The Politically Incorrect Argument for Christianity

Alternate Title: Muscular Christianity, Power and the Case Against Team Beta

Maybe redundant if any argument for Christianity is politically incorrect, which it is according to “Silicon Valley.”

The idea for this article came when I saw that Andrew Tate is a Muslim now. And I thought, isn’t that cute? His explained reasoning was that Christianity has gone woke, which is absurd. But men have been bored with Christianity for centuries. Brett McKay wrote Muscular Christianity about the movement that tried to address this. It features chapters like “Is Christianity an Inherently Feminine Religion?” and “The Feminization of Christianity.”

The Muscular Christianity movement spawned two organizations I was active in without realizing their heritage: the YMCA and the Boy Scouts. To kick off the politically incorrect argument, a couple quotes from the book on that movement.

The danger of this growing effeminacy, men like [Theodore Roosevelt] thought, was that it “let those who stand for evil have all the virile qualities,” while “gentlemen who were very nice, very refined, who shook their heads over political corruption and discussed it in drawing rooms and parlors were wholly unable to grapple with real men in real life.” Who would secure the country’s ideals in an age of “over-softness” and “over-sentimentality,” Roosevelt asked. “Unless we keep the barbarian virtues,” he warned, “gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.”

Muscular Christianity by Brett McKay

The next passage is a quote lifted from Thomas Hughes’s “Tom Brown”:

The least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man’s body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men.

Muscular Christianity by Brett McKay

I wrote an argument for someone like Andrew Tate, or someone who likes Tate. For men who consider themselves to be, or aspire to be, alpha males … why Christianity? If you’re trying to get ahead, so why waste your time with kindness, charity and mercy?

That’s exactly what the Jews thought of Jesus when he was alive. They expected in a messiah a warrior leader who would liberate them from the Romans, maybe someone like Tate, to lead a revolution. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” was not what they wanted to hear. But zoom out and fast forward a couple millennia. Look at His results.

Jesus’s church was built in the heart of Rome itself, and Christianity has conquered the world as the largest religion, dominating the most powerful nations. How have the Jews fared? How is the average Jew living today, compared to 2,000 years ago? They went from a backwater tribe to the heights of power and prosperity. They’re so successful they arouse jealousy worldwide. The Jews achieved this within Christian nations. I would say their rise was driven by Jesus.

The Jews tried to expel the Romans but never could alone. They never created their own homeland, until the last century, when the leading Christian nations carved out a nation which included Jerusalem, Judea, the land of Israel.

Obviously it hasn’t been all good for all Jews, as nothing is, but Jesus was nothing less than the messiah they were promised. How many Jews of His time could have imagined what He would deliver on a long enough timeline?

You can read Machiavelli and the 48 Laws and Tate Speech and the Art of the Deal, but it’s all a siren song. The true path to power and prosperity is not focusing on self. Self-sacrifice and loving your neighbor works in a backhanded way that serves you. It doesn’t make sense, but it works. It’s the mystery of faith. The meek will inherit the earth. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

That mystery is how Christianity became the alpha of all religions. Non-Christians scrub the toilets of the Christians. They emigrate for the privilege of scrubbing Christian toilets, to enjoy a little Christian fruit. To be a Muslim is to be a bottomer.

Muslim nations cry genocide at what Christians do on accident. If Christian nations really wanted to destroy a Muslim nation, they could. If they’re not killing them all, it’s because they’re not trying.

Some Muslim nations would wipe Christians (or Jews) off the map if they could, but they can’t. The Christian nations could wipe them from the map, but won’t. That is the essence of the power dynamic.

Muslims are at the bottom, the essence of beta. To go Muslim is to join the B-Team. Team Beta. You’re a freshman in college joining the Lambda Lambda Lambdas.

If you want to join Team Alpha, there is no debate. You become Christian.

I sat on this for a week before publishing. It doesn’t feel right. It almost makes me cringe. It does reflect the essence is what I felt in the context of having read about Muscular Christianity and seeing Andrew Tate become a Muslim. But it’s not just politically incorrect, it’s hypocritical.

Jesus did not spend His time with kings. If He were around today, Jesus would weep for the miserable Muslims in the most pitiful place on earth, in Gaza. It’s tempting for me to say to them, less than a generation after electing Hamas to power, “What did you expect? How did you think it was going to end?” And I’d consider it their own fault.

Or it’s easy for me to view the panhandler with contempt. After all, how many have I known for whom it was nothing less than a job? Paying them is enabling them.

But neither way is Christian. Maybe not cash, but Jesus would help. Alleviate suffering, show mercy. His message was for the poor and suffering, the bottomers. You should not follow Jesus for personal power, but to free your mind from the bondage of self. Self interest can drive you to blow your brains out, or to get strung out on smack, sex or whatever your vice of choice is.

Power and prosperity are just a nice side effect.

End disclaimer.