Hit Bottom, Started Digging

April 16, 2007 by djackson.

I’m a man; I’m therefore a misogynist, utterly self-involved, and have the concentration level of a rat terrier on benzedrine.  Who says so?  Bella Abzug?  Gloria Steinham?  Nanci Pelosi?

No.  The Christian Men’s Movement says so.  And they think they’re doing me a favor.

I refer to “The Church for Men,” the latest excresence from the tumor of self-seeker sensitivity battening on American Evangelicalism.  This “church” meets in a gym. . .on Saturday nights. . .once a month.  Women are not welcome.  The organizers guarantee a sixty minute max and run the scoreboard clock to prevent the message from breaking the quarter-hour mark.  (Note:  the Sermon on the Mount takes eighteen to twenty minutes to deliver.  I guess Jesus would be ejected.  “So you men could not keep watch with me for one hour?”  Well, Lord, you ran overtime and the Spurs were on.)

What next?  Since the pulpit sits at the top of the key, why not a three-second violation if the preacher remains in the paint for too long?  After all, we toddlers need constant movement to keep us plugged in.  Maybe fire up the shot clock, too, and force the speaker to relinquish the microphone if he goes that long without using a sports illustration.   

I confess to resenting the demeaning stereotypes.  “Musically men want AC/DC,” says Christian comedian Chris Elrod, “and we give them Celine Dion.  Lyrically men want Tom Clancy and we give them Danielle Steel.  Spiritually men want ‘Braveheart’ and we give them ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’”  Well, my own musical tastes run on a continuum from Hank Williams to Gregorian chant, I read Tolstoy and Jane Austen, and hardly go to movies.  Guess I don’t qualify as a follower of the Son of He-Man.  I reluctantly admit that I can stay focused for an hour of liturgy and Biblical preaching.  Evidently, that isn’t a manly thing.  Mike Ellis, purported pastor of this farce, brags that “I have the attention span of a flea.”  And the waistline of an elephant seal if the photograph in the paper is at all accurate.  One hairy-chested church in Peoria, Illinois, doesn’t have a pastor; they have a “coach” who integrates “a masculine spirit throughout the entire church.”  Funny; I thought the pastor was supposed to convey the Holy Spirit.  I thought I’d read somewhere that the way this Christian thing works is that I get transformed; not that God gets conformed.

What drives this drivel?  Why would those who claim to follow the risen Son of God see the need to drape the Gospel in a jersey, douse it with Gatorade, paint its face in someone’s team colors?  After all, if these boys want an all-male club with a cross out front they can just enroll in Southwestern Seminary.  There they’ll be completely safe from women, at least women professors.  (Well, except the boss’s wife, but it appears that even the boss isn’t safe from her.)

A comment by United Brethren pastor Chuck McKeown answers the question.  “If the church is going to survive,” he whimpers, “we have to get men plugged back in.”  Ah!  When Jesus said “on this rock I will build my church” he didn’t mean Peter and he didn’t mean Peter’s confession of faith.  (At least the men’s movement can put an end to one of the oldest contentions in the Protestant/Catholic schism.)  The “rock” he had in mind was beer-bellied arrested adolescents who think God has to cater to their carnality in order to keep up his standing in the Nielson ratings.  Theology that begins with the vulnerability of the church has set aside the power of Christ and made its own savvy the power truly to be trusted.  Nothing good can come of that.

Although I should admit that there exists a scriptural precedent for all-male worship.  It dates back to the birth of the faith, that first Easter Sunday when the men met alone because they didn’t have the guts to accompany the women to the last place anyone had seen Jesus.  The risen Lord didn’t seem to mind commissioning a woman to bring these lunkheads up to speed.  Christ’s own fault, of course: he should have booked a rock band and promised to empty the tomb on a time-limit.

Jesus cried at funerals.  Jesus went to weddings.  Jesus kissed one of his pals right in front of a brigade of Marines.  Jesus sent his mom a mother’s day card in the midst of the ultimate bad day at the office.  I think we can just keep going to church.  If we want to pound on our chests, that’s all right too.  But not like Tarzan; more like mourners in sackcloth who confess their need to rise above a lying culture and to give God, not what they want but what He demands.  Now that sounds like a man’s work to me.

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