the promise
The church handed them a part they
weren’t ready to play,
Gave them a podium they still couldn’t reach,
Dug a hole inside them and dubbed it “Authority,”
For God inspired them.
Little boys were told their destiny is leadership,
But what is unearned leadership if not entitlement?
Little boys were told their destiny is spiritual headship,
But what is a spiritual head if not a god?
Little boys were told their greatest need is respect,
But what is unearned respect if not control?
Little girls were handed submissiveness like lollipops,
Meekness assigned as a universal trait,
Told God designed them for a life on their knees,
Submitting in all ways—All Ways.
For God inspired them.
“Acting like a girl,” was the ultimate insult
Thus a hierarchy was built,
Humiliation by humiliation,
Sermon by sermon,
Little Boy over Little Girl.
For God inspired them.
Growing boys were told to bounce their eyes,
That girls’ God-crafted bodies were merely temptations,
Shoulders and thighs from the pits of hell
Sent to destroy their purity.
Church leaders complained the world was over-sexed,
Then told twelve-year-old girls to cover up their frames to protect the grown men,
Because if you obsess over something long enough
You can’t see beyond it.
Respect for God’s intentional creation
Morphed into hidden deceits,
Compulsions born from the manufacturing of the elicit
When it had all been innocent until the preacher said it wasn’t.
Pressure to be a “Godly Man”
Only made them experts at pretense.
Emotions being dubbed as feminine
Only made them experts at repression.
The Boys grew into Men with
strong bodies and weak hearts,
Corroded by shame,
exhausted from pretending,
Men who gripped the
Promise of Power so tightly,
Needing the role of Husband
to make the pain go away.
Eventually
Repression dug a well of inferiority,
And that well filled up with rage
Because anger is the easiest way to say,
“I’m dying inside,”
When you’re told emotions are weak.
Inevitably
The men at the top of the Food Chain
Found themselves
Holding a steaming bag of
Authoritarianism
To silence the voices of “Not Good Enough”
Bought by the checks dropped into the plate
On Sunday mornings.
And now we ask, “What happened to all the Christian men?”
But when will we start putting the pieces together?
Has it ever been healthy for any human being to be granted absolute authority?
“Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely,” they said.
Except for the Christian Men.
“The last shall be first,”
The preacher shouted from the podium on his stage.
If we call it entitlement for our children,
Why do we call it good for our men?
If we call it spoiling for our toddlers,
Why do we call it healthy for our men?
It wasn’t ever that they were bad seeds
But that they were planted in a broken pot,
Watered with stories from an ancient patriarchal society labeled as “God’s Design”
While following a Savior who’d been trying to rescue them from it all along.
A Savior who counter-culturally embraced
The prostitutes, the widows, and the cheats,
While calling out the men who stoned them.
A Savior who said being the first and best and most
Corrodes the soul.
A Savior who promised richness of life was found in
Sacrificial Love, Self-Denial, and Humility.
A Savior whose complete and total SUBMISSION hung him on cross,
Crucified by a mob of men for fear of losing Power,
Men who required Leadership and Respect
And complete Religious Control
To feel Good Enough.
And yet, here we are,
Handing generation after generation of men a noose
Cut from that same pharisaical cloth.
Power is the drug,
The evangelical church is the dealer,
And the victims are countless.
What happened to all the Christian men?
Our theology is killing them.
