The final words of Jesus on the cross, “It is finished,” leave nothing in question that still needs to be accomplished. Jesus paid, in body and soul, for all our sins. It is done, finished, and complete. What a marvelous gospel the Christian faith announces: The just for the unjust, he “who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

And he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them (John 19:18).

Jesus carried his own cross to the gate; he was bleeding and fully dehydrated. His physical capacities were exhausted as he carried the cross for about half a mile. Jesus arrived at the Roman place of execution called Golgotha, meaning “place of the skull.” Jesus was brought here as we read dark ominous words, “there they crucified him.”
What was crucifixion?
The soldiers secured Jesus backwards against the cross and drove two heavy square iron nails through his wrists into the wood. Then they took Jesus’ left foot, pushed it backwards against the right foot, both facing downward, to drive another one of these large nails through both, leaving some flexibility in the body for movement. Jesus hung there in such excruciating pain, raising himself up for air until his heart was compressed and he suffered asphyxiation. This is the cruel death of crucifixion.
The soldiers then stripped Jesus of his clothing into four parts. In Roman executions, the victims were left hanging on the cross naked and full of shame. The crucifixion of Jesus ended with him so thirsty that he was unable to swallow as he cried out, “I thirst.”
One of the most painful things one could ever face in this life is to die of thirst. According to an early twentieth-century study by W. J. McGee on death by thirst,

Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth…. A lump seems to form in the throat…. Severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin…. Speech becomes impossible…. The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws…. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult…. Finally…there is “living death.”[1]

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Dreyer refers to learnings from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was a dissident of the Soviet communist regime. Solzhenitsyn wrote to his fellow countrymen before he was exiled from his home in Russia in 1974 for exposing the inhumane repression of his fellow countrymen, particularly by its repressive Gulag system. In his open letter, titled “Live Not By Lies”, he urges his countrymen not to accept the lies of the government. Solzhenitsyn equates “lies” with ideology, the illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications. And his last word before leaving his homeland urged Soviet citizens as individuals to refrain from cooperating with the regime’s lies.

For decades, the elites of feminism and academia have undermined fatherhood and manhood through the mainstream media and entertainment industry.
Their attack on men has been so successful that masculinity in many western nations is now deemed toxic. Many psychologists today have endorsed this diagnosis by claiming that the innate characteristics of manhood — risk-taking, stoicism, dominance, aggression and competitiveness — are ‘harmful’.
These are the qualities in men that have defended our nations in war, led rescue missions even in the most dangerous situations, designed and built cities, explored the depths of the earth, ocean and sky, and developed, invented and innovated endlessly.
This attack on manhood has morphed into what I call the “fatherlessness pandemic,” giving the natural affection between boys and fathers a death blow.
Even the natural affection of women has turned against men, so that our relationship has changed from being complementary to competitive.
Feminist Destruction
Via a complicit Hollywood and an unquestioning mainstream media, the feminist movement has led the charge to destroy motherhood and womanhood. Women are increasingly the working backbone of our western societies, and in the US they now outnumber men in the workforce, filling childcare centres with our little ones.
The way that many women in our nation are fighting for the right to kill our unborn children is a sign that the natural affection between mothers and children has been gravely weakened.
In addition, it is astounding how many young women I encounter today who have tense and bitter relationships with their mothers. This should not be the case amongst Christians, but from observation, there appears to be little difference between them and those from outside the faith. There is a clear, and increasingly obvious increase in the lack of natural affection between mothers and daughters.
Thanks to the worldwide pornographic epidemic, natural affection is being broken not only between men and women, but also between sons and their mothers and their sisters — resulting in the objectification of women.
My response to young people when they ask how they can live out their Christian faith in the current culture is that we need to take our faith seriously and live counter-culturally, that is, refuse to emulate the world’s narrative and empty philosophy. Having strong families that display genuine natural affection is the key to leading the way.
Sadly, today’s generation has little respect for their parents’ generation. They see them as developing and sustaining the institutions that are the source of so much perceived ‘oppression’ and ‘racism’. They have embraced the lie that the ‘patriarchy’ is an oppressive structure that must be destroyed. Allegiance to the family is looked on with scorn.
One writer, a former high school teacher, observes of young people, “They dismiss religion, are not interested in marriage and family and are not patriotic.” In fact, today’s generation in general could be described as without natural affection, the natural instinctive love between family members. And this characteristic is listed in 2 Timothy as a last-day phenomenon.
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These types of preachers were originally called “social justice warriors,” but it has come time to assign them a more honest label. They are, in all actuality, hate preachers. No, they do not call for acts of violence against anyone, but they are constantly calling people like me (i.e., straight, white, cis, male) to hate ourselves and to hate how our very existence oppresses others. This has caused psychological and spiritual trauma to millions of evangelical Christians, and you can hear it in the strange way they now talk: Virtue Signaling.

All the most popular preachers in America are now woke. They betray this sad fact in their frequent mention of the plight of the oppressed and also of our obligation as oppressors to make atonement for our historical sins. Remember, our “sin” in not something we actually did, but something we inherited from our fathers.
These types of preachers were originally called “social justice warriors,” but it has come time to assign them a more honest label. They are, in all actuality, hate preachers. No, they do not call for acts of violence against anyone, but they are constantly calling people like me (i.e., straight, white, cis, male) to hate ourselves and to hate how our very existence oppresses others. This has caused psychological and spiritual trauma to millions of evangelical Christians, and you can hear it in the strange way they now talk: Virtue Signaling.
Virtue signaling is when you modify your normal way of speaking in order to signal, or send a message, to others that you are sufficiently woke. For example, a normal person might say, “Hey, I was having dinner last night with a friend and he said the funniest thing…”
If you add a little wokeness to that conversation, you will end up with a virtue signal, “I was having dinner with a friend last night, who happens to be black, and he said the funniest thing…” The signaled virtue is obvious: I have dinner with black people, so I am obviously not a racist.
If you add even more wokeness to the conversation, you end up with even more signaling, “I was having dinner with a friend last night, who happens to black, and he said the funniest thing about his boyfriend…” Now the signaled virtue is twofold: I have dinner with gay black people, so I am obviously not a racist or a homophobe.
There is, actually, no end to the virtue that clever wokesters can manage to signal, “I was having dinner with a friend last night, who happens to be black, and he said the funniest thing about his boyfriend who’s running for a democrat seat in the Senate…” The signal is now threefold: I have dinner with gay black democrats. Notice that the joke has not even been told! What was the funny thing that he said? It doesn’t ultimately matter, because sufficient virtue has been signaled.
Listen for this kind of talk and you will be surprised by how prevalent it truly is. Virtue signaling is the Neo-Marxist’s twisted version of personal holiness or witnessing and if you do not learn to do it, you are doomed.
I am probably doomed, by the way, for writing these articles, but I do not care and cannot care because of a solemn vow I took on the day of my ordination, “Do you promise to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths of the gospel and the purity, the peace, and the unity of the church, whatever persecution or opposition may arise unto you on that account?”
I said, “Yes” to that vow. I plan on keeping it until the day I die and that makes me most willing to face the wrath of the Neo-Marxists. Yes, there is true wrath there, but this we will explore in the next article.
Christian McShaffrey is a Minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and is Pastor of Five Solas Church (OPC) in Reedsburg, Wis.