Manhood

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce that Tim Bayly's Daddy Tried is now available as an audiobook. If you haven't had a chance to read it for yourself, swing over to Audible.com or Amazon.com, download a copy, and have Tim read it for you.

We're also pleased to offer a free download of the Chapter 1 audio to Baylyblog readers.

Peggy Noonan is a Reagan Democrat. She wrote speeches for President Reagan and her memoir of her Reagan years, What I Saw at the Revolution, is a piece of tender affection for Nancy's Ronnie. Joe Sobran loved Peggy. There was a tenderness when he talked about her you never saw him express for anyone else except Jesus Christ.

What Noonan writes I like and trust. After 9/11 she wrote a short piece titled "Welcome Back, Duke" that I consider one of the most astute essays on sexuality in our time. 9/11 and sexuality? Yup, read it and you'll never forget her contrast between firemen and Woody Allen. Devastating—not just to Woody Allen but also you (if you're a man) and me.

Now Noonan has given us a short piece on the Inauguration of President Donald Trump...

David Bowie, Prince, and today George Michael died. The news is Elton John just penned a tender tribute. After Michael began LivingOut, he told an interviewer:

I used to sleep with women quite a lot in the Wham! days but never felt it could develop into a relationship because I knew that, emotionally, I was a gay man. I didn’t want to commit to them but I was attracted to them. Then I became ashamed that I might be using them.

Note his confession (and yes, he's talking about his women): "I didn't really want to commit to them but I was attracted to them."

You remember the Apostle Paul's declaration, "It's better to marry than burn?" The "gay Christian" men of LivingOut.org don't self-disclose with the honesty of Michael. If they did, their pastor and elders would be kind to repeat the Apostle Paul's remedy and exhort them to marry. The essence of manhood is responsibility. Commitment is the swearing-in ceremony. Marriage is manhood's sacrament. You don't need to be married to be a man, but it sure does help. And if you burn, it is the remedy God Himself ordained.

Older women ...encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. (Titus 2:3-5)

A brother in Christ passed this text on to me. It's from Project Gutenberg so it's public domain (meaning copyright-free).

There are many of us who come to the end of the dialogue and are able to say "that's my dear wife!"

Will you be able to say as much when you're my age?

In our wicked culture with the church seemingly determined to hide her light, being blessed with a wife who loves doing the home work and loves her husband doing the away-from-home work is a miracle. But this miracle begins with a lover of a husband who sees the good of this and argues and fights for it, maybe with his wife, but certainly with his friends, neighbors, and relatives—starting with his in-laws. In these fights, it is a great help to have...

I saw two men hugging in public last weekend. Actually, it wasn’t two, it was about two hundred. And they weren’t just hugging, they were lung-burstingly singing and dancing with their arms around each other.

No, it wasn’t a same-sex “wedding.”

It was a soccer game.

Never seen men, mostly white and in their 20s-40s, let out all of their emotions and show affection with other men? Go visit your local Major League Soccer game, sit near the “supporter’s section,” and see what happens.

There’s glory, there’s conflict, and there’s male emotion in spades....

For those confused about the bandwagon the Louisville Southern Baptists and the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors have climbed aboard, the news tells us each day that these men have picked a winner. Everyone is busy passing laws preventing fathers and mothers from getting any help teaching their sons to be masculine and their daughters to be feminine. This is the heart of the issue. To instruct and counsel children to embrace who God made them, sexually, and to forsake any desires they may suffer under to commit the sins of effeminacy or butchness is being criminalized around the country.

Meanwhile, Al Mohler,1 Heath Lambert,2 Denny Burke, and the professional association of "certified Biblical" counselors have all announced they are also opposed to parents getting this help for their children.

It's such fine synchronicity when the world and the church both realize at precisely the same moment precisely the same sexual reforms that are needed. It makes the work of deconstruction so much easier.

Along with California, Oregon, New Jersey, Cincinnati, and the District of Columbia, New York has criminalized this therapy.

And now New York is taking it a step further by putting financial teeth behind these laws. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo just took executive actions directing the state's Department of Financial Services to...

Over more than two decades, when I've read or preached Psalm 73 I've not been able to get Donald Trump out of my head. It's as if the Psalmist knew and envied The Donald:

For I was envious of the arrogant As I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, And their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, Nor are they plagued like mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; The garment of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from fatness; The imaginations of their heart run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; They speak from on high. They have set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue parades through the earth. (Psalms 73:3-9)

Mr. Tump is as public as he can be with his wickedness. Pride is his necklace and his tongue parades through the earth. His words to and about Megyn Kelly are maybe the most repulsive example of the betrayal of manhood I've ever read...

(NOTE: “Johnny” is a diminutive of “John.” After titling this piece, it occurred to me that using the title “Johnny get your gun” would be seen as disrespectful, so I’ve changed it to “John, get your gun.” I respect John Piper and apologize for a title that didn’t show proper respect for him.)

The Reformed church has been all atwitter over John Piper’s response to Jerry Falwell encouraging the students of his Baptist college to get a gun and help protect the campus against armed attack. John tells his readers that he talked with Jerry before writing him up. Then, he frames his response to Jerry this way: 

The issue is about the whole tenor and focus and demeanor and heart-attitude of the Christian life. Does it accord with the New Testament to encourage the attitude that says, “I have the power to kill you in my pocket, so don’t mess with me”? My answer is, No.

Of course, this is an uncharitable summary of President Falwell’s position since no one carrying a gun on Liberty’s campus is primarily concerned about himself. Christians don’t carry guns because they don’t want to be killed themselves, but because they want to be faithful to defend others—particularly women and children. This is our calling as Christian men. We defend the innocent and defenseless. It would have been more kind for John to phrase it this way: “I have the power to defend my sisters in Christ here in my holster, so don’t mess with them!”

(Henry Holsters are the superb work of a member of our church, Andrew Henry. Buy one.)

I haven’t read any of the responses to John’s anti-gun piece except Doug Wilson’s. Doug makes a good point when he begins his defense of John this way...

Prior to enrolling in Clearnote Pastors College, Pastor David Abu-Sara of Clearnote Church, Indianapolis, worked in Chicago as a treeman ("certified aborist"). I watched this video about a year ago, then again this past week. This time Dave was in the loop of those the link was forwarded to and he sent out an e-mail giving a little explanation of the work here recorded.

I've watched Dave take down trees that were leaning forty-five degrees in the opposite direction from where he set them down, and it's stupendous. Have a look at the video, then read Dave's commentary.

Urban Hardwoods / Seattle's Largest Hardwood Tree from Ron Hansen on Vimeo.

Dave writes...