Donal’s post on Sympathy and Understanding talks about how married men tend to be insulated once they marry.
Which drives me to the subject of this post- men shouldn’t expect much in the way of understanding from those around them re: the MMP. In fact, the only ones who might understand are men in the same position (or who recently occupied it). I don’t know about most of my readers, but I find this to be a terribly frustrating matter. On more than one occasion I have been asked why I’m not married yet. And no matter how much or well I explain it, I can see in people’s eyes that they don’t understand. I find this quite isolating at times- it creates a climate of being cut off and without aid.
Generally speaking, this is both true and false.
I know quite a few men who work with an on-campus ministry, and they are not insulated from the cultural changes in marriage simply because they mentor and listen to the stories of the young men. On the other hand, as has been stated before, there is definitely a lack of sympathy and understanding from a lot of married men who don’t know what it is like. They are stuck in the 1960s and 1970s prior to “no fault divorce” and “free love.”
The problem is that Christians who don’t step out to actually engage the culture become insulated in their own bubble. Christians are not supposed to remove themselves from the world, but to be in the world but not of the world. This is the theme of Jesus’ prayer to the Father in John 17.
The major problem(s) of the Church tend to be traced back to these two themes. The Church and Christians try to isolate and insulate themselves from the world in many circumstances. For example, sheltered homeschool children. On the other hand, the Church and Christians also become of the world rather than in the world but not of the world. For instance, feminism and most of the rest of the issues the Church battles with in Revelation 2 and 3.
Men who try to impart knowledge simply based on their knowledge of themselves without taking into account the changing and rapid secularization of culture — not that 1950s America was some bastion of Christianity in the first place — have insulated themselves in their own bubble. Whether this is deliberate, accidental, or both is neither here nor there. But it does happen, often with disastrous results.
Young, unmarried and married Christian men beware and be wise.
Christianity and masculinity 
Good observation. As I’ve noted many times in many posts, there’s numerous reasons for this. Not mentioned is the issue of tradition, which often inoculates people from self-awareness and evaluation of what’s going on in their own midst (i.e. the reign of feminism over the last 500 years). Then, a lot of Christians live in the land of “Shud Be”, looking at Scripture and their own conceptions instead of the world and don’t even look beyond themselves to see what is going on.
To sharpen this post to a fine point, this points to a lack of agape love within the Church environment, which tracks perfectly with the very current prophetic fulfillment of Matthew 24, which I hope to address soon. More specifically:
I notice, unfortunately, that minuscule few have a genuine love of God within their hearts, and consequently are incapable of loving others, fulfilling neither part of the Great Commandment Jesus given.
Isolated would be a better word for the situation many men find themselves in. Having lived alone for many years I have watched plenty of marriages fall apart and have formed a circle of friends similar to myself. We mostly tend to struggle with the same sins, sexual frustration, alcoholism and issues with children and ex-wives. These guys understand how f*<ked up the MMP is, but the bonds we form between us aren't that strong either. Isolation best describes the result.
There is little to nothing in the churches except perhaps marriage 2.0 [sigh].
Mostly, if we manage to get together we bitch about the world, and church and each other. And if one of gets remarried we pick apart his new wife like a sunday roast. And there is a great reluctance to organise any type of event because it's like herding cats. Yep, isolated is a better term for previously married or unmarried guys.
This is the issue I suffer with my father. I have had red pill type conversations with him regarding the current state of the church, man/woman relationships and marriage and he just doesn’t see it. He cannot bring himself to believe that this is the state we are in, that women’s hypergamy and rebellion is at an all time high and that it has a VERY PROFOUND effect on a lot of different things. From the atomic family to the church to the state – the rebelliousness of women dips it’s crone fingers into a lot, but the old-timers can’t, or don’t want to, see it.
Sad to say, I’m pretty oblivious to what my church does. The evangelistic activities they organise try to model what the world offers (e.g., fishing trips and kickboxing classes) but in my mind, it goes back to what the Church should offer that the world can’t — and this is where people will come.
It’s sad that Jesus offered something that nothing in the world can give or offer and the Church should play that role (with the guidance of the Holy Ghost) but most of them are so far off that they become nothing more than “pseudo-religious” support groups where people gather to play “church” (and politics).
Oh, and some isolation for children is good. At least when they are young. But that needs to switch to inoculation when they get older.
@SnapperTrx
That attitude is pretty universal, at least among the older (i.e., first half of the Boomer cohort and earlier) generations. The reasons for it are probably varied, but IME it’s a combination of apathy, denial, laziness, and shame (as in “did I and my generation play a key role in allow things to get this bad?”).
I would wager that your father probably, deep within himself, knows full good and well that what you are telling him is true. It’s simply too painful for him to contemplate that his children and grandchildren face a future so bleak when in his mind their fortunes should be an improvement over his own. I go through the same thing with my 82-year-old mother. It’s always 1957 in her world. Despite the fact that she sees in front of her own eyes ever day what’s happening out in the world (she complains about it endlessly), she simply cannot bring herself to face the fact that the worst of what she sees is the NORM, not the exception.
@CORP
Inre evangelical outreach, I cannot repeat often enough that the reason most churches avoid it like the plague –and the reason that it’s usually a catastrophic failure on those rare occasions when they try doing it– is because Apologetics is completely ignored in most churches (too much effort required), as is serious study of the Scripture (ditto). Couple that with the fact that most church members’ faith is lukewarm on even the best of days, and they realize that there’s really not much point in trying. People recognize lukewarm faith when they encounter it and will give such people a very wide berth.