pentecostal in the U.S. Senate and an active supporter of Promise Keepers, a husband and father of three, admits to an extramarital affair with one of his campaign aids. It is later learned that his father, a casino mogul in Las Vegas, paid his mistresses family 96,000 dollars.
* July 7: Perhaps the most dramatic example of a prominent adult male who never really grew out of his adolescence is Michael Jackson, whose incredible musical career was overshadowed by his sad and terribly tragic personal life, characterized by countless cosmetic surgeries and fixation on Peter Pan. Jackson died in an apparent drug induced Neverland stupor millions of dollars in debt and struggling with bouts of deep depression. His subsequent funeral, paid for by the city of Los Angeles, was more of an extravaganza than a memorial service and cost an estimated 1.4 million dollars.
Some will say that this is not a trend in the making- that these are the kinds of things that have always gone on and that we are living in an information age in which an explosion of scandal is constantly barraging public consciousness that in other times would not have been known or reported. To that I would confess that I am somewhat but not completely naive to human nature and our societies somewhat scandalous history.
But I see other signs that the moral fabric of society is beginning to fray that go beyond these latest and most obvious examples. There are many more prominent examples that are impacting our culture that we can see and feel every day- like the fact that most babies born in Oklahoma county are born into homes needing government assistance and that the large majority of them are single moms. Like the fact that men are marrying late or not marrying at all. Recently, the New York Times reported:
Once, virtually all Americans had married by their mid-40's. Now, many American men without college degrees find themselves still single as they approach middle age. About 18 percent of men ages 40 to 44 with less than four years of college have never married, according to census estimates. That is up from about 6 percent a quarter-century ago. Among similar men ages 35 to 39, the portion jumped to 22 percent from 8 percent in that time. At virtually every level of education, fewer Americans are marrying. But the decline is most pronounced among men with less education. Even marriage rates among female professionals over 40 have stabilized in recent years.
Like the fact that most violent crimes against society are by angry, adolescent men.
Like the fact that the large majority of men in prison were raised by their moms and did not have a father at home and that nearly 100% of men on death row admit to either hating or not knowing their dads.
It may not be an epidemic, but it is at the very least a growing crises. And this is why I say it may very we be THE biggest problem in culture.
All of this leads me to simply say that it seems to me that one of the greatest challenges for the church in the future will be the discipleship of men. We need fathers and men of God who influence young men without fathers to step up and teach what it means to be a real man.
Real men provide for their family.
Real men don't cheat on their wives.
Real men, like my own father and his father before him, love their wives all their lives and care and support their families and sacrifice for them and though not perfect, live responsible and humble lives and pass down their faith to the next generation.
Just because you can play football for a living it doesn't mean your a real man.
Just because you have political power it doesn't mean you are a real man.
Just because you make millions as an entertainer it doesn't mean your a real man.
A man, a real man, leads courageously, accepts responsibility, rejects passivity and expects God's reward, not his own reward. A real man rejects the tendency toward selfishness and irresponsibility as characterized by the first Adam and is called toward the adventure of living like the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
And though the man who strives to live like Christ within Christian community is not always perfect and often falls short, give me that man who is plugging away at work and loving his family and being faithful to his wife and leading and serving in the church EVERY TIME over the spectacular examples of failing male role models we so often have in current culture.
Josiah Gilbert Holland wrote the following the late 1800s.
- GOD, give us men! A time like this demands
- Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
- Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
- Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
- Men who possess opinions and a will;
- Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
- Men who can stand before a demagogue
- And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
- Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
- In public duty, and in private thinking;
- For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
- Their large professions and their little deeds,
- Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
- Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
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