My listening began after the host's tirade had already reached the next gear, and I had no idea what the overall context of his ramblings was. All I knew was that the NCAA had treated the Kid poorly. He said it over and over again, emphasizing the victimizer (the NCAA) and the victim (the Kid). Just before I turned the thing off, I discovered that the monologue was about the case of Steven Rhodes, a former Marine who had planned to walk on at Middle Tennessee State University...that is, before the NCAA intervened to inform him that his prior participation in a military recreation football league would render him ineligible from competition for one year. (His ineligibility, incidentally, was more akin to a mandatory redshirt than actual ineligibility, meaning that Rhodes would still have four full years of eligibility after sitting out this season.)
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| Steven Rhodes: A Man |
Pronouncing a Marine ineligible for playing rag-tag football while serving his country? Sounds like tirade material! And, truthfully, the NCAA was wrong...again...by following the letter rather than the spirit of their bylaws. But I was most struck by the host's ongoing description of Steven Rhodes: the Kid.
The Kid is a 24 year old man. He was man enough to serve in our nation's military as one of the few and the proud. He is apparently man enough to walk on and play Div. 1 college football. Until the media intervened, he would have also been man enough to deal with a redshirt year (I get the feeling this is the kind of man who could have handled going to college while awaiting another opportunity to walk on next year). Point being, he's not a kid.
This is more than splitting hairs over terminology; this is another small indicator of a major cultural imbalance: arrested adolescence. As younger adults struggle with their entrance into maturity, older adults are characterizing them more and more as kids. Still living at Mom and Dad's? Must be a kid. Can't figure out what to major in after three years of college courses? Must be a kid. More of a gamer than worker? Well, you get the point.
Another thing I've noticed is that it is almost always younger men who are given this designation. Younger women are sometimes referred to as "girls" by their close acquaintances or those who are quite elderly, but rarely are younger women called "kids." Maybe this is because younger women are less likely to act like kids. Yes, they too are prone to their own kinds of fits of self-aggrandizing immaturity in the YOLO culture, but our society - for perhaps the first time in Western history - expects far more from our younger women than we do their male counterparts. Younger men are expected to fail...expected to bumble through college or get somebody pregnant or fail to launch. Hollywood has taught us this with any movie starring any member of the Frat Pack, right?
We need men these days. I don't mean Skoal-spittin', honky-tonkin', truck-drivin', camo-wearin' dudes; I'm talking about wife-lovin', child-raisin', God-honorin' men. No more gamers. No more kids who can shave. No more guys with their dreams of fantasy football greatness. We need men who understand their role in the Kingdom of God. We need men who have been shaped in part by childhood, but like the Apostle, have left the childish things in the past. We need men who are so acquainted with the mercy and grace of the Lord that they aren't willing to waste the best years of their lives on themselves. We know where the kids are -- where are the men these days?
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