Behold the Man

If you are a Christian woman who is appalled by abortion, appalled by the mass psychosis surrounding Lindsay Clancy, and appalled by preachers pandering to it, I am not talking about you. I am talking about the women making these arguments and the preachers humiliating themselves to remain in their good graces, of which I have seen many.

Yesterday I wrote about churches that want a preacher like the nations round about. This is what that demand eventually produces. It produces men who know what God has said and still measure their words by whether the women listening will approve.

There is a moral bankruptcy underneath much of what we are watching. Since 1990, more than two billion unborn children have been killed by abortion worldwide. That number is roughly equivalent to one quarter of the entire population presently living on Earth.

That slaughter required more than doctors willing to perform abortions. It required millions upon millions of people willing to approve them, defend them, finance them, vote to protect them, and condemn anyone who called the act what it is.

“Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” Romans 1:32

God does not grant moral innocence to the person who applauds evil from a safe distance. Approval matters. Political support matters. Defending the deed matters.

Self is their god, and the weak and helpless are the sacrifice laid upon its altar. A child stands between a woman and school, career, sexual freedom, money, social life, or the future she has chosen for herself, and the child becomes expendable.

They want the power to kill their children, and they do not want to be condemned for exercising that power. They will sacrifice the child rather than submit themselves to the consequences of their own decisions.

Then Lindsay Clancy killed her three children, and the same moral instinct appeared in another form. Three children were dead, yet the moral attention of thousands of women immediately rushed back toward the mother who killed them.

Her illness. Her medications. Her exhaustion. Her pregnancies. Her husband. Her doctors. Her support system. Her circumstances.

Every surrounding circumstance was summoned to explain what happened, while the three dead children repeatedly became supporting characters in the story of their mother’s suffering. That is suicidal empathy, compassion severed from judgment until sympathy for the person who committed the evil begins swallowing sympathy for the people destroyed by it.

Postpartum psychosis is real. Mental illness can impair judgment. Medical treatment can fail, and every failure surrounding Lindsay Clancy deserves honest examination.

None of those facts requires Christians to become morally confused about three murdered children. Explanation does not require moral inversion, and compassion does not require us to place the person who killed the children at the center of the tragedy.

That is why some of the ugliest jokes surrounding this case strike such a nerve. People have described what Clancy did as an “extremely late-term abortion.” The phrase is deliberately outrageous because her children had already been born and their deaths were murder.

The insult works because it accuses her defenders of carrying the same moral instinct beyond birth. Center the woman. Catalogue her burdens. Explain why she suffered. Treat judgment as cruelty. Let the life of the weaker human being disappear underneath the needs of the stronger one.

What has sickened me most has been watching men who call themselves preachers scramble to prove to these women that they are safe. They mitigate, qualify, explain, and soften because plainly condemning evil might cost them female approval.

They are leveraging their souls so as to stay in the good graces of baby-murdering women.

To accomplish that, they need a Jesus who approves of their cowardice. Pilate gave them the caricature they require.

“Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!” John 19:5

Look at Him as Pilate presented Him. Beaten. Bloodied. Crowned with thorns. Wrapped in purple as a joke. He appears harmless, humiliated, and defeated.

That is the Jesus these men want. They want an impotent Jesus, defeated and crucified on the cross of their own false virtue.

Their Jesus understands everything and condemns almost nothing. He comforts without demanding repentance, forgives without requiring submission, suffers without exercising judgment, and possesses enough compassion to affirm whatever moral confusion happens to be standing in front of Him.

The actual Christ standing before Pilate remained King while men mocked His kingship. His submission to suffering came from obedience to the Father, and His restraint came from strength under perfect control.

Christ never needed the approval of the people He corrected. He spoke truth to women and men, rulers and beggars, disciples and enemies, because the Father’s will governed His speech.

These preachers have taken His voluntary humiliation and turned it into a theology of weakness. Then they call their fear compassion, their appeasement gentleness, and their refusal to offend Christlikeness.

The church in America cannot recover while its men fear the displeasure of liberal women more than they fear God. It cannot recover while preachers soften the Word because women who defend abortion, excuse evil, or resent judgment might call them cruel.

A preacher must possess enough courage to offend women when fidelity to God requires it. He must also possess enough courage to offend the men who abase themselves for those women’s approval.

Pilate pointed to the bleeding Christ and said, “Behold the man.” Too many Christians have accepted Pilate’s caricature and built their religion around it.

The man in the purple robe was still the King. Christian men need to remember whom they are actually preaching.