“A boy who is allowed to drift downward into this sin [laziness] is also being prepared for a life of poverty . . . (Prov. 6:6-11). God does not just promise poverty to this young man, He promises that it will come upon him like a thug with a gun. In the good providence of …
Cranky Discipline
“Related to this, a wise father rejoices in the fruit of his discipline. This is why many ‘disciplinarians’ are not disciplinarians in the biblical sense at all. They discipline because they are annoyed or irritated; they are almost impossible to please and they go through life like a crate of crankcase oil. But a ‘wise …
Accepting Responsibility
“The opposite problem to effeminacy is that of embracing, enthusiastically, a truncated view of masculinity, what I call counterfeit masculinity. This problem ‘glories’ in masculinity, but has a view of it that no wise observer should consider glorious at all. There is more to masculinity than grunting and bluster . . . True masculinity accepts …
False Masculinity
“There are two basic directions a boy can take in departing from biblical masculinity. One is the option of effeminacy, and the other is a macho-like counterfeit masculinity. With the former, he takes as a model a set of virtues which are not supposed to be his virtues. With the latter, he adopts a set …
Dragons and Pruning Hooks
“And this is why it is absolutely essential for boys to play with wooden swords and plastic guns. Boys have a deep need to have something to defend, something to represent in battle. And to beat the spears into pruning hooks prematurely, before the war is over, will leave you fighting the dragon with a …
Knowing Where You are Headed
“Before taking a road trip, it is a very good idea to have some idea of where you are going. Before rearing a son to be ‘masculine,’ it is equally important to have some notion of what that is . . . Manhood is where boyhood should be aimed” (Future Men, p. 13).
Defining Masculine Sin
“But in our day, many of these designed masculine traits are drilled or drugged out of him by the time he is ten. Faith resists this ungodly process and defines sin by the Scriptures and not by pietistic traditions” (Future Men, p. 11).
Weeping for Tammuz
“Not even God knows what is true. Remember that for postevangelicals, God is out of it and pretty groggy. True postmoderns know that He is dead, and that is why He does not view objective truth from His Nowhere House. But we in the postev milieu are still sensitively struggling away in the church, and …
Credenda Deadenda
“But in brief, there are only three possible types of responses to Kenneson. One could say that his statement that truth is irrelevant to Christians is true, thus demonstrating that he doesn’t get it. Or he could say that it is false, demonstrating that he still thinks the other side of the coin (truth) is …
Sharing
“Rather, Kenneson wants to speak of truth for us. We hammer out the truth on the anvil of shared experience, we walk it out in the paths of communal trust, we flip the burgers of truth on the griddle of sharing” (Contours of Post Maturity, p. 63).