Consumed by culture
Nathaniel Binversie • September 23, 2025
Walking down the hallway of your office building, how many men do you suspect would have an active prayer life? Lest this column be trite, I will promptly bypass any comparison to the amount of time men in the office spend watching sports, working on cars, or more contemporarily, and dare I say egregiously, playing video games.
Instead, I’ll ask you to consider the same task, but this time do so of the men occupying the pews of your parish.
Certainly, it would be right to demand a definition of terms here. What is an active prayer life? Is praying before meals on special occasions an active prayer life? What about praying before every meal, and at bedtime with your children? Is attending Mass on Sundays and days of obligation an active prayer life?
Men can assent to a point swiftly to get at the meat of the matter, and so I go there now. An active prayer life can be described as one that goes beyond the bare minimum. One that is daily in nature and consists of more than rote prayers. Most specifically, one that includes a daily time of intentional and uninterrupted dialogue with our Lord.
With so much e-ink spent, evaluate anew: how many men do you suspect you could count that would say they have an active prayer life in your parish?
Why so few? Do men not have enough time? They have just as much as women do. Do men not know how to pray? Google has plenty of stats that show men in particular know very well how to search for “How to” videos on YouTube. Do they not want to be happy? Ok, now that’s begging the question. I retract.
As we back ourselves away from the massive pit of judgmentalness before us, we must not allow ourselves to leave the question altogether. Instead, I urge you to either self-evaluate, or if you feel like you are an exemplar of the devout life, to assess the lives of the men you know and love best in your parish constructively. Why do these men, who would proclaim that they are Christian men without hesitation, not have an active spiritual life?
The possible answers here are manifold. However, let us look at but one reason men do not engage with the spiritual life.
Consumerism.
How many shirts do you need? One more. The vacuum stopped working. Throw it away. Did you hear about that new insulated water bottle that’s great for hiking? I ordered one yesterday. Knock, knock, knock. And there it is now.
In resonating agreement, we all see how consumerism has made the worship of material goods easier than ever for the general populace. But keeping our scope narrow, let’s look at engaged Christian men.
As I’ve travelled around the country and around the world, dialoguing with men of all kinds, I’ve ceased being astounded by the types of responses I get when I ask men about their spiritual lives. The young adults and young dads will tell me about the podcasts they’ve been diving into and what personalities they’ve been following on social media. Slightly older men and above will recite an impressive bibliography of books they’ve acquired over the last 12 months, and the youth will tell me how they got to go to this year's awesome conference — in case their T-shirt choice that day wasn’t telling enough.
The sad part of these responses is not that my question is too vulnerable to incite a deep response, but that the responses I receive are consistently as deep as most of today’s engaged Christian men’s spiritual lives.
Why does it seem the case that men are willing to proudly say they are Christian, as if they have already earned the medal of martyrdom, and yet are afraid to face the unglamorous challenges of advancing in holiness? Are they only willing to embrace Christianity as far as it mirrors modern culture?
Mull this parallel example around in your mind for a moment.
What is the point of hiking for miles, sleeping in a tent on the cold hard ground, and eating dehydrated food from your backpack for three straight days in an attempt to summit some remote 14er in the San Juans when you could just drive to the top of Pikes Peak on a paved road, achieve an even higher elevation, take your selfie, and let everyone on your socials know how wild you are?
What is the reason men venture out into the wilderness? To summit a mountain? To challenge oneself? To escape the noise of the world? To replace the virtual with the realities of raw beauty? Whatever our reason, we can be sure that those we know to be true experts in the world of outdoor pursuits and exploration aren’t doing it for the ’gram. If they were, we would have a photo of Sir Edmund Hillary on the summit of Everest — but we don’t.
A mountaintop experience is not a commodity to be consumed. Though, we’ve darn well tried to make it one with roads, rails, and aerial trams to the tops of countless mountains around the world. One can arrive at the summit of a mountain with little to no work. One can even pay for a guided day hike to the top of a windswept peak. But one cannot buy the deeply rewarding impact offered exclusively to those who submit themselves to the pain, endurance, adversity, and perseverance that come from human-powered pursuits in the alpine.
An experienced mountaineer is radically counter-cultural. He is filled with joy at the thought of his next expedition, even though he knows how much work, self-denial, and suffering come along with it. No photo, no T-shirt, no easy road to the top offers even the slightest temptation to him. He has tasted the fruits of authentic labours, and he longs to taste of them anew.
Today, engaged Christian men all over the world are proving to be easily appeased by cheap replacements for an authentic active prayer life. Why would I get my dress trousers dirty kneeling in the chapel before work when I could listen to a Christian podcast on my commute? Why put time into meditating on a small portion of the living Word of God when I could more successfully devour a hundred pages of delicious commentary? Why would I ever embrace the discomforts of a daily ascetic life when I have already booked my room at next year’s conference?
Consume, consume, consume. Has the contemporary consumeristic mindset really blinded an entire populace of engaged Christian men? Have we been so easily deceived on what the authentic path to holiness looks like?
Whatever the answer for the men, the family will follow.