In nine days I leave for my third trip to Ethiopia.  I’m leading a team of eight men to work with sixteen former street boys.  Andrew, one of the guys on my team, asked me what Scriptures would be helpful to meditate on to prepare spiritually for the trip, an insightful question if ever there was one.

I’m encouraging the team to spend some time in Matthew 5, especially in the beatitudes.  I think we often miss the profundity of what Jesus is saying here.  We tend to think the ambitious, the cunning, and the powerful are blessed.  But he says it’s the meek, the mourners, the merciful.  He then moves on to address apathy, anger, lust, divorce, lying, pride, and love, and while his teachings apply equally to everyone, I think many of these are areas that men in particular wrestle with.

Each day I’ll be spending time meditating on one beatitude and one section of Jesus’ teaching on the aforementioned issues.

With the beatitudes, I’ll be asking myself three questions:

• When has this beatitude been evident in my life?
• Am I currently demonstrating this beatitude?
• How can I make it more a part of my life?

The questions for the teachings are similar:

• When have I handled this issue well?
• When have I handled this issue poorly?
• What steps to I need to take to grow in this area?

There was an essay a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal titled Where have all the Good Men Gone? The article speaks to the crisis of extended adolescence among males.

The crisis as I see it is one of irresponsibility.  Men don’t want to move out of their parents house. They don’t want to take responsibility for the children they father. They’re less educated than women. They’re less likely to volunteer.

Unfortunately, articles like the one above focus on the wrong things.  From the lede:

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children.

And later:

Men in their 20s now have an array of toys and distractions at their disposal, from videogames and sports bars to ‘lad’ magazines like Maxim, which makes Playboy look like Camus.

What this author fails to recognize is that there’s a huge difference between “irresponsibility” and “foregoing unnecessary responsibility.” A man who is irresponsible doesn’t do what needs to be done.  He doesn’t provide for himself financially.  He doesn’t take care of his kids.  He doesn’t help the less fortunate.

But there’s nothing irresponsible about not getting married or not having children.  Who is to say that those things must be priorities?

I don’t want children at this point in my life.  I have a good job where I work hard and strive to excel.  I put my resources into serving people in need.  I have meaningful friendships, people who rely on me and I on them.  How am I irresponsible simply because I don’t want children right now?

I know a lot of guys in their mid-to-late twenties who are smart, hardworking, and responsible but unmarried and childless.  Some of them even play videogames and watch sports, but again, what is wrong with that?  Any hobby taken to the extreme can be destructive, but it seems these activities have been pigeonholed as inherently irresponsible because some irresponsible young men play too many videogames and watch too much sports.

Let me be clear that I like marriage and I like kids. (I also like videogames and sports.)  But that doesn’t mean that someone whose isn’t interested marriage or children is somehow less grown up or less responsible.

In the interest of brevity, I haven’t addressed every argument and counterpoint.  Feel free to poke holes in my logic in the comments. I’ll be sure to poke back.

Thanks to Jeremy Sexton and Andy Pisciotti, two sports-watching, videogame-playing, hard-working, upstanding, unmarried, childless, twentysomething men, for their tweets that inspired this post and contributed to my thinking on the topic.

That was the name for the NCC men’s retreat that happened this weekend. I know, a bit hokey, but it was a great retreat, got the chance to hang out with a few guys that I know well and meet a few new dudes as well. We played a lot of cornhole and had a couple of talks about, well, being a man. We also got the chance to spend a bit of time in prayer, meditating, reflecting, etc. Plus, it was nice to get out of the city for a little while. Perhaps most importantly, I think there’s some stuff that I, and hopefully some of the other guys, can bring home from it.

Like I said, a great retreat and a huge thanks to James Gentry and the guys from his small group for putting it together. Thanks to Pastor Mark and Pastor Joel for speaking as well.