Saturday, December 5, 2009


According to a recent Yahoo report, famous tennis star Andy Murray and his long-time girlfriend are breaking up. Now why would a pastor write a blog comment over such dramatic event? The answer….because it is the perfect example of delayed manhood.

Evidently his girlfriend decided to dump him because he spends seven hours a day playing video games. Seriously, there is something wrong in a culture when 22 year old men are spending 7 hours a day playing video games, dating a girl for four years without any marriage in sight (or at least there was no evidence of such plans in this case).

I’m seeing this issue over and over again in marital counseling. The responsibilities of early 20-year-olds such as work, pursing a family, and cultivating spiritual maturity have been replaced with living at home with parents, playing video games all night, spending their weekends out with their buddies, and delaying the responsibilities of manhood. If I may be so blunt as to say that the results are 30 year-olds with the maturity level of 16 year-olds. While this is obviously not true in every case, there has most certainly been a shift in the culture on this issue.

One of the tragic affects of delayed adulthood is the conflict it brings into marriage. The longer one lives out their independence the harder the transition to being dependent (marriage) will be. Now this doesn’t mean everyone needs to be married by 18, nor am I suggesting such an arbitrary guideline. What I am suggesting is that if you are 22 and are playing 7 hours of video games, a transition to marriage and taking on the responsibilities of a family will be very challenging.

Genesis 1 is clear that God’s design for manhood is rooted in three main tasks, namely work, marry, and have a family that you protect and provide for to the glory of God. While there are individual circumstances preventing some of these, that is God’s design for being a man and it is a glorious responsibility because it is rooted in the image of God. Maybe Andy Murray needs to work on a different kind of serve?

For His Glory,

Pastor Wes