Christian Men: Your Trending Tarnished Testimony

Some will hear braying, some will hear a donkey speaking…

But, like the donkey in Balaam’s tale, I cannot move forward against the Truth blocking your testimony from being fruitful.

I am not your enemy. This post is not about you (alone). I am not against men. I am certainly not against men being men… The trouble is men being men is not the trending testimony from our churches. Rather, our young, middle-aged, and old men still entirely ensnared and enslaved by their youthful lusts IS the trending tarnished testimony.

That is not just ‘imperfect’, brothers; that is downright embarrassing - for all of the ways you have not put away childish things. What fellowship has light with darkness? What business do men claiming to be Christ-followers have with tinkering with their childhood tinker toys? I am not speaking to the world-at-large; to some degree, we expect their shenanigans in darkness.

But not from you.

40 Years Around Your Same Mountain

This is just one Christian woman’s observation, yet the sights and sounds are stuck on repeat.

Whether it was my dad called to a congregant’s home in the middle of the night because of a fight between a heartbroken wife and her porn-watching-in-the-living-room husband, multiple CHRISTIAN boyfriends taking advantage of me in various ways due to their porn habits; the married worship leader of my church caught messing around with a woman on the praise team, the congregant who’s dad watched porn on a projector screen when she was growing up (and so she now thought she had to stay with her husband through the same ordeal); the associate pastor I was under who was caught by one of the youth in a strip club, the father-in-laws also dabbling in porn, the man in a local church just found-out on Grindr, or the betrayal of my own ex in church leadership enjoying the same hidden and fiercely guarded vice — I am sick to death of your justifications, excuses, and trivializing of what has become a rotten stench, not just in our culture, but in our churches and ‘Christian’ homes.

That’s not even to mention the headlined scandals in Christendom — of which there have been plenty over the last 40 years. Michael Tait of the Newsboys is only the latest in a long string of embarrassments and tarnished testimony in God’s name.

Due to your current trending testimony — the one’s I’ve encountered now for 40 years — I can no longer see any Christian man or title the same way. You are in church leadership? You lead a Bible study? You look like a superstar at church, volunteering to the max while your wife shoots daggers from the back (where she is tending to three children under the age of 5)? — Yeah, that’s meaningless (except for what I read on your wife’s face).

What do you do in private?

What’s your life look like behind closed doors?

Does your wife think you’re a superstar or is she getting another side of you?

What are you justifying, excusing, and minimizing in the name of ‘greasy grace’?

The Angel with the flaming sword ahead compels me to dig in: I will not go easy on you. You’re supposed to be men, remember? Contrary to popular belief - recently inspired by bosomy ads in jeans - being a man does not include dribbling drool like a basketball in a panted (even if shushed and hidden) heat over the female (immodest or unclothed) female body in an ad, in video, or on the beach.

That is called lust (and why are we back to having to teach elementary things?), and it’s actually a very shallow defining of the word ‘male’. Just because Eve was created for Adam does not mean Adam gets the right to lust after, drool over, and otherwise boast about slinging seed in a one-sided frenzy of fantasy over all of his sisters, daughters, the video whore, and other men’s wives - nor using Eve to fulfill in the flesh the screen-burnt passions of and behind his eyes.

I felt like the Bible was pretty clear about these things… but apparently men are now also defined by illiteracy (or blindness).

Yes, I’m being insulting… because you’ve insulted your wives and the name of Jesus with your nonsense for far too long.

Nothing about that is okay.

The Time of Ignorance Has Now Ended

As the lady who said nothing mean about anyone once said: That devil sure is a persistent fellow, isn’t he?

A very effective campaign was launched against men by the powers that be (spiritual and physical). Still, let’s be clear, there is nothing new under the sun. Lust is not new. Men fiddling or diddling around wicked webs is not new. Sin seeking an occasion is also not new. What is new is the ease by which men can engage and nurse this particular sin - quietly, minimizing screens, hiding it away under passcodes and demands for ‘privacy’, denying all the way. This has been devastating for the family unit… the Church… and your testimony.

Calling it an ‘addiction’ only gives you permission to nurse and pet it - your own little precious (demon). But you know the truth. And the truth is —

If your every action and thought were to be aired on live TV for all of your friends, family, and colleagues, you would suddenly stop it. Magically, you’d grow discipline like a true set of balls.

It is the secret nursing that fuels your so-called ‘addiction’….

Far too many Christian woman tolerated this nonsense out of ignorance in the past, but I do believe that time has ended. You are not ignorant of the lustful devices (how old are you now?) - and your wife is no longer ignorant of just how prevalent the problem has become. Well, Christian or not, the Jumbotron and phones guarded more heavily than Fort Knox never lie. Sometimes tolerating is just coddling. And sometimes it’s just time to take the binky away so that the child can grow up.

That time is far overdue for men claiming to be Christian.

Yes, the hyper sexualized culture is everywhere in America, but your eyes don’t have to be. Selah.

If your device causes you to sin, throw it away..

If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out - someone said (and in the New Testament - uh-oh).

If social media leads you down bad, bad bunny trails (ehhem), close the accounts and deal with it - like a man.

Stop coddling your sin.

It’s trashing your testimony.

Whip me all you want. I’m not budging on this one - because it’s God’s Way, not mine. Truth is truth… even if it comes through a humbled donkey.

Put your toys away and pick up your sword. That is what a man does.