Requiem for Manhood
Here is the thing that I grieve that just shows what wusses we've become, forgive my language, but I just so viscerally feel the gruesome dissipation right now, sorry.
This weekend saw the final NASCAR race at what is by the sponsor name "Auto Club" Speedway in Fontana. I'm just happy to call it the Fontana Speedway, and it has been hosting all kinds of races since it opened in 1997. It indeed one of the very best racetracks in all of motor sports, it really is. There is so much jostling for position at the highest speeds, it has made for the very best racing there could ever be. Objectively. You could quote many other seasoned racing aficionados and I know you'd get wide agreement. I will add it is the racetrack that is closest to my own home and I have seen a few races there in person.
Now, they want to turn it into a short track. They are really, actually, and mind-bendingly stupidly going to carve up that beautiful track, haul all the concrete away, and build a dinky, piddly short track. Please.
On June 27, 2015, the greatest automobile race ever in the history of auto racing anywhere was held. It was the MAVTV 500, I don't even know what "MAVTV" is, but whatever, it was the name sponsor. 23 Indycar drivers placed their cars on the track in a race that was somewhere at the midpoint of the Indycar series that year, and that have something like twenty or so races on the season.
I'd never seen anything like it. Many others felt the same way. For the entire race the cars were running in large close packs of 10 to 15 cars, all the time, the whole time -- flying down the track at well over 200 miles-per-hour. The entire time the drivers were slipping in and out of their lanes, streaking up and down the track for position, moving high and low with phenomenal dexterity.
Lap after lap it was like that, never once was there a dull moment. The race ended when just as the white flag flew for one lap to go Ryan Hunter-Reay got into it with Ryan Briscoe who flew into the air and flipped and flopped until he landed right-side-up and turned out to be okay -- all of this right in front of the grandstands near the start-finish line.
Graham Rahal was in the lead at the time and since there was no overtime he was declared the winner.
Still.
What does this have to do with anything?
Here's the deal.
First of all, that was the last Indycar race run at the Fontana Speedway, back then in 2015. No more after that. None. Excuse me? After that spectacular amazingness you aren't going to race there again?
One of the reasons they gave was the combination of speeds and close pack racing made the racing too dangerous. Oh my. There you go as to the representative nature of this idiocy to what is happening with manhood, with masculinity, with being a husband and a father and a wealth producer and a risk taker and a courageous leader...
How have we allowed ourselves to get so wussified? (If you'll excuse me, but it is true...)
So who's fault is that? The race track's? No, it is the ding-dong race track and auto racing organization's fault -- it is their ineptitude at marketing. Where are the men getting going and doing the heavy lifting of making a fantastic spectacle like this work?
So, do they get off their asses and get it in gear and market this phenomenal experience for next time to thousands of race fans who'd love to come enjoy what happened on that wonderful June day?
Nope. They just wuss out.
And I just grieve. And I do so a lot because again I see it so reflective of how much men simply refuse to be men out there.
Today I saw a news story that said Tennessee (right there in the heartland of NASCAR country, by the way) passed a law that outlaws any medical procedure that changes a child's biological sexual constitution. Of course it was praised up and down by well-meaning people who kind of don't like this transgender, transexual, trans-whatever thing going around. I understand that sentiment and agree wholeheartedly.
But this particular effort is dangerously misguided.
When a child is lawfully prevented from having some medical thing done to him or her, what happens when he or she looks at Uncle Bob who can perfectly legally turn himself into Aunt Babs? Sorry but a very non-stupid child is going to wonder. Don't get me wrong, it is never the child who would ever make such a decision for himself or herself to do such a thing, but foolish adults certainly do.
In Tennessee now no adult may do that to a child, but they may do it to themselves. Even if it can't be done to a child, that child will still believe it perfectly fine because an adult can do it. In that sense, by default, that law enshrines adult "transitioning" into firm legal protection.
They've just officially legalized the stultifyingly horrific evils of trans-whatever, and to the child the message remains as a general rule it is still a perfectly fine thing to do.
Sorry, but by the transcendently objective principles of God's law and human decency and just plain meaningful connection with reality, the only law that should ever be passed is the one that says no medical personnel may do any such mutilation on any human being. Right now doctors are prohibited from sawing off the arms of people who claim they are earthworms. I mean really, with this trans-whatever enablement, why should doctors be prohibited from doing that? Or from lopping off limbs and replacing them with wings because you believe yourself to be a seagull? Or surgically adding a few extra prosthetic limbs because you believe yourself to be a spider and want to crawl around all the time?
This is just no different. Bodily mutilation should be against the law for everyone for any of these kinds of instances for all people in all places.
Furthermore, where are the courageous men out there to make this argument and stand for righteousness?
How many instances of these kinds of things are ravaging our society, even our closest communities and dearest families because men refuse to be men. I am further convinced we've gone so far away from Christ and have no idea about His model for manhood that this is becoming worse and worse and worse.
This is the only reason I do this ministry work. Here to vent a bit in a blog post about my grief... but also to maybe just say, wow, men, turn to Christ and learn from Him. Put your faith on Him. Trust in Him. Even be ungrafted to a World System that is part of yanking you and your natural masculinity through the metaphorical wood chipper -- and instead enter the glorious Kingdom where Christ wants to honor who He made you and redeemed you to be.
This does mean that we have enough courage to call out what is happening with the wickedly distorted considerations of sexuality that are so devastating right now, but also in Christ share the truth that there is mercy and grace and healing that comes from repentance and rest in Him for anyone mixed up in that lethal hellscape.
There are certainly dozens of other major ways manhood is being eviscerated right now. It is happening to womanhood too, and it is leaving a terrible swath of destroyed souls in its wake. This hideous messing-about with sexual integrity on a wholesale level is one of the devil's most insidious weapons, and it sure does look like he's winning this war.
But again, God's mercy triumphs over judgment. His judgment is quite severe, and very justified, but in His great lovingkindness He waits. Again again, don't wait. Join with other men and be Kingdom out there.
___
Comments
Post a Comment