Weak men chase away hard men

And nowhere is that more true than in Christianity.

At a recent pastor’s conference hosted by Clearnote Fellowship, I sat down with Tim Bayly, who made an interesting observation about rural life, animal husbandry, hunting and pastoral work.  

“Give me a man that knows how to take a life, who understands the seriousness of it, and can pull the trigger without sentimentality,” Tim said. “We need more of that from our pastors and in our churches.”  

A shepherd’s work, he pointed out, requires both the gentle arms of a man and fierceness toward the wolves in our midst. It’s bloody, messy, manly work. Completely unsentimental or pretty. Something many in our skinny jeans culture can’t stomach.

When I was stationed in Mississippi, we went over the river into Louisiana to go to church.  Not the greatest area, and it had a few folks who didn't have any compunction about just taking what they wanted, or hurting folks who got in their way.  My priest, who was Southern born and raised, carried a 9mm under his cassock, and he knew how to use it.

He didn't have soft hands.  He was educated, well traveled, well spoken, and fearless.  He's also wildly popular with his congregation.

What the church needs is hard men, men of principle who pursue their own godliness with a holy violence. Men who run into burning buildings when everyone else, like a Broward County sheriff’s deputy, is running out. What we especially need in the pastorate are men who act like it, who actively repent of their softness and embrace the kind of biblical hardness God has called us to. 

I've said it before, that men do not take teaching from lisping, effeminate queens in the pulpit.  The Methodist Church is finding this out right now, as congregations rebel against the ordination of open homosexuals in direct violation of the bible the church claims to read and follow.

Hey, somebody ask the Episcopals how that's working out for them.  If you can find a healthy church that is, what with all the Episcopal churches shutting down.  Just do an internet search for "Episcopal Church closure" and take a gander at the results.

Lest some think I'm only poking at rivals with a sharp stick, you can also take a gander at the Catholic numbers after Vatican II, when the seminaries were taken over by soft gay men, who produced soft gay priests, who were sent out into the flock like wolves to prey on the unwary, with predictable results.  Donald Wuerl, McCarrick, Cupich, all of them have driven legions of souls away from the pews.  And those three are just the most recent.  Reading about what Cardinal Bernadin did to Chicago will make any real man's stomach churn.

Christianity is not the soft, "Jesus is LOVE, man!" kind of bullshit that people preach when they want to avoid the hard truth like you see too often today.  Christianity is hard.  As in "Take up your cross and follow me" hard.  As in "I died for you, and I might request you do the same for me so get ready for some hard times" kind of hard.  As in "Yes this sucks for you in this world, no I'm not going to fix it for you because MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT, so suck it up buttercup" kind of hard.

Christianity needs hard men.  If you're a Christian, think about that the next time you sit in the pews.