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On December 7, 2024 By In Culture, Discipleship, Men

Letters To Young Men: OK, Boomer

Dear Young Man,

I haven’t written a letter like this in a while, but having watched online interactions over the past few years, it seemed prudent to take up this format again. Generational hostilities have heated up on social media, especially coming from millennials and Gen Z, and I want to address it.  (If you are not part of the social media militia, you can still read this letter with profit, but it won’t apply to you as directly). The “OK, Boomer” attitude has become a standard meme. Older generations (including Gen X, of which I am a part) are railed against for the messes they have left for the younger generations while providing them few, if any, tools with which to clean them up. Many of the accusations are legitimate. Boomers, having been raised by Silents who had to scrape by during the depression and face the harsh realities of World War 2, wanted an easier life for their children. My grandpa, a Silent who was, for all intents and purposes, my father, told me that he wouldn’t teach me to weld (he was a master welder) because he wanted me to get a college education so I wouldn’t have to work as hard as he did. The Silents gave their children everything they could, making life as easy as possible. It turned into a culture of rebellion, “free love,” Second Wave Feminism, and a general self-centeredness whose greatest aspiration was to retire at a young age to free themselves of as much responsibility as possible.

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On September 26, 2024 By In Church, Men, Theology, Worship

Ordination

Ordination changes a man, not in a way that changes his liver into a lung, nor in a way that gives him magical powers to do sacramental tricks, but he is changed nevertheless. The change is more like when a degree is conferred upon a graduate or when a man marries a woman. In neither case is the man physically transformed, nor does he receive special powers. However, he is a changed man. No longer is the man a student. He is a graduate, possibly with a title attached to his name and all the clout that comes with his new status. No longer is the man a bachelor, but he is a husband who now has the privileges and duties of marriage. The molecular structure in his body may be the same pre- and post-ceremony; however, in many ways, he is not the same person. He stands in new relationships, and those new relationships, with all of their attendant responsibilities, make him a new man.

So it is with a man who is ordained to the gospel ministry. He is put into a new relationship before God and to the church. This new relationship with all of its attendant responsibilities makes him a new man.

The changes are an addition rather than a physical or even mystical metamorphosis. Ordination gives a new “weight” to the person. In biblical terms, this weight is “glory.” (The word “glory” in Hebrew literally means “heavy.”) Ordination glorifies a man in a unique way.

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On August 15, 2024 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Men, Wisdom

Encouraging Fathers

Fatherlessness is at epidemic proportions in our nation and wreaking havoc on the health of our society. There are many reasons for fathers’ absence, some legitimate and many illegitimate consequences of sin. The absence is felt. Based on the US Census Bureau statistics, 43% of children in the US live in fatherless homes. Their absence is devastating. Ninety percent of runaway and homeless children are from fatherless homes. Seventy percent of minors housed in state facilities are from fatherless homes. Thirty-nine percent of inmates in jail are from fatherless homes. The rate of abuse in single-parent homes is almost double that in two-parent homes.[1] There is more than a superficial correlation in those numbers. Lack of fathers is the cause of many of these societal maladies.

Being present as fathers is only half the battle. The other half is being proactive in nurturing and disciplining children. God’s command to Israel in Deuteronomy 6 assumes the father’s presence with his children and commands his diligence in their instruction. Fathers must teach God’s law to their children “when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Dt 6:7). As a father, you are involved in your children’s lives.

When addressing the new creation family, Paul addresses fathers directly in Colossians 3:21: “Fathers, do not provoke your children so that they do not become discouraged.” While the mother is to receive due honor from children and has responsibility for raising children, Paul homes in on fathers. The word “parents” was available to Paul because he used it in 3:20. The fathers are ultimately responsible for how the children are disciplined. (Three of the commands in the section are focused on men as heads of their house: husbands, fathers, and masters. Men have the greatest responsibility for the health of the home.)

Discipline must never be undertaken to “ break the spirit” of children. The word translated as “discouraged” has at its root the idea of a child’s vital force, spirit, desire, drive, or passion. His drives, corrupted by sin, are to be corrected and redirected toward that which is good, true, and beautiful. He is not to be squashed but shaped.

How can fathers discourage their children?

1. Never praise your child. Always tell him what he could have done better without praising his effort or accomplishments.

2. Lead only by command and not by example. Demand discipline and obedience from your children while you are undisciplined and refuse to submit to your authorities.

3. Be inconsistent in discipline. Don’t enforce rules one day and come down on your children like a ton of bricks the next for breaking the rules. They will never know where the boundaries are and will be living in a psychological earthquake.

4. Refuse to discipline your children. Teach them by lack of discipline that there are no boundaries, that they can do anything without consequence, and that they should be able to have whatever they want when they want it. They will have a lousy relationship with reality and be anxious, angry children who grow to be anxious, angry adults.

5. Make unreasonable demands. Expect more of them than they are capable of doing for their age and skill level. Don’t take into consideration their unique personalities and desires, forcing them to become something that they aren’t. Be a perfectionist, always chasing the elusive standard that not even you can attain.

6. Don’t allow your child to mature. As he grows older, tighten your grip on him, never giving him any freedom to fail or succeed. Never let him take risks. Micromanage his life so that he doesn’t learn how to make decisions for himself and becomes a helpless adult (who you are probably hoping will depend on you to fulfill your need to be needed).

7. Never show affection, laugh with, or play with your children. Teach him that God never allows you to lighten up but that you must carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You must take yourself with utmost seriousness at all times.

If you do these things, you will break the spirit of your children. Your goal is to shape your child into a joyful child. A joyful child is one who knows that he is loved, has learned contentment through accepting his and others’ limitations, is freed to be all that God created him to be, and matures so that he can make decisions without being unhealthily dependent upon others.

Fathers, don’t discourage your children.

[1] https://parentspluskids.com/blog/fatherhood-statistics-trends-and-analysis

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On July 24, 2024 By In Family and Children, Men, Theology, Wisdom, Women

A Husband’s Love

“Husbands, love your wives and do not become bitter with them.” ~Colossians 3:19

Marriage has been a fight for survival from the beginning of time. The present-day battle of the sexes is nothing new. Feminists rail against biblical marriage because the thought of submitting to a husband is barbaric and demeaning. But Feminism, with all its evils, is not the primary problem. The lack of masculine leadership is the principal problem; it has been since the Garden. Modern men respond to Feminism not by assuming masculine responsibility and seeking to win women back with strong, confident leadership but by agreeing with them that marriage is a bad deal for men as well. “The courts are stacked against us. A woman can take almost everything I have, including my children. Marriage is a bad deal for men.” Black-pilled (at least in the area of marriage) MGTOWs (Men Going Their Own Way) have blamed women for everything, becoming resentful. “Masculine” influencers encourage young men never to get married; in other words, never truly love a woman.

Marriage is risky. It always has been. You are entrusting yourself to another person, opening yourself up to the possibility of the greatest pain you can ever experience. But it is also true that you may experience some of the deepest joys known to a man. Masculine men take risks and take on responsibility. Effeminate men hide behind all the excuses of everything being against them, whine, and refuse to fight for what is good. Real men take the risk of loving a woman genuinely and deeply.

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On June 6, 2024 By In Church, Culture, Discipleship, Men, Politics

The Bane of Disciplines

With all the confusion in the world, people are looking for something … anything really … that seems sane and stable. Politically, the left has shown their certifiable insanity by not only having economic policies that destroy but doubling down on them every chance they get. “Gender dysphoria” is accepted as someone’s personal journey and not something to be corrected by confrontation with absolutes such as, “No, son, you are not a girl. You are a boy, and you will act like one.” Our government acknowledges Pride Month, recognizing deviant sexual lifestyles as praiseworthy.

Amid all this chaos, there are political conservatives, masculine and feminine online influencers, and fundamentalist non-Christian religions that seem to acknowledge realities that the woke left rejects: the absolute distinctions between the sexes and masculine and feminine roles. People hungry for sanity will eat from Christless garbage cans because they see that the only alternative is the sewage of the left. Not much of a choice. As good as some conservatism and fundamentalism may be in some respects, if they are Christless, then they don’t deal with the real problem of mankind.

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On November 8, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Women

Men, Marriage, and the Feminine Imperative

Gilder, George. Men and Marriage. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2023.*

By 1973, the hightide of second-wave feminism had flooded the beaches of American culture. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique eroded the shores of traditional female roles by naming and stirring up further domestic discontentment. Kate Millet wrote her dissertation-turned-book, Sexual Politics, which sought to overthrow the patriarchy with her Marxist revolutionaries through the National Organization of Women (313). Against the flood,, conservative George Gilder manned the dikes with Sexual Suicide in 1973. With the rise of intersectionality in third wave feminism, Gilder revised and re-titled the book Men and Marriage in 1986. Besides the 2023 Preface, Canon’s republication is the 1986 edition. While the stats are antiquated, his underlying principles and overall message are clear, and his prescience of future events based on trajectories have far exceeded what he probably imagined.

When Gilder first published Sexual Suicide and then doubled down in Men and Marriage, he infuriated all the right people, drawing the ire of the main players in the feminist movement and exposing the places in our culture where the latest iterations of feminism had taken root. Second-wave feminism fought for equality with men in the workplace and the sexual marketplace. Women wanted to be like men. While the elimination of the differences did not rise to the level that we see today, in which many are claiming that there is no such thing as a man or woman, the equality called for in second-wave feminism helped lay the foundations for what we are experiencing today. Women didn’t want the consequences of sexual promiscuity, and the creation of the birth control pill and swelling tsunami for the legalization of abortion gave their wombs the liberation to live sexually promiscuous lives.

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On September 14, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Wisdom, Women

Good Wife, Good Life: Integrity, Industry, & Generosity

Despite what many masculine influencers tell young men today, marriage is good. There is no greater blessing in a man’s life than to have a good wife. While marriage has its own challenges, a good marriage makes life easier in many respects because you are facing challenges with mutual support and effort. A good wife makes a good life. (This, by the way, is very different than what is usually meant by “Happy wife. Happy life.” That’s another subject for another day.)

The good wife is described in rich, poetic detail in Proverbs 31. While not every woman will do exactly what this woman is said to do, women in general and wives in particular are to emulate the character of this woman.

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On August 10, 2023 By In Men, Wisdom, Women

Do Not Give Your Strength To Women

The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him: What, my son? What, son of my womb? What, son of my vows? Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings.

~Proverbs 31.1-3

In 1969, Mallory Millet was invited by her sister, Kate, to attend a meeting to start a revolution. They were in the preliminary stages of forming The National Organization of Women. Kate was finishing her Ph. D. thesis for Columbia University that later became the book, Sexual Politics. The group met in the home of one of Kate’s friends, calling the meeting a “consciousness-raising-group.” The group was unabashedly Marxist, taking on communist talk and exercises. In the meeting, according to Mallory, the women went through a litany much like the Catholic Church might do but with very different content.

“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

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On August 3, 2023 By In Men, Wisdom, Women

The Wonder of Attraction

“Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not know: the way of an eagle in the heavens, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the heart of the sea, and the way of a man with a maiden.”

~Proverbs 30.18-19

When you first see her in the crowd, she catches your eye. You wonder who she is, so you ask people about her. As you mill about in other conversations, you constantly scan the room to find out where she is, wondering if she has noticed you. You are nervous about talking to her, but you summon the willpower knowing rejection is better than regret. As you approach her, you notice that she becomes a little fidgety herself, involuntarily giving a little grin with a blush and a concern about her appearance. Your heart rates increase, and your minds are singularly focused on one another, blocking out everything and everyone in the room. You are attracted to one another. Much more must be learned about one another to sustain and mature this attraction, but the dance has begun.

Why her? Why him? Why didn’t you feel this way around other people in the crowd or other people you’ve met in various situations? Ahhh, the wonder and mystery of attraction. Some aspects of attraction are quite obvious, but some we will never grasp. This intersexual dance is a beautiful feature of God’s created design and an integral aspect of fulfilling the mission God gave us.

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On July 19, 2023 By In Men, Women

Why Can’t We Be Friends?

In 1989 the Rob Reiner movie When Harry Met Sally starring Billy Crystal as Harry Burns and Meg Ryan as Sally Albright hit the screens. There is a popular scene from that movie that exposed something that many people won’t say: men and women can’t be friends. Harry and Sally are riding in a car together talking. Harry explains to Sally that men and women can’t be friends because the issue of sex always gets in the way. Sally incredulously and in shock tells Harry that this isn’t true. She has a number of men friends, and the desire for sex is not involved. Harry disagrees with her, and the conversation ensues.

Rob Reiner and his characters are no biblical scholars to be sure. What they expound as truth certainly needs to be tested. Is it true that men and women can’t be friends; that is, that intersexual friendships are very different than same sex friendships? I actually think Harry Burns is on to something. I believe that although the sexual relations issue is one of the biggest issues in intersexual relationships, it is certainly not the only one.

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