The Road Home Meditations on Exile and Return Sat, 29 Sep 2018 23:16:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 Why I Deleted My USA Today App https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/09/why-i-deleted-my-usa-today-app/ Fri, 28 Sep 2018 15:40:03 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5211
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I decided a while ago, with full knowledge of this decision’s consequences, to become a little more ignorant. As part of my ongoing attempt to live a quieter life, I deleted some apps from my phone that served little purpose but to distract me and to add noise to my life.
One was my USA Today app. I used to receive notifications on my phone whenever the social media editors at USA Today decided something was important enough to send out an alert. I rarely read the accompanying stories, but I couldn’t help but notice the headlines in the notifications even if that meant only letting my eyes sweep across the words while dismissing the notification.
Most of these alerts were for things that I found totally uninteresting. Apparently, to USA Today’s social media mavens, sports stories and tales about what celebrities are wearing merited alerting the millions who had downloaded their app. Even more serious things, stories about disasters or another school shooting, were lost amidst the other noise. The little dinging bell on my phone that sounded when an alert came through reduced every development to just another bit of background noise.
I could do nothing about the serious developments I read about in the alerts. Most of what was reported on, no matter how dreadful, lay outside my circle of influence. Sure, once in a while there might have been stories that prompted a call to my congressman’s office, but the vast majority of the news was nothing but abstract stories about human suffering I could do nothing to aleve.
So, I deleted the app. I haven’t missed it. I have also begun avoiding other sources of news and opinion I once frequented. I unfollowed news outlets on Facebook. I silenced friend’s feeds who routinely post opinions on current events. I stopped visiting blogs whose content consists primarily of reactions to the current news cycle.
I haven’t missed any of it. I could have predicted that I wouldn’t have after reading C. John Sommerville’s great little book “How the News Makes Us Dumb” a few years ago. In its few pages, Sommerville dissects the news industry as well as our cultural myth that watching a lot of news is the sign of a mature and “well-informed” person.
Since making this change, life has, predictably, gotten quieter. I no longer get hooked into pointless online debates. My body is more relaxed. When I was caught up paying attention to online news and opinion, I could feel my chest constricting. Participating in online debate culture has an addictive quality. We wait breathlessly for the next hot take to appear. We feel a surge of power in leaving a comment. We relish the snarky take down.
Like all addictions though, this one limits our ability to live fully. Since I have given up following online news, I have discovered that I am interested in a whole slew of topics to which I can now give more attention. I spend more time listening to music, exercising, and attending to my children. Yesterday, I learned a magic trick.
So, perhaps it is not wholly accurate to say I have chosen to become more ignorant because I have learned much about the world outside online debate culture. I was ignorant of those things before, but by being up-to-the-minute on the news allowed me to think I was not. When I was more current with the news, I knew less about the things I am really interested in, about the present moment in which I exist.
No one can be omniscient, but modern internet communications can easily give us the feeling that we are. Choosing to spend less time attending to the news, is just a way of choosing to learn things that are more fulfilling and more valuable. If being more ignorant about the news allows us to pay more attention to things that are ultimately more important, then that is the kind of ignorance I want more of.
]]> A New Direction https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/07/a-new-direction/ Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:38:13 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5188
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Focus is a relief. To me it is, anyway. For a long time, my blogging was too “all over the place”. I was commenting on too many issues and topics without an anchor to tie them together. When I started asking myself what was at the heart of my concerns right now, what topics mattered most to me, and what I took the greatest joy in writing about, two things stood out.
First, I want to write about the meaning of home and about how difficult it is in the modern world to experience the feeling of belonging that word implies. I chose the title of this blog to reflect these concerns. Second, I desire to explore what it means to live in a way that truly makes home possible. I want to discover how we can live calmly and in peace in an increasingly chaotic and dangerous world.
I decided to test the waters on my personal website which has a smaller and more intimate following than what I’ve found here at Patheos. So far, I’ve written two posts. The first goes into some detail about the process of settling on The Quieter Life as a focus for my writing.
There I wrote:
There are a few things that do create that spark in me. Practical wisdom is one. By this, I mean reflections on personal virtue and the dynamics of peaceful relationships. I’ve realized I would prefer to write about forgiveness and leadership, for example, than about the decadence we see everywhere now.
I also like the idea of helping people, even perhaps working one-on-one to aid those who want to straighten out their lives using time-tested principles and approaches that might once have been common sense, but are now largely forgotten. People make such a mess of their lives. I don’t imagine I have an answer for every problem, but I do know a few things and I want to write about those in a way that is accessible and helpful to an audience.
As paradoxical as it sounds, I also get excited about quiet, about designing a life for myself and my family that is more free of the relentless complications and pressures of the modern world. We are a long way from that in our house, but maybe sharing some of our story would be part of what people find helpful.
In a follow up, I reflected a little on why the hunger for The Quieter Life is so pronounced now:
Because desperation is universal in mankind so is the hunger for The Quieter Life. At some point, a few us make the connection between the desperation we feel and the life we have been living. A life whose focus is material gain, social approval, distraction from the difficult realities of the inner world, or even just day-to-day survival is bound to make us desperate.
It’s hard to think about the hunger for The Quieter Life without thinking about another concept almost everyone seems to have forgotten: world-weariness. A certain tiredness settles into the soul. We feel it at night when we wait for sleep. If we are lucky, we feel it when we see something beautiful, a morning sky, a building, a baby. The world loses some of its luster as life goes on. In the best case scenario, that lustre is replaced with a deeper melancholy longing, a vision of what it all might mean, that, although it may inspire us, doesn’t make us any less soul-tired.
You can read the posts in their entirety here.
I plan to continue blogging here at Patheos, but I will be looking for ways to focus my message and create some content that moves us all toward a quieter, more human existence.
]]> Tonight I Was Tempted to Murder https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/07/tonight-i-was-tempted-to-murder/ Tue, 03 Jul 2018 00:58:30 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5155
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My wife, a professional musician, called me from rehearsal. I could instantly tell from the sound of her voice that something was wrong.
“I forgot my score,” she said,”It’s on the piano. I need you to bring it to me. “
I told her I’d be there soon.
I rushed around the house pulling myself together and then out to the car.
In a hurry and a couple of blocks from our house, I began to pull forward from a stop sign when I turned my head and saw a vehicle approaching from the right. The front of my car was nowhere near the center of the street. This truck and I had come nowhere near a collision of any sort. The street was clear with plenty of space for him to proceed without even tapping his brakes.
Instead, of doing this, the driver flipped out. He stomped on his brakes, coming to a complete halt in the middle of a moderately well-trafficked thoroughfare. A skinny arm extended from the window in a gesture that communicated an equal mix of “after you, please” and “screw you, buddy.”
Rather than proceed, I gestured him onward. He did have the right-of-way after all. He rolled past. He was a kid, a teenager or in his early ‘20’s at most. He had an angular face, and glared at me from beneath heavy eyelids. His shoulders slouched forward toward the steering wheel. His ball cap tilted backward toward the window.
In the instant it took him to pass, he looked directly at me and utter a curse that included pretty much the strongest profanity in English. And then, he was off down the road.
Externally, I held it together. I am not a man inclined to angry confrontations with strangers however much they might deserve it. I turned onto the street behind him until he went his own way, unmolested by me, a couple of blocks later.
Inside, it was a different story. I was seething. If it is possible to have murder in your heart, for a couple of minutes there, my heart was home to Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and whatever other notorious killer you can name. I wanted revenge. Badly. I imagined chasing this kid down and giving him more than a good talking to.
All this came on the evening of a day when I had been listening to the audiobook of Chip Gaines’ recent memoir. Chip isn’t the world’s deepest philosopher, but he is a good man with a naturally positive outlook and a head for business.
In one chapter, he talk about how he rarely gets bent out of shape when strangers mistreat him. He just figures they’ve had a bad day. His overly sunny view has cost him a few times, he says, but he’s not going to change.
Clearly, I differ from Chip Gaines in this respect.
Why, unlike Chip, did I become so angry at this young kid who, in all honesty, probably had a life tough life situation?
Because I have a reservoir of anger simmering under the surface. One little puncture, and a portion of it comes rushing out. Most people are more like me, I suspect, than like Chip Gaines.
Anger never stays confined to the little boxes we assign it to. A few months ago, I suffered a devastating professional betrayal that remains unresolved. The feelings are still there. They come out in nightmares while I sleep and in daydreams when I let my mind wander. The anger I feel from this entirely separate and still ongoing situation, bled over tonight into my reaction to some silly punk who, in all likelihood, had no father and mother to teach him not to behave that way.
My anger at the kid lasted about two minutes. The anger at the other situation has persisted most of a year. I am not ready to forgive. Yet, I know that if I don’t want to spend my life getting furious every time some teenager throws a swear my way, I will have to.
The Bible tells us to put away anger for this very reason. As difficult as it is to do, anger allowed to run riot has a way of taking root and growing until its dark leaves shade our entire personality, our worldview, our relationships with others.
As has been said many times, forgiveness is not for the benefit of the one who did wrong, but for the benefit of the one wronged. When we hold onto resentment we cease to be able to achieve the good we were made to do. We cease to be able to offer mercy to those who need it and to those who don’t deserve it, like, for example, people at work who lie and surly young men who fly off the handle.
Clearly, I have not put away anger to the degree I should, but the future is still before me and who knows what can happen in this big mysterious life.
]]> Episode Ten Of The Dean Abbott Podcast Is Now Available. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/06/episode-ten-of-the-dean-abbott-podcast-is-now-available/ Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:45:02 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5129
In this episode, I chat with former New York Post Columnist Naomi Schaefer Riley about her book “Be the Parent, Please! : Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat.” You can find the new episode here. The show is also available in iTunes.
If you’d like to support the show via Patreon, click here.
Listen to “Ep. 10 The Dean Abbott Podcast- Naomi Schaefer Riley 6/25/18” on Spreaker.
]]> To Uphold The Law Is Mercy https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/06/to-uphold-the-law-is-mercy/ Mon, 18 Jun 2018 20:28:43 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5105
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My wife and I sometimes settle in to watch a little television. This often involves some British series, usually a period piece, typically set in the countryside. Our watching of Blue Bloods was more the exception than the rule.
Twice recently, I have been struck by the portrayal of clergy in these programs. In Grantchester, a pretty good show overall, Anglican clergyman Sidney Chambers is so confused about moral realities he can barely preach or offer counsel to his flock.
Even worse was a moment in Ballykissangel, an Irish program from the 1990’s. Having just arrived in Ballykissangel, the new priest is engaged in a conversation with a young parishioner in which she says she wants to sleep with her boyfriend before getting married to try him out, to see if they are “sexually compatible.”
Father Clifford winces and says, “I’m a Catholic priest, what do you expect me to say?” Could there be a more ringing endorsement of the church’s moral teaching? Later, he says apologetically, “I can’t tell you to sleep with your boyfriend, but I won’t condemn you if you do.”
All this waffling is meant to show the human side of the characters. As characters in programs designed to appeal to modern, secular audiences equivocating on issues of right and wrong is supposed to make clerical characters palatable, as if the audience is supposed to say, “Well, yea, he’s a priest, but he’s the cool kind!”
The problem would be less serious if it were only on television. But, the attitudes displayed on the tube are widespread. Confusion on moral matters is now not only expected, but considered admirable. Tacit consent to the general cultural conviction that no one really knows what’s right or wrong is de rigueur.
It’s no wonder people, even clergy, eager to be liked and to fit in try to avoid speaking clearly on such issues. Speaking as if there really is a moral law which people can know and by which they ought to seek to order their actions is now regarded as a grave trespass against social mores.
But, people need such speech desperately. Human beings, by nature, require moral guidance. While we all have inchoate intuitions of the moral law, we need others, in the form of parents, clergy, teachers and social institutions to reinforce those intuitions. Our community is supposed to offer us guidance when our own sense of the moral law is undeveloped or becomes obscured by our innate selfishness and tendency toward self-justification.
People, especially modern people, hunger for moral clarity. They want to know the right thing to do. Even when they resist, argue, and choose wrongly, people draw a deep comfort from knowing that people around them are committed to unchanging moral truths. Those who do not waver on matters of the moral law are a rock in the tumultuous sea of human life. Even people who subject themselves to being tossed needlessly upon the waves are comforted by knowing the rocks are there.
Those who, like the clergy in these programs, equivocate about moral matters often claim to do so from compassion. Giving a clear answer where the moral law is clear, they believe, makes people feel bad. Such answers cause people to feel embarrassed or condemned. Giving a clear answer where the moral law is clear often involves telling people they are wrong, and that, in this view, is mean.
Such thinking is short-sighted. Even if people feel embarrassed when told unambiguously what the moral law demands, we should tell them. Feelings pass. It’s better that people be momentarily offended than that they be bereft of guidance. It is better to give momentary offense than to stand by while people flounder through their moral decisions sometimes wrecking their lives and causing great damage to others.
Rather than fearing a passing unpleasantness, we should speak plainly to one another where the law is plain. Of course, in speaking this way, we should be subject to the moral law ourselves. We have no excuse for speaking in ways that belittle or berate.
The moral law, far from being an oppressive force or a source of pain, is good. Obedience to it leads to integrity. Those who submit to the moral law need no longer be in submission to the world and its fickle forces, and this is freedom. Because the law is good, obscuring it in any way is neither kind nor gracious. Rather, to declare openly what is good is a tonic and to uphold the law is mercy.
]]> Everything You Know About Legalism Is Wrong https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/06/everything-you-know-about-legalism-is-wrong/ Mon, 11 Jun 2018 15:49:32 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5066
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If there is one thing people in most evangelical settings fear it’s being a “legalist.” You hear it all the time: “You don’t want to be too legalistic” or “She came from a very legalistic background.” Whatever “being legalistic” is in these circles, it’s clearly the opposite of what the serious Christian life should be. In fact, many evangelical institutions would prefer to welcome someone who calls the basic tenets of their faith into question than someone who is “too legalistic.”
This situation is rife with problems. Not the least of these is that most people who are concerned about the negative influence of “legalism” seem to have no idea what “legalism” is. In the vernacular, “legalism” means something like “being very strict about morality”, or “insisting that absolute moral laws are, after all, absolute.”
The adverb gives it away. When people talk about someone being “too legalistic”, the implication is that the right amount of “legalism” is good. As if some “legalism” is a mark of Christian maturity while too much indicates a lack of faith, a controlling nature, an underlying fear or anger from which the legalist should repent. None of this is correct. Legalism is neither moral strictness nor a belief that absolute moral injunctions apply absolutely.
What Legalism Is And Is Not
Rather than referring to either of these, legalism has a specific definition that most overlook.
Legalism is an inner attitude of the heart that seeks to compel God’s favor on the basis of one’s ability to keep the moral law.
That’s it. Any behavior or attitude that doesn’t seek to compel God’s favor through lawkeeping isn’t legalism. Establishing and strictly enforcing a dress code at your Christian school? Not legalism. Insisting that abortion is wrong or that people shouldn’t have sex outside of marriage even if they really love each other? Not legalism.
Given the correct definition of legalism, we can see that not only conservatives are apt to fall prey to it. Many times I have heard “liberal Christians” openly declare that God is pleased with those who fight for “social justice” because of their efforts. This is “progressive” legalism: the claim that God’s favor can be earned by being an advocate for the oppressed and tweeting snarky insults at conservatives.
Why This Matters
This matters because legalism, wherever it surfaces, is a spiritual snare. However, in contemporary American evangelicalism, very little true legalism exists. When evangelicals evince extreme concern over some small moral matter, the height of a girl’s skirt for example, they are displaying scrupulosity, not legalism. Scrupulosity is often a destructive force, but because it is not anchored in the desire to compel God’s favor, it’s not legalism.
Many people react to the scrupulosity of others, which they mistake for legalism, by careening into permissiveness. When people in evangelical settings argue against being “too legalistic”, they typically aren’t advocating for developing a right understanding of law and gospel or a deeper grasp of the real basis of God’s grace. Rather, they are arguing that evangelical churches and other organizations should simply be more permissive.
The subtext of their argument is that unwavering insistence on upholding the moral law is somehow “legalistic” and at odds with being “loving”. One can easily insist on the absolute nature of the moral law without believing that doing so compels God’s favor, so doing so is not necessarily being legalistic.
Yet, the forces opposing “legalism” almost always prevail in evangelical institutions. They win, but not for theological reasons. It turns out that not being “too legalistic” reduces the number of times conflict comes up. When an evangelical institutions decides not to be “too legalistic”, they decide to be more permissive. Permissive environments don’t require as many tough conversations and, not coincidentally, keep people flowing in.
The misunderstanding of “legalism” and the attempt to counter it by being more permissive is a large part of how evangelical institutions move left. Other dynamics also contribute to leftward drift, but seeking to resist “legalism” is a major one.
For this reason, evangelicals should always question whether accusations of “legalism” are accurate. They should ask if the one accused of legalism truly believes he can earn God’s favor through lawkeeping. If not, then perhaps there is a case of unnecessary scrupulosity at play. When neither of these conditions are met, those accused should resist being shamed as “too legalistic” and insist instead that when put to its proper use the law is, overwhelmingly, beautifully, good.
]]> The Modern Mind Is Not a Mind At All https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/06/the-modern-mind-is-not-a-mind-at-all/ Tue, 05 Jun 2018 18:25:32 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=5033
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The modern mind, strictly speaking, is not a mind at all. If the mind is, among other things, that part of the human person that seeks truth, weighs claims and seeks, as far as possible, to come to an objective understanding of reality, then the average modern person has been rendered mindless.
This is not to say that the average modern person is stupid. Rather, the modern man’s approach to life does not value detailed examination of ideas. The modern man does not seek to create a life characterized by a logically consistent belief system and ordered, purposeful behavior. Above all, the modern man does not think in terms of truth and falsity.
The seeds of this condition have always lain within us. Most people are not naturally inclined to seek truth or to do the hard work of developing a coherent worldview. Most people are more inclined simply to seek sensation, amusement and novelty, never clarity, insight or depth.
The ancients knew this. From the beginning, Western literature contains instructions telling audiences to allow their reason to rule their passions. They knew that, left to our own devices, we would live, not as fully developed human beings, but as machines programmed simply to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
Since men have always been the sort of creature to abandon themselves to their feelings and passions when left to their own devices, what makes the modern man so different from those who struggled with the same problem long ago? Simple: modern man is left to his own devices in a way people in previous times were not.
Liberalism has burned away from the individual every unchosen obligation. Obligations to family? Gone. Obligations to religion? Gone. Obligations to local or national governments? Gone. Unlike any other era in history, the modern man stands alone, disconnected from all that once called people out of themselves and directed them to behave on the basis of moral law, custom, good manners and reason. This set of interconnecting institutions is what allowed the individual mind to develop and function.
Moreover, liberalism has substituted its own set of demanding beliefs for the religious framework that once shaped men’s thinking. Even the least intellectually inclined once received instruction in right and wrong from some authoritative source. Now, it’s each man for himself. The modern person is tasked with constantly reinventing the moral wheel. Every man must be his own God, charged with deciding for himself what is right and wrong, and creating his own experience of meaning.
People can’t do this. It is too much pressure. The emptiness of the modern world is unavoidable. Modern people sense that emptiness when they attempt to engage the world in all its complexity without the resources the old institutions provided. For the average modern, the world feels barely supported over an endless abyss.
So, people shrink back. Their goal ceases to be understanding the world, but to avoid as much of it as possible. People don’t ask too many questions. Questions they cannot avoid, they answer with meaningless cliches everyone pretends to understand. Having been taught that truth claims are mostly a cover for power-grabs, and that no one can really know the answers to the questions that plague them, modern people fail to see the purpose of their rational faculties.
The result is a withdrawal into the world of emotion. Rather than finding truth through a process of study and reflection, truth merely becomes whatever feels right at the moment. If an idea feels right, there is no need to examine it further. If an idea initially feels bad, the only right responses are to escape it or to punish the person who brought it up.
This attitude is part of what causes the tremendous anxiety of our age. In a world where we hang precariously over an abyss of meaninglessness and where disturbing ideas that challenge us to face it might come at us from anywhere, it’s hard to relax.
Liberalism, which ostensibly sought to free the individual, has ultimately enslaved him. The modern man while free at a shallow level, has surrendered his deepest, most important freedoms, including the freedom to exercise and develop his mind, and the freedom to live his life ensconced in a web of meaning.
The institutions that once bound an individual’s choices, did not restrict him only. They also provided him an identity and the encouragement to develop and obey the dictates of his reason rather than his passions. Without the force of those institutions, modern man has ceased to be at home and instead become a wanderer who has lost his way, his hope, and even his very mind.
]]> Episode Eight of The Dean Abbott Podcast is Now Available https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/05/episode-eight-of-the-dean-abbott-podcast-is-now-available/ Mon, 07 May 2018 17:08:13 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=4979
A new episode of The Dean Abbott Podcast has been published today. You can find it here.
In this episode, I talk about the state of modern men with Aaron Renn, author and publisher of The Masculinist, an email newsletter devoted to helping men better themselves and their situations.
You can listen via the player below.
Listen to “Ep. 08 The Dean Abbott Podcast- Aaron Renn 5/7/2018” on Spreaker.
Here’s the YouTube version , if you prefer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0vFIAbuheY
]]> Episode Seven of The Dean Abbott Podcast Is Now Available https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/04/episode-seven-of-the-dean-abbott-podcast-is-now-available/ Mon, 30 Apr 2018 13:15:05 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=4961
A new episode of The Dean Abbott Podcast has just been published. In this episode, I am joined by economist Bryan Caplan to discuss his book The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
You can find it here or listen through the player below.
Listen to “Ep. 07-The Dean Abbott Podcast- Bryan Caplan 4/30/18” on Spreaker.
Here is the YouTube version if you prefer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOnAy5X9AdM
]]> The Quandary of the Evangelical Man https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/2018/04/the-quandary-of-the-evangelical-man/ Tue, 17 Apr 2018 16:29:52 +0000 http://admin.patheos.com/blogs/theroadhome/?p=4943
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For a long time, the most desired quality in an Evangelical youth pastor was that he be crazy. Not the “he-thinks-he’s-Napoleon” kind of crazy, but the “you-never-know-what-he’ll-get-up-to” kind of crazy. He had to be the kind of guy whose behavior could aptly be described with the words “antics” and “shenanigans.” His role in the church was “to show the kids that Christians can have fun too.”
Above all, he had to be the master of silly games and icebreakers. He had to be willing to sit in a dunk tank, get pies smeared in his face, abase himself endlessly in a stream of idiotic stunts. My wife knew a youth pastor who agreed to swallow a live goldfish if everyone in youth group brought a guest. A good youth pastor had to be the kind of guy that late-middle-aged women, largely disappointed with life and grieving their own vanished youths, would look at and say with amused delight “That Boy is CRAZY!”
More sober members of the church would chalk these behaviors up, not to craziness, as to a “servant’s heart” willing to do anything to connect with the kids. In this view, a youth pastor’s juvenile behavior was, in fact, incontrovertible evidence of the maturity of his commitment.
As Thomas Bergler
To see what I mean, take a look at the video below. The dance move at 1:09 captures the quintessence of crazy evangelical guy. Look in the background at the same time to see a group of people shielding their eyes from what can only be this man’s unacknowledged shame.
Without understanding the dynamics behind this phenomenon, we cannot understand why most men have no interest in the evangelical movement. Without understanding men’s lack of interest, we can’t understand why the movement has so little influence on the surrounding culture.
Men like hierarchy. We like a clearly defined structures of status with a clear path to the top. The structure of the military, for example,reflects these innate traits of the masculine psyche. The very traits that make the military understandable to men make the evangelical movement inscrutable to them at best and, at worst, repulsive.
Furthermore, hierarchy is a natural and universal part of human relations. Evangelicals like to pretend their churches are free from social hierarchy, but they aren’t. When visiting a typical evangelical church, men naturally assess what is required to ascend the hierarchy in that setting. This process is so ingrained in the masculine psyche that it often happens unconsciously. Nevertheless, most men sense quickly that in order to ascend the hierarchies in evangelical contexts, they would have to sacrifice their dignity.
Evangelical churches typically provide two paths up the hierarchy. Both require men to surrender their self-respect, dignity and gravitas. The first path is to be crazy, to be the funny guy who’s not so hung up on his masculine seriousness that he won’t cavort like a little girl in the worship service’s opening number. The second path is to cultivate “niceness” which means renouncing every vestige of assertive masculine energy.
Only these paths are available in the evangelical movement because the movement has subtly conformed itself to the secular world. Elite opinion in recent decades has held that men are, by nature, dangerous, abusive and, quite probably, criminal. Our redemption is only possible to the degree that we eschew those traits that characterized men of ages past and adopt new personas that are both more feminized and more boyish.
The evangelical movement largely accepts this view. The result is a movement with no room for manly gravity, dignity, and authority. Those qualities have been replaced by nice guys and buffoons trained to take no stands, and offer no offense unless, of course, the offense given is directed toward unredeemed traditional men. Offending them is always fair play.
And so, men just stay away. Create a social situation where men cannot express their nature, cannot realize the best versions of themselves and they will protest via their absence.
See, each man carries in his heart a heroic vision of himself. The price of being part of the evangelical movement is too often surrendering that vision. In its place, the evangelical movement offers a vision of manhood comprised of an attitude of endless apology and shenanigans to make teenagers and middle-aged women laugh.
Men desire a band of brothers, a cohort of like-minded men committed to soldiering on in pursuit of personal and public virtue. Men desire to be part of something like The Fraternity of Excellence that Hunter Drew and Craig James have put together. Such a group can hardly be found in the modern world, certainly not in the modern evangelical church. Reverse this trend, and men, with all the dedication and power of which we are capable, will be more drawn to the evangelical movement. Don’t reverse it, and the movement can expect to proceed toward extinction, sashaying all the way.
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