I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently, given the abject cowardice displayed by most politicians, military leaders, and denominational church leaders: where are the heroes? Two generations ago, our forefathers landed on the beaches of Normandy. A generation before that, the Fundamentalist movement was born as pastors led their churches out of compromised denominations. Before that the Puritans in Massachusetts fled to a new world to escape religious persecution, the Baptists went to the wilds of Rhode Island for the same, the Black Robed Regiment of pastors in the War of Independence fired up their congregants to demand their rights as Englishmen, the heroic defense of Fort McHenry, and on and on and on. Where are men of that caliber?
I submit that the American church (and by extension American political life), has succumbed to an epidemic of “niceness”. This epidemic has been sourced largely out of the feminist movement that has infiltrated our church services. We care far more about how we appear to effeminate men, and women, than we do about being right. The idea that we must constantly be “nice” is foreign to any of the early church leaders and to Christ Himself. Calling the Pharisee’s “whitened sepulchers” was not a compliment. Nice men are not heroes.
Nice men are not heroes because they conform to whatever society tells them they must be. Nice men are passive, they never upset anyone, they never challenge anyone, they just go along to get along. They have no spine, no convictions and they take no risks. Compare that description to the Apostles. Do you think Peter, Paul, John, etc never got anyone upset with them? Yeah, they were all thrown in jail repeatedly and eventually executed (save John), because everyone liked them so much. That is totally how the New Testament church worked.
Nice men succeed in life when there are no battles to fight because they do not offend anyone. They win promotions because they never tell the boss “no”. They are popular in social circles because they never offend anyone. But when there is a battle to fight, these nice men sit it out. Why? Because they might have to offend someone by actually standing up for something. And the last thing a nice man wants is to lose his social standing.
Winston Churchill said “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” I submit we have far too many emasculated men who have never stood for anything. Part of that is our effeminate culture that teaches men to hate being males. Part of it is church culture that constantly lectures men and praises women. If you want proof the church favors men, listen to the mothers day and father’s day sermons of most churches back to back. And part of it is the natural result of the fall where men want to shirk responsibility and women take it. But none of this makes for heroes. It makes for cowards.
Why are women leading the fight against abortion? Why are women leading the fight against CRT? Why are so few men speaking out against the heresies in the church? Because men have become convinced they need to be nice and niceness means silence. Yet the capacity for heroism is still there. How do I know? Look at the number of video games that men play and how they are marketed. The main character is usually male and always heroic. There is always some epic achievement to strive for, some death-defying feat to be performed, some awful monster to be destroyed, and some princess to be saved. Men still want to be heroes, they just do it virtually now because they are convinced they must be “nice’ in real life.
It’s time to end the facade. We don’t need nice men. We need men who will charge the beaches of Normandy, knowing they will likely die in the process. We need men who will lead their churches out of the pseudo-Christian institutions and build new ones. We need men who will be heroes. We need men who will stand. “So where are you men of courage?” “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” Ez: 22:30
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In His Image 