“your continued participation and confidence in the American economy would be greatly appreciated” – George W. Bush

“we are left with indefinite adolescence and a Peter Pan Syndrome epidemic where men want to remain boys forever.” – Mark Driscoll

I read an article that Mark Driscoll wrote for the Washington Post as part of their ‘On Faith’ series. The gist of it was that our generation is full of men who fail to be men and who stay an extended adolescence surrounded by their XBox, iPad, and self-centered heart.  That consumerism is, at its end, pushing our men towards incompetence in their traditional role of 1) getting an education, 2) getting a wife, 3) getting a career, and 4) getting kids. In short, we fail to be producers and therefore we fail to be men and we are self-centered.

Beyond that many things can get in the way of that traditional path like failing to make it into college, failing to find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, having a wonderful job but not one that is a traditional ‘career’, or even being infertile or some combination of those can kill that man-track.

But where I think Mark really falls short on are two points. First, we live in a consumer society and haven’t seen significant production since the 40s. Our obsession with spending and things found greater steam in the birth of the Internet and was never so more pronounced than when our last president urged Americans at the dawn of the last great conflict to buy to continue our economy. Consumerism isn’t something that we can put directly into the laps of men in our society nor is it a problem that has one source or one thing it eats away at.

Music, for example, has seen a large amount of commodification with the advent of the digital download. It’s been years since I’ve paid more than 5 dollars for a collection of music from an artist. In fact, I just picked up 15 CDs from various sales in the past couple of weeks and have only spent around 12 dollars. Here is art where people pour out their heart and it has been relegated to the sub-dollar level. Yes, it’s accessible, yes it’s available, but I have 10,000 songs in my itunes library. That can be a bad thing when good art is lost in the noise. Consumerism, although it drives our economy, has sociological implications that Driscoll hits well, but falls short of calling it the societal (both men *and* women) sin that it is.

Instead of replacing the sin with gospel he instead falls short again by providing another series of expectations and definitions to what true manhood is. My confession here is that a core lie I tell myself is that ‘I am a man and therefore significant because I cry, am sensitive, spend time with my kids, because I’ve been married for 12 years, etc.’ Honestly, replace any of that, as a christian, with anything other than Christ and it’s disposable because anything, at any time, can be gone. So, where’s your identity because it *all* falls away in the end.

The beauty of Christianity for me is not the rules. Driscoll really discredits the faith by offering a suggestion that we become producers and sets the mark short by offering a standard for manhood that can ultimately leave you unfulfilled and that is not likely to be the standard in our culture. For me, the standard is grace and the ability to offer others and show others the grace that was given to me; to me that is something that lasts far beyond any petty standard I can give to being a man.