Mostly Peaceful November Letters

Jake, I would advise them not to lie on anyone’s behalf, and to reserve their views on it for family discussions, as long as such discussions remain productive. I don’t believe they would have a moral duty to act as an informant.

Vexed Questions on a Husband’s Responsibility

So I’ve heard you for years talk about husbands taking responsibility. I understand the concept, however, you never seem to address the issue of what a man is to do when his wife refuses to submit. Typically with responsibility comes authority. But I have no authority over my wife. She would deny she is a feminist, but she’s been drinking the feminist culture for so long, I would say absolutely she’s a feminist in her views of relationships.
My wife does not believe that the verses to submit, honor and respect your husband apply to her, because I am a sinner. (logical conclusion is that no wife needs to submit, honor and respect since all husbands are sinners). Given your illustration of the captain of the ship and the first mate running the ship aground, at least the captain has the authority to not put a drunken, irresponsible first mate in charge of the ship. But when I have no authority over my wife, how can I be held responsible? She appears to take joy is flaunting anything I say and doing the opposite. I have brought this to the elders of my PCA church and they after much prayer and council they have concluded that I have a tough situation and they don’t know what to do.
I can’t divorce her, because she hasn’t been unfaithful to me. She hasn’t abandoned me, in fact she really does enjoy not working and watching TV and spending my money. And she knows I can’t divorce her and flaunts that fact.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the whole sacrificial responsibility thing doesn’t really work to well unless both husband and wife are in submission to God’s authority.
Steven

Steven, a big part of the reason why she flaunts like this is that we live in a society that would back her up, and not you, if it came down to it. Most couples are helped by such external societal expectations. But we live in a disobedient age, which means that your wife has reinforcement in the disobedience. And that means you are on your own—but you and God outnumber everybody. God believes you are the head of the home.
What you need to do is this. This is between you and God and alone. Don’t share what you are doing with anybody. In your prayers, you have the authority before God to bring everything to a head. You come before God as an individual (“Lord, it’s Steven), but you also have the authority to come before God as a representative of the whole family—to confess the disarray that the [fill in your last name] are in. Confess the sinful condition of your family. Do it as the representative head. On a daily basis, ask God to bring true conviction of sin to everyone in your household. Say nothing to your wife about what you are doing—that would turn prayer into guilt tripping. Ask God to bring everything to a head. This will mean that she will become even more unreasonable, and she will try to pick fights—because if you get into sin she can use that to justify having picked the fight. Remember that the fish does most of its thrashing right before it is hauled into the boat. You want her to be drawn to the point of such misery that she either repents, or she divorces you.

Re “On Becoming a Responsible Man:”
I’m still not clear on (A) What “responsible” means, and (B) What to do about it, = how to take responsibility/live responsibly.
Besides trying again on both, maybe you could offer, or point to, a link or chain to previous efforts and/or efforts by others?
Andrew

Andrew, for extreme cases, see above. In an ordinary marriage, a decent marriage, taking responsibility means “owning” the situation. Say you come home, your wife is behind on dinner, the kids are whizzed up, and smoke alarm starts going. You step in and assume the responsibility to straighten everything out. If the house is hot, don’t step into the situation as just one more thermometer. You are the thermostat.

I really appreciated your article on the responsibility of husbands and men. I have a husband who has always taken responsibility for everyone in his household and has always led us in a godly way. However, there are friends of my husband who are unbelievers and act in rebellion towards God outwardly with their conduct and speech. He has on multiple occasions wanted me and our young children to visit them or have them to our house. I am more concerned about bringing people like that around our kids and myself I am not comfortable with those kind of people but I also know we are not suppose to be isolated from the world. How can I show hospitality and kindness to them while still protecting my kids. Should I even voice my concerns? What does that look like?
Thank you.
Erin

Erin, yes. Of course you should voice your concerns. He should know exactly how this affects you. At the same time, you need to voice them respectfully, such that if he decides to have them over, you are going to work hard to back him up, and to make it work. I assume that the concern is more over “who they are” than it is “how they behave while at your house.” If they walk around your living room blaspheming, then you would have a strong case as you talk with your husband. But if he is genuinely evangelizing them, then cooperate when he tries to allay your nervousness.

Regarding this quote from “On Becoming a Responsible Man”:
“When Eve ate the fruit, and offered it to Adam, what should he have done? Two things. First, he should have refused the fruit. And second, when the Lord came down to walk in the garden in the cool of the day, Adam should have sought Him out, and said, “Take me instead.” He would not have been to blame, but he was responsible.”
This makes total sense. But, can this same principle apply to being reconciled in broken relationships in general? How does that work when, at the same time, it is also true that it takes both parties to be reconciled?
Thank you.
grh

grh, yes, it does take both parties. If the break is between you and those you have authority over, as in wife or kids, see the letter above. If the break is with extended family or former friends, then I would encourage a similar approach (i.e. in prayer) but the missing authority means it is likely to take longer.

John Piper on Christian Nationalism

I agree with your general response to Piper’s statement on Christian Nationalism. When Piper advocates for the pro-life cause, he is advocating for a form of CN. He wants the government to punish evil and promote good, according to the God’s law. John Piper . . . welcome to the CN club.
He did mentioned in the video that the Republicans have largely abandoned the pro-life cause. This is where I wholly agree with him. Trump did not get my vote in 2024 because under his direction, the party removed the pro-life cause from their party platform. I have no confidence it will get added back in the near future.
So why should we gear up for the Republicans? I would rather seem them get smashed in a mid-term cycle and see it as punishment for abandoning the movement that has carried them for many years.
Roger

Roger, yes. The Republicans deserve the drubbing they got. That is really true. But the additional millions of. children who will die under Democratic rule don’t deserve that. With the Democrats, the judges are guaranteed to be pro-abortion. With the Republicans, there is a genuine spread. Trump is not pro-life, but Roe fell because of him. All the pro-life presidents who preceded him accomplished far less than he did.

Tariffs and Cornyn

Looking forward to the future NQN posts you teased here. Important topics.
On this one, two questions:
(1) do you think tariffs (or more accurately, their downstream effects on cost of living) had any effect on these midterm results? I don’t see them mentioned in your summary, and I think any discussion of this election has to at least nod in their direction, since that’s when approval of the admin really started to slide.
(2) Can you provide some background on this: “And then Sen. John Cornyn refused to secure Trump’s endorsement, thus throwing Texas away.” Candidly, that strikes me as a pretty strained reading of what went down in the TX primary. This is Cornyn’s fault? Not the state GOP for nominating a terrible candidate? Also, the implication is that if Cornyn was on the ballot, the GOP would have held the seat (which seems a damning indictment of MAGA’s popularity, but that’s beside the point). So it’s down to candidate quality, and that seems to open up a major discussion that needs to be had (and goes unmentioned): the fingerprints of a certain national leader in nearly every contested Senate race.
In Christ,
Samuel

Samuel, tariffs are complicated. Tariffs as big time revenue generators are a bad economic idea. Tariffs as a negotiating tool to get countries with high tariffs on our goods to lower their tariffs seems reasonable to me. But like the Iran war, I think the messaging needed to be a lot more clear and consistent.
Trump was willing to endorse Cornyn in exchange for support for the SAVE act. Even though Cornyn was a poor senator, I believe that Trump’s endorsement and the inertia of incumbency would have saved that seat.

Unbaptized Communicants?

I have many, many things I’d like your advice on. I do my best to resist too much identifying with the unattributed quote “Life is hard and then you die.” Living the Christian life is a struggle for me and it’s hard to find older men of wisdom that are willing to say “Do this.”
I’m the youngest in a medium-large family. My father was faithful to his calling in many ways. he worked very hard and provided a good life for us. He faithfully took his family to church and brought them up in the faith. He was, for a time, quite the “Wilson-ite” if you’ll forgive the term. He was, at the same time, a man full of anger. The mixture of the two made for a messy childhood. It is, in my opinion, a remarkable confirmation of covenantal blessings that my entire family generally gets along well, desires to be with one-another, and are all true believers. The question centers on my brother.
My brother is a father of two girls under 3 yo. I am the only one in my family that would verbally confirm infant baptism. He would confirm that his children are Christians as covenantal partakers of his household (if that’s the correct way to say it). Neither he nor I believe that having Christian parents is what imparts salvation. My brother and his wife go to a church that, as I understand it, does not baptize. At all. I don’t understand their theological basis (if it exists) for this decision. I think he would like to have his girls baptized now but that is the topic of much consternation between him and his wife. All that aside, the baffling thing to me is that he, by means of sneakery, helps at least his oldest daughter to partake of the Table.
I think this is, at best, staggeringly unwise, and at worst, conferring real spiritual curses on the girls. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
If I were to voice my concern about this arrangement, I don’t think it would fall on fully deaf ears. Can you please give some thoughts on how I could start the conversation and some low-hanging argumentation?
Tom

Tom, I would encourage you to talk about it with your brother, but without the threat of covenantal curses falling on his kids hanging over the discussion. That would ramp the whole thing up to levels where the theology of the thing would likely be very much unheard.

Adulterous Thoughts

I’ve been trying to find some material on this but I couldn’t. How would you counsel a husband whose wife confessed to thinking about one of the husband’s friends? At first, it sounded like it was just “I thought he was cute” and one can assume that it was just one of those thoughts one has from time to time which one has to battle with. The husband, of course has had those type of thoughts come to mind, but in this case the wife then confessed further and it turned into “I’ve been thinking about him from time to time, after we’ve argued, randomly at times, sometimes while we’ve been in bed, and I’ve thought that I would be just fine if you were to be gone, because I would be with him.”
The husband works hard, takes responsibility, provides, loves, battles with his sin, and she also works hard at home, takes really good care of the home, submits to him and they have sexual relationships periodically. However, the situation is difficult. She has confessed to sin, which is good, she sounds like she’s really repented, but he is having a hard time with it.
She keeps on saying “you are perfect and I’m the worse, I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
He knows Christ loved the bride to the point of dying for her, and he remembers Hosea’s story, and how we as the bride of Christ sin constantly, struggle with idols and are forgiven our sins every single time. But at this point, his is just thinking about the fact that he’s probably not enough, feels weak and fears she’ll dump him for someone else. He’ll forgive, keep on providing and working hard.
Is this one of the situations where one must apply 1 Corinthians 13? He thought he was supposed to endure at some point but this situation makes him feel weak if he forgives, forgets and keeps on loving as Christ did. Being proud is the temptation.
Anon

Anon, I believe that the husband in this case needs to assume responsibility by teaching his wife in a very specific area. The symptom here is adulterous thoughts, but the sin is discontent. He needs to attack that. “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Heb. 13:4–5). I would start by setting aside time in your daily devotions together to read through books on the subject of contentment. I would start with my wife’s book Learning Contentment, then Thomas Watson’s The Art of Divine Contentment, and then the graduate school of Jeremiah Burrough’s Rare Jewel.

Location of Eden

Ok . . . so I just started listening to “Saints in Genesis”, the first one being about Abraham. Already I’m blown away by the fact that a creationist would talk as if we knew where the Garden of Eden was AFTER THE FLOOD!!!! The fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened!!!! Gen 7:11 Animals of every kind had to be sheltered in a big boat for there to be even one survivor!!!! Do you not think the entire globe would have been restructured on its surface? Here’s a link from someone who knows a little more about it than I do. Thanks for listening to my rant. :)
Laurel

Laurel, your question is not an unreasonable one. But remember that the antediluvians would likely have been able to determine locations from astronomical data.

Natural Laws

I was wondering how the providence of God and God’s interaction with the physical world takes place. I personally think that God is actively causing everything to work the way it does. However, I am not able to explain various laws that are in place, for example, the law of gravity and various other laws of physics, or the law of independent assortment as seen in genetics, or the various phenomena (physical) in the natural realm. How do you personally think these things work? Looking at the way Jesus speaks, it seems God is actively causing all these things to happen, as if these are not independent mechanisms set into motion by God Himself but then how do we explain gravity (for example)? How is God actively involved in this matter?
Sincerely,
Sam

Sam, I believe that what we call “natural laws” is simply our description of what God usually does. It is as predictable as it is out of kindness to us, as a gift to us. In Him we live and move and have our being. I don’t think there is a “creature” out there called Gravity. It is in Christ that all things hold together (Col. 1:17).

A Funky Question

I hope your NQN has been enjoyable thus far, and that the smoke hasn’t quite clouded your lungs. I have a bit of a funky question: What do we make of Buzz Aldrin, an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church in Texas, performing the Lord’s Supper during the Apollo 11 Mission in 1969? I attend a CREC church, so I know we will share (I recognize that no one’s ever 100% with another person on anything) convictions regarding the Lord’s Supper, its meaning, purpose, etc. But what, then, ought we to think? Was it a publicity stunt? Or, theoretically, could the Lord have done something through it? Some people in my life have posited that this is why “alien encounters,” which I assume are demonic, occurred frequently thereafter; we entered into “heaven space.” Performing the Lord’s Supper in space was an act of Christendom charging into and taking dominion over “heaven space.” I also like the works of the late Dr. Michael Heiser (again, I’m not 100% with him on everything), so I can sort of “jive” with certain aspects of what I’ve heard people say.
I know it sounds bonkers, but what are your thoughts?
ON

ON, I don’t think it was a publicity stunt. I also don’t know if he was an elder at the time. If he was not, then I would consider that observance of the Supper to have been irregular, but not invalid.

Staying Undercover

At a large public university, I run into a lot of the globo-homo stuff. In a class last year when it came time for the reading on queerness, I skipped the reading and the journal assignment, and allergies (ahem) prevented my attendance in class. I’m faced with another situation this year very much in kind.
Was this the right course of action and should I do it again? I feel like there’s something to be said about being salt and light, but I feel like there’s also something to be said about waking pretend sleepers.
Any thoughts?
JB

JB, there are times when a person is called to confront this kind of thing, and other times when it is legitimate to just lay low. Making a scene and steering clear are both lawful options.

Creeping Feminism?

Recently we had our sixth child baptized. I’ve held/presented the first five. My wife and I discussed that it would be a sweet moment for her to hold our last son while being baptized, recalling Hannah’s dedication of Samuel to the Lord. Apparently some of our sensitive members had a big problem with this, quite concerned that feminism now has me in its unrelenting grip. Curious to hear your thoughts on a mother occasionally holding/presenting a child for baptism. Thank you!
Aaron

Aaron, first, give thanks to God that you live in a community where this is thought to be creeping feminism. Second, you could have it both ways. Have your wife hold the baby during baptism, and then have her turn and present the baby to you.

The Empty Nest

My wife and I are a few months from being empty-nesters; our two oldest children are married (no kids yet), and my youngest is a senior in high school. Do you have any book recommendations for transitioning into “Grandfather” mode? I want to finish strong and lead my family well in the second half of my life, and I’m looking for some practical tips and guiding principles in intentionally parenting adult children who are themselves parents, and grandparenting. Additionally, I’ve watched my parents and my wife’s parents “go woke” in their later years, and I don’t want to roll over and float downstream in my later years. I have a few practical ideas on how to avoid that (sit under the teaching of the actual Bible instead of a regurgitation of “All Things Considered,” read or listen to the Bible daily, and so on). Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.
As an aside, a couple of book reviews you provided in The Plodcast were absolutely outstanding: “Theo of Golden” was such a refreshing story, I was actually stunned how much I enjoyed it. “Men on the Line” by Brock Looysen is also outstanding- it has been helping my daily prayers for my entire family for several months now and I am thankful for you pointing it out.
John

John, you might try Biblical Grandparenting by Josh Mulvihill, a book I have started but have not finished. And my wife Nancy has written Silver Lining, but I haven’t gotten to that part of family life yet. I think I need to.