All of us—and especially men—must lay claim to thumos so that God’s grace in us can construct a new and dynamic person. Most of us will never fight a physical battle against an enemy; we will use our thumos, or not, for moral courage against both the evil spirit of the age that erodes human dignity and also against our own tendency to take the easy way through life, which halts spiritual growth. We must harness thumos to rise above the mediocre, trivial, social-club Christianity in which we too often find ourselves, shaking off the fearful and uninformed critics who worship comfort instead of truth. Because a shift is taking place: God is calling his people to fight for justice, and more and more of them are answering the call.
We have flexed compassion the world over to combat poverty and disease. But one of the most underreported reasons people’s lives are so desperate isn’t that they don’t have the ability to feed and educate themselves—it’s that others oppress them, rob them, maim them, and enslave them. Many don’t need more bags of rice—not ultimately. They, like the estimated twenty-seven million people in actual slavery, like the 160,000 kids who stay home daily from American schools for fear of being bullied, need justice to rain down upon them from the hands of righteous people who will fight on their behalf. That’s right, fight—one of evangelicalism’s most feared words and even more feared actions. We need the men to move first—that’s almost always how it works.
The concept of thumos is explained here, and in this Weekly Standard review of Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness:
"Manliness," [Mansfield] says, "is a quality that causes individuals to stand for something." The Greeks used the term thumos to denote the bristling, spirited element shared by human beings and animals that makes them fight back when threatened. It causes dogs to defend their turf; it makes human beings stand up for their kin, their religion, their country, their principles. "Just as a dog defends its master," writes Mansfield, "so the doggish part of the human soul defends human ends higher than itself."
Every human being possesses thumos. But those who are manly possess it in abundance, and sometimes in excess. The manly man is not satisfied to let things be as they are, and he makes sure everyone knows it. He invests his perception of injustice with cosmic importance.
