Off with the Skirt, on with the Pants

I've never been a big fan of the Promise Keepers. My assessment of the movement goes something like this: "Give them credit for correctly diagnosing the problem. But their solutions are more of the same." The evangelical church is chock- full of skirt-wearing men, and I don't mean the bold warriors in Braveheart. Coach McCartney is right, it is time for men to stand in the gap. But the way to do that is not by running off to stadiums and having a religious experience. In order for men to lead in their homes and churches, they need to lead.

Failure to lead, more often than not, is born not of a failure of brains. Rather it stems from a lack of conviction that is manifest either in a fearful acquiescence to the status quo or - far worse - indifference.

In the liberal churches, we have women sitting in the seats of authority. In the conservative churches, all too often the women lead by default, exercising their will from the outside. Consider this example. A friend attends a church from which the pastor recently resigned. Her women's group is trying to decide what they should study together, and the leading suggestion is a study that denies one of the fundamentals of the church's confession. She is at a loss as to what to do. "What," I asked, "is the procedure for oversight of the women's group?" She explained that the elders would have to approve anything the group might use. So far so good. But then she confessed that this approval is nothing more than a rubber stamp. It would be forthcoming no matter what, because the ladies get what the ladies want. The men on another occasion already had approved a study studded with even more error.

Calvin struggled with the chicken and the egg problem of knowledge in the first few pages of his Institutes. You can't know God, he argued, until you know man. And you can't know man until you know God. Similarly, I'm not sure whether our men in the church wear skirts because we worship a god in a skirt, or whether we worship a skirt-wearing god because the men in the church are so weak.

The solution to this teaser is the same that Calvin would offer: go to the source and see what God has to say. The calling to men is to be bold and strong, to lead with courage. And the God who makes this call is no weak sister. "Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with His anger, and His burden is heavy; His lips are full of indignation, and His tongue like a devouring fire. His breath is like an overflowing stream, which reaches up to the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of futility; and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err" (Isa. 30:27- 28).

Do you feel the tender comfort there? Here is a God who is decidedly from Mars. But that truth doesn't change the truth that He is also from Venus. We treat God's war-like wrath and His tender care as if they were somehow separate things. He seems rather capricious to us, and if we're smart we'll do our religious duties and hope we don't get visited by His wrath. But it is because He is from Venus that He must be from Mars. This fearful description ought not cause us to avert our eyes, but rather should set our eyes to tears of comfort. In fact, the above passage comes in the context of God's comfort to His people. They should be comforted because the God of all wrath is coming to pour out His wrath on the enemies of His people. The destruction of God's enemies, the calamities that befall them, should lead us to rejoicing. But we're so weak we won't even pray some of God's Spirit-inspired prayers. "Let his days be few, and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also from their desolate places. Let the creditor seize all that he has, and let strangers plunder his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy to him, nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out" (Ps. 109: 8-13).

Here is the tenderness of God, that He would hear our prayers to destroy our enemies. If we but believed in this God, the God of the Bible, then we would not be a people who fear the world. If we believed in this biblical God, maybe we would again be biblical men and women, both exhibiting the strength we are called to, both seeking comfort not in words of peace but in the strength of our Lord.

Perhaps we should be praying that the simpering god, the hand-wringing god, the wrathless god would be destroyed, that his false bride would become a widow, that his children would be beggars, and then remembered no more. May the God who destroyed Assyria, the God who put the bridle in the jaws of the people to lead them to err, lead them right back to the flaming pit from which they came. And when He has, may we praise His tender mercy to us, His grace and compassion in ridding His church of yet another false god. May we take genuine comfort in the avenging God who is, and praise Him for His relentless wrath. May we rest under the wing of the war eagle, who holds thunderbolts in His omnipotent claws. May we aspire to be men and women of war, and build the everlasting kingdom of the unchanging King.