Serving God with His people at Faith OPC has been a great joy and blessing. When I grow up, I want to umpire Little League Baseball. I will revel on that day when I can say to a 10-year-old boy after four pitched balls, "Take a walk in the sunshine."
My wife of 30+ years, Peggy, consistently demonstrates the love of Christ and remains my very best friend. Our six children, our four lovely, sweetie-pie daughters-in-law, and our four grandchildren serve as resident theologians.
Two quotes on the communion Christians have with one another in Christ Jesus
“Since all true believers are thus intimately united to Christ as the common Head of the whole body, and the Source of a common life, it follows that they must be initimately united together. If they have but one Head, and all members of one body, they must have one common life, and be all members one of another.”
A.A. Hodge, Princeton Seminary Professor, died in 1886
“Although the Christian has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, it is not a private relationship.”
Phil Ryken, presently the Pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia
It was five years ago, March 31, 2005, that Terry Schiavo passed away; we also remember the call to stand for life. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play!
My wife recently read this book, and it sounds like a super read.
Note this announcement: Country Legend Randy Travis Headlines the April 11 show in Indianapolis with Opening Act Collin Raye
This concert showcases two award-winning Country stars in a rare appearance together on the same stage! It promises to be a fabulous music show, long to be remembered by country music fans! The concert comes just days after the fifth anniversary of Terri Schiavo's death and will benefit the Foundation established by her family.
With one of the most recognizable voices in country music and over twenty-five years on the country music charts, Randy Travis is one of the top-ten selling solo country artists of all time. Collin Raye has produced five Platinum Albums, and fifteen #1 hits. But perhaps the closest to Collin's heart is his granddaughter, Haley, who is afflicted with a rare degenerative brain disorder. Collin has worked tirelessly to help find a cure for Haley and has helped other families who are faced with similar situations.
The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Concert will be Sunday, April 11, 2010…
I got wind of this news today about the concert, and I wanted to pass it along. It’s this news that helps us to keep jumping up and down with gratefulness for the kindness of our God and His common grace.
Lingering meditation about King Saul in 1 Samuel 28
1 Samuel 28:15-16: After Saul had the woman of En Dor call Samuel
Now Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”
And Saul answered, “I am deeply distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams. Therefore I have called you, that you may reveal to me what I should do.”
Then Samuel said: “Why then do you ask me, seeing the LORD has departed from you and has become your enemy?”
Saul hears this very, very bad news from Samuel, just as back in 1 Samuel 15. It’s the same man--Samuel, and he has the same message--words of rebuke and judgment.
It is one thing to be entangled in our earthly trials, like David; it is a country mile difference to be cut off from God, as was Saul's case.
Thomas Wilcox, a British Puritan of the 1550s-early 1600’s, stood fast against a heart-less religion and devotion. He has words germane to Saul's life. Saul was one to give himself to the motions of faith; but without repentance and turning. Motions are God-designed and good: we pray, we praise, we offer gifts, we practice specific prescriptions of His truth, but here's the question: do we do so in repentance? Do we turn from every inch of trust in ourselves in order to turn to God through Jesus Christ?
Listen to this from Wilcox; thanks to pastor-friend, HT, David York for this:
“A Christless, formal religion, will be the blackest sight next to hell that can be. You may have many good things, and yet one thing may be wanting, that may make you go away sorrowful from Christ. You have never sold all; you have never parted with all your own righteousness, and so on. You may be high in duty and yet a perfect enemy and adversary to Christ, in every prayer, in every ordinance. Labour after sanctification to your utmost; but make not a Christ of it to save yourself; if so, it must come down one way or other. Christ’s infinite satisfaction, not your sanctification, must be your justification before God.”
Thomas Wilcox, Puritan in the London area, died 1608.
I can remember back 2005-06 plowing through about 3/4 of Smith's book on the massive survey of Protestant young people.
With our young people,
23% are NOT sure about the existence of miracles
33% definitely or maybe definitely believe in reincarnation
41% disagree with the statement that people should practice only one faith
Smith concludes: For a tradition that has so strongly emphasized infallibility or inerrancy of the Bible, the exclusive claims of conservative Christianity, and the need for a personal commitment of one's life to God, some of these numbers are astounding. He summarizes that the local church is at fault. Our distinct impression is that very many religious congregations and communities of faith in the United States are failing rather badly in religiously engaging and educating their youth.
See Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford Press, 2005).
Dale Ralph Davis, a PCA man, has insightful words on 1 Samuel 28
Davis notes how the story in 1 Samuel 27 up to 28:2 gives all the muscle to David and his entanglement with King Achish of Gath. Specifically, Davis notes that there's an interruption of the story---we would like to go on into chapter 29 to finish with David; but now, here, it abruptly moves to Saul's coming interplay with the medium of Endor.
What's the target-point at which Davis is aiming?
He says the writer leaves us hanging about David. We've been primed to read through to the end of David's situation, but no. It's whiplash reading.
What happened to David being Achish's bodyguard and so on?
There's something more important. David had his entanglements; Saul has his excommunication. Heaven is silent. God's voice has been removed. God's silence and the coming judgment for Saul are vital for Israel's discipleship, and ours.
Verse 3 Samuel is dead.
Verses 7-8 Saul readies to inquire of the medium.
Verses 15-19 When Samuel does speak to Saul it's the rehash of his disobedience and the consequences. There's no revelation nor guidance for Saul, only confrontation.
It's an Alaska-Canadian Highway black night for Saul; so, so dark.
Davis parks it over the left field fence: it's one thing to be in a complicated trial with your enemies (David in chapter 27); it's altogether miles different to be without God, without hope in this world and the next.
Avoid the Homogeneity Tendencies in Youth Ministry
Yaconelli tells his listeners:
“You need to take the young people on a water skiing trip; but you also need to take them to the local historical museum. Yeah, that's right.
You need to the take high school students water skiing, and you need to take them to the ballet. Yes, I said, ballet.
You say: Mike, you'll only get three kids to the ballet.
I say: That's right. The three kids that need your attention and care that you wouldn't otherwise minister to. Those three kids will show up.” Yaconelli goes on to say things like: Refuse to plan things only designed to reach the jocks and popular kids at church. The church and your thinking about the youth of the church needs to avoid homogeneity. We're not all the same. Homogeneity breeds a maintenance mentality. We do things because we do things; we reach students the way we've always done it. Wise words on youth ministry in the local church.
Luther’s theology of the cross, an emphasis on weakness
Martin Luther of the very early 1500’s promised St. Anne, “Help me, and I’ll become a monk.” Remember, he had been walking in a violent rainstorm, and at the bone-rattling sounds of colossal thunderbolts, he made his cry to Anne. He believed that she had protected him that day, and so he left law school and entered an Augustinian monastery.At that point, his spiritual journey began.
As a student and teacher, he started to dig into the Word. He hop-scotched from Rome’s view of personal righteousness, then over to his growing disdain for man’s practice of penance, and then over to his own personal guilt about his sin, then over to various Bible passages on the grace and mercy of God.He landed on Romans 1:16-17. He writes about how this text particularly and other passages in Romans became a floodgate of light on his soul; praise God, he was re-born to paradise. He experienced new-found liberty! God’s just sentence of death had been hanging over him, a sentence of judgment so well-deserving because of the weakness of man’s flesh to obey and to keep obeying God’s righteous law. How could God ever accept him?
The cross of Jesus Christ was the biblical thunderbolt that got Martin’s attention. Over time, it became the heart-penetrating bolt of life for him. The Book of Galatians inflamed his soul and rightly so. Galatians 2:20 was a bread and butter text, maybe we can call it a life verse: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Luther knew his own body had been nailed to the tree at Calvary in the atoning work of Jesus; he also knew that he, with his guilt, had been buried with Christ in the tomb. This is to say, his life and his death in being united to Christ’s life and death, meant judgment had passed! Christ’s work satisfied divine justice. It’s nothing of Luther’s own righteousness that God would look upon, it’s all of Jesus and His blood and righteousness! Righteousness is accounted to him by faith in Christ; such a gift and all other graces Luther would come to say are alien to him. Heavenly gifts are showered from above.
Since Luther underscored Christ’s identity with our very humanity to be our Savior, it’s important to keep the implications in view. What one implication needs attention? Author and Teacher Carl Trueman reminds us of how there are teachers and theologians who emphasize a theology of glory, that is, they reflect on God and His ways in His loftiness and splendor, His heavenly glory, and they neglect the bodily and earthly splendor of His revelation in Jesus. The cross tells us something of the majesty and glory that is very earth-bound. The cross beams with light!
Trueman says that because of the work of Christ at Golgotha, Luther’s meditation and theology received new color.Trueman would remind us to keep Luther’s work on this topic in mind; it should help us with the use of particular words when thinking about the Christian life.
Trueman writes:
“Take for example the word power. When theologians of glory read about divine power in the Bible, or use the term in their own theology, they assume that it is analogous to human power. They suppose that they can arrive at an understanding of divine power by magnifying to an infinite degree the most powerful thing of which they can think. In light of the cross, however, this understanding of divine power is the very opposite of what divine power is all about. Divine power is revealed in the weakness of the cross, for it is in his apparent defeat at the hands of evil powers and corrupt earthly authorities that Jesus shows his divine power in the conquest of death and of all the powers of evil. So when a Christian talks about divine power, or even about church or Christian power, it is to be conceived of in terms of the cross—power hidden in the form of weakness.”
My former pastor down in San Diego, Dick Kaufmann, first taught me this theology of weakness. He learned it from the late Jack Miller of the Philadelphia area and his preaching and writings. The gospel hymn has it for us: There is power, power, wonder-working power, in the precious blood of the Lamb.
No question, the theology of weakness seen through the window of 1 Corinthians 1:18-ff, for example, gives shape to our view of God’s saving plan, His calling us out of sin and darkness, the task of preaching, the view point and approach of the world’s mindset, and the fruit with which we’re concerned. In this way, we can acknowledge with the apostle Paul that all we desire to be about is to know Christ and Him crucified.
It was Martin Luther that brought this kind of teaching to the Protestant Reformation table of the 1500s. There’ll be little more on Luther’s teaching on the cross, weakness and the Christian life soon.
It was a dark and stormy night, and all the boys were sitting around...
“The story is not your story or my story or his-story or her-story or some neat story someone read or made up. The story of the sermon and of the hymns and of the processions and of the sacramental acts and of the readings is to be God's story, the story of the Bible. Preachers are the greatest sinners here. The text already is and belongs to the one true story; it does not need to be helped out in this respect. What is said and enacted in the Church must be with the greatest exactitude and faithfulness and exclusivity the story of creation and redemption by the God of Israel and Father of the risen Christ. As we used to say: period.” Robert W. Jensen in First Things, his article: How the World Lost its Story.
Tomorrow, God willing, you unite in the bond of covenant love, fidelity and service. Peggy and I are giddy for you both. We wish we could be there. Being witnesses within the public arena for a wedding affirms once again that our God continually—in a seamless way between the home and the church—boosts our faith and devotion. Your covenant making tomorrow at 1:00 PM nudges us all into greater and greater covenant faithfulness. We’ll miss your own vow-exchanging and the emotion and joy!
I know that both your parents will beam with you with a radiance of Christ’s good pleasure as they see the two of you united in marriage. Parents are particularly grateful and blessed to see this benchmark in life. Their own fruit of the labor of their loins, hands and hearts experiences a treasured aspect of the harvest. Parents value the ability to see the fruit of their hands. Resurrection hope gets fortification at weddings! Their own joy will be the complete sharing in yours—amen!
I wish somehow, CJ, that the two of us would have been able to meet face to face, and give one another a chest butt and share a beer. I have heard glowing testimonies of God’s kindness to you—with imparting to you His gift of grace and His many gifts of service within the Body of Christ. Continue on, son of the covenant, and grow in the Lord’s love and sacrificial service unto the King.
I exhort you brother with Ephesians 5: 26: imitate your Savior, and take the words of promise, blessing, cheer, comfort, hope, forward-looking anticipation and more and more, and wash your dear bride. I take the meaning of the word “the washing of the word,” in vs. 26 to mean the words that we speak to our wives as daily rituals of thoughtfulness, the everyday routines of the words of kindness and favor. Jesus told Peter and the other eleven that smaller cleansings are needful—the everyday kind like the feet: “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean…” The daily washings are the ones that are timely when she’s tired, discouraged, defeated and so on with respect to her faith and service. As you do this to Lisa, CJ, you’ll remind yourself and her of Christ’s work of redemption. Our Lord Jesus has washed us with His blood, we act upon His finished work washing and bathing with His Word of hope for growth in His sanctification. Wash her, brother! Grab your towel and basin and speak words of hope, life and faith. She will always have a sparkle in her eye and a kick in her step when she hears encouraging words from her prince.
My dear Lisa! I am almost in tears thinking about you today! I can remember doing the Bible study at Chapelgate Christian Academy in Maryland maybe 10-12 years ago, and I would see you around the school and various places with your school buds. I remember your bouncy step around your home in Glenwood. You always had a smile on, and I can remember the fun you had with our kids—especially with Toby. I have treasured your model of godliness of self-giving service. No doubt, you follow your folks on this. Your thoughtful ways of the little things for others are vivid in my mind. Yes indeedy, you’re a help-meet to the 10th power! Lisa, honor your man by contributing to his station in life. You’ve been privileged to gain skill in practical service at your own occupation in the past 2-3 years now, and I am sure that practical service will be a lift for your man and it will serve as a resource from which you will draw. Keep your eyes on Jesus Christ in your role of being the soil of humility, submission and service. It’s your soil of such things—being low, being a servant without words, see 1 Peter 3:1-6—where he is most influenced for growth. Be the soil in which CJ’s roots can go down deep for strength as God raises him up with growth to be a strong oak of a man.
To you both: may the Lord Jesus Christ be the supply of truth, life and faith as your lives are dedicated to His honor. May He enable you to hold fast to your good confession, to practice your oaths of loyalty that you make to one another tomorrow, and that you might walk in His service as husband and wife displaying the testimony that God has sent His Son for saving love, power and renewal.
Amen and Amen—in the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
One way to learn more about God's good use of ritual
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs.
“The Pledge is constitutional,” Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling.“The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded.”
We can joyfully express gratitude to God for this! God has displayed His gracious way of intervention and preservation regarding His own providential favor for Christians in this land. Amen and Amen.
Did you notice the words, “The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of the ideals…”
The men of the nations and peoples of citizenship have their ways of symbol and worship. It’s inescapable. Men are ritual beings; men are given to symbolic practice and ritual—in this case, it comes via public voices in recitation as a form of civil pageantry. We have it right here: unison of voices, eyes focused, bodily posture, cadence and form; and with diction of prescribed words—from memory to boot, and more.
We try to deny our rituality as humans, generally, and we try to banish it from our public corporate worship, specifically. It’s can’t be done.
Read this explanation from Ken Myers:
Ritual is thus part of human nature. It is not peculiar to religion; it is part of being human. The rejection of ritual is almost impossible, since actions and gestures have a way of becoming formalized even when we don't try to formalize them. But the effort to overturn all ritual is a wonderful way to identify with the dehumanizing tendencies of modern culture; a wonderful way to reject the assumption that there are things common to human actions and societies.
Here I must ask respectfully if the Puritans' distaste for ceremonies and rituals was really consistent with their convictions about the universality of human nature and the necessity of taking the light of nature seriously. One early twentieth-century Lutheran noted that the New England Puritans possessed a "rigid Calvinistic hostility to everything that is studied or uniform in religious ceremony, and for a century or more they seemed to glory in the distinction of maintaining church song in the barbarous condition that this art has ever suffered since the founding of Christianity." The Puritans' purge of liturgy began with the worthy goal of liberating Christian consciences from false obligations imposed by the Roman Church. But one must ask if they didn't err in condemning any effort to structure the experience of worship in ways that accord with created human nature.
Ceremony per se is not a problem. After all, the strictest Reformed churches still structure their services somehow, still have ushers walk in sync when delivering offering plates, and still allow pastors to use certain archaisms when praying. There are hidden rituals in many allegedly ritual-free churches. These hidden rituals simply lack formal names; often they came into being without any thought or care, usually being products of pastors' personalities.
From Ken Myers and his site at Mars Hill Audio commentary and cultural analysis ministry in Virginia.
Ritual and formalism are here to stay—the question regarding public worship is: are you using it for the good pleasure and honor of our gracious King?
Events like this ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reminds of us of such things.
This coming Friday and Saturday, Faith OPC/Grants Pass is hosting the DVD presentations from Paul Tripp on his latest marriage series, What Did You Expect?We're grateful. There are about 14-15 couples signed up.
Tripp shovels grace upon our self-centered ways of promoting our own aims for comfort at all costs—better known as self-sufficiency—and hammers away on us with the gospel. This excerpt is some of his finest Napa Valley-like wine:
“God’s grace purposes to expose and free you from your bondage to you. His grace is meant to bring you to the end of yourself so that you willing finally begin to place your identity, your meaning and purpose, and your inner sense of well-being in him.
So he places you in a comprehensive relationship with another flawed person, and he places that relationship right in the middle of a very broken world.
To add to this, he designs circumstances for you that you would have never designed for yourself.
All this is meant to bring you to the end of yourself, because that is where true righteousness begins.
He wants you to give up.
He wants you to abandon your dream.
He wants you to face the futility of trying to manipulate the other person into your service.
He knows there is no life to be found in these things.
What does this practically mean?
It means the trouble that you face in your marriage is not an evidence of the failure of grace.
No, these troubles are grace.
They are tools God uses to pry us out of the stultifying confines of the kingdom of self so that we can be free to luxuriate in the big-sky glories of the kingdom of God.
This means that you and I will never understand our marriages and never be satisfied with them until we understand that marriage is not an end to itself.
No, the reality is that marriage has been designed by God to be a means to an end.
When you make it the end, bad things happen.
But when you begin to understand that it is a means to an end, then you begin to enjoy and see the value in things that you would not have been able to enjoy before.”
From his book, What Did You Expect?, pp. 51-52.
G. Mark Sumpter
HT: From Justin Taylor, Crossway Publishing, Wheaton, Ill.
What's Your Reason for Sleeping in and Staying Away From Corporate Worship?
In opening up Hebrews 12:22-24, we get the potent reminder that when we gather in the Lord's presence with His people, we make our way to Zion above, the heavenly assembly! The celebration of God's glory is underway; we get the privilege of joining in the praise and honor of the King. Our voices blend with the saints and angels of glory.
Listen to Ed Clowney on this:
The church is the assembly, not primarily because we meet together in assemblies here on earth but because we have the awesome privilege to gather with the saints and angels with Christ in glory…The author of Hebrews warns us not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Heb 10:25). As we meet in heaven, so we are to gather on earth. Consider what that means. Our gathering together is not incidental—the church is the assembly of the people of God. Moreover, as we gather we stand in the presence of the Lord. We are in the company of the angels and of all believers. From Clowney's The Living Church, p. 12.
Believer, get up and get moving on Sunday AMs! Forget about worshiping at Beside Baptist or Pillow Presbyterian! Come, join the glorified, eschatological church. The worship of God's people on earth is linked right into the heavenly court of God's holiness and splendor in glory! We've got glory to attend to!
After the benediction at the end of worship, our elders have a liturgical recessional. We walk the center aisle to the back of the worship assembly, and proceed to stand at the back to greet the saints as they leave the service of worship.
I have been in multiple conversations over the years with folks about this recessional--sometimes with fellow elders, sometimes with the members of the church.
Why? Why do you men walk out of the service going down the aisle through the congregation?
One of our elders has repeatedly said: We're leading the congregation out from the presence of God in His worship, so that the congregation is led forth into His service in the world.
Well spoken, and it's very practical contributing to our symbolism regarding the called-together worshiping soldiers and saints of God's people.
God is our fore guard and our rear guard. Our elders lead at the beginning and at the ending of worship.
It's taken me a long time to warm up to his explanation. But I'm there.
I am not all that discerning about stories, after all, I've just now in my early 50s plowed through this first 513-pager. But let me cut to the chase quickly on one point. I wasn't ready for the steamy scenery in places. I think the grandfathers of Victor Books--the founders of the books division of Scripture Press over in Colorado Springs--are rolling 6 feet under. James Adair, God rest his soul, was the author of the old Scripture Press Power Papers that I used to use with 6th grade students up in Anchorage. Adair was one of the early men behind Victor Books. His Sunday School take-homes were great!
Anyway, when I read the Victor Books publication, The Puritans, by Jack Cavanaugh, the first volume in the American Family Protrait series, at times I had to roll down the windows and grab some ice-cold lemonade. It was getting a little hot.
On page 58, we read of a gal ducking under a bar so that she can emerge up between a man's arms, and now being face to face...
“Your crazy!” Marshall said with a smile.
“Crazy,” she replied with a playful peck on his lips, “when it comes to you.”
Marshall released the bar and pulled Mary Sedgewick to him. Any resistance he once had was gone as he passionately embraced his lover, who also happened to be his professor's daughter and his partner in crime...”
Whoa.
There's more in other places too. The book was a fun story and kept my interest. I wasn't prepared for the parts that included cars parked at the beach, where people were watching the submarine races.
1 Samuel and the stories of enemies, especially the narratives about Saul and David, have heightened my awareness of the need for worship and world-view living to be rounded out by a theology of enemies. I've heard a ton about a theology of quiet times, worship, daily work, finances, end times, and the like. But I've known very, very little of a Word-grounded theology of enemies. Have you ever heard the pastor announce on a Sunday morning: This coming Wednesday night, we'll be starting three small groups on Waging Godly Warfare on Enemies?
There will be much more on this in other posts, but at the start, we must learn to embrace and emulate the enmity that God established in the world at Genesis 3:15 with the words, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” Somehow we need to get our lives wrapped around God's appointed, deliberate plan to set up and use the enmity between Christ and the men of unbelief. Being a Christian requires taking up Christ's cause and being on His side in a war that began right here in the garden; it's something that God ordered for the world of time, for the men of nations and for everyday living. This war will go on and on until the last day. It's the war of the Seed of the woman—Christ and His people, and the seed of the serpent. We were enlisted when the sign-line of baptism was applied to us; that's when Jesus called us to be His own, summoning us to a life of faith and faithful allegiance. It's war time, all leave has been canceled.
Part of the war is the godly practice of prayer. We're to pray against enemies, those against God and His gospel; and at the same time, we're to pray for His saving work in them. Praying curses against them like the imprecatory psalms in the Bible demonstrates faith.
I like this quote from PCA minister, John Day. It's from his book Crying for Justice. It's well worth our meditation. Listen to Day as he notes the role of faith in calling out to God to bring curses down on His enemies.
“...in the community of Israel, as in the broader ancient Near East, the legitimate curse was an expression of human powerlessness. It was used when people were unable to adequately help or protect themselves. This cry was the voice of the oppressed, the victim, and the unjustly accused. It was directed against powerful or unconvictable offenders. Indeed, the legitimate curse was an act of faith that God's desire for justice, as expressed in the Law and ethical teachings of religion, would be reflected in real life. When viewed in this light, the so-called imprecatory psalms and other imprecatory texts, which seem so vicious and strange to the modern reader, are seen to be expressions of faith in the just rule of Yahweh in situations in which the covenant member or community can see no other source of help or possible means of securing just treatment.”
Of course, I am one of Day's modern readers. Over the years, I have kept a safe distance from the imprecatory psalms. I have figured that name-calling, curse-praying and other similar forms of cries to God were for people and matters far, far away from today's evangelical Christianity. I've never thought of the imprecatory psalms as a show of faith, as a show of godliness of what real men do when they are backed into a corner, without the help and assistance of man.
