Immature Men Quotes

It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.

I happen to be immature, undisciplined, and self-centered, pretty much a little boy in a man's body, although I'd appreciate it if you didn't quote me on that. -Bobby Tom

Young girls are like helpless children in the hands of amorous men, whatever is said to them is true and whatever manipulation on their bodies seems like love to them, sooner or later, they come back to their senses, but the scars are not dead inasmuch as her spoiler lives.

I've given up men. It's true. At first, I was just going to give up attorneys, but that seemed immature - and far too exclusive, so I'm playing it safe and giving up all the penis-carrying humans.

The moment you have to recruit people to put another person down, in order to convince someone of your value is the day you dishonor your children, your parents and your God. If someone doesn't see your worth the problem is them, not people outside your relationship.

No matter how tiny you look, you can lead huge men if you have what the huge men don't have.

Intelligent men do not decide any subject until they have carefully examined both or all sides of it. Fools, cowards, and those too lazy to think, accept blindly, without examination, dogmas and doctrines imposed upon them in childhood by their parents, priests, and teachers, when their minds were immature and they could not reason.

Just remember that it's not your responsibility to fix a broken man. It's not worth your time, your effort, your love or your tears. If he's not willing to fix himself for you, there's nothing left to do but walk away and move behind his selfish, immature, and ultimately abusive behavior. Not all men are broken, but you have to believe you deserve better. Expect better and you'll receive better, it's that simple.

Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness.

Mature men look into the ladies hearts. Immature ones mention constantly their body parts. They mentioned sex like they’re obsessed. Enslaved by drugs and alcohol; helpless.

In a general sense, I admit to valuing the worldviews of men under the age of 40 and women over the age of 30.

There is so much woman in many a girl and too much boy in many a man.

People that don't know what they are worth will always see their capture's wings, but never their tail.

You’ve grown tired of being the trophy for mature men, yet always approached by immature fellas running game, in, “Mr Right” disguise. They can’t understand, because all they see is the smile, the strength, perseverance, the accomplishments, but all are clueless about the sadness, loneliness, emotional breakdowns…the failures.

This Author has come to the conclusion that there are rakes, and there are Rakes. Anthony Bridgerton is a Rake. A rake (lower-case) is youthful and immature. He flaunts his exploits, behaves with utmost idiocy, and thinks himself dangerous to women. A Rake (upper-case) knows he is dangerous to women. He doesn’t flaunt his exploits because he doesn’t need to. He knows he will be whispered about by men and women alike, and in fact, he’d rather they didn’t whisper about him at all. He knows who he is and what he has done; further recountings are, to him, redundant. He doesn’t behave like an idiot for the simple reason that he isn’t an idiot

I couldn't take much more of this. Being the object two men competed for wasn't as glamorous as it sounded in the movies. The two men who both wanted one hundred percent of my time weren't dashing, international playboys. They were undead and surprisingly immature, considering the youngest was just over a hundred years old.

When confronted with a problem involving the use of the reasoning faculties, individuals of strong intellect keep their poise, and seek to reach a solution by obtaining facts bearing upon the question. Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted, are overwhelmed. While the former may be qualified to solve the riddle of their own destiny, the latter must be led like a flock of sheep and taught in simple language. They depend almost entirely upon the ministrations of the shepherd. The Apostle Paul said that these little ones must be fed with milk, but that meat is the food of strong men. Thoughtlessness is almost synonymous with childishness, while thoughtfulness is symbolic of maturity. There are, however, but few mature minds in the world; and thus it was that the philosophic-religious doctrines of the pagans were divided to meet the needs of these two fundamental groups of human intellect--one philosophic, the other incapable of appreciating the deeper mysteries of life. To the discerning few were revealed the esoteric, or spiritual, teachings, while the unqualified many received only the literal, or exoteric, interpretations. In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While the ignorant multitudes brought their offerings to the altars of Priapus and Pan (deities representing the procreative energies), the wise recognized in these marble statues only symbolic concretions of great abstract truths. In all cities of the ancient

As for the majority, it is not so much race as it is political affiliation that really divides it today. What was once an issue of physical difference is now one of intellectual difference. Men have yet to master disagreeing without flashing all their frustrations that come with it; the conservative will throw half-truths while the liberal will throw insults. Combine these and what do you get? A dishonest mockery of a country.

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.

Many of the boys and men who are regarded as immature by some females are so deemed merely because they do not want to get married someday … or soon.

People who lacked emotional engagement in childhood, men and women alike, often can’t believe that someone would want to have a relationship with them just because of who they are. They believe that if they want closeness, they must play a role that always puts the other person first.

I had a dream that boys would act like men for once…then I woke up.

People who have no hold over their process of thinking are likely to be ruined by liberty of thought. If thought is immature, liberty of thought becomes a method of converting men into animals.

Ladies, don't lower yourself to fight over a man or compete with other women for one. It's not classy, immature, and a waste of time. Instead, use that energy and time wisely by achieving goals and being a better you. This way, you attract someone better than a man that doesn't see the jewel that you are. Have standards always.

By drinking, a boy acts like a man. After drinking, many a man acts like a boy.

I’ve given up men.” At that, he arched a brow. Be strong. Be confident. Be… Neytiri from Avatar. Okay, so Neytiri was a mythical creature, not to mention animated, but still. She was strong and confident, and that’s all that matters at the moment. “It’s true. At first, I was just going to give up attorneys, but that seemed immature—and far too exclusive, so I’m playing it safe and giving up all the penis-carrying humans.” Because that was so much more mature.

Our society tells young adult men to deprive themselves of God's provision for their physical, emotional, and sexual needs so they can remain as immature and self-absorbed as possible, for as long as possible. You know what the Bible says about this: it just is not good.

More African American adults are under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites.

Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman’s body takes on as she matures - the fuller breasts and rounded hips - have become distateful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men.

Nations that are populated largely by immature, immoral, weak-willed, cowardly, and self-indulgent men cannot and will not long endure. These types of men include those who sire and abandon their children; who cheat on their wives; who lie, steal, and covet; who hate their countrymen; and who serve no god but money. That is the direction culture is taking today's boys.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance, nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians...

Do not wait forever but do wait. Just remember that it’s not your responsibility to fix a broken man. It’s not worth your time, your effort, your love or your tears. If he’s not willing to fix himself for you, there’s nothing left to do but walk away and move beyond his selfish, immature, and ultimately abusive behavior. Not all men are broken, but you have to believe you deserve better. Expect better and you’ll receive better, it’s that simple.

Tough men are tough not because they want to be tough, but because they have to be tough. Outgrow the adolescent fawning over being a tough guy, and you will become a tough man.

Immature men make decisions based on how they feel. Mature men make decisions based on what is right.

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that [they]... make, the more often [they] will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.

Women partners of men with Asperger's Syndrome have mentioned qualities such as quiet, kind, strong, and attentive as what attracted them to their partners. The man may be perceived as a "silent stranger" due to lack of social and conversational skills, but there is the possibility that his social naivete and immaturity can be changed by a partner who is a natural expert on empathy, socializing, and conversation.

In his book "Men to boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity", Gary Cross asks simply: "Where have all the men gone?" Like George Will, Victor David Hanson, and others who've posed that question, Professor Cross is no doubt aware that he sounds old and square. But in a land of middle-aged teenagers somebody has to.

...A huge “army” of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet. To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy. LET’S FACE IT: There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc. Be HONEST with yourself!

There has been among us, particularly in America, an adolescent competitiveness—a feeling that life is a race in which the victory of one must mean the defeat of the other. No one can measure how much personal unhappiness and inner cowardice have come from this immaturity of our social outlook, this childlike comparison, this absurd rivalry in every area of life. As our democracy becomes more mature, men have a chance of growing up and of realizing that every person is needed and has some contribution to make.

our objective as moms and dads is to transform our sons from “immature and flighty youngsters into honest, caring men who will be respectful of women, loyal and faithful in marriage, keepers of commitments, strong and decisive leaders, good workers, and men who are secure in their masculinity.

Patriotism,” said Lymond, “like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itself out of the spiritual market altogether. [...] It is an emotion as well, and of course the emotion comes first. A child’s home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbours, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps, at last our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe. [...] Patriotism is a fine hothouse for maggots. It breeds intolerance; it forces a spindle-legged, spurious riot of colour.… A man of only moderate powers enjoys the special sanction of purpose, the sense of ceremony; the echo of mysterious, lost and royal things; a trace of the broad, plain childish virtues of myth and legend and ballad. He wants advancement—what simpler way is there? He’s tired of the little seasons and looks for movement and change and an edge of peril and excitement; he enjoys the flowering of small talents lost in the dry courses of daily life. For all these reasons, men at least once in their lives move the finger which will take them to battle for their country.… “Patriotism,” said Lymond again. “It’s an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism; loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one’s fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power— [...] These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave. [...] “And who shall say they are wrong?” said Lymond. “There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.' ("The Wendigo")

Did you tell him you love him? My mom says men have trouble with that sometimes because they're emotionally immature.

High school guys are boys. They are totally selfish and immature. They will break your heart into a million pieces and then pick up all of the pieces and cut you with them. College guys, on the other hand are men.

The nationalist, however loves his own kind as the extension of his family, realizing that universal values are primitive values or no values at all; that men can be free and content only within their native cultural environment. This profound insight completely escapes the immature internationalists. The nationalist seeks peace— not the peace of the pacifist or the slave but the peace of the free and independent. He believes in nonaggression, nonintervention and neutrality whereas the internationalist sees every dispute anywhere in the world as an excuse for the raising of an army, the floating of a bond issue and the raising of taxes—letting the suckers, of course, do the fighting, the buying of bonds and the paying of taxes. Nationalism is the only sane approach to the problem of world peace in an increasingly crazy and dangerous world. It is the spirit of live and let live, the healthy ethic of self-respect, racial integrity and conscientious concern for the rights of others.

One of my greatest concerns for the young women of the Church is that they will sell themselves short in dating and marriage by forgetting who they really are--daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. . . . Unfortunately, a young woman who lowers her standards far enough can always find temporary acceptance from immature and unworthy young men. . . . At their best, daughters of God are loving, caring, understanding, and sympathetic. This does not mean they are also gullible, unrealistic, or easily manipulated. If a young man does not measure up to the standards a young woman has set, he may promise her that he will change if she will marry him first. Wise daughters of God will insist that young men who seek their hand in marriage change before the wedding, not after. (I am referring here to the kind of change that will be part of the lifelong growth of every disciple.) He may argue that she doesn't really believe in repentance and forgiveness. But one of the hallmarks of repentance is forsaking sin. Especially when the sin involves addictive behaviors or a pattern of transgression, wise daughters of God insist on seeing a sustained effort to forsake sin over a long period of time as true evidence of repentance. They do not marry someone because they believe they can change him. Young women, please do not settle for someone unworthy of your gospel standards. On the other hand, young women should not refuse to settle down. There is no right age for young men or young women to marry, but there is a right attitude for them to have about marriage: "Thy will be done" . . . . The time to marry is when we are prepared to meet a suitable mate, not after we have done all the enjoyable things in life we hoped to do while we were single. . . . When I hear some young men and young women set plans in stone which do not include marriage until after age twenty-five or thirty or until a graduate degree has been obtained, I recall Jacob's warning, "Seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand" (Jacob 4:10). . . . How we conduct ourselves in dating relationships is a good indication of how we will conduct ourselves in a marriage relationship. . . . Individuals considering marriage would be wise to conduct their own prayerful due diligence--long before they set their hearts on marriage. There is nothing wrong with making a T-square diagram and on either side of the vertical line listing the relative strengths and weaknesses of a potential mate. I sometimes wonder whether doing more homework when it comes to this critical decision would spare some Church members needless heartache. I fear too many fall in love with each other or even with the idea of marriage before doing the background research necessary to make a good decision. It is sad when a person who wants to be married never has the opportunity to marry. But it is much, much sadder to be married to the wrong person. If you do not believe me, talk with someone who has made that mistake. Think carefully about the person you are considering marrying, because marriage should last for time and for all eternity.

Shackleton's unwillingness to succumb to the demands of everyday life & his insatiable excitement w/ unrealistic ventures left him open to the accusation of being basically immature & irresponsible. & very possibly he was-by conventional standards. But the great leaders of historical record-the Napoleons, the Nelsons, the Alexanders-have rarely fitted any conventional mold, & it is perhaps an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms. There can be little doubt that Shackleton, in this way, was an extraordinary leader of men.

Behind this lies not just impact or drama, but a typically Japanese tendency. The story of Pygmalion, the Greek myth — in which Pygmalion falls in love with the statue of a young woman that he creates and which is hen transformed into a human by Aphrodite who imbues it with life — represents a Western approach in which the statue represents the human body. In Japan, however, there is a unique predilection for dolls ... This can be interpreted as a decadent, necrophiliac erotic story but it can also be interpreted as a propensity for Japanese men to fall in love with figures. These men's desires are directed at the figure for the very reason that it is a doll. The overwhelming passivity of the doll is a reflection of the behavior of a certain type of Japanese man whose immaturity makes it very difficult for him to establish an equal relationship with a mature woman.

To be a man and live among men is miraculous, even if we know the vile deeds and crimes that people are capable of. Every day we build together an enormous beehive with our thoughts, discoveries, inventions, works, lives. Even that analogy is hardly accurate; it is too static, since our collective work is constantly changing and displaying itself in various colors, subject to time or history. Again, this is an insufficient description, because it ignores the most important thing: that this collective creation is given life by the most private, hidden fuel of all individual aspirations and decisions. The oddity of man's exceptional calling rests principally on his being a comical being, forever immature, so that a group of children with their easy mood swings from laughter to crying is the best illustration of his lack of dignity. A few years pass, and suddenly they are adults, taking control and supposedly prepared to make pronouncements on public matters and even to take upon themselves the duties of father and mother, although it would be good if they first had an entire life of their own to prepare for this.

The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started... ...'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.' (Wilhelm Stekel)... ...you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.

It is recognised now that Freud never gave proper attention, even in man, to growth of the ego or self: 'the impulse to master, control or come to self-fulfilling terms with the environment'. Analysts who have freed themselves from Freud's bias and joined other behavioural scientists in studying the human need, and that interference with it, in any dimension, is the source of psychic trouble. The sexual is only one dimension of the human potential. Freud saw women only in terms of their sexual relationship with men. But in all those women in whom he saw sexual problems, there must have been very severe problems of blocked growth, growth short of full human identity -- an immature, incomplete self. Society as it was then, by explicit denial of education and independence, prevented women from realising their full potential, or from attaining those interests and ideals that might stimulated their growth. Freud reported these deficiencies, but could only explain them as the toll of 'penis envy'. He saw that women who secretly hungered to be man's equal would not enjoy being his object; and in this, he seemed to be describing a fact. But when he dismissed woman's yearning for equality as 'penis envy', was he not merely stating his own view that woman could never really be man's equal, any more than she could wear his penis?

Here we are, in 2020, still without male equivalents to ...[the] pill, implant, injection, IUD. Here we are with a female pill that is simply not fit for purpose, making women in their millions....depressed, anxious, suicidal, sick, panicked, overweight, in pain and all the other myriad side effects discussed in private WhatsApp groups and late night confessions around the world. Here we are with a modern fuck culture that keeps men in a state of sexual immaturity their entire adult lives.

The boy under the power of the Mama's Boy is what is called autoerotic. He may compulsively masturbate. He may be into pornography, seeking the Goddess in the nearly infinite forms of the female body. Some men under the infantile power of the Mama's Boy aspect of the Oedipal Child have vast collections of pictures of nude women, alone or making love with men. He is seeking to experience his masculinity, his phallic power, his generativity. But instead of affirming his own masculinity as a mortal man, he is really seeking to experience the penis of God—the Great Phallus—that experiences all women, or rather that experiences union with the Mother Goddess in her infinity of female forms. Caught up in masturbation and the compulsive use of pornography, the Mama's Boy, like all immature energies, wants just to be. He does not want to do what it takes to actually have union with a mortal woman and to deal with all the complex feelings involved in an intimate relationship. He does not want to take responsibility.

Thus, the person of experience and reflection writes history. Anyone who has not experienced life on a greater and higher level than everyone else will not know how to interpret the greatness and loftiness of the past. The utterance of the past is always an oracular pronouncement. You will understand it only as builders of the future and as people who know about the present. People now explain the extraordinarily deep and far-reaching effect of Delphi by the particular fact that the Delphic priests had precise knowledge about the past. It is appropriate now to understand that only the man who builds the future has a right to judge the past. In order to look ahead, set yourselves an important goal, and at the same time control that voluptuous analytical drive with which you now lay waste the present and render almost impossible all tranquility, all peaceful growth and maturing. Draw around yourself the fence of a large and extensive hope, an optimistic striving. Create in yourselves a picture to which the future is to correspond, and forget the myth that you are epigones. You have enough to plan and to invent when you imagine that future life for yourselves. But in considering history do not ask that she show you the 'How?' and the 'With what?' If, however, you live your life in the history of great men, then you will learn from history the highest command: to become mature and to flee away from that paralyzing and prohibiting upbringing of the age, which sees advantages for itself in not allowing you to become mature, in order to rule and exploit you, the immature. And when you ask after biographies, then do not ask for those with the refrain 'Mr. Soandso and His Age' but for those whose title page must read 'A Fighter Against His Age.' Fill your souls with Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves when you have faith in his heroes. With a hundred people raised in such an unmodern way, that is, people who have become mature and familiar with the heroic, one could permanently silence the entire noisy pseudo-education of this age.

Thinking about such a situation, one becomes aware of the human lack of detachment; our inexperience and immaturity in the complex problems of the human condition. But it should not be so. We have the ‘breathing spaces’ when we can take a detached point of view. If it was of life-or-death importance that we learned by these moments of insight, men would quickly become something closer to being godlike. But most of us can drift through life without making any great moral decisions. And so the human race has shown no advance in wisdom in three thousand years.

It becomes ever increasingly clear to many students of man and of the contemporary scene that the crucial difficulty with which we are confronted lies in the fact that the development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. Man represses the irrational passions of destructiveness, hate, envy, revenge; he worships power, money, the sovereign state, the nation; while he pays lip service to the teachings of the great spiritual leaders of the human race, those of Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, Jesus, Mohammed—he has transformed these teachings into a jungle of superstition and idol-worship. How can mankind save itself from destroying itself by this discrepancy between intellectual-technical over-maturity and emotional backwardness?

More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites.

Animals are the lower intelligent of creatures, yet God illustrates man as one of them. Why? To demonstrate to us how careless, how thoughtless, and sometimes how cruel and low-life we can be without him. Without God, we go through a hard, disappointing, and dreadful life. We are like fearful, untrained, and bitter children that have played all day and are afraid to go to sleep at night, thinking we are going to miss out or be left out of things. A sailor out on a stormy sea needs a strong sail and anchor for the days and a lighthouse for the nights to survive. This is a good illustration of witnessing. We draw from one another’s strength for the day and mediate on it in the nights in accordance with God’s Word. God has faded out of the mind of this generation, we like immature children, believe that the Toyland of material wealth is a sufficient world. Yet houses, cars, and money really do not fulfill. Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob – a generation of God-fearing men. But in the next generation, God was not the God of Isaac. He had faded and became second place in their lives. Even in the mother’s womb, there was a struggle for honor and success. Jacob stole his brother’s birthright. Morals were decaying, rottenness appeared. The same things have happened with us. Our whole nation is reaping the results of a fading faith and trust, which is producing decaying morals and a decaying country. We are morally out of control. Unless we, like Jacob, who when frightened for his life desired a moral renewal, acknowledge that we are wrong and find God in the process. We must seek God with our whole hearts. The future of this world is in the hands of the believers. God has left everything in the hands of the church. Therefore, we must witness. An evangelical team must go out and bring the people back to the Garden of Eden as God had originally planned. Grace is always available!

[E]very reader must be struck by the contrast between the outspokenness of these speeches and Thucydides’ own reticence. [...] Now this silence does not mean that he is indifferent, or that he no longer responds to men and events, as he encourages us to do, with approval and disapproval. It shows, rather, that he is a skillful political educator. For the moral seriousness that he fosters in us remains immature, it does not sufficiently help us to promote the well-being of our communities, which it necessarily wants to promote, unless it is guided by or culminates in political wisdom. And since political wisdom is primarily good judgment about unprecedented, particular situations, it is not so much a subject matter to be taught as a skill to be developed through practice. Accordingly, instead of telling us whether or not he approves of a given policy, Thucydides asks us to make our own judgments, and then to subject them to the testing that the war provides.

91 THE HONESTY OF GOD. An omniscient and omnipotent God who does not even take care that His intentions shall be understood by His creatures could He be a God of goodness ? A God, who, for thousands of years, has permitted innumerable doubts and scruples to continue unchecked as if they were of no importance in the salvation of mankind, and who, nevertheless, announces the most dreadful consequences for anyone who mistakes his truth ? Would he not be a cruel god if, being himself in possession of the truth, he could calmly contemplate mankind, in a state of miserable torment, worrying its mind as to what was truth ? Perhaps, however, he really is a God of goodness, and was unable to express Himself more clearly ? Perhaps he lacked intelligence enough for this? Or eloquence ? All the worse ! For in such a cas6 he may have been deceived himself in regard to what he calls his " truth," and may not be far from being another " poor, deceived devil ! " Must he not therefore experience all the torments of hell at seeing His creatures suffering so much here below and even more, suffering through all eternity when he himself can neither advise nor help them, except as a deaf and dumb person, who makes all kinds of equivocal signs when his child or his dog is threatened with the most fearful danger ? A distressed believer who argues thus might be pardoned if his pity for the suffering God were greater than his pity for his "neighbours"; for they are his neighbours no longer if that most solitary and primeval being is also the greatest sufferer and stands most in need of consolation. Every religion shows some traits of the fact that it owes its origin to a state of human intellectuality which was as yet too young and immature : they all make light of the necessity for speaking the truth : as yet they know nothing of the duty of God, the duty of being clear and truthful in His communications with men. No one was more eloquent than Pascal in speaking of the " hidden God " and the reasons why He had to keep Himself hidden, all of which indicates clearly enough that Pascal himself could never make his mind easy on this point : but he speaks with such confidence that one is led to imagine that he must have been let into the secret at some time or other. He seemed to have some idea that the deus absconditus bore a few slight traces of immorality ; and he felt too much ashamed and afraid of acknowledging this to himself: consequently, like a man who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could.

Early in my career, I formed a personal motto, one by which I continue to live: If offering a criticism, accompany it with one potential solution. In the case I described, the individual didn’t want to work together to find a solution. Unfortunately, I’ve never found an effective way to deal with adults who exhibit immaturity. The Bible offers a bit of interesting insight that I consider applicable: “Do not eat the bread of a selfish man, or desire his delicacies; for as he thinks within himself, so he is. He says to you, ‘Eat and drink!’ but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten, and waste your compliments. Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words” (Proverbs 23:6-9). The Bible also says, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” (Romans 12:18). It saddens me to say, but in that individual’s case, peace meant limiting my interactions with him. To foster peace, I stopped saying hello in the mornings. Not out of spite, but because friendly conversation led to comfort, and comfort, I noticed, opened the door for negative comments. Rarely do I take such an extreme measure, but sometimes distance is helpful. His visits ended. My peace and fervor began to reemerge.

This felt like a golden opportunity to alert Dan to some non-negotiables I had regarding men. "Bear with me," I told Dan. "This is going to be a long list. I don't like strong scents, so that kind of prohibits waking up next to someone of the opposite sex, or any sex, really. I'm extremely sensitive to smell. I have a problem with smelling anyone's breath. I'm not the kind of person who can get past that. I get turned off very easily. It could be anything. It could be finding out they have a cat, or seeing their apartment, or they could love room temperature water...Feet are tricky. That's why I like to lead with them. When I meet a guy I like, I take out a foot and show him what he'll be dealing with if things go any further. Put your worse foot forward. That's how I like to start a conversation. And then, when they're gracious enough to tolerate me and my feet, God forbid they have a weird foot or a double-decker toe - I can't deal with it...Also, I have too many questionable habits that no man would be cool with, and by the way, if there was a guy that was cool with them, I'm not sure I'd be interested in him..I can get icked out so easily. I'm aware this behavior is unreasonable and immature, and I'd like it to stop. I don't want to get turned off so easily, but I just don't know how to get past a bad pair of shoes, or...male jewelry.

My conception of genius. — Great men, like great ages, are explosives in which a tremendous force is stored up; their precondition is always, historically and physiologically, that for a long time much has been gathered, stored up, saved up, and conserved for them — that there has been no explosion for a long time. Once the tension in the mass has become too great, then the most accidental stimulus suffices to summon into the world the "genius," the "deed," the great destiny. What does the environment matter then, or the age, or the "spirit of the age," or "public opinion"! Take the case of Napoleon. Revolutionary France, and even more, prerevolutionary France, would have brought forth the opposite type; in fact, it did. Because Napoleon was different, the heir of a stronger, older, more ancient civilization than the one which was then perishing in France, he became the master there, he was the only master. Great men are necessary, the age in which they appear is accidental; that they almost always become masters over their age is only because they are stronger, because they are older, because for a longer time much was gathered for them. The relationship between a genius and his age is like that between strong and weak, or between old and young: the age is relatively always much younger, thinner, more immature, less assured, more childish.

By failing to make the obvious connection between an openly misogynistic culture and the mysterious lack of women, Levy contributed to the myth of innately talented hackers being implicitly male. And, today, it’s hard to think of a profession more in thrall to brilliance bias than computer science. ‘Where are the girls that love to program?’ asked a high-school teacher who took part in a summer programme for advanced-placement computer-science teachers at Carnegie Mellon; ‘I have any number of boys who really really love computers,’ he mused. ‘Several parents have told me their sons would be on the computer programming all night if they could. I have yet to run into a girl like that.’ This may be true, but as one of his fellow teachers pointed out, failing to exhibit this behaviour doesn’t mean that his female students don’t love computer science. Recalling her own student experience, she explained how she ‘fell in love’ with programming when she took her first course in college. But she didn’t stay up all night, or even spend a majority of her time programming. ‘Staying up all night doing something is a sign of single-mindedness and possibly immaturity as well as love for the subject. The girls may show their love for computers and computer science very differently. If you are looking for this type of obsessive behavior, then you are looking for a typically young, male behavior. While some girls will exhibit it, most won’t.

HEART ACTION Do you practice what you preach? Become aware of the times when you are not living out the principles and kindnesses that you hold dear. Find fresh ways to show God's love and express your gifts and your compassion. Cambric tea was hot water and milk, with only a taste of tea in it, but little girls felt grown-up when their mothers let them drink cambric tea. LAURA INGALLS WILDER We are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him. -EPHESIANS 4:14-15 God does not want us to remain spiritually immature. Many of the 30-to-40-year-old women I meet seem to dwell on how old they are. There doesn't seem to be much hope or time for them to make an impact in life. I always reassure them how beautiful the older decades are. Each season of life has so much to offer. Life becomes richer the more mature we become. Benjamin Jowett once wrote, Though I am growing old, I maintain that the best part is yet to come-the time when one may see things more dispassionately and know oneself and others more truly, and perhaps be able to do more, and in religion rest centered in a few simple truths. I do not want to ignore the other side, that one will not be able to see so well or walk so far or read so much. But there may be more peace within, more communications with God, more real light instead of distraction about many things, better relations with others, and fewer

To sum up: history is written by the experienced and superior man. He who has not experienced greater and more exalted things than others will not know how to interpret the great and exalted things of the past.When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle: only if you are an architect of the future and know the present will you understand it. The extraordinary degree and extent of the influence exercised by Delphi is nowadays explained principally by the fact that the Delphic priests had an exact knowledge of the past; now it would be right to say that only he who constructs the future has a right to judge the past. If you look ahead and set yourself a great goal, you at the same time restrain that rank analytical impulse which makes the present into a desert and all tranquillity, all peaceful growth and maturing almost impossible. Draw about yourself the fence of a great and comprehensive hope, of a hope-filled striving. Form within yourself an image to which the future shall correspond, and forget the superstition that you are epigones. You will have enough to ponder and to invent when you reflect on the life of the future; but do not ask of history that it should show you the How? and the Wherewith? to this life. If, on the other hand, you acquire a living knowledge of the history of great men, you will learn from it a supreme commandment: to become mature and to flee from that paralyzing upbringing of the present age which sees its advantage in preventing your growth so as to rule and exploit you to the full while you are still immature. And if you want biographies, do not desire those which bear the legend ‘Herr So-and-So and his age’, but those upon whose title-page there would stand ‘a fighter against his age’.

I'm not an ageist, and I'm not looking for a man in a certain restrictive age range, however I've found over the years that people younger than me tend to be immature. The problem with this is that, as I get older, all the good men have already been snapped up.

What?” Judd growled and I had to admit Tawny was right about him sounding like a dog when he did that. Turning around, I noticed two of Cooper’s club guys standing behind us. “What’s your deal, O’Keefe?” one guy asked while the other avoided Judd’s hateful gaze. When no one responded, the big bald guy looked me up and down. “She’s tiny. How does fucking even work?” Aaron shifted next to me, now looking as hostile as Judd. “Back off, Mac.” “Just curious. I’ve never fucked a tiny chick.” “You shouldn’t talk about a man’s girl that way especially when she’s carrying his kid,” Cooper warned, clearly wanting to jump in, but holding back so not to emasculate Aaron. Farah said guys in the club were testing Cooper lately because they sensed weakness in his leadership. I couldn’t imagine anyone looking at Cooper without fearing his wrath. Even if they didn’t fear Cooper, they ought to fear his enforcers. After all, Judd was glaring at Mac like waiting for any reason to attack. Sensing a back story to this pissing match, I knew Mac was about to say something nasty even before he opened his mouth. “I hear chicks get big tits when they’re knocked up. Certainly can’t hurt with this one.” Why Mac was starting shit didn’t matter. Aaron threw the punch and the bar immediately exploded into violence. Judd was waiting for a reason to attack while Cooper and Vaughn were always up for a fight. Aaron hit Mac again as the bigger guy stumbled back. I thought of grabbing a chair and helping my man, but Tawny pulled me away. Soon, we were hiding under a table where Farah crouched with wide eyes. “Aaron needs to stake his claim and protect his woman,” Tawny said, cuddled next to Farah. “If you help him, it’s like you’re cutting off his balls and tossing them in your purse. Immature or not, these guys need to be men or they get insecure. Can’t have that.

Children who feel they cannot engage their parents emotionally often try to strengthen their connection by playing whatever roles they believe their parents want them to. Although this may win them some fleeting approval, it doesn’t yield genuine emotional closeness. Emotionally disconnected parents don’t suddenly develop a capacity for empathy just because a child does something to please them. People who lacked emotional engagement in childhood, men and women alike, often can’t believe that someone would want to have a relationship with them just because of who they are. They believe that if they want closeness, they must play a role that always puts the other person first.

It will also show itself in a large-hearted attitude that avoids quarreling and jealousy, and refuses to sink into narrow factionalism. If some who have the Spirit are slow to display this rising maturity, the kindest interpretation is that they are “worldly.” In these matters they are acting like “mere men” instead of like Christian men and women, men and women empowered by the Spirit of God. They are wretchedly, unacceptably, spiritually immature.

Somehow a group of middle-aged men had transformed themselves into the immature kids they'd been back in their college days.

Discipleship, then, is the putting off of the sinful patterns and habits of our biological families and being transformed to live as members of Christ’s family. This is the Christian life. God’s intention is that we grow up into mature men and women transformed by the indwelling presence of Christ. We honor our parents, culture, and histories but obey God. Every disciple, then, has to look at the brokenness and sin of his or her family and culture. The problem is that few of us have reflected honestly on the impact of our family of origin and other major “earthquake” events in our histories.

They Are Willing to Be Influenced Emotionally mature people have a secure sense of self. They don’t feel threatened when other people see things differently, nor are they afraid of seeming weak if they don’t know something. So when you have an insight to share with them, they listen and consider what you tell them. They may not agree, but thanks to their natural curiosity they’ll try to understand your point of view. John Gottman, well-known for his research into relationships and marital stability, describes this trait as a willingness to be influenced by others, and counts it among his seven principles for a sustainable, happy relationship (1999). Men

Both were careful not to look at Phillip, but it was clear they wanted to change the subject when Buck said, “What kind of expression was that, Shane?”   “Hey! What the hell?” Shea raised a hand to her head. “I was trying to look delicate and frail.”   Buck hooted and cackled. “Delicate? You looked like you were about to take a dump.”   “I did not.”   Eamon roared in laughter. “Yes. Yes, you did. I thought I was going to fall off my horse trying not to laugh.”   “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shea muttered, spurring her horse to move faster. “That was my delicate look.”   The two just roared louder as Shea cantered away. Rounding the bend, Shea shook her head. Something she had learned over the years, men could be immature regardless of age.

So—no boyfriends,” he said. “That seems impossible. Surely men noticed you.” “All the time,” she said. “But I was too busy for men. And for the ones who didn’t understand the word no, I developed a very fast left hook.” He chuckled at her. “Passes,” he said. “That would be the polite term. I swear, men can be so fricking rude! Well, after Chip, I said I’d never be that stupid again. And, in my immature mind, I thought that being practical where Arnie was concerned made so much more sense than letting myself get emotionally stupid and make a big mistake. Shows you what I know.” “Three

David did not. Instead he used his absolute power as king to ensure the details of his colossal failure were published in the history books for all future generations! In fact, David wrote a song about his failure to be sung in Israel’s worship services and to be published in their worship manual, the psalms. (Hopefully he asked Bathsheba’s permission first!) David knew “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). Another of God’s great men, the apostle Paul, wrote about God not answering his prayers and about his “thorn in [the] flesh.” He thanked God for his brokenness, reminding his readers that Christ’s power “is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7–10). How many Christians do you know who would do such a thing today? The

They’re all in the King’s Army,” Roen said, “all trained by Brigan’s people, all equally competent, and the men who went to Gray Haven already have a natural allegiance to your lady, Archer.” Allegiance wasn’t quite the word for it. The soldiers who’d gone to Gray Haven seemed to regard Fire now with something akin to worship; which was, of course, why Archer didn’t want them. A number of them had sought her out today and knelt before her, kissed her hand, and pledged to protect her. “Very well,” Archer said grumpily, somewhat mollified, Fire suspected, because Roen had referred to Fire as his lady. Fire added immaturity to the things she could accuse him of in the fight they weren’t going to have.

Only immature men hide their desires and act out on them, despite what they told the person they’re with.

The reason some — immature — men cheat is because they get this desire to be with other women, and they try to handle their desires by suppressing them. This can create guilt and shame, so they act on their desires and cheat, even though they might care about the woman they’re in a relationship with.

I’m also the mother of a teenage boy. I’ve said in the past, and I’ll say it again, that fourteen-year-old boys are like the single-cell protozoan version of a husband. I often want to invite my single girlfriends over to my house for a day so they can get a clear picture of what they’re really dealing with when it comes to men. It’s not that all men are immature. It’s that all men have a part inside them that matches the part inside me that never really left ninth grade. And in order to love them (and love myself), I’m going to need to get realistic about that part.

There is little need to stress the fact that monism, and faith in a single criterion, has always proved a deep source of satisfaction both to the intellect and to the emotions. [...] Pluralism, with the measure of 'negative' liberty that it entails, seems to me a truer and more humane ideal [...]. It is truer, because it does, at least, recognise the fact that human goals are many, not all of them conmensurable, and in perpetual rivalry with one another. To assume that all values can be graded on one scale, so that it is a mere matter of nspection to determine the highest, seems to me to falsify our knowledge that men are free agents, to represent moral decision as an operation which a slide-rule could, in principle, perform. [...] 'To realise the relative validity of one's convictions', said an admirable writer of our time, 'and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.' To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity.

Let there be light. Gen. 1:3 Let there be enlightenment; let there be understanding. Darkness. Gen. 1:4 Ignorance; lack of enlightenment and understanding. Eden. Gen. 2:8 A delightful place; temporal life. Garden. Gen. 2:8 Metaphorically—a wife; a family. Tree of life in the midst of the garden. Gen. 2:9 Sex; posterity, progeny. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Gen. 2:9 Moral law; the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life. Gen. 2:9 Eternal life. The tree of good and evil. Gen. 2:17 Metaphorically—sexual relationship. Good. Gen. 2:17 Anything perfect. Evil. Gen. 2:17 Anything imperfect; contrary to good; immature. Naked. Gen. 2:25 Exposed; ashamed. Serpent. Gen. 3:1 An enemy; deception. Thorns and thistles. Gen. 3:18 Grievances and difficulties. Sent forth from the garden. Gen. 3:23 A loss of harmony; a lost paradise. God took him away. Gen. 5:24 He died painlessly. He had a heart attack. Sons of God. Gen. 6:2 Good men; the descendants of Seth. My spirit shall not dwell in man forever. Gen. 6:3 I have become weary and impatient. (A scribal note.) The Lord was sorry that He made man. Gen. 6:6 (A scribal note. See Old Testament Light—Lamsa.) I set my bow in the clouds. Gen. 9:13 I set the rainbow in the sky. I have lifted up my hands. Gen. 14:22 I am taking a solemn oath. Thy seed. Gen. 17:7 Your offspring; your teaching. Angels. Gen. 19:1 God’s counsel; spirits; God’s thoughts. Looking behind. Gen. 19:17 Regretting; wasting time. A pillar of salt. Gen. 19:26 Lifeless; stricken dead. As the stars of heaven. Gen. 22:17 Many in number; a great multitude. Went in at the gate. Gen. 23:18 Mature men who sat at the counsel. Hand under thigh. Gen. 24:2 Hand under girdle; a solemn oath. Tender eyed. Gen. 29:17 Attractive eyes. He hath sold us. Gen. 31:15 He has devoured our dowry. Wrestling with an angel. Gen. 32:24 Being suspicious of a pious man. Coat of many colors. Gen. 37:23 A coat with long sleeves meaning learning, honor and a high position. Spilling seed on the ground. Gen. 38:9 Spilling semen on the ground. (An ancient practice of birth control.) No man shall lift up his hand or foot. Gen. 41:44 No man shall do anything without your approval. Put his hand upon thine eyes. Gen. 46:4 Shall close your eyes upon your death bed. Laying on of hands. Gen. 48:14 Blessing and approving a person. His right hand upon the head. Gen. 48:17 A sincere blessing. Unstable as water. Gen. 49:4 Undecided; in a dilemma. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah. Gen. 49:10 There shall always be a king from the lineage of Judah. Washed his garments in wine. Gen. 49:11 He will become an owner of many vineyards. His teeth white with milk. Gen. 49:12 He will have abundant flocks of sheep. His bow abode in strength. Gen. 49:24 He will become a valiant warrior. The stone of Israel. Gen. 49:24 The strong race of Israel. He gathered up his feet. Gen. 49:33 He stretched out his feet—He breathed his last breathe; he died.

only sport known to have inspired an indignant left-wing poem. It was written by one Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn in 1915. The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. Just show me an indignant left-wing poem about softball or bungee jumping. And our local mill has been converted to a shopping mall, so the kids are still there. Golf is also the only sport God is known to play. God and Saint Peter are out on Sunday morning. On the first hole God drives into a water hazard. The waters part and God chips onto the green. On the second hole God takes a tremendous whack and the ball lands ten feet from the pin. There’s an earthquake, one side of the green rises up, and the ball rolls into the cup. On the third hole God lands in a sand trap. He creates life. Single-cell organisms develop into fish and then amphibians. Amphibians crawl out of the ocean and evolve into reptiles, birds, and furry little mammals. One of those furry little mammals runs into the sand trap, grabs God’s ball in its mouth, scurries over, and drops it in the hole. Saint Peter looks at God and says, “You wanna play golf or you wanna fuck around?” And golf courses are beautiful. Many people think mature men have no appreciation for beauty except in immature women. This isn’t true, and, anyway, we’d rather be playing golf. A golf course is a perfect example of Republican male aesthetics—no fussy little flowers, no stupid ornamental shrubs, no exorbitant demands for alimony, just acre upon acre of lush green grass that somebody else has to mow. Truth, beauty, and even poetry are to be found in golf. Every man, when he steps up to the tee, feels, as Keats has it … Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. That is, the men were silent. Cortez was saying, “I can get on in two, easy. A three-wood drive, a five-iron from the fairway, then a two-putt max. But if I hook it, shit, I’m in the drink.” EAT THE RICH

Men and women alike will list the things they have to be thankful for, as if their life were an addition problem whose positive sum means nothing can be wrong. But they can’t shake the feeling of being fundamentally alone and lacking the level of emotional intimacy they crave in their closest relationships.

Such were the men on whom an immature king from a foreign culture, speaking a foreign tongue,

Lucy picked up the point. “I remember this one time when I was in the third grade? And Jesse Cantu decided that he liked me? But I didn’t like him? So he decided that I would fall in love with him if he rescued me from some kind of danger, because that’s what always happens in the movies? So one day he told me that there was a surprise waiting for me in the cupboard at the back of the classroom and all I had to do was go in at recess and open the cupboard door—” “And you believed him?” Benno interrupted, aghast. “Of course!” Lucy said indignantly. “Because I’m from Mississippi! Where we believe people! So anyway, when I opened the cupboard there was a whole mess of spiders in there and I know people say that spiders scuttle away when they see you coming, but these spiders jumped out at me like they were rabid or something and Jesse ran into the room to save me but I was screaming so much that the principal called 911!” She paused for breath. “And the only good thing that happened was that we all got out of school for the rest of the day.” There was a brief silence as everyone absorbed this. Finally Silvia muttered, “Men are pigs.” Giacomo sighed. “How old was this boy with the spiders?” he asked Lucy in a patient voice, as if they had all gone off the rails but were fortunate that he was there to put them right. She frowned, as if suspecting a trick, but finally answered, “Eight.” “As I thought! Far too young to realize what a mistake he was making,” he said triumphantly. “But I’m sure he learned from this sad experience, yes? He didn’t keep trying to attract women with spiders?” “Well, no, of course not,” Lucy said. “Jesse’s still real immature, but he’s not an idiot.” “There you are, then.” Giacomo leaned his chair back, teetering on the back two legs, looking pleased with himself. “Everyone makes mistakes in love. The point is to learn from them. For example, Jesse learned—” “What?” Kate scoffed. “That attacking a girl with spiders isn’t a good way to say ‘I love you’? That should have been obvious from the start.” “Well, yes.” He nodded, as if conceding the point, but then added. “Of course, all knowledge is useful.” “But not all knowledge is worth the cost.” “And what cost is that?” Giacomo’s deep brown eyes were alight with enjoyment. “Looking like a fool.” “Oh, that.” He folded his arms across his chest with the air of one who is about to win an argument. “That’s nothing to concern yourself with. After all, love makes fools of everyone, don’t you agree?” “No, I don’t.” Kate bit off each word. “I don’t agree at all.” “How astonishing,” he muttered. “In fact,” she said meaningfully, “I would say that love only makes fools of those who were fools to begin with.” She smiled at him, clearly pleased with her riposte. Giacomo let his chair fall back to the floor with a thump. “If the world was left to people like you,” he said in an accusing tone, “we’d all be computing love’s logic on computers and dissecting our hearts in a biology lab.” “If the world were left to people like me,” Kate said with conviction, “it would be a much better place to live.” “Oh, yes,” he said sarcastically. “Because it would be orderly. Sensible. And dull.” “Love doesn’t have to end in riots and disaster and, and, and . . . spider attacks!” she said hotly.

The sight presented by the estimable young Mullins would, almost certainly, have induced paroxysms of pride in his mother and mirth in his father: such is the uncommon nature of women and the immaturity of men.

A clear sign of immaturity or stunted growth in the things of God is, as described in Ephesians, where believers are ‘being tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine and being deceived by the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.’ If you haven’t become a son-submitted, mature Christian [gender irrelevant]-of the authority God placed you under, you don’t deserve to be ‘given’ to anyone in the world much less a specified people. Babies are born. Sons are a gift; they must be given.

People who lacked emotional engagement in childhood, men and women alike, often can’t believe that someone would want to have a rela- tionship with them just because of who they are. They believe that if they want closeness, they must play a role that always puts the other person first.

That makes for a top-heavy lot of father-power concentrated in men who derive it from a nebulous ‘father-god’, at the expense of normal human fatherhood. It reverses the order of sane traditional relationships between the generations, where any younger male would call an older man ‘father’, while in Christianity the wise old peasant must call the junior priest ‘father’. It may well also have had a disempowering effect on the normal development of mature manhood and fatherhood in ordinary men. Arguably, with so much ‘father-power’ vested in the priests as community authorities and owners of morality and spirituality, ordinary family men would be deprived of much of their own male potential to grow into emotionally adult fatherhood. Logically, the frustrated adult male must then take advantage of men’s patriarchal ‘superiority’ to indulge in immature compensatory behaviors of domestic violence on wife and children.

Men could be so immature. Did I even want one in my life? The answer was a resounding yes, because I wanted children and companionship and love.

The whole set of stylizations that are known as 'camp' (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about 'camp' is that it has become fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, 'Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag.' Perhaps 'camp' is set in the 'twenties because after that differences between the sexes—especially visible differences—began to fade. This, of course, has never mattered to women in the least. They know they are women. To homosexuals, who must, with every breath they draw, with every step they take, demonstrate that they are feminine, it is frustrating. They look back in sorrow to that more formal era and try to re-live it. The whole structure of society was at that time much more rigid than it has ever been since, and in two main ways. The first of these was sexual. The short skirts, bobbed hair and flat chests that were in fashion were in fact symbols of immaturity. No one ever drew attention to this, presumably out of politeness. The word 'boyish' was used to describe the girls of that era. This epithet they accepted graciously. They knew that they looked nothing like boys. They also realized that it was meant to be a compliment. Manliness was all the rage. The men of the 'twenties searched themselves for vestiges of effeminacy as though for lice. They did not worry about their characters but about their hair and their clothes. Their predicament was that they must never be caught worrying about either. I once heard a slightly dandified friend of my brother say, 'People are always accusing me of taking care over my appearance.' The sexual meaning of behaviour was only sketchily understood, but the symbolism of clothes was recognized by everyone. To wear suede shoes was to be under suspicion. Anyone who had hair rather than bristle at the back of his neck was thought to be an artist, a foreigner or worse. A friend of mine who was young in the same decade as I says that, when he was introduced to an elderly gentleman as an artist, the gentleman said, 'Oh, I know this young man is an artist. The other day I saw him in the street in a brown jacket.' The other way in which society in the 'twenties was rigid was in its class distinctions. Doubtless to a sociologist there were many different strata merging here and there but, among the people that I was now getting to know, there were only two classes. They never mingled except in bed. There was 'them', who acted refined and spoke nice and whose people had pots of money, and there was 'us', who were the salt of the earth.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance, nevertheless gladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons, it is all too easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians.

People like Sophie often feel guilty for complaining. Men and women alike will list the things they have to be thankful for, as if their life were an addition problem whose positive sum means nothing can be wrong. But they can’t shake the feeling of being fundamentally alone and lacking the level of emotional intimacy they crave in their closest relationships.

Mature men look into the ladies' heads & hearts. Immature men constantly mention their body parts.

Mature women recognize the men who will make a difference. Immature women chase the men who will destroy their entire existence.

People who lacked emotional engagement in childhood, men and women alike, often can’t believe that someone would want to have a relationship with them just because of who they are. They believe that if they want closeness, they must play

If Yahweh’s worth is not so great that those who reject him have committed a crime that cries out for infinite justice, then the zero-tolerance policy against the people of the land is a brutal, unjust, egomaniacal atrocity.3 But Yahweh’s policies are not like those of mere men, whose importance does not warrant the slaughter of their opponents. Nor is this a kind of immature self-centered phase that Yahweh eventually grows out of when he decides to be nice and send his Son, Jesus. Rather, the ban on the Canaanites heralds the infinite majesty of the justice of Yahweh, whose holiness demands perfect loyalty, whose worth is such that anything less than absolute allegiance defiles unto death.

And later when she was being fed and I was being ignored I, like all immature fathers, experienced the most intense jealousy which only men ever feel, jealousy of their own child.

Do We Need a Eulogy or a Birth Announcement? Like most African-Americans my age and older, I have been touched by the virtue and disturbed by the failures of the African-American church. I have had some of the richest times of celebration and praise in local black churches. And I’ve also experienced some of the most perplexing and discouraging situations in this same institution. It was an African-American preacher who vouched for me when I was facing criminal charges as a rising junior in high school, making all the difference in my future. And it was the membership of a black Baptist congregation that nearly poisoned my love for the church when, as a new Christian, I witnessed the “brawl” of my first church business meeting. The preaching of the church gave me biblical tropes and themes for building a sense of self in the world. But a low level of spiritual living among many African-American Christians tempted me to believe that everything in the Black Church was show-and-tell, a tragic comedy of self-delusion and religious hypocrisy. I left the Black Church of my youth and converted to Islam during college. I became zealous for Islam and a staunch critic of the Black Church. I welcomed much of the criticisms of radicals, Afrocentrists, and groups like the Nation of Islam. I cut my teeth on the writing and speaking of men like Molefi Kete Asante, Na’im Akbar, Wade Noble, and Louis Farrakhan. The institution that helped nurture me I now deem a real enemy to the progress of African-Americans, an opiate and a tool of white supremacy. I had experienced enough of the church’s weakness to reject her altogether. The immature and undiscerning rarely know how to handle the failures of its heroes, to evaluate with nuance and critical appreciation. That was true of me before the Lord saved me. In July 1995, sitting in an African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) church in the Washington, DC, area, a short, square, balding African-American preacher expounded the text of Exodus 32. With passion and insight, he detailed the idolatry of Israel and exposed the idolatry of my heart. As he pressed on, more and more I felt guilty for my sin, estranged from God, and deserving of God’s holy judgment. Then, from the text of Exodus 32, he preached Jesus Christ, the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world and reconciles sinners to God. He proclaimed the cross of Jesus Christ, where my sins had been nailed and the Son of God punished in my place. The preacher announced the resurrection of Christ, proving the Father accepted the Son’s sacrifice. Then the pastor called every sinner to repent and put their trust—not in themselves—but in Jesus Christ alone for righteousness, forgiveness, and eternal life. It was as if he addressed me alone though I sat in a congregation of eight thousand. That morning, under the preaching of the gospel from God’s Word, the Spirit gave me and my wife repentance and faith leading to eternal life. I was a dead man when I walked into that building. But I left a living man, revived by God’s Word and Spirit.