Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

More Reinforcement On The Current NAPARC Scene

Last night I heard from an old friend I had not spoken with in quite some time. He was on speaking terms with a Pastor in a NAPARC church in a region of the country far away from where I live. He knows of how I have mocked the NAPARC denominations citing their abandonment of the historic Reformed faith as seen in the persecutions of Rev. Michael Spangler, Rev. Michael Hunter, and Rev. Zach Garris.

He contacted me to blow off some steam. He himself does not attend a NAPARC Church but in the past has met a Pastor of a local NAPARC church through mutual friends. This NAPARC Pastor learned of my friends Kinist like beliefs and found himself compelled to grill my friend about his Kinist like beliefs in order to “set him straight.” It seems that this same Pastor, who thought that my friend (let’s call him “Derek”) was so potentially dangerous to the Christian faith because of his views on Kinism, was himself spending a good deal of time staring at the interesting things on the internet that one can stare at while on the internet. It seems this staring has gone on for a good amount of time and yet nothing of any consequence was done to this Pastor by NAPARC church leadership in light of this pastoral staring until only recently when a very slight slap on the hand was given for this improper pastoral ogling, gawking, and leering at internet images.

So, here we are in 2025 and owning views on race that have been owned by centuries in the Reformed Church and by the Fathers of the Reformed faith can get one tossed by clerical cultural Marxists in NAPARC churches but a preoccupation with improper internet staring is treated as if someone improperly belched while giving a sermon.

This reminds of another case I was aware of and involved with a few years ago. I knew a chap from Michigan who was Pastoring a flagship NAPARC church in a region of the country far away from where I live and this Pastor chap had the chops to criticize me online for my very traditionalist revisionist views on the War of Northern Aggression. It seems he thought that because we were both from Michigan and both Pastors that gave him some duty to lecture me. His views were politically correct and along the way I was privy to his incessant online charges of “racism.” His time in the ministry ended so badly that out of respect for what remains of his non-Pastoral life and out of respect for his family I will not go into any detail of how all this ended except to say it was the height of hypocrisy for him to be going all spastic against my pro-Southern views on the war of Northern Aggression while he was involved in the unseemly matters he was involved with and which eventually (sadly enough for he and his family) caught up with him.

All this to say that modern Reformed clergy, no doubt with notable exceptions, are a joke. Likewise modern Reformed NAPARC churches, exceptions notwithstanding, are merely pale (and sometimes not so pale) reflections of the broader WOKE culture. I would rather take Christian counsel and spiritual advice from my auto mechanic then listen to modern conservative Reformed NAPARC clergy. When the NAPARC clergy move their lips I hear the voices of Antonio Gramsci, Al Sharpton, and Ron Burns (aka –Thabiti Anybwile).  These are men who are condemning the theology of Calvin, Rutherford, Althusius, Augustine, Dabney, Thornwell, Palmer, and Girardeau all the while involved themselves in the grossest of inconsistencies. When I’m around these people (as long as my stomach can hold out) it is as if I am surrounded by grifters, snake oil salesmen, and intellectual dullards. I am thankful that there are exceptions but those exceptions are just that — exceptions.

Clearly, the Seminary system has failed and this is likely due to the fact that the Seminary Professors are cut from the same cloth as those who are graduating from these “conservative” cemeteries.

Yes, I realize this is a screed … a rant if you please. However, we are talking about the Church of Jesus Christ here and it strikes me that an occasional rant / screed is appropriate when living under our current Reformed Babylonian captivity.

Free Spangler, Hunter, and Garris.

Vice President J. D. Vance Sanctions Kinism … And The Fur Flies

“There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

“A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.  And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept of America First. It doesn’t mean you hate anybody else, it means that you have leadership. And President Trump has been very clear about this — that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British prime minister should care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that’s a very welcome change.”

The idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does Anyone?

J. D. Vance 
Vice President of these united States 

“First, the kindred in blood, caeteris paribus, (all other things being equal), are more to be beloved than strangers, in those things which pertain to the good things of this life; and among those who are near in blood those who are nearest are most to be loved.”

William Ames — 1576-1633
Puritan Theologian
More Widely Read in Colonial America than Calvin and Luther combined

The Christians is supposed to love his neighbor, and since his wife is his nearest neighbor, she should be his deepest love.”

Martin Luther

I notice over on X Doug Wilson, Rich Lusk and these CREC types who have forever bashed Kinism — which was the very embodiment of the Ordo Amoris — are now chirping in praise over J. D. Vance’s statements on the Ordo Amoris.

The problem w/ these CREC types is that they want to hold and embrace the Ordo Amoris in the abstract but the minute someone starts to apply it concretely by, for example, explaining that generally speaking (which is different than universally speaking) marrying outside one’s race is not a good idea precisely because of the teaching of the Ordo Amoris suddenly they get all outraged and are adamantly opposed to a basic derivative principle of the Ordo Amoris.

That marrying within your race is a basic principle of the Ordo Amoris was articulated in Church history repeatedly;

“The ancient fathers… were concerned that the ties of kinship itself should not be loosened as generation succeeded generation, should not diverge too far, so that they finally ceased to be ties at all. And so for them it was a matter of religion to restore the bond of kinship by means of the marriage tie before kinship became too remote—to call kinship back, as it were, as it disappeared into the distance.”

Augustine – (A.D. 354 – 430)
City of God, book XV, Chpt. 16

“Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

Dr. Clarence MacCartney – Presbyterian Minister
Colleague of the Great J. Gresham Machen

“It has become fashionable in recent times to talk of the leveling of nations, and of various peoples disappearing into the melting pot of contemporary civilization. I disagree with this, but that is another matter; all that should be said here is that the disappearance of whole nations would impoverish us no less than if all people were to become identical, with the same character and the same face. Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities. The least among them has its own special colors, and harbors within itself a special aspect of God’s design.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

These CREC guys want it both ways. They want to come across as perfectly orthodox in embracing the Ordo Amoris in the abstract but when it comes to the concrete suddenly they treat the Ordo Amoris like it is a Cross being presented to Count Dracula.

Failing that it could be just another case where these CREC types are sticking their fingers into the wind and seeing which way the wind is blowing are now setting their sails to catch this new wind.

However, there is another angle to all this and that is the countless number of putative theologians who are coming out of the woodwork to say that J. D. Vance and all of Church history up until 1950 or so are wrong. You can find some of that protest here;

Theologians push back on JD Vance’s view of ‘ordered love’

Over on X the Marxist minister Ron Burns is jumping up and down insisting that J. D. Vance and all of Church history is not as smart as he is. It seems Ron thinks that the parable of the Good Samaritan proves Vance wrong. However, it is the case instead that the parable of the Good Samaritan proves that Ron Burns couldn’t grossly mishandles Scripture.

Ron Burns and other on the Christian Marxist left appeals to the Parable of the Good Samaritan as the template that all Christians must use in order to demand that amnesty for illegal immigrants be put in place.

The Good Samaritan has been made the tool of Social Justice Warriors everywhere and by it we are being taught that in order to inherit eternal life we must disinherit ourselves and our children so that the alien and the stranger can inherit the here and the now. This is an exceptionally un-neighborly thing to do to our Children and our descendants. According to this interpretation the teaching of the Good Samaritan means that we must treat our children and our people as Aliens and Stranger in order to treat Aliens and Stranger like our children and our people.

The failure with this interpretation lies in the attempt to universalize a particular obligation. Jesus is teaching here in a very specific and particular situation.  The Lord Christ was not laying down policy for 21st century Nation States to take up. He was not creating new policy for Magistrates of all time everywhere to pursue. He was speaking to a religious Lawyer in order to crack his smug confidence that he indeed was a good person.

Jesus is giving ethical instruction, I believe, to the end that the Lawyer would see that he is not an ethical person. Yet the Ron Burns in the Christian world want to see the Parable of the Good Samaritan as a way to say that given their desire for open borders it is clearly the case that they are ethical people. In reality, by using the Good Samaritan parable wrongly the Thabiti Anybwile (Ron Burns) Marxists of the World can preen their self righteousness while seeking to foist guilt upon those who dare disagree with their gross misinterpretations.

The thinking that insists that the parable of the Good Samaritan is about immigration and amnesty policy, if taken literally, would mean the disappearance of borders and nations and peoples. It is a world where we can

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do

Upon giving this Parable, Jesus was not setting National or International Policy. He was not teaching on the Universal brotherhood of all man. He was not negating the reality of ever widening concentric circles of love whereby we first have to look out for our own and prioritized who are of the household of faith. Jesus was not negating the prioritizing of them who are of the household of faith in terms of our care and affection.

He is simply teaching that in the course of our daily living, as we walk through life, when we come upon a real live human being in desperate need of care we have a duty and privilege to care for the least of these.

Some will retort that by seeing this passage as individual and personal that I am not loving my neighbor. Some will insist that by not championing that the Government open up the borders that I am not loving my neighbor. But what of my next door neighbor who can’t find work? How loving is it to that neighbor to glut the market with cheap labor so he will never find work? What of the minority communities in this country who’s unemployment rate is 25-30% in some quarters? Is it neighbor love to them to insist on an amnesty which will cement their unemployment? Is it neighbor love to fellow Christians to invite in a global population that is hostile to Biblical Christianity? Is it neighbor love to Christian women to open the borders to those from misogynistic cultures?

Those who want to use the Parable of the Good Samaritan to the end of pursuing the Cultural Marxist agenda of Social Justice have only incompletely thought through the matter. In many instances the misuse of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is just a means to advance a liberal humanist non Christian agenda.

J. D. Vance and William Ames centuries before him are right, and the long tradition or the Ordo Amoris going back to Augustine and behind him to the Bible is the Christian way of thinking held to by millennium of Church history. Men like Doug Wilson, Rich Lusk, are poseurs who hold the Ordo Amoris in the abstract but blanch at any real application of the doctrine. Finally men like Ron Burns (Thabiti Anybwile) are just not Christian in contending that the Ordo Amoris is not a Christian Doctrine.

And I might add here in ending that the Kinists are incrementally being seen as vindicated. What Ames, and Luther and countless other Christians advocated centuries ago and what Vance is advocating today is what Kinists have been lambasted for and as seen in the cases against Spangler, Hunter, and Garris, Kinists are still being bashed for holding to the timeless Christian principle of the Ordo Amoris.

 

R2k fanboy Mike Horton vs. the Belgic Confession and John Calvin

“…we have the privilege of religious freedom for true and false worship in this country. Nevertheless, we do not expect the state to create opportunities for the advance of Christ’s kingdom through his means of grace.”

~ R2k “theologian” Michael Horton

Of course Horton is wrong here and is pushing the same tired error that the theological system of classical liberalism has always pushed. We decidedly do not have the privilege of religious freedom of true and false worship in this country. We only have the privilege of religious freedom for false worship in this country. We do not have the privilege of religious freedom for true religion in this country. I know this because the freedom of true religion in this country would make illegal all forms of false worship. Because all forms of false religions are not illegal in this country we decidedly do not have freedom of religion for true religion. The true religion of Christianity would not allow false gods to have equal time in the public square with the one true God. Now because the false gods have equal time with the one true God in this country, as required by the State, we clearly see that we do not, contra Mike Horton’s assertion, have freedom of religion in this country. I am not free to honor the God of the Bible above all other gods in this country therefore I am not free to practice my religion. My religion requires the elimination of all other gods from the public square. It requires me to support the elimination of all false worship. That is part of what the Bible’s 1st commandment means; “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

What is happening here is Mike, as a sub-Christian, is prioritizing the 1st amendment over the 1st commandment. Freedom of religion would mean that the people would be free to only worship the only one true God. Because I do not have that freedom, I decidedly do not live in a country with “freedom of religion.” Instead I live in a country that has freedom of religion for all religions except the one true religion.

Even The Belgic Confession of Faith, which Dr. Horton putatively confesses teaches;

“Their office (the magistrate) is not only to have regard unto and watch for welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted.”

Belgic Confession Article 36

Does anybody think that Mike really believes this?

And John Calvin also supports me and is against Dr. Horton;

In the Institutes Calvin says that;

“civil government has as its appointed end . . .to cherish and protect the outward worship of God, to defend sound doctrine of piety and the position of the church, to adjust our life to the society of men, to form our social behavior to civil righteousness, to reconcile us with one another, and to promote general peace and tranquility.” (4.20.2)

I would earnestly contend that that the promotion of general peace and tranquility cannot be achieved where false gods like Allah, the Jewish God, and the Hindu gods, are allowed to roam in the public square.

I hope God will grant grace to Mike and all the R2K fanboys to repent of this noxious doctrine of theirs.

NAPARC, Shadow Confessions, And The Ecclesiastical Lynching Of Godly Men

What Geerhardus Vos combatted as liberal scholarship, the Church today faces under the banner of evangelicalism only in reference to Cultural Marxism. Evangelical scholarship now stunningly embraces many of the assumptions and methods of Cultural Marxism. In Vos’ words Evangelicals seem

“……resolute in showing kindness for what once was called liberalism. To put it frankly, there is an unnerving sympathy within evangelical scholarship for seeking light in darkness, for synthesizing antithesis, and even for wedding belief and unbelief. It has become all too acceptable to appropriate the methods of unbelieving scholarship, to assert common ground with its unbelieving assumptions, and to give such syncretism some credible-sounding, winsome label like ‘believing criticism.’”

Geerhardus Vos

 

The Institutional Reformed Church keeps doing the orthodox folks among the Reformed rank and file the favor of showing us who they really are. Earlier this year the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) tossed one Rev. Michael Spangler from their midst using some of the most unique and contrived methodologies possibly imagined. Most recently the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) via a majority report in the Rio Grande Presbytery brought charges against Rev. Zach Garris for noting that inasmuch as the Scriptures regulate slavery therefore the Scriptures do not forbid all types of slavery. Over in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP) they are cooking up much the same kind of feminine outrage and hissy fit over some of the vanilla type things that Rev. Michael Hunter has said or written on the subject of race.

Keep in mind that anything and everything these chaps are writing and speaking about race have been said repeatedly by Reformed divines throughout Reformed church history. It is not as if these three chaps are acting like the Confederate soldiers at Ft. Pillow. What Spangler, Hunter, and Garris have said and written is moderate and supported with varied and sundry quotes from Southern Presbyterians.

Yet, despite the moderation coming from the pens of these good men, the institutional structures of these NAPARC churches are hell bent on treating them as if they are King Kleagles of the Klan.

Matters have gotten so bad in today’s Reformed and Presbyterian Church Aimee Byrd, Duke Kwon, Lamont English, Greg Johnson, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, and Ron Burns have eclipsed R. L. Dabney, J. Gresham Machen, Morton Smith, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, James Henley Thornwell and John Girardeau as the heroes of the faith.

This isn’t your Father’s Presbyterian Church.

What we have here is a clear demonstration that the Reformed denominations in America have gone WOKE. The Confessions that they say they subscribe to have been displaced by what might well be referred to as “shadow confessions.” Shadow Confessions are Confessions that operatively are controlling men and so the church but exist as not explicitly stated. What has happened in the previously “Conservative” “Reformed” denominations is what happened in the US as explained by Christopher Caldwell in his book; “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.” In that book Caldwell argues that with the passage and embrace of Civil Rights Legislation in the 1960s the US, in a defacto sense, took on a new Constitution that replaced the previous Constitution. Caldwell argues that ever since that time the original Constitution has existed in name only.

The same type of thing has happened in Reformed denominations. The Westminster Confession and the Three Forms of Unity are still present but they really are not the confessional standard by which the Churches are ruled. Instead, a shadow confession has been owned and that is the real standard that these non-Christian clergy in the denominations are operating in terms of their allegiance.

That shadow confession amounts to an embrace of Cultural Marxism categories. There is a good deal of information on Iron Ink on the subject of Cultural Marxism and I urge you to probe Iron Ink for more information on what Cultural Marxism is but as a shorthand explanation Cultural Marxism embraces the “Oppressor vs. the Oppressed” narrative and applies it in the Church to how the white man, playing the Oppressor, has allegedly  mistreated the 0ppressed minority, oppressed females, and oppressed perverts. Now that we are aware of this long injustice we live in a time when the oppressed is to be given “justice” so that the oppressor is finally brought low. Part of this whole Cultural Marxist narrative that is operating as the shadow confession in the Reformed Church is the whole Critical Race Theory paradigm.

As a result of this shadow confession of Cultural Marxism / Critical Race Theory in the Church both the Scriptures and the Confessions are read through that prism and reinterpreted in light of these new reigning shadow confessions. The truth of this was underscored for me when I heard of a  ordination controversy that happened recently in one of the NAPARC denominations somewhere in the Southeast. It seems that the candidate up for ordination had admitted he was a socialist or had socialist leanings. There was some heated exchange on the floor until someone stood up and insisted that since the Westminster Confession didn’t speak explicitly to the issue of Socialism therefore there could be no barring of the candidate from being ordained. The problem with that reasoning is that it just isn’t so. Consider the Westminster Larger Catechism when explaining the sins that are condemned by the Eighth commandment;

 all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbour what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves;

The above could stand as a definition of Socialism as socialism withholds from our neighbor what belongs to him so that we can enrich ourselves and worse yet it uses the State to accomplish this larceny.

The candidate was ordained and became another WOKE clergy in the bulging ranks of our WOKE Reformed clergy.

It is these types that are going after Spangler, Hunter, and Garris and they are going after them with such success that one can only conclude that the modern NAPARC churches are, generally speaking, anti-Christ churches. The fact that they are wickedly pursuing god fearing men like Spangler, Hunter, and Garris are proof of that. The fact that they brought down men like Ryan Louis Underwood in the United Episcopal Church of North America a few years ago testifies to how ubiquitous this anti-Christ malady exists as among the “Reformed” “clergy,” and denominations.

I am being told that the cancer is especially bad in the PCA as among their Mission to the World organization. In that organization there is a black chap named Lamont English who has a title who seems to be best exemplifying this Cultural Marxist mindset. It is English (irony abounds) who pressed the case against Rev. Zach Garris. MTW has been a problem in the PCA for at least a couple decades as clear back in the late 1990s they were largely controlled by a pagan Psychology mindset. (First hand experience here.)

Of course most of the rank and file in these denomination are clueless about this controversy. Unfortunately, the rank and file tend to trust their Pastors which right now is like the goat herd trusting the Judas Goat to lead them.

I’m pretty sure that this is not going to change. The Cultural Marxists/CRT crowd are controlling these NAPARC denominations. It strikes me that we are at a time where Biblical Christians need to flee these anti-Christ denominations and start new ones.

Keep in your prayers Rev. Hunter, Rev. Spangler, and Rev. Garris. Pray that God would vindicate them upon their and His enemies.

Advice On People’s Advice Concerning “Manliness”

Recently, there have been a spate of books written on what it means to be a man. Also there have been the requisite blog posts to the same end. Some of it is quite good (Rev. Zach Garris’ book Masculine Christianity for example) while others are questionable at best.

Yesterday, I came across a typical bite sized X post on the subject of manliness from someone who is getting a great deal of press these days that has stuck in my craw because I think it is nonsense and can do a great deal of damage.

Here is the advice I came across from some genius on the subject of manliness;

The best of men learn how to thrive in moments of intense opposition and adversity. This is the “it” factor. 4th and long. Bottom of the 9th, 2 outs. “Manliness loves…the position of being embattled and alone against the world.”

The first sentence and the last sentence do not necessarily coincide and are not really the same thing. It can be true that the best of men learn how to thrive in moments of intense opposition and adversity while not being true that “manliness loves… the position of being embattled and alone against the world.”

Also, it is facile to compare being “embattled and alone against the world” with 4th and long and bottom of the 9th, 2 outs. When we think of embattled and alone against the world we think of the martyrs of the faith. That is a bit more consequential and trying then needing to make a first down or get a winning hit. Embattled and alone against the world is Polycarp being burnt at the stake. Embattled and alone against the world is fighting with the Confederacy after Richmond fell. Embattled and alone against the world is Pilgrim in Vanity Fair.

I wonder if someone who is dishing out this kind of advice has ever really themselves been “embattled and alone against the world.” I don’t think someone who has genuinely been “embattled and alone against the world” would use such trivial comparisons to the sportsball world.

It’s easy to toss around this kind of advice when not embattled and alone against the world. Much more difficult to live it out when one is in the vice grip of being embattled and alone.

Now if it had been said that love for greater realities moves one to accept their duty — no matter how difficult — I would have been satisfied with the statement. However, no man loves the position of being embattled and alone. Scripture teaches that we can learn to be content in all things but being content is different than loving being embattled and alone.

I reckon the reason I have taken such exception to this quote is because in many respects my ministry has been one of being embattled and alone. I have some experience here. Now, my being embattled and being alone is nothing to be compared with the saints who have gone before such as are listed in Hebrews 11;

 others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.

The idea that manliness “loves” this being embattled and alone turns manliness into a masochistic ideal. Now, manliness does endure such but to endure something because of one’s priorities is different than loving being embattled and alone.

Paul can write to Timothy saying;

Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

4 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

Timothy is counseled to endure hardness, just as Paul himself endured hardness. But love it, in the sense of being delighted in the hardness itself? Only a masochist would speak that way.

Manliness accepts the responsibility that one is called to. Manliness endures hardness out of love for Christ or for family or for the Church. But manliness does not love the being embattled and aloneness just as realities in themselves. That is not manliness and anyone telling you that it is has never been embattled and alone for sustained periods of time. They have never had to fight knowing that they wouldn’t win in the short term. They have never had to endure solitary confinement. They have never faced being the lone voice of sanity among peers that can damage them professionally for disagreeing as the lone voice. They have never had to endure being ground down year after year. They just are not being rational, choosing instead to embrace some kind of romantic nonsense about what it means to be a man.

And what of the others around this man who loves being embattled and alone? What of his wife and children? Is there no awareness that the man who is embattled and alone has no put his wife and children in the positions of being embattled and alone also? This is not to say that a man must do this if the issue warrants it but if a man chooses not only for himself but for his wife and children to be embattled and alone is it really sane to love that when he sees how much it hurts his wife and children to be embattled and alone — and that even if they agree with whatever the cause is that has them all embattled and alone?

Just to be clear, I do agree that manliness learns how to thrive when the chips are down. My beef is using silly sports analogies for something so serious and my beef is with the idea that real men love being embattled and alone. I suppose real men who are masochistic love being embattled and alone.

Anyway … be careful of the advice that is being thrown around out there in Christian corners. More than a little of this advice is not well thought out.