“If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.”
Proverbs 24:10
When I was a kid, I always found it prudent to confront a big bully from a safe distance. My bravery at pointing out the guy was a jerk was best displayed from behind a tree fifty yards away. Such was the courage of a child. Men of courage prefer to confront enemies face to face.
No man longs for small strength. No godly man can stomach the thought of fainting before adversity; faltering when he should otherwise stand firm for his family, his church, and his Lord. In Proverbs, this man gives his son a different charge:
“…to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;”
Proverbs 24:11
He trains his son to be a strong man of God. A man who risks his own comforts to rescue others. A man who exerts his mind, his will, and his heart to restrain those stumbling toward destruction. Every playful sword fight your child fights in the back yard, every dream of battling dragons, every ache of valor, testifies that even fallen man has not completely forgotten his purpose. It’s in his blood. Man was created to fight for what is right.
No man wants to be weak; but strength comes at a price. Danger and hardship await those who do not faint. Demons fight those who do not play dead. Men want to be strong, and yet no man wants to suffer, at least not much.
In this modern generation we have devised a plan whereby we can travel the path that seems to be the hard way, but requires nothing but small strength. One way we do this is to ride our horse triumphantly into yesterday’s battlefields, and boldly proclaim “If I had been here things would have been different.” Yeah, right. But, that way you can avoid the dangerous, frightful, unpredictable place of the here and now. We cowardly avoid the place where real bullets are whizzing by, yet we can still make a show of strength by combating the yesterday of adversity.
Students at the University of Virginia desecrated the statue of Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder. Why? He was a slave owner. There have also been calls for the removal of President George Washington’s and President Abraham Lincoln’s statues. Some have called for the renaming of schools that honor Washington, Jefferson, and 11 other slave-owning presidents. Leftists have called for the renaming of streets named after slave-owning presidents. There have been many liberal calls for the elimination of Columbus Day. Their success at getting Confederate statues taken down has emboldened them. Of course, right here in North Carolina, Fort Bragg is no longer Fort Bragg.
This, to many eyes, has the appearance of courage. But is it? Chesterton, for one, would not be impressed:
“There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one’s grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers.”
How many of us are tempted to be men who fight grandmothers instead of facing living giants? We all can position ourselves on the right side of history retroactively, instead of putting on the uniform of those drawing fire today. It is easier, of course, to shoot arrows onto a battlefield that has already cooled, at an enemy that has already left. “Were I around back then,” we boldly proclaim, “I would have done thus and thus.” We denounce our ancestors’ blind spots but say little about our own.
Today, unlike yesterday, is full of enemies that will strike you back. You can lose face, lose money, lose your job, and more. It is less troublesome to fight those who can’t fight back. Instead of focusing on men who have been dead for centuries, why not use your resources to fight today’s battles instead of attacking what is often a single dimension of our forefathers. Why don’t we stand against China and other countries that still practice slavery today? Why not stand against Islamic cultures that execute homosexuals? Instead of blasting Washington, why not go to China and blast Chairman Mao? Why? Because you are a coward and you know they would fight back!
Feigning ignorance of the real evils of our times, though convenient, will not absolve us. The king continues,
“If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?”
Proverbs 24:12
God knows the characteristic sins of every crooked and twisted generation. He knows well our current abominations. And more than that, God knows we know about them too. He knows, for example, we are murdering our children at the altar of the goddess called choice. And some shouting down our grandfather’s evils are also the loudest advocates for this generation’s more heinous abominations. Standing before the judgment seat of God, we can say we did not care, but none can say we did not know.
Being men of great strength for today’s challenges will require us to be willing to fight where the battle rages, to be ready to suffer for the truth, and to live with Christ, without the comfort of being welcomed in the world. The foe we fail to meet at the gate in our own generation is the foe that will reign over our children in the next. Fail to show up on compromise, marriage, manhood and womanhood, and sexuality today, and the camp will be overrun tomorrow.
Where the battle rages is where the loyalty of the soldier is proved. It is here, before Pharaoh’s courts, that God commands us, “Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh.” Our Founders had decisions to make. Most were good, some could have been better, but God gives us the sobering task of destroying this generation’s lies.
You might imagine the heroes of yesterday were loved by their contemporaries. Some were; many were not. Charles Spurgeon said, “We admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago, but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down.” We love our heroes like many love lions, in the zoo and at a safe distance.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “They that know have grown afraid to speak. That is why sorrows that used to purify now only fester.” In every day of adversity, sorrows fester when men who know the truth grow afraid to speak. When they faint, when they grow weary, hopeless, unwilling, listless, the vulnerable and victimized are not rescued. Evil gains a foothold.
No man longs for small strength. But then again, who among us loves so deeply, believes so fiercely, trusts Christ so unshakably that he will not — cannot — faint with so much at stake? Today, souls will be lost. Today, children will be murdered. Today, Satan launches assaults on the church, and blinds the minds of unbelievers from the glory of Christ. Today is the only day we have, and today, not tomorrow, is the day of salvation. We are living in a dangerous time. Will we fight today’s battles or just hurl our accusations against those who fought in the battles of old? Will we speak, or let sorrows fester? We were born again to fight battles, to extend God’s kingdom, to war with devils.
Dozens of counties, hundreds of municipalities, a state, and our nation’s capital have all been named after George Washington. There are countless statues, monuments, and memorials to Washington all around the country. Think of the millions of individuals that still think this imperfect man is worthy of being remembered. So, here you come, like a coward fighting from a safe distance. Arriving on the battlefield 250 years later, but you want to be remembered too. So, as a mouse you stand in judgement of men. I wonder, my liberal friend, did you have ancestors that lived back then? If so, why didn’t they make a stand?
Our society, our families, our churches will not survive without us; without men molded to be good soldiers for such a time as this.
Dr. Worthington has been in the ministry for over forty five years and serves as President of Pathway Ministries and Christian Bible College.