We had won our first two football games in blowouts. We beat North Reading and Lawrence, and were preparing to face Billerica when the crap hit the fan. Allegations of HAZING came out. The news crews showed up, we were totally distracted and our season began to fall apart. Some of the allegations were untrue, some rumors of events were simply not true, but some were. As 17 year olds we had no idea why people were so interested in this, it was just what teams did. This was our culture. No one was injured, but people were humiliated. I had been through it when I was a freshman and sophomore.
Just this past year, the football team that Linnea and I were involved with (she is the Athletic Trainer, I helped with their conditioning) had a SCANDAL. One player received a wedgie from a couple of the other players and somehow this was blown out of proportion and made the news. A few players and a coach were suspended. This, in my mind, is just boys being boys, not hazing or initiation, but our politically correct and feminist culture does not understand this. (in my overly valued opinion) There is a big difference between boys being mean to each other and hazing or initiation.
I cannot now defend hazing, because a person’s self esteem is very important. (I am somewhat facetious in saying that). A ritual humiliation seems to be hardwired in men. (I have read a couple of books which address this issue, if I remember correctly, “Raising a Modern Day Knight”, I can’t remember the author, is one of them) I am saying this as I read Richard Rohr’s “Adam’s Return, The Five Promises of Male Initiation”. An initiation seems to be needed by men into a culture that they value. I would say this is much different than the hazing done on a team by kids to kids. I do believe this hazing happens because there are not adult men in kids lives who initiate the kids, so the kids do a type of ‘peer initiation’.
As I read Rohr’s book, I am living in Swaziland. The Swazis have an initiation culture. They value this initiation. It is called the ‘Incwala’, or kingship ceremony. The most important part of the ceremony takes place over 6 days in mid summer. Thousands of young men join the king in a march to the place where the sacred ‘lusekwane’ shrub grows. This is a 50 kilometer round trip and young and old walk together through the sun and rain, singing together. The boys cut the shrubs and carry them through the night, over 20 kilometers, and one’s strength and dedication is apparent in the size of the branch one returns with. These shrubs are then used to make an enclosure called the ‘inhlambelo’, and top secret rituals are then performed in the enclosure.
During this time, a boy chooses a group or regiment that he wants to join. Before being accepted into this group, the newcomer must perform some humiliating tasks, some of which include women’s work like fetching water, jumping on one foot, and using his bare hands to resurface the floor with fresh cow dung. After going through these initiations, the recruit is then given a new name.
Finally, the young men must catch a bull with their bare hands and bring him into this enclosure, where one account I read (because of the secretiveness, details are different) has the young men beating the bull to death, again with their bare hands.
To me, as much as the Swazi culture is different than mine, their initiation seems different than hazing. The adult men set a standard that the young desire to achieve. A little different than getting a wedgie or doing calisthenics in your jock strap (though the Swazi loin cloths don’t cover much more than a jock strap). The boys are required to prove their devotion.
I don’t know if I would say that men are necessarily simply looking for an initiation, it is that an initiation is the first step that is required for what men are hardwired to. This is belonging in a group that they value. Young men are hardwired to be devoted to something. Devotion to a group (and that group’s cause), where it costs something to be a member, and loyalty to each other, commitment to a cause, and sacrifice are required. This group must be valued in itself.
I believe this is something that christian men are missing. The local church simply does not offer this. Rohr states that “male love needs to be earned”. I wonder if, in our journey to understand unconditional love and grace we have missed this in the church. As we try to understand God’s love, His unconditional love, we have become totally feminized, even SISSIFIED (I thank Tony Evans for that term, from his book “No More Excuses”), and we don’t even see it. In fact we are angered by thoughts like this, we have trouble understanding how an all loving God would allow us to suffer. We lose sight of God’s masculine, fatherly love, as we focus on the soft warm fuzzy unconditional side. This fatherly love is something that I believe all humans struggle with, due to our ‘father wounds’. (I don’t think it is simply psychobabble that we relate to ‘Father God’ the same way we relate to our human fathers.) This fatherly love is the type that disciplines us, teaches us, and motivates us.
I think we have trouble differentiating that our God, giver of unconditional love, has conditions for us to show our love to him. It seems that showing our desire to be a part of God’s will might COST us something.
Could it be that our God is the original and master initiator? That membership in His kingdom might actually cost us something, might actually require an initiation? Maybe our self-esteem and egos are not very important to God? Maybe leaving my self-concept intact is not God’s purpose for my life? Maybe christianity is taken too lightly because we preach the free gift (which we still esteem too lightly) of salvation, but forget Paul’s statement to work that salvation out with fear and trembling? That we hope to build a mega-church, or at least fill the pews, so we give too light a message, at least to the men?
When the sons of Zebedee and their mother (how about that one- these two men had their mother ask for them!) were concerned with their standing in this ‘club’, they had no idea what they asked for (Mark 10:35-45). Jesus asked them, “can you drink the cup I drink?” They in their ignorance answered “we can”. Jesus basically responded with “you will”. This cup and baptism that Jesus spoke of, I believe, is his life and death. This initiation. Jesus was initiated (check out Paul’s life for another example of God’s initiation), the gospel hangs on Jesus going through these trials which caused him such anguish he sweat blood. He was then hung on the cross.
Jesus also taught of the great cost of loving him and following him, of loving others. The standard Jesus gave for this was to lay our lives down for others.
Maybe this initiation requires us to act willingly. Where hazing is being acted upon, against our will. (which many of us wait for and hope for, we sit in the boat hoping Jesus will pick us up and have us walk on water, where Peter had to risk humiliation by stepping out of the boat, in his free will)
I wonder if receiving a wedgie from Jesus might simply be easier than being initiated by him.
