solid as a rock. it's a porous rock but it's still a rock.

This is why every visit from my father is a fruitful one – each one gives me loads to process and think about. One thing that struck me while he and I debated, tussled and sparred, was the subject of strength. Very often an ideological line was invisibly drawn linking Christianity-masculinity-strength-truth. And this kind of theological word association was odd to me.
Let’s move away from my father, because this isn’t really about him. It’s more about Christian discourse. Our church culture conflates all these terms, flattening them until they’re indistinct from one another. (And for the dictionary deprived, ‘conflate’ does not mean ‘negate.’)

I wonder how we’ve arrived at this linguistic pancake. Although sermons and screeds are built around the idea of cultivating the faithful until we resemble concrete, I wonder if that’s true - if we should display ourselves like pillars of concrete. All our most moving narratives of Christian identity depict martyrdom – an extreme act of effacement. Christ’s sacrifice is the source of our faith; Paul even advises slaves to be content. In contrast, the perfect example of masculine pulchritude, King David wins on the battlefield but, because he succumbs to concomitant impulses (lust and pride), he suffers the eventual destruction and dissolution of his family and legacy.

So. Just for the sake of argument, what other narratives am I missing – either of ‘weakness triumphant’ or ‘strength run amok’? (Or even vice versa – brute strength being rewarded and praised as a virtue?)