(Red Deer Advocate, June 28, 2008.)
Here’s a picture of some fashionable dude walking down a catwalk in Milan or some place like
that. There is a time to subject a person to ridicule: when that person is
being ridiculous. Odds are that this model will never read what he made
possible for me to write. But should he stumble upon this article, very well.
Then he might be inspired to ‘man-up,’ as they say. Should a man allow
designers to make him look like a frankenstein on estrogen supplements? Is it
not easy enough to appear freakish in this fallen world without fabricating
more of it to put on?
It
isn’t just the models who thoughtlessly plod through life being whatever they
are told to be. At the mall I see the zombied boys being pulled along by their
precocious girls. I see all the cars lined up in the left hand lane waiting for
several lights’ time to get to that mall, about a dozen drivers in a row not
thinking enough to turn left a couple of intersections back to avoid the
traffic jam. Remember the year teenage girls wore soothers around their necks
‘just because’—just because some celebrity, no doubt, told them, by example, to
do it? Look at all the boys, some above the age of twenty, going through
contortions to keep their pants drooping down below their underwear without
having them fall to the ground. Look at them waddle like ducks, and tell me
this is normal! Tell me they’re not zombies, and chances are you are one
yourself. And what about these men who go around saying, ‘Let me ask the boss’
for fear of doing something without the wife’s consent? These are the most
pathetic zombies of all! They must act like the henpecked sissies they’ve
become because they’re convinced that we must change with the times, no matter
what that change involves, even if it means that men may no longer be men!
For
those of us who no longer regard ‘the times’ as the determining factor for what
we believe and how we think, speak, and act, we can cite instances of
zombie-like behavior from our past. I recall being at my dad’s grave beside the
shovels. Like a zombie marching the way I was programmed to march, I did not
seriously deliberate about what I was craving with all my heart to do. And so
the traditional gravedigger, a stranger probably, got to bury the father who
should have been buried by his three sons.
Before
we follow the herd or run with the pack, we should inquire about the wisdom
of our age to find out what sort it is. Our herd mentality might be a sign that
we are unthinking persons on the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew
7.13.) When you become converted to truth, Jesus Christ, and reason, you begin
to think for yourself and to question what you do and why you do it. Is it
natural for a man to cower before a woman? To wear his pants down in public?
These are signs, my friends, of a mentality that is twisted against nature,
reason, decency, and God. Men must be woken up from their zombie sleep. Then
they must separate themselves from the zombies that remain, take Jesus’ advice,
and ‘let the dead bury their dead’ (Matthew 8.22.) The man who follows Jesus
will be neither a sissy nor a brute. Like Jesus, he will rebuke his own mother
when she’s out of place, and he’ll reach out to the lepers of society out of
compassion. This man will not be afraid to overturn a tradition or spurn a fad
that is contrary to righteousness. ‘By faith in his name’ it is possible to
pick up the cross and follow Jesus and his iconoclastic, trend-breaking
lifestyle. This is the narrow way that leads to life—everlasting life.
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