Radically Happy

Sequel to The First Rule of Christ Club: You Can’t Explain Christ Club

As Jack London, write about the modern church as a ringless gym.

ChatGPT Prompt

They have stripped the ring from the gym like a man strips bark from a tree.
The bones remain, but the soul is gone.
What once was a crucible is now a showroom.
What once demanded blood now takes credit cards.

What once demanded blood now takes credit cards.

I have seen men made in the ring.
And I have seen boys pampered into softness beneath the chrome lights of these new sanctuaries.
They call them “churches.” They call them “gyms.”
They are neither.
They are parlors for the death of the will.

There was a time when the rope-bound square was a forge,
and a man, if he were honest and unafraid,
could enter and become.

He would be tested—not with words, not with applause, but with pain.
He would meet an adversary who did not care about his feelings,
his background, or his curated excuses.

Only one thing mattered in the ring:
Can you get back up?

Only one thing mattered in the ring:
Can you get back up?

“The righteous falls seven times and rises again…” — Proverbs 24:16

But now?

Now they have mirrors.
So many mirrors.

So a man may look like a fighter,
while never throwing a punch that lands.
He may sweat,
but never suffer.
He may flex,
but never fail.
He may train for a thousand years
and never know what he is.

He may train for a thousand years
and never know what he is.

The modern gym is a museum of motion without meaning.
And the modern church is its spiritual twin.
Sterile.
Safe.
Comfortable.

They have burned the fire out of faith.
What remains are ashes arranged in the shape of doctrine.
Talk of love
without the burn of sacrifice.
Talk of transformation,
without the bruising of repentance.

Talk of transformation,
without the bruising of repentance.

It is all as hollow as a bag with no sand.
As clean as a canvas never stained.

And the men—
the men raised in these ringless gyms,
they speak bravely,
until the first moment life hits back.

They are not fighters.
They are mannequins dressed in muscle.

Give me the old ring.
Give me the sweat-stained floor and the ropes that kept you honest.
Give me the God who demanded everything,
not the one who asks for nothing and gives nothing in return.

Give me the God who demanded everything,
not the one who asks for nothing and gives nothing in return.

Because in the wild, the animal that cannot fight does not survive.
And in the soul, the man who will not wrestle with his Maker will never be transformed.

They tore out the ring.
And they called it progress.
But what they built instead was a temple to cowardice.
A sanctuary for the untested.

And the bell no longer rings.

Because the fight is gone.