“For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.”
Philippians 3:18-19 NIV
Sometimes shame is a very good thing!
It is meant by God to be a cleansing agent for the soul. Shame is the awareness that I have made choices and decisions that have “marred” the image of God in my life. As I look back, one of the areas of my life where shame surfaces the most is when I believed the lie of what it means to be “manly” in America. I adopted a mindset and behavior that really was only a shameful cover to hide my Male Moral Rottenness (M.M.R.).
I thought I was crazy, cool, and just being “one of the guys”; when in truth I was a mindless zombie, a fool, scum.
Male Moral Rot is ruining many, many lives. If it wasn’t for the saving mercy of God, M.M.R. would have killed me. But God in his kindness woke me up to it at the age of 23 and allowed the conviction of the Holy Spirit and his medicinal power of shame to cure me. What is “Male Moral Rot?”
Paul the Apostle describes it best where he says “when people glory in their shame.” Shame is intended to break us, shock us, humble us…but moral rot occurs when instead we “glory” in garbage. It is when we boast and brag about how perverse we are; when ugliness and filth in our life is relished and valued.
Let me give you the A-B-C-D’s of Male Moral Rot:
A is for “Exhibit A” (beginning illustration): The Timothy Piazza Tragedy
This past February, Penn State’s Beta Theta Pi’s fraternity called one of their nights of hazing, “The Gauntlet.” College students who were desperate to join the fraternity participated in a drinking game where they would run from station to station drinking more and more glasses of alcohol. At one station the students were compelled to drink four to five alcoholic drinks in a two-minute span. After the festivities were over, Timothy Piazza fell down a flight of stairs in a drunken stupor, and 12 hours later was declared dead after 9-1-1 was alerted.
His fraternity brothers said, “they never intended things to get so out of hand.” They were just having a night of fun never meaning to hurt anyone. Initially, his death was ruled an “accident”, but after reports were made public in court the judge determined the death was “the direct result of encouraged reckless conduct.” Criminal charges were announced Friday, which included 50 counts of hazing and reckless endangerment, stemming from hazing activities that date to spring 2016.
Some of the abuse he experienced that night was:
- Piazza’s blood alcohol content reached 0.28 and 0.36 percent that night.
- During the night Piazza was slapped in the face, slammed onto a couch and hit in the abdomen by fraternity members.
- After 3 a.m., Piazza tried to stand but he fell, hitting his head on the floor.
- At about 5 a.m., Piazza stood and then fell headfirst into an iron railing, landing on a stone floor.
- In the early morning hours, brothers saw Piazza in distress but didn’t help.
- At about 10 a.m., three men carried Piazza’s unconscious body upstairs and placed him back on the couch.
- Surveillance footage showed brothers shaking him and trying to prop him up. At 10:48 a.m., a fraternity member called 911. Piazza was hospitalized and died the next day.
But it was all in good fun, right? Every drinking party at college frats are. Nothing is intended to go wrong. But it did, and it is the direct result of young men “glorying in shame.” This is M.M.R., and I know it firsthand. Timothy’s father summed up the tragedy this way, “In August, we dropped off our two sons here at Penn State University to further their collegiate experience. Today, we’re only going to be bringing one of them home, due to a senseless and very preventable tragedy that … caused us to bury our son three months ago.” The attorney for the family said, “Penn State frat’s ‘grotesque actions’ were ‘beyond human decency,’”
This is M.M.R. Why does it keep happening, and is there any hope for young men to change? I hate to say it…this type of foolish – the world is my playground, “cast caution to the wind” – type of behavior has always been the case. And it will keep going on until “godly shame” is reintroduced in homes, schools and churches. But America loves glorying in its shame because…
B is for Wanting to Belong (our need for community):
In one article on the Timothy Piazza case, a reporter compared college fraternities to “gangs for rich white kids.” There is truth in that: All young males, white – black – brown – yellow, have a desperate need to belong. From inner-city gangs to high school sports teams to youth groups. And if there is no respected supervision for each of these groups, “Lord of the Flies” becomes the way of the group. As Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, nature left to itself is “Red in tooth and claw.”
I experienced this firsthand: At college, I was far away from home, I wanted to belong, so I joined in. It is easy to stand back and wonder why young men don’t resist or fail to become the strong independent warrior who thumbs his nose at the mob…but without strong and well-thought-out convictions, most men are sitting ducks to the mob’s power. Left to tribal influences, and a desire to be accepted, it is virtually impossible to resist in the heat of the moment. (And ladies, you are just as prone to the mind of majority rule too).
M.M.R. exists because we all want to belong. Parents, listen up: If you never make your home a welcome place, your child will find another. And that is why it is imperative for the church to offer an outlet for belonging without losing your soul. Because…
C is for the Cultural Current (the emotional undertow that is almost impossible to resist):
Outrage concerning the death of this student is appropriate, but for most regular people that are outraged, it is also extremely hypocritical. Why are we shocked when “someone gets hurt” by M.M.R? Do we not realize our culture celebrates and artistically promotes this very attitude of unrestrained hedonism in vivid color every day on media outlets across American airways? When I was in High School, listening to most conversations between my male friends was nothing more than their quoting of movie lines from silly, wicked and juvenile movies like “Scarface”, “Cheech and Chong’s: Up In Smoke”, “Caddy Shack” and “Porky’s.” Each one of those movies are clear illustrations of M.M.R., and most of the parents of my friends watched those movies right along with their kids, laughing all the way!
What you laugh at exposes so much more about what you really believe than what you teach.
A case in point: I was listening to two adult male hosts on the radio show “Mike and Mike” just last week when they give their answers to this question, “What are the funniest movies of all time.” Mike Golic, a 50-year-old regular dad with grown-up kids, said, “‘The Hangover’, ‘Animal House’, ‘Old School’, and ‘Eddie Murphy’s Raw.’” You want to talk about the celebration of debauchery! They are laughing at the very same thing that got that Timothy Piazza kid killed. Those are four movies that celebrate and exalt in shame.
So while news outlets bemoan the “entitled mentality of white fraternities” they keep pumping out movies that promote this same perverse praise for M.M.R. And it affects us more than we give it credit for. Naturally, some of the women reading this will rage against how “the rape culture” needs to be stopped in our country — how men are solely to blame for this epidemic. But these same ladies also statistically watch and equally enjoy the same rotten movies, laughing just as loud and encouraging debauchery just as strongly. I have listed the IMBD user ratings for two movies that promote M.M.R.: “The Hangover” and “50 Shades of Grey”, the horrible sadomasochistic movie that promotes soft-porn for women. If you notice, there is no difference between the favorability ratings between men and women on “The Hangover” and women are more approving of “50 Shades of Grey” than men. So it seems women have plunged down in the M.M.R. pit as well.
Feminism has hit a new low in our country where women too want to indulge in their own version of M.M.R. The raunchy comedians Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham, are just as vile and perverse as any college frat boy. That brings us to…
D is for the Depravity of Man (theological problem for everyone):
There is only one way to fix this problem of M.M.R.; we need to acknowledge all men and women outside of Christ are “Totally Depraved.” Ephesians 2:1-3 says it like this:
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Men and women alike are born dead, unable to resist their passions and wicked desires. For some reason, we think we are smart enough to manage it outside of the power of Christ…why? We want to devise stronger laws against “hate groups”, “rape culture”, “underage drinking”, “religious intolerance”, “domestic violence”, and “gun violence”. Are all these problems the product of male testosterone or sin in the heart of man?
If we don’t correctly diagnose the real disease we will never find a cure. M.M.R. Is a symptom, in fact, it has been around for thousands of years. Look at Isaiah 56:10-12…
“Israel’s watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they lie around and dream, they love to sleep. They are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, they seek their own gain. ‘Come,’ each one cries, ‘let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.’”
See, men have always loved to lie around and drink, M.M.R. has always been a major human problem. There is only one real answer, one cure, one hope:
Turn to Jesus.
If a person does not turn to him, sure they can have fun, and this life can be all fun and games, until, well…the Bible calls it the “Great White Throne Judgement Seat.” (Revelations 20:11-15). If you end up there, I guarantee you, it is not fun. Please, oh cool, wild, foolish man; consider this warning before your fun runs out.
