A Generation of Heroes

Satan watches for those vessels that sail without a convoy,” wrote Puritan pastor George Swinnock (1627–1673). Every individual knows he was created for community. Isolation is the Devil’s playground, and our Enemy is on the lookout for the Christian who thinks he can stand alone in independent isolation from the fellowship, accountability, and encouragement of faithful brothers and sisters.

Before the fall of man, even though the Lord God walked in close communion with Adam in the garden, our gracious and triune God knew it was not good for man to be alone (Gen. 2:18), and so God created someone who would meet Adam’s needs and relate to Adam in a way that, by design, God Himself did not. In His often-overlooked grace, God blessed mankind with the most beautiful, intimate, and joyous relationship that exists between mere human beings: holy wedlock between a man and a woman, who by design and covenant become one flesh. Nevertheless, even from that glorious union, He called them to multiply themselves into communities of families that would populate and dominate creation to share life and glorify God together.

God gave each of us an insatiable hunger to experience life together — life’s joys and passions and life’s sorrows and burdens. Men need men, and women need women. Younger men and women need to listen to and learn from the wisdom and experiences of older men and women. Older men and women need the passion and patience to sit down and tell their stories and lessons to the next generation. Women need authentic relationships with other women to form the enduring companionship of sisterhood that not only detests divisive gossip and grudges but defends, encourages, and bears the burdens of every woman so that no woman is left alone to fend for herself in serving the Lord in her many callings.

Even though many men are completely content with the community and companionship of images, games, and voices on a screen, men desperately need the camaraderie and fraternity of other men. Men are made to experience intimate and authentic, loyal and enduring friendships with other men — on the battlefield, in the foxhole, at the gates of the city, and at the coffee shop on the corner. And while no wise and truly humble man will ever consider himself a hero, each and every man of God by His grace is called to strive to conquer this world, his flesh, and the Devil, shoulder to shoulder with other men who together serve one another in a company of heroes as husbands and dads who serve by leading their wives, families, churches, and communities into fellowship with God.

By Burk Parsons is editor of Tabletalk magazine and associate minister at Saint Andrew’s in Sanford, Florida

Honoring the Legacy of a 9-11 Rescuer

This September 11 marks nine years since evil men turned airplanes into flying bombs and murdered 2,976 people in New York City, Washington DC and Shankstown Pennsylvania.

We all can recall where we were that day when we heard the news. Those incredible images remain etched in our minds. Evil spread its wings before the world that day but courage was also unfurled before us as we witnessed the fraternity of men at its best. When the lives of others were at stake, those heroes of 9/11 rushed the stairways and mounted the rubble to rescue them.

403 firemen, paramedics and policemen sacrificed themselves in a grand rescue mission at Ground Zero. There are so many remarkable stories of heroism that day but there’s one in particular that lingers over me to this day

In those final moments before the collapse of the Twin Towers, when people in them were doing all they could to save themselves, there was a mysterious young man who stepped out of the smoke and chaos. He wasn’t a fireman or a rescuer worker but just a regular guy who chose to put the wellbeing of others before his own.

The survivors didn’t know their rescuer’s name that horrible day, but they did remember this about him: he wore a red bandanna around his mouth and nose.

For seventy-six minutes the man in the red bandanna led men and women to safety down stairwells. He called out to them, “I found the stairs. Follow me.” He carried one woman on his back down fifteen flights of stairs. Once he reached the ground floor, he started back up. READ MORE

Hyper-Masculinity and A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash

What does "A Boy Named Sue" have do with biblical manhood and fatherhood? Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice-President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says:
 
“If you can understand what’s going on when Johnny Cash sings this song from the point of view of a young boy who has been abandoned by his dad who is given a name that with emasculates him, then you can understand what is really going on in a lot of the conversations that we’re having in our culture, and a lot of the conversations we’re having in our churches, when it comes to masculinity.” Moore goes on to argue that we need to define masculinity in terms of Jesus Christ, and not the other way around.

 

You can listen to the Moore's excellent podcast here.

The Her.meneutics Gender Debates

From Her.meneutics – The Christianity Today Blog for Women (http://blog.christianitytoday.com/women/)

We talk to theologian Russell Moore about Bachmann, the divorce culture, and why a feminist reading of Scripture would often be easier than a complementarian one.

Interview by Rachel Stone

Yesterday on the blog, we heard from theologian William Webb, an egalitarian who says the Bible's "redemptive movement" shows that because of Christ, women are more, not less, free to exercise gifts in church ministry and beyond. Today we hear from popular pastor and blogger Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and, as of today, the board chairman of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Moore says that headship in marriage actually empowers women, and that complementarians and egalitarians can find common ground around fighting a pornographic culture that reduces women to sexualized bodies.

Many evangelicals who would elect Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann for President wouldn’t attend a church with a female pastor. Is there a contradiction here?

On the face of it, there is no contradiction since Scripture teaches that the church, not the world, is presently the outpost of the new creation. The state in this age doesn’t — and can’t — reflect God’s kingdom purposes in the way that the church or a family can.

I would gladly vote for someone to be my president who disagrees with me on whether or not infants can be baptized. I wouldn’t want that same person to be my pastor, because we will have to decide together who and how to baptize. The Kuyperian principle of “sphere sovereignty” is helpful here.

On the other hand, that’s the ideal and, very often, not the reality. Unfortunately, American evangelicals have too often longed for a secular authority to serve as a spiritual leader, and political professionals have been all too willing to exploit this by teaching candidates to parrot evangelical-sounding phrases and “testimonies.” In such cases, political leaders become totem-like for evangelicals. An attack on a candidate who identifies with “us” is an attack on “us” or, worse, on Jesus. That’s unhealthy, regardless of whether the politician is male or female.

In the case of evangelical over-identification with political partisanship, though, there can be a subtle shifting in what it means to define a woman’s life, or a man’s, as a “success.” There is quite a bit of inconsistency in evangelical complementarians talking about a “gentle and quiet spirit” while cheering Ann Coulter’s latest sarcastic barbs.

Lots of evangelicals, such as William Webb, take the Bible seriously and are still comfortable seeing a woman in the pulpit. What about you?

I don’t think the issue is one of comfort — there are many women I would love to hear preach, and who are much better Bible scholars and communicators than any man I know. But the issue is whether the Scripture’s qualifications for this office (1 Tim. 2 and others) are normative.

There are some so-called “complementarian” Christians, I’m sure, who hold the position simply because they have never seen anyone but a man in the pulpit, and just find anything else odd and disquieting.

I have never met a convictional complementarian, though, who holds that position out of reflexive comfort. For most of us, the Scripture is pulling us in the other direction from our comfort. It would be much easier, especially for those us under 40, to embrace a more feminist stance here and elsewhere.

Complementarians sometimes say that a feminist or egalitarian reading of the Bible owes more to our own cultural prejudices than to a faithful reading of Scripture. Is this true?

I do not believe that egalitarian Christians are evil, Bible-destructing people. Most of them are trying to reconcile some things they find in Scripture (Jesus’ affirmation of women, for instance) with others that seem to contradict these (the teachings of Paul and Peter on the church and family, for instance).

I do think there’s a tendency for all of us to read the Scripture around our own “plausibility structures.” Paul obviously can’t mean that women aren’t to teach men, we conclude, because the very idea seems absurd, so he must mean something else. I think that’s a mistake.

This is not unique to egalitarians by any means. For example, American Christians have a great deal of difficulty hearing Jesus and his apostles on issues of wealth and poverty. We seek to make Bible elastic enough to allow us to pursue our dollars and follow Jesus simultaneously.

When complementarians argue that we shouldn’t conform the Bible to our cultural expectations, we are not saying that this is unique to egalitarianism. We’re saying, across the board, that we should let the Bible be as countercultural as it is.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood claims that evangelical feminism has caused a "tragic loss of the beauty of manhood and womanhood as created by God." What would you consider an example of this?

I think this is one area where complementarians and feminists can find common ground. The pornographic “revolution” has not empowered women but the men objectifying them. The abortion-rights “revolution” has not empowered women but sexually predatory men. Women and children are the first hurt by the kind of unaccountable divorce culture we have allowed to be cultivated in our culture and our churches.

Moreover, in Christian circles, there is often a diminishing of the value of the unique contribution of women to the church and to the home. What is implied is that a woman’s gifting is only valued if it is the same as that of a man.

What complementarianism contributes to this discussion is to say that where there is a loss of self-sacrificial, other-protective male leadership, the result is not equality but the worst form of patriarchy. In the Bible, headship is not dictatorship, but instead the responsibility to sacrifice oneself for another (Eph. 5:25-30). In a Christian view of reality, women’s value is not determined by her sexual attractiveness or availability to men. A truly complementarian Christianity will value the full spectrum of gifts, and the cooperative economy that God brings about through the distinctions between women and men as well as through their commonalities.

Thank you, Dr. Moore!

Are You An Alamo Man?

In the 2004 version of The Alamo with Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thorton, there’s a scene when Col. Travis talks to his courageous men and gives them a choice of staying and fighting or leaving while they can: "I want to ask each of you, what it is you value so highly, that you are willing to fight and possibly die for?"

The brave men of the Alamo willingy fought and bled for Texas. The question for us today is: Are Christian men willing to lay down their lives for the Kingdom of God?

Detrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” He further wrote, “Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide for there is an element of self-will even in that.To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only who goes before us and no more the road which is too hard for us.”

Kevin Weatherby, founder of Campfire Cowboy Ministries, takes off on this theme with “We Sell Our Lives Dearly”. Read More

Unmanly Men and Manly Men

Unmanly Men and Manly Men

Manhood is neither macho nor metrosexual, but according to God's design.

by Larry Crabb

What does a godly man look like? (You can substitute the phrase "manly man" for "godly man." The two are the same.)

Is he broad-shouldered, self-confident, tough, successful? Is he powerful, committed to his purposes, able to keep in check emotions that might interfere with achieving his goals? Does he keep moving against all odds, never indulging the urge to panic or cry? Does his deepest enjoyment come more from what he has accomplished than from what he is like to be with?

That's the traditional view: real men are tough, tough enough to lead and make decisions and keep on moving. But for the last ten or twenty years, that view has taken a beating.

From pulpits, in conferences, and through books, modern men have been encouraged (sometimes commanded) to show their gentle side, to become comfortable with vulnerability and emotional displays, to stop thinking of themselves as superior to women, to release that part of their humanity that longs to connect more than achieve.

Men who live by God's design, so this thinking goes, are nicer, kinder, more considerate than we thought men were supposed to be. Aggression and power, those traditional "manly" qualities that have men out fighting the world while the ladies stay home, are now scorned as cultural mistakes, perversions of true masculinity.

Something has been lost. Something is wrong with men. Something good that God has placed within every male—something that comes alive only through regeneration—remains unreleased in most men.

As a way of introducing our understanding of manhood, let me encourage you to think of masculinity as an energy, a natural momentum within the heart of every man, a power and an urge to move into life in a particular way.

Men in whom masculine energy is suppressed or distorted are unmanly, ungodly men, however culture may regard them. Men are manly only when they live in the power of released masculine energy. Now, what on earth does that mean?

To develop a clearer idea of what "released manhood" looks like, it might be helpful first to take a brief look at an inauthentic man, someone whose manly energy remains dormant or is expressed in corrupted form.

Inauthentic Man

If you are in relationship with an unmanly man, you likely will experience him as:

• controlling (impersonally powerful)

• destructive (or dangerous)

• selfish (committed, above all else, to feeling a certain way about himself) 

An unmanly man controls conversations; he manipulates family and friends; he arranges his life to avoid whatever he is not sure he can handle. He trusts no one, not deeply. He works hard to maneuver himself into a favorable light, into a position where he comes out on top or at least unchallenged. He is not a good listener. He rarely asks meaningful questions, preferring either to offer opinions or remain quiet. No one feels pursued by him except when their friendship might work to his advantage. When he does take an interest in you, it has the feel of a car salesman asking to see a picture of your family.

And he is destructive. His words and actions harm people, though coworkers may feel encouraged and challenged for a time (sometimes a long time). Family members feel the harm soonest and most deeply but are sometimes too scared to admit it, even to themselves. Often the veneer of goodness and affability is so thick that the harm is felt only with a cumulative power that slowly destroys, like small traces of poison in drinking water. Sometimes he actively hurts people with sarcasm and meanness, occasionally with violence. More often the damage is done by indifference and retreat, the kind of weapons that make you feel guilty or weird for feeling attacked. The wife of an unmanly man rarely senses that she is cherished. She may never tell him so, but she more often feels used, taken for granted, or hated. His children and friends keep their distance. They're too angry, or scared, to get close.

When masculine energy is not released, when it is either suppressed or distorted, men,

1. feel powerless; they compensate by committing themselves to controlling something. They become AGGRESSIVE MEN.

2. experience rage and persuade themselves that vengeance is their due. They become ABUSIVE MEN.

3. live with a terror for which there is no resolution or escape, only relief. They dull the terror with physical pleasure and become ADDICTED MEN.

Manly Men

An authentic man is very different. When the energy God has placed within a man is released, 

1. the man knows he is strong, not powerless. Strong men take the initiative, even when they're not sure what to do. Their calling to reflect God in their manner of relating compels them more than their hope for power or their fear of impotence. A manly man is not an aggressive man; he is an ACTIVE MAN, involved in offering quality relationships to others, more committed to developing a strength that others can enjoy than to achieving for himself a sense of power and control.

2. the man experiences a state of being less angry, less easily threatened. Some call it peace. For him the phrase "more than a conqueror" means something, even during life's hard moments. A manly man's pain doesn't interfere with his feeling the plight of others, even when their troubles are less severe than his. He has the courage to face his experience honestly. He therefore feels the sadness of living in a fallen world, and the loneliness of living in imperfect community. 

But his sadness and loneliness generate only a righteous anger, the kind that stirs compassion for people, while it remains offended by sin. A released man is not abusive; he is a GENTLE MAN, not weak, a man whose power is controlled for good purposes.

3. the man finds an answer to his terror: in FREEDOM. No matter what happens in life, manly men always find room to move. There is always something to BE, even when there is nothing to DO.

When their families fall apart or their businesses collapse, manly men—like unmanly men—are tempted to lash out in vengeance or to retreat into relief. But they do neither. They are drawn by the opportunity to exhibit something good, to reflect the always hopeful movement of God. They move through trials with a presence that others, more than they, notice.

Manly men are enticed by the joys of freedom, by the unhindered chance to follow the call of manhood. A manly man is not addicted; he treats his body roughly, to avoid coming under a foreign power. He fights hard against his relentless desire for pleasure. He moves according to a plan. He is a PURPOSEFUL MAN who knows what he's about and what he can contribute to the purpose for which he is living.

Every day, we move either toward godly manhood or away from it. One of the great tragedies of our day is that so many men are walking a path that they think leads to the joys of legitimate masculinity. It may be many years before those moving in wrong directions realize that the path they have been following releases masculine energy that is more corrupt than genuine, and that this path leaves them even more powerless, bitter, and terrified. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" (Proverbs 14:12).

Taken from The Silence of Adam by Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr. PhD., P.A., dba, Institute of Biblical Counseling

Real Men Flee

In the first century AD, crowns were awarded to victorious military leaders, champion athletes, and dignitaries. In Paul’s farewell to his beloved disciple he wrote of receiving such a reward from Jesus Christ. Think of the impact that thought must have had on Timothy. How encouraging would it be for him to hear his mentor’s final words to him, which conveyed confidence and joy in Jesus Christ? Paul’s hope, as expressed in 2 Timothy 4:7-8, reminded his protege of the reason that he was fighting as a soldier and striving as an athlete. In spite of being in prision about to die, the apostle exulted, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.” No matter what the struggles looked like for Timothy, he could overcome temptation because of the hope he had in Christ. 

History tells us that Timothy died while trying to stop people from engaging in idolatry at a pagan feast. As he proclaimed the true gospel, he was severely beaten by the angry crowd and died two days later. Timothy gave up his life so that Christ would be glorified. He exhibited faithfulness and courage to the end.

As we flee from sin and pursue holiness in our own lives, let’s follow the example of Timothy. By relying on God’s strength, reminding ourselves of the gospel, and running away from sin and toward righteousness, we too can experience a life of spiritual victory. The road will not always be easy, but our faithfulness will be well-rewarded. One day, we will stand before Christ. Then sin and temptation will be no more. As we look forward to that day, we can rejoice with Paul in knowing that “the Lord will rescue [us] from every evil deed, and will bring [us] safely into His heavenly kingdom; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18).

 “Real Men Flee Temptation” by Andrew Gutierrez from Men of the Word edited by Nathan Busenitz