The Cost of Abdicated Leadership
Why Disorder Grows Where Men Refuse Covenant Responsibility
We are living in a moment of visible disorder. Public protests spill into rage. Lawful authority is increasingly met with distrust and open resistance. Moral claims are shouted with conviction but detached from coherence. Compassion is invoked while restraint is despised.
This moment cannot be explained adequately as a disagreement between political factions. Something deeper has eroded. What we are witnessing is a collapse of confidence in order itself, and a corresponding surge of emotional volatility in public life.
Before assigning blame outward, Scripture directs us inward.
Rejecting False Scapegoats Without Excusing Guilt
In recent months, public disorder has often been attributed to women, particularly unmarried women or those animated by progressive causes. They are mocked, ridiculed, and treated as entertainment rather than addressed as sin.
Women are moral agents created in the image of God. They are accountable for rebellion against God’s order, for despising lawful authority, and for participating in lawlessness. Genesis 3 does not portray Eve as a passive victim. She believed the lie, rejected God’s word, and acted in disobedience. Her sin was real, and its consequences were severe.
Yet Genesis 3 also establishes a deeper covenantal order of accountability. When God confronts the fall, He addresses Adam first. Adam is not excused by pointing to Eve’s deception. He is judged as the covenant head who failed to guard, lead, and obey. Scripture places representative responsibility on the man without diminishing the woman’s guilt. Both are judged, but Adam bears the weight of oversight.
Ezekiel 34 indicts shepherds who failed to feed, protect, and restrain. God condemns leaders who allowed the vulnerable to wander, be devoured, and become prey. The sheep suffer real harm, but judgment falls first on those entrusted with authority.
Hebrews 13 reinforces this covenantal logic within the church. Leaders are charged to watch over souls and will give an account. The responsibility to exercise authority and oversight is a charge given by God, not a matter of personal choice. Disorder among the people does not remove responsibility from those appointed to oversee them.
Ridicule fails to address sin, and mockery avoids responsibility. Treating visible disorder as entertainment while refusing to exercise authority reflects breach of duty. Scripture calls men to restrain rebellion through faithful leadership. Silence justified as peace finds no warrant in Scripture. God assigns leadership that guards life, upholds truth, and preserves order.
When men abandon that responsibility, disorder grows unchecked. Scripture calls those who failed to guard the flock to repentance, not those offered as convenient scapegoats. The call is not to excuse sin, but to restore order through obedience, courage, and faithful authority.
Responsibility Where Scripture Places It
In Genesis 3, God addresses Adam first. Adam was silent. He stood present while truth was distorted and failed to intervene. Judgment begins with him.
Shepherds are held accountable before sheep. Elders are judged more strictly than congregants. Fathers bear representative responsibility for households. Male headship in Scripture is a call to covenantal responsibility and faithful care. It is accountability before God for the protection, instruction, and ordering of those entrusted to one’s care.
When leadership withdraws, order erodes. When men abandon clarity, women are left to navigate chaos without protection or direction. Emotional volatility is a predictable outcome of male absence.
Scripture places responsibility where authority was given.
Disordered Compassion and Misguided Nurture
Compassion is a real and necessary good. Nurture is a God given instinct. Scripture honors both. Compassion requires truth to bring healing and order.
In the absence of protection, instruction, and moral boundaries, nurture becomes misdirected. It defends what should be restrained. It shelters what should be corrected. It aligns itself with victims while excusing perpetrators. This pattern surfaces in many forms, whenever compassion is untethered from truth, leading people to oppose lawful order, excuse wrongdoing, or treat resistance to authority as moral courage.
The deeper problem is the absence of steady leadership.
Where men refuse to guard boundaries, women often attempt to compensate through emotional force. Scripture recognizes this condition as the result of abdicated headship.
Authority and Law in God’s Design
Scripture teaches that lawful authority is ordained by God. Romans 13 grounds civil authority in divine commission. Proverbs repeatedly connects restraint with wisdom and unrestrained passion with destruction. Genesis establishes order as a gift, not a curse.
Scripture allows resistance when commands violate God’s law. Protest, appeal, and correction may be exercised within God’s order. What Scripture condemns is the appeal to mercy as a justification for lawlessness and rebellion.
To despise authority wholesale is to despise the God who establishes order.
A Call to Men
This moment calls for repentance, not mockery.
Men must repent of silence that passes itself off as peace. Of retreat mislabeled as humility. Of sarcasm mistaken for strength. Of surrendering leadership while criticizing the results.
Men are called to lead with steadiness. To speak truth without rage. To protect without domination. To restore order through obedience rather than reaction. Christlike headship bears responsibility with clarity and steadiness, rather than provoking disorder or scorning weakness.
Disorder is not corrected by escalating outrage, but by steady and faithful leadership.
The Calm of Christ
Christ is not unsettled by chaos. His kingdom does not wobble. He stood before hostility without panic. He addressed error with composure and resolve. He ruled without mirroring the rage of His accusers.
That same Christ reigns now.
The church is called to embody the steadiness of her King. In families, in congregations, and in public life, God’s people are called to become stabilizing presences rooted in truth and order.
The fruit of abdicated leadership is visible. So is the hope of restoration. Christ reigns. His order stands. And He calls His people to faithfulness marked by courage, clarity, and calm obedience.