Prince Harry’s Escapade: Why Men Must Do Their Duty
Prince Harry of Wales has become the international poster-child for today’s playboy Peter Pans.
Though the Prince’s recent escapade in a Las Vegas hotel has been soft-pedaled by some commentators as “harmless,” his conduct was atrocious and unbefitting his age and station. As a 27-year-old man of royal lineage, Prince Harry should be acting with a high sense of noblesse oblige and recognize that his every step disciples other men concerning their behavior.
His recent actions convey this pathetic message: that it’s acceptable for men of responsibility to cavort in the nude with women they have barely met to entertain a little fleshly pleasure. The UK Telegraph’s Peter Oborne rightly decried this accommodating view:
Some people will argue that this latest episode is nothing to worry about. . . . They will say that it’s his own business what he gets up to in the privacy of a hotel room. . . . And it is certainly true that this incident will not spark off a crisis. The Royal family will survive. The reputation of the Queen remains as high as ever. But Prince Harry’s conduct should still cause concern—and here’s why. Ultimately, the Royal family is about one word: duty.1
Oborne’s call for Prince Harry to act with “duty” is one not limited to British royalty, however, but is a call that all Christian men should heed with resolve. Why? Because we are a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9) who have been “bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20a), and we must therefore “glorify God in [our] body” (1 Corinthians 6:20b). This is our duty as Christian men.
Regrettably, Prince Harry’s outrageous escapade is indicative of an epidemic of male immaturity on both sides of the Atlantic. The state of manhood in the West is at a low-point. A recent study revealed this shameful statistic: that 18 to 34-year-old men spend more time playing video games a day than 12 to 17-year-old boys do.2
Newsweek columnist Tony Dokoupil has noted five key milestones where today’s men are failing:
[T]he traditional markers of manhood—leaving home, getting an education, finding a partner, starting work and becoming a father—have moved downfield as the passage from adolescence to adulthood has evolved from “a transitional moment to a whole new stage of life.” In 1960, almost 70 percent of men had reached these milestones by the age of 30. Today, less than a third of males that age can say the same.3
Dokoupil states further: “Today’s guys are perhaps the first downwardly mobile—and endlessly adolescent—generation of men in U.S. history.”4
This tidal wave of immaturity among today’s 20 and 30-something Peter Pans threatens to destroy the beachhead of our civilization. If the West is to be saved, we must forsake the lures of Neverland.
Men must stand athwart the current of irresponsibility and dutifully lead.
