I recently had the opportunity to see The Bourne Legacy, which is way better than the critics had made it sound and totally worth seeing for adults. The critics, by the way, often don’t like a movie that skews traditional, as Legacy does. It was a fantastic action film filled with the intelligent intensity you expect from the Bourne series.
No, Jeremy Renner is not Matt Damon, but he’s quite convincing in his portrait of a Bourne-like character. Go see the film. It’s a blast.
Anyway, it struck me afresh how impressive the lead character of the Bourne movie is as a man. He’s in control, assertive, aware of others, physically fine-tuned, and one who meets any challenge in front of him. This kind of man is strikingly different than another avatar of modern cinema, the boy-man, who pops up repeatedly in the films made or led by Judd Apatow, Adam Sandler, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, and many others.
The boy-man is selfish, young, immature, addicted to games, immune to responsibility, foul-mouthed, and weak. He’s overwhelmed by adulthood, so he chooses to stay in some sort of boyish fantasy. He doesn’t want to build big things, meaningful things, like a family, a six-decade marriage, a socially and personally profitable career, or a gospel-driven church or missions effort. He wants to make music, play games, follow sports, flirt with girls, loaf through life, bend the rules so he’s not accountable or inconvenienced in his selfishness, and ignore the need to help others.
I want to suggest that wherever you can as a young man or one involved in any way in training young men, you point them toward manhood, maturity, adulthood, responsibility, ambition, strategy, vision, focus. Yes, it can be fun to be boyish. But you know what’s far more satisfying? Becoming something. Becoming something greater than you are. Becoming a man. Building stuff.
What else is cool? Winning a woman’s heart and keeping it for years, decades, a lifetime. Raising children to know the Lord. Giving tons of energy to a church plant or a church undergoing revitalization. Leaving everything to go to the mission field as a single young man. Mentoring at-risk youth. Creating a company that employs others and advances the common good. Pushing past laziness and whining and getting yourself in shape, fine-tuning your body so that you’re no longer a boy in the way you eat and take care of yourself.
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More than 250 Southern Seminary students received degrees – ranging from certificates to doctorates – during commencement exercises on the seminary lawn, May 17, 2013. “This great assembly is humbled by the knowledge that you will go where so many of us have never gone,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary, told the [...]
Veteran Southern Baptist journalist James A. Smith Sr. has been named seminary executive editor and chief spokesman of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, school officials announced May 15. “Jim Smith is one of the most respected journalists and writers in the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a man of great gifts and tremendous experience,” R. [...]
Southern Seminary honored Russell D. Moore for his nearly 10 years of service, April 16, when he preached his last chapel sermon as dean of the School of Theology and senior vice president for academic administration. Earlier this year, on March 26, trustees of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist [...]
And so, you graduate. The Seminary Lawn is filled with hundreds of graduates, faculty, family, and friends. Everyone is playing his or her part. Parents are proud, spouses are glad, friends are happy, and a good number of infants are hungry. The faculty is feeling old and the graduates are feeling wise. And you are [...]
The doctor is a murderer. The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell ended yesterday, with the infamous abortion doctor convicted of three counts of first degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter. The doctor’s abortion clinic, described by a Philadelphia prosecutor as a “house of horrors,” is no more, but the truth revealed in his [...]
Looking for evidence that our society is losing its mind? Just look at the controversy over so-called “emergency contraceptives” and a federal judge’s effort to make these drugs available, over the counter, to girls of any age. Last month, Judge Edward Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York [...]
Mother’s Day is a particularly sensitive time in many congregations, and pastors and church leaders often don’t even know it. This is true even in congregations that don’t focus the entire service around the event as if it were a feast day on the church’s liturgical calendar. Infertile women, and often their husbands, are still [...]
In the beginning was the Word. Christians rightly cherish the declaration that our Savior, the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, is first known as the Word — the one whom the Father has sent to communicate and to accomplish our redemption. We are saved because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Believers [...]
George Jones has died, and I am afraid a lot of people will think he was a hypocrite. George Jones was no hypocrite. He was the troubadour of the Christ-haunted South. The raw emotion, and even whispers of torture, in his voice can teach American Christianity much about the nature of sin and the longing for repentance. [...]
We should have seen it coming. Back in 1989 two young activists pushing for the normalization of homosexuality coauthored a book intended to serve as a political strategy manual and public relations guide for their movement. In After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s, authors Marshall Kirk [...]
Jesus once told of a wealthy man who went on a long journey. Before the man left, he entrusted his wealth to three servants. To one he gave five units, to another just two units, and to the last he gave only one. Each received “according to his ability,” Jesus said. The servant with the [...]
