The pulpit is a male space. Always has been, always will be. Women can no more be pastors than they can be husbands or fathers. The pastorate is intrinsically male and masculine. Obviously there are plenty of domains that are open to men and women (though that does not make us androgynous beings in those domains – some degree of sexual differentiation will still be present). But there are also sex-segregated spaces and roles and offices. If there are no male-only spaces, there can be no female-only spaces. If women can enter male spaces, justice requires us to allow men into female spaces. So again: the pulpit is a male only space. The session meeting and presbytery meeting are male only spaces. The seminary, insofar as it exists to train pastors, should be a male only space. If women are allowed into pulpits, it logically follows that men must be allowed into women’s restrooms. And perhaps that is a big reason why denominations that allow women in the pastorate have generally also gone along with the transgender ideology.
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The roles and duties God assigns to men and women are not merely “cultural” or “traditional.” They are divine commands, grounded in his will and in our created natures. Those who reject the Bible’s teaching on headship and submission, on husbands as patriarchs and wives as homemakers, are not merely rejecting tradition or a cultural custom. They are rejecting God’s will. They are rejecting nature. They are rejecting the divine design.
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Paul teaches in Titus 2 that wives who refuse to be obedient to their husbands will cause the Word of God to be blasphemed. We can conclude the opposite is also the case: wives who do obey their husbands will cause the Word of God to be honored. The world often looks to the lives of Christians, especially Christian marriages and families, to determine if the Word of God deserves ridicule or respect. The world assumes that what they see in our lives is what the Word must teach. Happy and holy families are a powerful form of witness.
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If Paul’s teaching on a wife’s submission to her husband is just a reflection of a cultural convention, then his command that husbands love and cherish their wives must be a cultural convention too. This is sheer madness, obviously. The Bible is the Word of God. Its authority and applicability transcend time and culture. It says what it says, and it means what it says.
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It is true that the servant-leadership model is deeply flawed when applied to husbands/fathers. Men do not lead by serving – this turns leadership into its opposite. Rather, men serve by leading. Leadership itself is a gift of service. That being said, it is VERY important for husbands/fathers to remember that leadership is not the ONLY form of service they are to render to their households. Men should serve in a multitude of ways in their families, and frankly, some of those ways might look like “servant leadership” to the untrained eye.
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This is one of the first podcasts I was ever on – and it’s when I realized I actually enjoyed the format.
Eric Conn was gracious enough to invite me as a guest on his platform to discuss masculinity and femininity. I’m sure I talked way too much, but I still have people tell me from time to time that they’ve (re)listened to it and benefitted from it.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hard-men-podcast/id1512510969?i=1000529055720
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Every survey shows that progressives, especially progressive women, are more unhappy than conservatives. There is an obvious reason for this. Progressives will say conservatives are offensive to them, but the real offense is reality itself. When you’re constantly colliding with reality, of course you’re not going to be very happy.
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Feminism is another manifestation of the serpent deceiving the woman.
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A lot of kids today get medicated to make them compliant. But what most kids need is not a better pill, but better parenting.
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In modern America, parents obey their children more than children obey their parents. Oh sure, parents don’t always obey their children right away. Parents don’t always obey their children cheerfully. Sometimes they talk back. Sometimes they complain. But in most American homes, children are the real authority and parents dutifully obey them. This kind of inversion is the wrath of God upon a people (cf. Romans 1:30).
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According to Romans 1:30, a nation full of disobedient children is a nation given over to sin. It’s a nation under judgment.
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Parents, be what you want your kids to become.
Fathers, be the kind of man you want your sons to be, or your daughters to marry.
Mothers, be the kind of woman you want your daughters to be, or your sons to marry.
Many parents undermine good teaching with a bad example. It’s not enough to teach your children; your example, for better or worse, will actually carry far more weight. Your children will either see that what you have taught really is a matter of conviction, or they will come to see you as a hypocrite. Your example will be impressed upon them more than anything else. When it comes to parenting, actions always speak louder than words.
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While feminism has led many women to reject marriage and motherhood, women’s in-built maternal instinct does not just go away. Nature is too stubborn for that. When multitudes of women are no longer having children, they tend to redirect their maternal instinct towards progressive causes, particularly those that promise to rescue the latest class of victims identified by social justice warriors, e.g., this is why so many women hop onboard the transgender train. A lot of the leftwing/progressive radicalization of women politically in our day is due to the sublimation of motherhood into political causes. But the problem is that the maternal instincts that serve women so well in the domestic sphere are an unmitigated disaster in the public/political sphere.
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For many years, I have argued that Christian parenting is rooted in faith. The work we are called to do as parents is the work of faith. Christian parents will seek to build their household on the solid rock of God’s covenant promise, “I will be a God to you and to your household.” That promise contains everything parents need to raise godly children. It tells us the identity of our children and it tells us how we are to nurture them. Our children belong to God and raising them accordingly means discipling them.
My argument is basically twofold: (1) by virtue of God’s covenant promise, our children are members of the people of God and should be treated accordingly, until and unless they prove otherwise, and (2) parental works of discipline, discipleship, nurturing, instruction, etc. flow out of parental faith in the covenant promises. This is what it means to parent by faith.
Someone might ask, “Are you saying we can know our children elect?” The truth is we can never know infallibly who is elect – even your spouse. But we go by what is available to us, namely, the covenant and other observable realities. And in that sense, yes, we should treat our children the same way we treat other members of the visible covenant community. We regard them as eternally elect until and unless they prove otherwise — and our expectation is that if we nurture them faithfully in the gospel, their faith will grow, mature, and persevere. Edward Gross wrote a great book on this entitled, “Will My Children Go to Heaven?”
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When Jesus took infants into his arms and said “of such is the kingdom of God,” was that a guarantee of salvation for those children no matter what? No, the covenant can be taken from those who do not bear its fruit. Jesus was making a declaration of their covenant status. Our children, like all covenant members, have a responsibility to persevere in the faith. We should warn our children about the dangers of presumption as they get older. But parents who rest in the covenant promises will do the works of parental faith, and as they do so, they should have every expectation that God’s covenant will be fulfilled in the lives of their children. Covenant succession is God’s design.
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Charles Spurgeon, speaking to mothers: “You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, and training them up in God’s fear, and minding the house, and making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts.”
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Erika Komisar on parenting/parental authority:
“While much is said about the stress of parenting, the reality is that it has always been challenging. It has always required sacrifice, sleepless nights, and the delicate balance of a parent’s needs with those of their children. The difference today is that many parents feel unequipped to handle these demands. Of course, some parents struggle with their mental health—many are fragile, anxious, or have endured traumas that have left them emotionally unprepared to lead. In my practice, I see multi-generational fragility—parents who were raised by caregivers who themselves struggled with the responsibilities of parenting. These parents, now raising children of their own, are more emotionally vulnerable, less resilient, and more easily overwhelmed by the trials of parenthood.
When parents lose their way, they abdicate their leadership role, allowing children to take the reins. Some parents try to be their children’s peers—drinking and smoking with them, or by giving in to demands for smartphones at an early age out of fear of conflict. But this continues a cycle of children who have lost their way because parents have lost theirs. Reversing the mental health crisis among children must begin with restoring parental authority. Parents must reclaim their authority, not by becoming authoritarian, but by providing the firm, loving structure children require for healthy development, and society must stop undermining their influence. Instead, we must support parents in their fundamental role as the primary caretakers and moral guides of their children. This means ending the outsourcing of parenting to schools, therapists, and social media influencers. It means recognizing that, while parenting is challenging, it is also one of the most meaningful and necessary roles in society. Only then can we raise a generation that is mentally strong, emotionally stable, and prepared to face the world with confidence.”
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C. S. Lewis on “equality”:
“A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. This introduces a view of equality rather different from that in which we have been trained. I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent, I don’t think the old authority in kings, priests, husbands, or fathers, and the old obedience in subjects, laymen, wives, and sons, was in itself a degrading or evil thing at all. I think it was intrinsically as good and beautiful as the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It was rightly taken away because men became bad and abused it. . . . But medicine is not good. There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. And that is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values: offers food to some need which we have starved. When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked.”
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Friedman on our leadership crisis:
“There exists throughout America today a rampant sabotaging of leaders who try to stand tall amid the raging anxiety-storms of our time. It is a highly reactive atmosphere pervading all the institutions of our society—a regressive mood that contaminates the decision-making processes of government and corporations at the highest level, and, on the local level, seeps down into the deliberations of neighborhood church, synagogue, hospital, library, and school boards. It is ‘something in the air’ that affects the most ordinary family no matter what its ethnic background. And its frustrating effect on leaders the same no matter what their gender, race, or age. It is my perception that this leadership-toxic climate runs the danger of squandering a natural resource far more vital to the continued evolution of our civilization than any part of the environment. We are polluting our own species. The more immediate threat to the regeneration—and perhaps even survival—of American civilization is internal, not external. It is our tendency to adapt to its immaturity. To come full circle, this kind of emotional climate can only be dissipated by clear, decisive, well-defined leadership. For whenever a ‘family’ is driven by anxiety, what will also always be present is a failure of nerve among its leaders.”
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Friedman on parenting: “The children who work through natural problems of maturing with the least amount of emotional or physical residue are those whose parents have made them least important to their own salvation. Children rarely succeed in rising above the maturity level of their parents, and this principle applies to all mentoring, healing, or administrative relationships.”
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For most young kids, free play is vastly superior to organized sports. It’s more fun and better for their development. As kids get a bit older, organized sports can be very valuable (especially for boys). But there is a tendency to over-program and over-supervise and over-structure the lives of our kids these days. Let kids be kids; the time for sports leagues can come later.
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Some parents try to make up for their laziness and inconsistency in discipline with lots of yelling. But yelling is not actually a form of discipline and does not produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Just the opposite in fact. Yelling is not a substitute for the rod. Parents, God has put the rod of discipline in your hands so you won’t have to yell. Use it.
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Most of what gets called “gentle parenting” these days is really just negotiating with terrorists. It doesn’t work with radical Muslims, and it won’t work with 2 year olds either.
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“I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the Gospel on the street corners and at the ends of the Earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism.” — Gresham Machen on the need for Christian education
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Parental anxiety undermines the peace and joy of the home. Moms and dads with unresolved anxiety (especially anxiety about their children) will inevitably make the home a less enjoyable place to be. Anxiety is the enemy of good parenting. Thankfully, God gives Christian parents promises they can use as swords to slay parental anxiety.
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Technology is a good servant but a terrible master. Technology is a useful tool but should never be allowed to displace basic human skills. Technology can enhance our lives or dehumanize us – how we use it is the key. Technology is often subversive of a healthy childhood. Technology can subvert a proper education. We must not underestimate it dangers.
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The issue of how we educate our children is really a giant custody battle for the next generation. Who do our children belong to – the covenant God or the secular state? Christ or Caesar? Who we entrust with the education (= discipleship) of our children is our answer to that question. Christian children should not be given a secular education. They should be given a Christian education, an education consistent with their covenantal identity.
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One of the most masculine things a teenage boy can do is honor his mother.
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Inheritances passed on from one generation to the next should be much more than financial/monetary. Good parents will pass on a heritage, a legacy, a culture, and most importantly, a faith.
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Parents, just a reminder that the day you give your child a smartphone, his childhood is effectively over.
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Much of the time when evangelicals try to explain masculinity/manhood, they make a real mess of it. Typically, Jesus is taken as the perfect manifestation of masculinity, but the way Jesus is used ends up presenting part of the truth as if it were the whole. This is due to a one-sided emphasis on the cross and a neglect of the resurrection. Masculinity becomes “servant leadership,” meaning a man leads by serving everyone else around him. He has no mission of his own; he lets other people around him define his mission. Male passivity and softness get reframed as virtues since we know Jesus would never assert himself in anyway. Obviously, this description of manhood is not only totally uninspiring, but it is hardly a full picture of who Jesus is.
What would it look like if we incorporated the resurrection, ascension, and reign of Jesus into our portrait of masculinity? What would happen if we included his act of vindication in destroying the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD (cf. Matthew 24, where Jesus describes the destruction of the temple as a result of him “coming” in judgment on those who persecuted him and his bride, the church)? What if we incorporated more psalms where he prays for judgment against his enemies or uses his scepter to smash the rebellious nations (I take it as axiomatic that the psalms are the prayers of Christ)?
What if we wove the imagery of Revelation 19 into our picture of redeemed masculinity? What do we see in this visionary text? A stud on a stallion, riding out conquering and to conquer. Historically, men have been concerned with glory on the battlefield and a test of manhood. Here we have that masculine impulse in its evangelized form. Christ gets glory in vanquishing his foes. He is competitive with Satan — and aggressively pursues victory. He is clearly battle hardened and ready for a fight. He has suffered for his bride — his robe is dipped in blood — but there is more to his mission than suffering sacrificially for others. He is a warrior. He is armed. He is bold. He is strong. All of this imagery is central to the biblical (and natural) picture of masculinity. The Bible (and our physiques) assign us this role of acting as dominant warrior-kings in the world. We were made for a mission that requires courage, sacrifice, and strength. We were made for battle and for dominion. We were made to be protectors and providers. We were made to do heroic things. The Bible’s Jesus-shaped portrait of masculinity includes all of this. Yes, for most men today, this will be spiritualized in a certain sense, e.g., most of the battles we are called to fight will not be flesh and blood battles. But Jesus’ battle in Revelation 19 is a spiritual battle as well. When we consider the fact that moral courage is often harder to come by than physical courage, this does not at all diminish the view of masculinity we derive from the Bible’s overall depiction of Jesus.
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The purpose of marriage according to Ephesians 5 is ultimately gospel symbolism. The husband and wife are icons of Christ the church. But they can only portray the gospel in their marriage if there is role differentiation between them. They each have a script, a part to play, and while there is all kinds of room for faithful improvisation within every marriage, the core roles are what they are. If he never initiates, leads, sacrifices, commands, provides, protects, loves, cherishes, and rules, then their marriage cannot portray the gospel. Likewise, if she does not respect, obey, honor, submit. Marriages that attempt to have an androgynous structure, in which husband and wife are more or less interchangeable pieces, preach a false gospel. Heretical marriages are inevitably unhappy power struggles. A marriage that preaches the orthodox gospel is a glorious thing, full of joy, and it serves as a powerful witness to the world. Marriage is the gospel. And the gospel is marita
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In Genesis 3, Adam emasculates himself in multiple ways. First, he fails to protect his wife when the serpent invades the garden. Second, he follows her into sin when they eat the forbidden fruit, rather than leading her in righteousness. Third, when God confronts him about what he has done, he blames her as if he were the victim, rather than taking responsibility.
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The serpent in the garden got the woman to question God’s goodness, to view God’s commands as oppressive, to believe that God could not possibly have her best interests in view.
Interestingly, feminism does the exact same thing to modern women, telling them God’s design for womanhood is oppressive and true liberation will be found in casting off God’s commands to women. The voice of feminism, like the voice of the serpent, contradicts God’s word and breeds discontentment in women. One might be tempted to conclude that feminism is Satanic, that is participates in the spirit of anti-christ.
Meanwhile, Adam bought into the “happy wife, happy life” myth in Genesis 3. Instead of standing up to his wife and commanding her to not eat of the fruit, he gave in to her. He decided it was more important to please his wife than please God. He did what she wanted rather than what God wanted. He feared her more than God. He abdicated his position of headship and submitted himself to his wife – just like the feminists would want a man to do. And unsurprisingly, it resulted in disaster, spiritually and maritally. Adam fell because he became an effeminate simp, unwilling to fight the serpent on behalf of his wife and unwilling to stand up to and challenge his wife’s participation in Satanic deception. This is why we read later in Scripture that the effeminate will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6).
The fall in Genesis 3 involved role reversal between the man and the woman. It involved the woman turning away from her femininity and the man abandoning his masculinity. Satan struck right at the heart of God’s sexual design because nothing is more foundational to God’s purposes for humanity (and to human happiness) than properly relating the sexes to one another. Satan loves to bring chaos and confusion in place of God’s creational order. Anytime we see a culture sinking into the ruin of sexual confusion (cf. Romans 1:18ff), we know far too many people are heeding Satan’s voice rather than God’s. Feminism is a form of Satanic revolution, a revolt against God’s good design.
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Some wives have an uncanny knack for caring deeply what everyone thinks about them *except* for the one person whose opinion should carry the most weight, namely, her husband. These women tend to be much more focused on pleasing their female friends or their mothers, rather than pleasing their husbands. It ought not to be this way.
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The story of the fall in Genesis 3 applies to and challenges both sexes. Adam’s sin was high-handed; the woman’s sin was a sin of wandering (to use the categories of Leviticus). The human race fell in Adam, not the woman, because he was the head (Rom. 5:12ff). It’s true, she failed to listen to (submit to) her husband, but it’s also true God rebukes Adam for listening to (submitting to) the word of his wife (Gen. 3:17). It’s true she followed a false teacher (the serpent), but he failed to guard the garden (including his wife) from the serpent.
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Marriage is a game. To play it right, you have to know the rules of the game and the role you are assigned by the game (eg, Ephesians 5:21ff). But to play the game well, you also have to know the strategies and tricks and, yes, even cheat codes that make the game fun and winnable.
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Men could solve the bulk of their marriage problems if they could find a way to make their wives laugh at least once each day.
An addendum to this post: Men can use laughter to bond with their wives, reduce anxiety, and make the culture of the home more joyful. A sense of humor is a great tool for a husband to use in the game that is marriage. But there are at least some men who should work at not only making their wives laugh once a day, but should also make it a habit to disagree with their wives at least once a day. Many modern men do not really lead their wives because they are too deferential and too agreeable. They are too passive and do not really think for themselves as much as they should. To these men, I would say having one disagreement a day with her is also a good rule of thumb. Just to keep you both on your toes. (Note: disagreements can be friendly, and need not produce arguments/fights.)
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