Warfare and humility

Cerulean Sanctum's Dan Edelen has been on the blogosphere's forefront in writing about Christian manhood. This month he posts about the tension between the images of Christian as warrior and as humble servant:

By nature, humility and war are a hard marriage. The examples don't come as readily as the images we get of tough, swaggering men in bullet-shredded uniforms, each with a cigar firmly clenched between his teeth, mowing down one wave after another of Nazis, flamethrower in one hand, tank gun ripped off a flaming Sherman in the other. Such men ascend through the ranks and become twelve-star generals, husbands to nubile movie starlets, and CEOs of multinationals that consume lesser companies no matter how many poison pills are consumed. That's the role model of manliness we Americans hallow. (In the American Christian world, the model's pretty much the same, though the cigar is suspect.)

I love it. Then there's this:

The problem with Christian manhood today is not that there aren't enough villages to plunder, it's that humble, stooped grandmothers are out there on their knees fighting the battles that "real" men are too proud (or lazy or weak) to fight. Too many men in our churches moan that someone stole their warrior badge. Meanwhile, Satan is plundering OUR village. And he's doing it not in the obvious places, but in the spiritual realms, the very place that prayer alone works.

True Christian warriors are men of humility and grace. They understand that only when they are weak are they strong.

Amen.