This Is Why You're Still a Boy

Men must strive to grow up.

You don’t become a man simply by getting older. Back when life was harder and when masculinity wasn’t something we needed to talk about, boys naturally became men when they reached a certain age. The trials and difficulties of becoming a responsible adult forced them to mature and leave their childhood behind much earlier than today. In fact, in our day and age, it’s increasingly common to see 40 year old boys, who never really grew up and who remain stuck in perpetual adolescence.

It is what it is. Our society pushes for this. There’s a war against masculinity and there’s an intentional effort to keep men from ever growing up. Boys are emotional, unstable, dependent, immature, and easily swayed by advertisement and the media. Is it any wonder that the powers in place want men to remain children forever? A society of man-children is a consumerist society, that will never rebel against any system, never take any ownership, and remain endlessly hooked to entertainment, cheap dopamine, and distractions of all kinds.

Whatever the causes of this epidemic of immaturity, the fact remains that there’s no longer many real men among the younger generations. Just listen to the most common complaints of women, specially within Christian circles: it’s almost always something along the lines of “there are no real men left”. Yes, I know there’s also a lot of things we could say about the state of femininity nowadays, but I speak to men only, and it’s undeniable that we have a lot of work to do as well.

What Causes Male Immaturity?

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
— 1 Corinthians 13:11

Why is it that some men remain childish and immature?

The answer is pretty obvious, and Saint Paul tells it plainly: childish ways. To become a man, you must put the things of children behind. You must develop a new identity, in which you don’t speak, think, reason, or act like a child.

While that sounds simple enough, it begets a follow-up question: what, then, are those childish ways that we need to give up?

That’s what I’ll try to answer in this article.

There are a lot of obvious things that we need to give up in order to grow up into the men God wants us to become: childish games, childish entertainment (don’t even get me started on cartoons and such), and childish external influences. I have, however, written amply about those already, and while giving those up is definitely an important part of the process of growing up, I think they are more symptoms than root causes of immaturity.

Instead, I want to discuss 3 childish behaviors that aren’t so commonly spoken of but go much deeper than the external signs of immaturity mentioned earlier. For the modern man, from what I’ve seen, aside from the things already mentioned, there are 3 unspoken and distinct things that keep him childish and immature.

It’s likely that this article will offend some readers, but I want to make something clear: I’m not writing this from a high horse nor is it my intention to criticize and judge arbitrarily. I do not have all of this figured out, but I’ve been able to gain awareness about some things that definitely do not help me act like a man. If you relate to some of the childish ways that I’ll mention in this article, and feel the temptation to become defensive and emotional, take a moment to reflect on whether that might be because deep down you know that you need to make some changes and leave behind those childish things.

I will explain what these childish ways are, and then provide both general and more specific strategies to grow out of them and into a purposeful, mature, masculine man.

So what exactly are these things that are keeping you a boy?