A Most Combative Effeminacy

Here is a funny thing. And needless to say it may be, once again, just me. But for all of certain (Christian and other) conservatives' forlorn wailing about the effeminacy of this Age - its appalling want of healthy martial impulse and martial virtue - somehow, I find no shortage of  influential, productive people whose gifts and talents suggest metaphors of soldiering, and War. And these even in such (supposedly) unlikely places as, well, deep in the corporate, NGO and think-tank worlds. Not to mention - and more to the purposes of my argument - in many Christian church circles of every description and complexion, both humanitarian and evangelical.

These men and women may cover, in their professed beliefs, a pretty wide gamut of spiritual truth or error. But I would suggest they have one key factor in common. They are all, I suspect, for the most part sincere in their pursuit of some one overarching, overriding Cause. One that, again, of itself may be essentially true, or largely false. But either way, their virtues seem to suggest what I would call spiritual Goliaths: Goliaths, not of Gath, but of God.

I'm thinking of certain dynamic individuals who are not only extremely conscious of their strengths and resources, their armor and weapons and artillery, if you will, but who further believe that God - or Allah, or Progress, or die Zeitgeist or whatever - expressly commands them to be both conscious and conscientious in their use of these assets. Even, one might almost guess, to the point of their relying on them - maybe not exclusively - but at very least primarily. Which in practice means only relying on their Maker when every other option has been pretty well exhausted. I'm thinking of people of whom, to judge from their actions - and sometimes even their avowed words - you'd almost swear that, whatever their theology may say about God equipping the called, in practice He only calls the equipped. In short, their God is the sort of deity who has no more use for unpreparedness and incapacity than does Satan. The results of which, I think, are pretty easy to predict. In short order, these would-be Goliaths become the sort of people whose most customary and deliberate and disciplined actions, and even policies, suggest that of all deadly sins sloth is the deadliest. And pride the most excusable. And weakness the least forgivable. 

Again, these Goliaths of God may be Catholic or Protestant or Jewish, Muslim or Hindu. Or transhumanist. My point is that even the most godly, and superhumanly efficient, among them needs at least one or two Davids. And not nearly so much for the purpose of killing them. Or even felling them to the ground. But rather  simply to bring them back, as it were, down to earth. To remind them that they still, even now, breathe the same air as we do. In short, not just to remind them that even they are still human, but to give the rest of us renewed permission to be human too.

And pray for the peace (as distinct from the victory) of Kyiv, etc.