{"id":1002,"date":"2026-07-21T14:37:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2026-07-21T14:37:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:37:39","slug":"being-nice-instead-of-godly-is-a-theology-for-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=1002","title":{"rendered":"Being Nice Instead Of Godly Is A Theology For Losers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cMy daughter was murdered by gender ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are the words of Abigail Martinez, a devout Christian widow in California, who watched the state take her daughter away when she refused to affirm her daughter\u2019s transgender identity. Her daughter, Yaeli, was struggling with depression and her sexuality, so a school psychologist recommended she join the school\u2019s LGBT club (without Abigail\u2019s knowledge or consent). When Abigail discovered what was happening, she refused to affirm her daughter\u2019s transition, so the state removed her from her home. <\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Dark-Money\u2019 Abortion Drug Dealer Hub Referred To Trump DOJ For Criminal Investigation<\/a><\/p>\n

Activists told Martinez to hold a funeral for her daughter and celebrate the adoption of a \u201cson.\u201d They told her she\u2019d never see Yaeli again if she kept talking about God.<\/p>\n

Not long after this, Yaeli killed herself.<\/p>\n

When Martinez later testified before Congress, she said her daughter\u2019s death was a murder. Gender ideology killed her.<\/p>\n

Now, ask yourself a question. How many Christian leaders and churches have been outspoken about the dangers of gender ideology? How many pastors will boldly and unflinchingly denounce homosexuality, gay \u201cmarriage,\u201d transgenderism, and the whole array of LGBT sins? Even though there is a growing movement of courageous pastors speaking out, the reality is, over the last 20 years or so, many of them have been silent.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a pastor. Over more than 20 years in ministry, I\u2019ve watched a theology take root in American evangelicalism that trains Christians to be silent in the face of all kinds of cultural tyranny. It\u2019s a theology that says the church is at her best when she\u2019s losing. It says we should not seek cultural influence because that would only corrupt us. Further, it says we should not seek political power because that\u2019s beneath us. Our only public duty is to do evangelism, because eternal destinies are all that really matters. The culture war is just a distraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I call this loser theology, and it has done great damage to the modern church. Further, it harms society by causing Christians to disengage as the greatest conscience-shaping force in our culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Loser theology is promoted by prominent advocates, though that\u2019s not what they call it. Russell Moore, one of the most influential evangelical voices of the last decade and former head of the Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s public policy arm, wrote in his 2015 book that \u201cthe Bible Belt is teetering toward collapse, and I say let it fall.\u201d He argued the church is most faithful when she exists as a \u201cpersecuted minority,\u201d never a \u201cmoral majority.\u201d He says Christians are better witnesses as cultural losers rather than winners.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That may sound humble, but it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s simply waving the white flag of surrender to cultural powers who will eagerly destroy us if given the chance. This theology is custom-built to explain away defeat after defeat, training a generation of Christians to lose and feel good about it. Loser theology regards retreat as a virtue.<\/p>\n

When loser theology is a dominant motif of modern evangelicalism, what do you think will happen? We don\u2019t have to guess. The same year Moore\u2019s book came out (2015), the Supreme Court invented a right to \u201cgay marriage\u201d in its Obergefell v. Hodges<\/em> decision. In the six years that followed, public support for gay marriage skyrocketed to 70 percent. During that same period, LGBTQ identification among Gen Z nearly doubled.<\/p>\n

Let that sink in. Roughly one-fifth of an entire generation of children who were seduced into sexual perversion in the immediate aftermath of Obergefell<\/em>. The culture didn\u2019t just suddenly change its mind. Rather, people changed their minds because powerful people signaled this was the new morality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And where was the church? She was largely silent because many Christians believed we should just focus on soul-winning rather than culture-warring. Thus, LGBT activism marched on, unopposed.<\/p>\n

None of this happened because the culture simply changed its mind. Rather, it happened because the church had abandoned its post as the most powerful conscience-shaping institution in the world.<\/p>\n

Read more Hawaii\u2019s Supreme Court Declares War On SCOTUS<\/a><\/p>\n

Obergefell<\/em> has already done its damage, and it will be very difficult to get that toothpaste back in the tube. In the wake of Obergefell<\/em>, Christian parents are now losing custody battles over their kids\u2019 gender identities because their churches never gave them a theological framework for resistance, only permission to suffer and lose. And when the church loses her spine, the sheep are left without protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other battles are ongoing and have yet to be settled where Christians need to assert a strong, prophetic voice. As Islam is already taking Europe hostage, its footprint in America continues to expand. Is it too late? Will we lose this battle also? We certainly will if the church is convinced that our only job is to ignore the culture and just do evangelism. And if we lose the culture, we will be ruled by a jihadist religious system that has no scruples against wielding power to crush its enemies. That\u2019s what Islam is. It\u2019s a system of domination with a religious veneer. They will not simply coexist with us if we let them win.<\/p>\n

So, should we let them win so we can be losers for Jesus? If so, how else might we choose to lose? How about family courts, school boards, and city councils? The pattern repeats across every civic institution because the best people to hold the line have been taught for two generations that line-holding is somebody else\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the part that should bother you most, whether you\u2019re a churchgoer or not. This isn\u2019t happening because Christians are cowards. They\u2019re not. It\u2019s happening because many of them have been discipled to regard passivity as a form of holiness. They\u2019ve been trained to think losing is \u201cthe way of the cross\u201d because \u201cJesus calls us to be weak.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

These statements sound pious, but they profoundly misunderstand scripture. Yes, when we are weak, he is strong, but scripture never commands us to pursue<\/em> weakness as an end in itself.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve sat across from men and women in my office who suppress every instinct toward leadership and strength because they\u2019ve absorbed the idea that ambition is sin and confidence is pride. I\u2019ve watched churches refuse to speak plainly about cultural evil because plain speech might be regarded as unkind. This is no accident. It was discipled into people, one sermon at a time.<\/p>\n

In short, some Christians are afraid of winning because we\u2019ve been conditioned to believe power can only be used for evil purposes, never as a force for good. That\u2019s not true. To be sure, scripture is full of warnings about the corrupting potential of power, but Jesus also promises to give his people power, and he expects us to wield it righteously (Acts 1:8).<\/p>\n

Further, there\u2019s a difference between refusing to worship power and refusing to use it at all. The same Christ who died on a cross now reigns at the right hand of the Father, and scripture says every knee will bow to Him \u2014 kings and nations included. That\u2019s not a losing vision. The men and women who built the church that shaped Western civilization understood this. They didn\u2019t do it by convincing themselves that losing was the point.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to contesting anything, or why every act of Christian courage gets treated with more suspicion than every act of Christian retreat, that\u2019s not your imagination, nor is it biblical faithfulness. It\u2019s loser theology. It\u2019s a theology of defeat that\u2019s presented as humility. And it\u2019s long past time we reject it and step into the arena where we belong.<\/p>\n

Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth<\/em> is currently available for pre-order at losertheology.com. Ships August 4.<\/p>\n

Read more Lazy Senate Republicans Attack J.D. Vance To Distract From Their Own Failure<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to the culture war, that\u2019s not your imagination. It\u2019s loser theology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3070],"tags":[3071,2386,3072,359,840,849,482,3073,3074,985,832,1854,369,1084,3075,7,3076,1976,836],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faith","tag-american-church","tag-bible","tag-christ","tag-christianity","tag-christians","tag-church","tag-culture","tag-evangelical-christianity","tag-evangelicals","tag-gay","tag-gender-identity","tag-islam","tag-lgbt","tag-politics","tag-protestant","tag-religion","tag-russell-moore","tag-theology","tag-transgender"],"yoast_head":"\nBeing Nice Instead Of Godly Is A Theology For Losers - Property Transition Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/propertytransitionmedia.com\/?p=1002\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Being Nice Instead Of Godly Is A Theology For Losers - Property Transition Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you\u2019ve ever sat in a pew wondering why your church seems allergic to the culture war, that\u2019s not your imagination. 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