The losses of John MacArthur, Charlie Kirk, and now Voddie Baucham have inspired thoughts that I think are worth considering. I keep thinking about Teddy Roosevelt’s speech, The Man in the Arena. Specifically, I’m reminded of this part:

A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

We live in an age where thousands of men and women do little more to contribute to the world besides type, pontificate and criticize. Fewer men than ever before, even Christian men, enter the arena, even of the smallest sort, to make a genuine impact within their spheres of influence. Worse, the Internet has produced a way for the whole world to sit comfortably behind our keyboards to pick apart the faults of the men who, however imperfectly, enter the arena on behalf of their detractors.

May the Lord raise up men who actually dare to enter the arena, and not more keyboard “warriors” who think that they are in the arena when they are actually barely in a simulator.