He felt like this was the proudest day of his life – he had become a man. Long ago, this would have been marked by when had ploughed a field, killed his first antelope and brought meat home or undergone a circumcision ritual. But instead, the 21st century youth stared at the bottle in-front of him, the mixture of orange juice and ‘tujili-jili’ that his friends had mixed at the back of the hall, during the ‘teen bash’ at school. He had taken the ‘hard stuff’, and two of his friends had blacked out before him. They were going to be the talk of the school the following Monday.
This is the new rite of passage, combined with the number of ‘sexual exploits’ to his name. In the eyes of so many in society, these are the marks of a modern man. These are what the modern youth takes to be the mark of a man, and sadly, many elderly people as well.
This is compounded by the fact that many women have picked up on this, and the men they look for are those who fit the modern ‘champion’ mentality. (I once heard a woman say she will only accept a man who drinks and has a hairy chest… if that is what women are looking for nowadays, rather than virtue and reliability, where are we headed?) This in turn leads other men to try and fit the image that is on demand. And so; “Due to the increase of wickedness, the love of many grows cold” (Matthew 24:12).
A few weeks back on Independence Day, I went to one of the popular Lusaka recreation centres, and was saddened to see the number of youth, (on average 14 years old, I would estimate), drunk. One girl could hardly walk and two of her friends had to support her. One boy had to be carried (literally) by his friend to the bathroom. A girl was pouring some spirits over the chicken she was roasting. If you don’t see something wrong with that picture, I am even more worried. Has this become so normal? The “stuff that teenagers do”?
How did our values shift from productivity (an ability to ‘protect, provide and lead’), to consumption and loose living? Some would link this to a colonial hangover, after restrictions on freedom and almost forced labor, the liberated people go to an opposite extreme; hating and avoiding work as much as possible rather than just hating cruel labor. They life of the former master looks good, but not the work that maintains that life. But this is only a guess.
The book of Proverbs describes the wise man as fearing God, having an honest vocation (not lying in wait to rob others or too lazy to lift his hand from the plate to his mouth), sticking to ‘the wife of his youth’ (not the adulterous woman), upholding justice and compassion. Is this how we view ‘a real man’?
Every child aspires to adulthood, and their ‘aspiration’ is molded by observing and imitating the adults. Long ago, there was a system of apprenticeship, where the family works together much of the time, and the sons learn the trade of the fathers. The family pride in the children’s maturity centered on how they work as opposed to how they play. The child’s expectations of adult life were centered on real responsibilities on not just liberty and leisure.
What is the measure of a man? What is the Bible’s measure of a man? Our Biblical mandate of dominion involves initiative, hard work, planning and endurance. It also demands sacrificial leadership like that of Jesus, the ability to live for others and give everything we have to protect, provide and lead. Somehow, I am not sure that’s what comes to mind when we ask ’What are the marks of a man’. And our society is poorer because of it. Where does the turn-around begin?
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