ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
May 27, 2025
You may have read something about this, but if not, there is an Orthodox Church here in Texas that is gaining a lot of interest among younger men. It’s not because they are seeking a deeper spiritual connection with God or wanting to better understand self-giving love or humility. I only wish! Instead, it is promoting a hypermasculinity as it denounces all kinds of things as too feminine, and of course, telling men that they are to bring home the paycheck because women’s place is in the home making babies. There have always been movements within Christianity that seek to play to the insecurities of certain groups, forgetting that the purpose of Christianity is to take up the cross, a symbol of self-giving, even self-sacrificing love. This is not done in pursuit of worldly power or bolstering an impotent ego. There will always be those who are so painfully insecure that they will be drawn to anyone who will profess a form of Christianity that falsely builds them up using the empty and pietistic sounding tools Jesus came to dismantle. It’s really impossible to teach Jesus by rejecting the core principles of his life. Of course, people have done so, in part, because it works—it works in attracting a crowd, but it never achieves the goal of forming people as disciples of Jesus Christ. We are not in the business of making crowds but making disciples.
It may be countercultural and go against the grain, but I trust you to guide me in the ways of Jesus, O Holy God. Arrogance, born from an empty sense of self-worth, will never have the courage to act with true humility for the most vulnerable, to live as Jesus lived. Amen.
