The impetus for this post comes from an article I read an hour or so ago on the recommendation of a friend. While the entire article is excellent, the section that made me sit up and take notice was this one, quotes from and comments about David Murrow’s Why Men Hate to Go to Church:
Murrow sees some good in [contemporary “praise and worship,” “P&W”] music, [but] overall he thinks [it] may have even less appeal to men than the hymns of old, and “has harmed men’s worship more than it has helped … With hymns, God is out there. He’s big. Powerful. Dangerous. He’s a leader. With P&W, God is at my side. He’s close. Intimate. Safe. He’s a lover. Most people assume this shift to greater intimacy in worship has been a good thing. On many levels, it has been. But it ignores a deep need in men.” ...
[In P&W music] men are to relate primarily to God as a lover, and Murrow observes that the kind of language used in praise and worship songs – “Your love is extravagant/Your friendship, it is intimate/ I feel I’m moving to the rhythm of Your grace/Your fragrance is intoxicating in this secret place” – “force[s] a man to express his affection to God using words he would never, ever, ever say to another guy. Even a guy he loves. Even a guy named Jesus.”
That reminded me of a song the accompaniment band in which I play bass led the congregation in last week. (Do you see the contradiction inherent in that sentence? Since when do accompanists lead?) One line that stuck in my craw then and has been an ear worm since is, “Your name is honey on my lips.” Words like that will be sung no matter where in the church building I am; I play in the band so I don’t have to sing them. I’m certainly glad my atheist, beer-chuggin’ libertarian friends weren’t in church for the occasion.
After reading the article I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Blame the Brazilian kebabs I had for dinner or the potato chips I snuck just before I went to bed. Blame my guilt at not being able to say that Jesus’ name is honey on my lips. Blame my ingratitude to God that I go to church with men who would rather follow Ahab to an imperialist war than to share the ignominy of Christ with Micaiah when I wish I were in Nepal with the men who told me they’d rather follow Micaiah. Blame my sins that I won’t talk about here.
But suddenly I remembered that the orchestration class my wife was teaching on Friday was interrupted when the dean came into the room, turned off the lights, and said, “We are on lockdown,” and barricaded the doors. The students went to the back of the room and cowered, not knowing what was up, terrified that there was a shooter on campus. After half an hour they were informed that there had been an armed robbery in the town and the perps were still at large, but it was another forty-five minutes before the lockdown was lifted and class could resume, but of course by then the class period was essentially over. I don’t know what the hourly tuition at that school works out to, but I’ll bet that if I got that much per hour for my work, we could be in the market for a decent house, not the shacks we’ve been looking at.
The thought of Christian young men in the prime of life cowering in a classroom like a bunch of elementary school students waiting for a shooter to show up turns my stomach. If a shooter lets loose in any public space where there is a Christian man, I say he’d better hit the Christian within the first five seconds, because after that, Mr. Epitome of Gentlemanliness will have unconcealed his carry and blown the perp’s brains out. (The other better solution, which may be right, for all I know, is to do it the Amish way: you go about your business—none of this lockdown stuff—and what happens, happens.)
The rise of the US police state has brought with it a pussyization of men, including Christian men. Instead of “Everybody cower!” the word should have been, “There has been an armed robbery in town. Men, we need you to stand outside the buildings for a while,” with the understanding being that those men—I’m talking about the students as well as the faculty here—were armed and knew how to use those weapons properly. Those robbers should have known before they got to the campus—and the truly sad part is that there is no evidence they ever even went in the direction of the campus—that they would be outnumbered and outgunned dozens to one if they dared to set foot there.
But no, while in every society I can think of until recently any man worth the name would have considered himself the primary defender of his family and the weak members of his community, American pussies are proud to leave defense to “the few, the proud,” the people in uniform. And, frankly, I’m part of the problem. The word gun is not one I utter with affection. No wonder every day is Honor the Vets Day or Honor the Police Day or Support Our Troops Day—they’re the only men left in society who truly act the part. (Well, there’s the Duck Dynasty hunting crowd, but only the rubes in Flyover Country respect them, and besides, most of them are military or police veterans.)
The taxman may take our money and use it for things we think are abhorrent—like late-term abortion, like imperialist war, like the godless indoctrination centers we call schools, like queer marriage, like crony capitalism and colonial and postcolonial dictatorships overseas, and like a secret police and spy network that always seems to have connections with the “lone nuts” who commit atrocities—but dammit, the taxman is the only one we can trust to protect us. We can’t be trusted to be the “armed American behind every blade of grass” who made Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto reluctant to bomb Pearl Harbor and utterly opposed to any talk of invading the US mainland.
Maybe if churches offered firearms safety courses instead of gooey songs about Jesus, we’d see more men in church.
