Judge Phil Ginn: We don’t have enough men right now who are fighters.
Daniel Ritchie: Right. Absolutely.
Judge Phil Ginn: And the story about your dad. You told me he had courage, he had wisdom, and the courage said, “Now’s the time to stand up. If I don’t do that, nobody else is going to.”
Daniel Ritchie: Well, I mean, we live in a really comfortable culture. It might be the highest aspiration of our culture right now. We want to be comfortable, we want to pursue the path of least resistance. And I think in a lot of unfortunate ways that has sprinkled into the faith. We want to take the path of least resistance. You see, in First Peter Chapter 1 and in James Chapter 1, we don’t grow in Christ in comfort and ease. We grow in Christ when we’re being tossed in the crucible of suffering, when endurance is being made manifest, when we truly have to come to the end of our understanding of how strong we think we are, and place our lives in the hands of a God who is all-powerful and all-knowing.
That only comes when, in such an odd way, we fight by trusting our lives to God and to His word and to His call for us to shirk comfort, and to be willing to trust God even at our worst, even in our suffering. I think for us as men, it is where we must set our minds against what cultural manhood is, and what Christian manhood really calls us to.
Judge Phil Ginn: You know, I’ve heard it often said that the devil doesn’t need us to lose our faith. All he needs to do is make us passive.
Daniel Ritchie: Oh, 100%.
Judge Phil Ginn: If we’re comfortable, we’re not going to go out and do the things that men are called to do. And I don’t need to exclude women from that either. There’s certainly something, and I wish it were mine, but I heard the phrase the other day that “Christ did not die to make us passive. He died to make us unshakable.”
Daniel Ritchie: That’s right.
Judge Phil Ginn: And one of the things that we’ve been talking about at Southern Evangelical the last few days and weeks, since Charlie Kirk, is that this is a special time in our nation. And I think that maybe Charlie’s death has brought it to a head. I don’t want to say that anything about Charlie’s death was good, but if there’s anything good that could come out of something bad, certainly a sorrowful day, I think Charlie’s life and his death have caused people to step back and say, ” Maybe I need to be in this fight.”
Daniel Ritchie: Yeah. I think of Charlie’s quote, especially in the days after his passing. The quote that just kept coming to the surface, especially on social media, was from when he had been asked the question, “What do you want to be known for once you die?” And his very simple answer was, “Courage in my faith.” I think that was very much a touchstone for a lot of people, who began to ask themselves, “Is that true of me and my faith? Is there a courage that is present and evident in my life, or am I more liable to fold when trial, or affliction, or opposition come my way?” And so I think it has pushed folks to ask uncomfortable questions of themselves. But I do think that’s what snaps you out of a comfortable and easy sort of way of life, if you really do start to challenge what is culturally acceptable versus what is the calling that Christ has set in front of you. And more often than not, that calls us to be courageous instead of just taking the easy road.
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