— Lennox Kalifungwa

The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

There is a sense in which complaint is the resignation and abdication of responsibility. This unqualified assertion will likely prompt the retort that affliction and pestilence are commonplace, and that people should be free to express their discomfort without fear of moral shaming.

Yet this expected retort ought to earn the response that trouble neither nullifies nor exempts a person from responsibility; in fact, it provides an opportunity for duty to be constructively exercised and applied.

To begin an article with such philosophical dialogue may not be ideal in some books, and yet it is necessary to confront the unfortunate spectacle that has been enshrined in the dogma of this modern world.

We live in a world that not only promotes, normalises, and celebrates irresponsibility but has effectively politicised and institutionalised it.

Statements such as “government must fix it” expose a culture that believes good is merely something to be redistributed and received, not created, stewarded, and multiplied. Such statements reveal a culture persistently ignorant or forgetful of what it means to be human—made in the image of God and endowed with the ability to be fruitful and multiply. They reveal a culture that delights in attaining benefits while frowning upon the idea of assuming responsibility.

A culture of irresponsibility inevitably produces a culture of consumerism, which ultimately leads to the propagation of a culture of death—and none survive its consequences.

For the State to assume the reins of social responsibility, the following occurrences are necessary: the demise of masculine virtue (self-governance), the dissolution of thriving households, and the fracturing of strong churches. The strategy to weaken each of these is to have them abandon their posts, blur the lines of their distinct God-given mandates, and offer what is rightfully theirs to Caesar and his pretentiously benevolent minions.

Masculinity is a man’s glad assumption of responsibility in wielding holistic strength, wisdom, and courage for the establishment of truth, beauty, and goodness by building, protecting, providing, and leading those he has a duty toward. Through poisons such as feminism and socialism, men are expected to abandon their roles and adopt an attitude of perpetual shame, victimhood, and weakness.

God calls men to protect, yet instead they embrace impotent diets, cannot discern good from evil, cannot complete a push-up or a fight, and hand over their guns to the State. (Note that tyrants can only gain power by disarming and banning weapons from virtuous men. The push to ban guns is carried out in the name of safety, but its real goal is to weaken men.)

God calls men to work, build, and provide, yet instead they politicise their envy of the wealthy and expect the State to rob the rich and redistribute the bounty to the lazy and effeminate.

God calls men to lead, yet instead they allow themselves to be ruled by illicit addictions, man-pleasing, and fear of the loudest and most obnoxious women in the room.

Men once presided over households—the primary engines of economic activity and success—which have now been reduced to little more than bunkers of sleep and mindless entertainment.God calls households to be responsible for education, health, and welfare. Wealth is also created, preserved, and multiplied exclusively through households.

No other form of government possesses the capacity to generate welfare in this fashion. From the household springs the highest well-being of society, both morally and economically.

Yet households today have abandoned their glory and are now laden with feminism, consumerism, and dysfunction. The weakness of households has consequently resulted in the State owning the means of production, expanding governmental regulations and controls, increasing taxation (as women normatively enter the corporate workforce), redefining marriage, multiplying adultery and divorce, murdering unborn children, promulgating alarming miseducation, escalating crime, and producing a low-trust society.

God hascommissioned the church to be the pillar and ground of truth in society. It is the government that God has established to be salt and light in this world, preparing God’s people to live before His face (Coram Deo) in every aspect of their lives by presiding over the proclamation of the Word and the dissemination of holy ordinances. The church is the moral conscience of society.

It is the voice that unashamedly proclaims the Gospel and lights the path on which men are called to walk in humble obedience to Christ. Today, however, many churches have abandoned their responsibility and adopted a timid spirit of pessimism, fatalism, and cowardice—impotent to speak truth to power, to hold society accountable, and to confront the beloved idols of the age. Consequently, the State has begun to seize the reins of moral power, asserting its own ordinances and liturgy with strange fire.

Nothing threatens politicised and institutionalised irresponsibility more effectively than responsible men, women, households, and churches.

At the heart ofresponsibility is ownership. Ownership is necessary for freedom and flourishing. Men ought to own what God has given them and aim to be fruitful with it. And this goes beyond merely owning property (though that is important) to owning the opportunities that exist in a world full of chaos.

The tendency is for men to be intimidated by the chaos surrounding them—to fold their arms, complain, and await a celestial escape. Owning the mess means acknowledging our own complicity in the chaos through participation, apathy, and silence, and also owning the redemption Christ so generously and potently supplies to bring about reformation.

Learn from our first father, who failed to take responsibility for his wife, his garden, and his mandate— and suffered the consequences. Learn from the second Adam, who assumed ownership of His Father’s will, our sin, and the comprehensive victory that lies in His redemptive work.

Take ownership. Be responsible. Honour the King.