Modern “liberalism” is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to “celebrate diversity” coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity.
![enicolle:
“…[Syme] remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a small bird tied to it. The whole gave him a sensation, the vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was always making mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them they would understand him when they understood the stars. He wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill.”
-from the Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
My buddy Ethan drew G.K. Chesterton on a hornbill. Must reblog!](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyvc3ekrAX1r5rasco1_500.png)
“…[Syme] remembered a hornbill, which was simply a huge yellow beak with a small bird tied to it. The whole gave him a sensation, the vividness of which he could not explain, that Nature was always making mysterious jokes. Sunday had told them they would understand him when they understood the stars. He wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill.”
-from the Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
My buddy Ethan drew G.K. Chesterton on a hornbill. Must reblog!
Drum asks us to envision a Muslim-run hospital that required its employees to bind themselves to Shariah law. But the analogy is hopelessly flawed, because the typical Catholic hospital doesn’t require its employees to follow Catholic doctrine in their personal lives — on sexual matters or anything else. The Church isn’t asking for the right to fire an employee for missing Mass on Sunday or for coveting his neighbor’s wife. It just doesn’t want its institutions to be legally required to pay for acts that it considers immoral, as the price of running hospitals at all. (Or to pay for them directly, since obviously an employee could use their paycheck to buy any produce or service they so chose.) This isn’t the equivalent of a hypothetical Muslim hospital demanding, say, that all its employees permanently abstain from pork and alcohol and premarital sex. It’s the equivalent of a hypothetical Muslim hospital declining to stock Playboy in its gift shop, or serve pork and alcohol in its cafeteria.
Where are the men?
Taken from “A Word to the Men”
by: Pastor Mark Driscoll on Jan 31, 2012“When men who’ve been changed by Jesus lead well by the power of the Holy Spirit, leading their homes in a loving and biblical way, amazing things happen.
For instance:
Men who lovingly and biblically lead their homes have considerably better marriages and families.[1]
Men who are involved with a local church express more positive emotion to their wives, are more attentive to their marriages, serve their wives more, take more time for date night and time together, and invest more in their wives.[2]
Men who are godly are “the most active and expressive fathers and the most emotionally engaged husbands.”[3]
Couples who regularly attend church together report greater marital happiness, marital support, and romance in their marriages.[4]
Couples who regularly attend church together are far less likely to separate or divorce, which is the most common eventual result of separation.[5]
Unfortunately, these types of men are the exception not the norm in our society. We have a crisis in the US. We’re sorely lacking in strong, godly men who love Jesus and lead well both in the church and in their marriages.
What are the guys doing?
Often, they’re acting like boys who can shave, getting drunk, watching porn, attending sporting events, and treating responsibility like Superman does green kryptonite.
The Atlantic (here and here), New York Times, and Wall Street Journal have run major stories on the changing landscape of gender in our culture, in particular, on young male’s increasing tendency to delay assuming any adult responsibilities and the effects this has on young women. This shift is the root of many marital problems today. As a pastor, I see the effects of men not leading daily and I’m deeply burdened by the suffering this causes for both women and children. One of the reasons Grace and I wrote Real Marriage was to share God’s plan for men and women in the Bible regarding gender and marriage in hopes of seeing healthy marriages.
This is why preach so directly to the men at Mars Hill Church. Contrary to what the bloggers would have you believe, we aren’t trying to build an army of meat-headed, hyper-masculine, misogynists. We’re calling men to repentance. We’re telling men they’re made for more than skimming through life with the goal of avoiding as much responsibility as possible, sleeping with as many girls as possible, and working dead-end jobs that let them play as much as possible.
When a man’s heart is inclined toward Jesus, his heart is also lovingly inclined toward his spouse, children, and grandchildren. Men, you were put here to love, to protect, to provide, to care, to serve, to nourish, and to bless. That’s what it means to be a man.
It takes the grace of God to be faithful and loving for a lifetime to one woman and to the children God entrusts to your care. We are not encouraging you to simply “man up” but to depend on the grace of God for forgiveness, ask for the Holy Spirit to empower you to love well, and enjoy the role he’s given you. By God’s grace we’ve seen men completely changed from slackers to strong leaders in our church and in their families at Mars Hill.
The primary reason we go after men is because we believe it’s biblical for men to lead their family and the church.
The Scriptures make clear that God designated that the marriage relationship—patterned after Christ’s own relationship with the church—be one in which the man and the woman each play distinctive roles.
These roles in the context of marriage are composed of the husband leading his home well and his wife respectfully encouraging him to lead. The Bible expects husbands and fathers to lovingly function as pastors to their wives and children. The Bible not only commands husbands to be in the Scriptures with their wives regularly and to lovingly lay down their life as Christ did for the church , it also commands fathers as “pastor dads” to spiritually raise their children.
Practically this means that as men, we need to be both tough and tender. We must be tender with our families, loving them, snuggling with them, verbalizing how much we love them, and serving them. We must also be tough for our families, protecting them and working hard to provide for them.
Men, I encourage you to take responsibility for yourself, and to take responsibility for your wife and children if or when you have them. Take responsibility for your church. Take responsibility for your company. Take responsibility your city. Real mean don’t look for others, organizations, and governments to carry their load. Real men carry their own load, because men are like trucks and drive straighter with a weighted load.”
Want to know more about what it means to be a man pursuing faith in Jesus? Check out the Biblical Manhood category on marshill.com.
[2] W. Bradford Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 158.
[3] Ibid., 195.
[4] Nicholas H. Wolfinger and W. Bradford Wilcox, “Happily Ever After? Religion, Marital Status, Gender, and Relationship Quality in Urban Families,” Social Forces 86 (20008): 1311-37..
[5] Edward O. Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 501.
Holy cow. Mark Driscoll is so intense.
Awesome.
To those Christians who (for some reason) think Driscoll hates women: watch this please. Or maybe any of his sermons on marriage.
Lincoln, 1940
N.C. Wyeth
High Diving Hare
While browsing through the family photo album, Lisa notices that there are no baby pictures of Maggie. Homer explains by recounting the story of Maggie’s birth. In 1993, Homer hated working at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, and had a dream of working at a bowling alley. After he received a paycheck that cleared him of all his debts, he quit his job at the power plant, and went to get a job at the local bowling alley.
When Homer and Marge “snuggled” to celebrate this development, she became pregnant. Marge knew that the news would end Homer’s new lifestyle and affect his happiness, because it meant he could no longer support his family on his bowling alley salary. Marge kept her pregnancy a secret as long as she could, but Patty and Selma, eager to ruin Homer’s life, spread the news quickly around town.
Homer was not happy when he found out about Marge’s pregnancy, and was completely unenthusiastic about the impending birth. Because of the financial problems caused by the pregnancy, Homer was forced to make a sacrifice and go back to the power plant. However, Mr. Burns made Homer beg for his job back, and placed a large plaque in front of Homer’s desk reading: “Don’t forget: you’re here forever”. Homer was once again unhappy at his work, but as with all the Simpson children, when Maggie was born, Homer instantly fell in love with her. Back in the present, Bart and Lisa still do not understand what that has to do with Maggie’s photos. Homer merely mentions that they are in the place where he needs them the most. The scene then cuts to his workplace where all of the photos of Maggie are positioned on the plaque on the wall, which now reads: “Do it for her”.
And just when I thought I was done with these Shit ____ Say things, Eliot & Ilana go and make the best one. If you live in New York. I PROMISE.
Yeeeeah watch this.
Ohhh New York….This is a pretty good one.
“It smells like maple syrup.” Is this still happening, New Yorkers? I remember the first time this happened, 5 or 6 years ago when I lived there, it was so odd.
Isaiah 55:6 - Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Designed by Daniel Golden (@dangolden1).
