Entries from January 7, 2007 - January 13, 2007
Castrating Jesus.
Let me rant for a bit about all the mawkish in our midst, those soft pacifist types, those sentimentalists who insist on feminizing and blandifying Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ. You know those perennially "nice" to whom I refer, in both their Catholic and Evangelical manifestations. Leon Podles kvetches about them in his trenchant book, The Church Impotent - The Feminization of Christianity. Men and women who drive from the Church normal males who might be made into believers. Feminists and homosexuals, a few of them, but mainly normal folk who just have no clue, and perpetuate the image of a Jesus that prompts so many men to ask, "Why bother?"
I just received the quarterly publication of Denver Seminary Magazine from my alma mater, one of those "trendy" Evangelical seminaries that is always flirting with modernism but always somehow manages to remain just shy of the modernist ruination that has come to so many Protestant schools and churches. For now, anyway. (The current issue, like so many, runs an article by the "Reverend" Sally So-and-So, the unnatural, unbiblical and untraditional fruition of that execrable feminist trend that vexed me so much when I attended Denver Seminary.) This issue was devoted to the topic of "shepherding" ("mentoring" apparently off the radar screen for the moment), and it featured images of a "shepherding" Jesus drawn from the wells of femininzation that Podles laments. Sweet Jesus holding a little lamb. Jesus who threatens no violence to anyone. An androgynized Jesus like we see in the image of the Sacred Heart. Puke.
I don't blame pagans when they rebel against this doll-like image of Jesus, this Jesus who wouldn't hurt a fly, this bearded lady with a transparent chest who leaves innocent men and women exposed to the depradation of evildoers and the unspeakable violence they commit. But for this unfortunate mentality, pacifism would have never gained a foothold in the Church, modern bishops wouldn't be dully opining that the Catholic church "is opposed to the death penalty," and many pagans might turn Christian. Moreover, men might stay in or return to the Church.
How in the world did this happen? The Scriptures are clear about just how really "meek and mild" this Jesus is. He hissed "brood of vipers!" at the perverters of religion. He opened a can of whoopass on the merchants in the temple. When he returns in glory, He will "tread the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the Almighty", for "the Lord is a man of war."
So spare me, please, all this nonsense about your milquetoast Jesus, your Jesus shorn of His cajones. He is a man's man. He is the lover of men, yes, but also the avenger of evil. Like the knight, he is "meek in hall" but "fierce in battle." And He rules over all with a rod of iron, the Pantocrator. So please, cowboy the hell up, Christian men. And tell your church-fleeing male friends that they really don't have to check their stones -- or their brains -- at the door of the church.
Caedmon
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