The Welfare State and the Selfish Society (by PragerUniversity)
(please excuse some of the expletives)
In a society that tells you not to focus on others, but to focus on self, one must ask what social and political movements heed this stance, and which combat it.
Obviously, I believe our lives should be Godward focused, but at the very least, they should be centered on others and not on self. Ironically, this happens by first working hard so that you can care for others.
I greatly appreciate this thought provoking video.
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.
