I know this is going to sound kind-of severe.  I was reading from Calvin on self-denial and found this:

For he who has learned to look to God in everything he does, is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.  This is that self-denial which Christ so strongly enforces on his disciples from the very outset (Mt. 16:24), which, as soon as it takes hold of the mind, leaves no place either, first, for pride, show, and ostentation; or, secondly, for avarice, lust, luxury, effeminacy, or other vices which are engendered by self love. (Book 3,Chap 6,sec 2)

Now this gave me a whole new perspective on the Christian concept of effeminacy.  Effeminacy is here simply loving luxury, wanting to live a soft life.  In a sense I can see how it might be the opposite of passion.  I did a little more research and found this from an old book called Defenseless America by Hudson Maxim.

“When Cyrus the Great, with his hardy mountaineers, had conquered the peace-loving, comfortloving people of the lowlands, he told his soldiers that they must not make their homes in the lowlands, but must return to their mountain fastnesses, because if they settled to a life of ease and luxury, they would become unwarlike, effeminate, and degenerate, like the lowlanders they had conquered and enslaved, and later would themselves be conquered and enslaved by other mountaineers inured to privations and hardships, who would descend upon them. Witness the wisdom of Herodotus, who said:

“It is the settled appointment of Nature that soft soils should breed soft men, and that the same land should never be famous for the excellence of its fruit and for the vigor of its inhabitants.”

To me this sheds a little light on why men are elders and pastors in the church.  We are to practice the kind of self-denial and self-sacrifice and tolerance for pain that only a man can.  A man will lay down his life,  be bold and stand fast in the face of opposition, and if he lives through it, stoically walk away giving the glory to his Lord.

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