Collin Hansen writes in Christianity Today on the perennial adolescent:
"For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man's default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turns boys into men," Hymowitz writes. "Now that the SYM [single young male] can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can—and will—try to stay a child-man."
Certainly this challenge requires a missionary response from our churches. If these men will not come and join our worship services, we must go and seek them. This imperative seems to inspire the current "missional" rage among evangelicals. Evangelistic appeals grounded in felt needs won't do the trick with these men. What good is this approach when we see no evidence that these young men feel the need to change? And if we adjust our beliefs and behaviors in order to attract these men, we run the risk of peddling the gospel and precluding God-given transformation."
In light of this, I would submit that all parents need to read Boys Adrift as it deals very poignantly with this issue.
(HT: Blog.Worship.Com)
5 comments:
So true. The church, and society by extension, have to give men the tools to become men. Society has largely failed at this, and the church hasn't done much better (and many things have attempted to fill the void: sports, addictions, lust, arrested development, etc.)
It seems that, like what we consider "primitive" societies, we must somehow embrace initiation again. There must be a rite of passage, a symbolic death and rebirth. It used to be baptism; now baptism has become more of a casually and casually forgotten statement.
Hmm, discuss.
This is a hard issue. I don't know that there is any one solution. Obviously, for many of the young men that fit the descriptions in this article, *conversion* would be the starting point to solve their problems!
Even in the church though, many men in their twenties and thirties still talk and act like teenagers-- and sadly, this is also true for some women of the same ages. The church has come a long way from the Puritans (who certainly didn't do everything right, by a long shot!). However, they were very Biblically wise on many issues. They didn't *delay* marriage, but actually married, from what I understand, in their late teens or early twenties, at the latest. This was the norm, not just in a "societal, cultural" way, but because they saw marriage as a *gift* of God that was not to be refused for an unduly long period of time.
Of course, the societal track of "high school-college-graduate school-job" makes it much harder for many people to marry as young as the Puritans did. How sad, I think-- how wonderful it would be as a young Christian man or woman to essentially live out the great majority of one's life with *one* companion. At most, I might have fifty years with a wife, and that is if I get married in the new few years....
For the Puritans, part of the gift of marriage was having children, because they understood that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman was specifically *designed by God* to at least have the *possibility* of resulting in a child. How different is this Biblical view of marriage and parenthood from that of the world, or even that of many Christians in these times?? The undeniable fact is, children are almost always described as "blessings" in the Bible, not as "options" or "inconveniences." The Puritans knew that the longer one waits to marry, the less possibility there will be of having children. If only more Christians today had such a Biblical view of all things, including marriage and parenthood!
I myself am 35 years old and not yet married-- but I am *not* at peace with it (in the sense of being complacent about it-- I do want to be content, in the Biblical sense, with wherever God has me). I was only saved at the age of 29, and I have made many mistakes in my life, due to not having a Biblical view of manhood and womanhood (at least until the last few years). "Better late than never," I tell myself, but I still have *much* regret for what I look back and see were lost years-- in more ways than one.
I meant to write, "if I get married in the *next* few years..."
this is definitely true. there is very little serious growing up being done in the years from highschool until age 30. but the parents are to blame for allowing it and contributing to it. my sister in law has access to all of her "20s" age kids' bank accounts, gives them money and buys them groceries. in the 40s and 50s didn't kids who were old enough to work (12 and up) get jobs, do chores, and contribute in some way to the family? most kids these days do not.
Heather and I mentor a singles group at church and this is a poignant issue. It appears that the women get stuck in relational issues and men get stuck in continuing to act as boys. They are now boys who have jobs, and therefore money, yet don't know what to do.
Post a Comment