Manliness of Christ – Getting Jesus Right in a Soft Age - Interview: Dale Partridge

The drift is real: a softer, sentimental Jesus has seeped into preaching, worship, and discipleship—and it's producing a church that feels more like therapy than an army. Dale Partridge argues this didn't happen overnight; emotionalism and post-war "weakness" reshaped what many Christians think is normal. The result is a Christ who comforts but rarely commands, and men who disengage because the Jesus presented to them feels domesticated.

As 2025 closes, the headlines tempt us to interpret history as a contest of strongmen, markets, and machines. Scripture won't let us stop there—God rules the nations, weighs the church, and judges what our age calls "private" sins with public consequences. This year-in-review asks not merely what happened, but what God is doing, and whether we will repent where it matters most. The goal is sobriety, courage, and a return to first priorities: fear God, take up the cross, and disciple the next generation.

Questions about the nature of hell and the destiny of the soul are resurfacing in the church, often framed as matters of nuance or speculation. Scripture, however, speaks with deliberate gravity—placing eternal punishment and eternal life side by side. These doctrines are meant to shape reverence, humility, and urgency, not fearfulness or indifference.

The greatest threat to liberty is not immigration, economics, or political disagreement—it is Christian apostasy. When churches abandon truth, the culture loses its moral anchor and the state fills the vacuum with coercion. The West is learning, once again, that freedom cannot outlast faithlessness. Liberty fades wherever God's authority is denied.

For generations, Christian homes operated as miniature economies where moms, dads, and children worked, served, and built together—but that vision has been largely lost. The dads explain why recovering it is essential for raising responsible sons, diligent daughters, and families who take dominion for Christ. They discuss risk-aversion, skill-building, mentorship, starting small, and how ordinary dads can reintroduce entrepreneurial life into their homes.

Christmas becomes dangerous when the symbols grow larger than the Savior they were meant to proclaim. Mangers, music, gifts, and traditions can quietly replace worship if they are detached from the cross and the gospel. Families must come back to the full story of Christ—from incarnation and humiliation to death, resurrection, and kingship. True joy is found not in the celebration itself, but in the Savior it points to.

Christian schools promise safety, but safety is found only in obedience to God's design. When education separates knowledge from character and learning from obedience, it produces pride rather than wisdom. Scripture calls parents to teach diligently as they sit, walk, rise, and lie down. True education is not measured by information transferred, but by lives shaped in the fear of the Lord.

The data is sobering: abortion support is rising, abortion pills are becoming normalized, and even self-identified evangelicals are divided where clarity should reign. This is reminiscent of Judah's collapse after Josiah - top-down reform without grassroots doesn't save a nation. Christians need to stop hiding behind soft language, speak plainly about murder and the 6th commandment, and seek cleansing through the blood of Christ.

Australia wants to ban social media for kids under 16, school shooters' parents face 180-year sentences, and Western governments increasingly act like surrogate parents. Kevin and Bill ask the big question: who actually has God-given authority over children—parents, the state, or the child himself?

Spiritual drift is rarely dramatic—it's quiet, subtle, and often unnoticed until you've drifted "900 miles" from where you started. Kevin and the dads talk honestly about the warning signs: selfishness, prayerlessness, skipped family worship, and hearts more drawn to entertainment than to Christ. They walk through anchors and rhythms—daily Word, prayer, Lord's Day, honest confession—and share practical ways to shepherd sleepy, distracted families back to spiritual alertness and joy in Christ.