Hard and Soft
Peace in the home is built upon the foundation of a biblical masculinity. At the center of each home should be a dependable man—a godly husband to the wife, and an immovable rock of a father for the children. He establishes and maintains his dominion through service, and not through domineering (Mark 9:35). In the home, one of the most important ways a man can sacrifice his own interests is through providing the leadership which the family needs from him. In this context, a servant’s heart does not drift about, saying, “Gosh, I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
Men should of course be kind and pleasant to their wives and children, and the Scripture sternly forbids harshness in the home (Col. 3:19-21). But being nice does not exhaust the duties placed upon a man by the Lord. Many nice men, through lack of leadership, have driven their wives and children to the point of exasperation.
Soft leadership produces hard people. Hard leadership, provided it is biblically hard, results in tender people. Soft leadership never rebukes, never disciplines, and the results for the home are often gross. David was an indulgent father, and his son Amnon raped his half-sister. His son Absalom killed Amnon and later rebelled against his father, and Adonijah plotted for the throne. A soft father sired hard sons (I Kgs. 1:6). Eli was another indulgent father and had sons who would sleep with the women who gathered at the tabernacle of the Lord. Soft leadership led to the harshness of rape, murder, and incest. In the modern world, we may add the fruit of drug abuse, divorce, sodomy, insolence, immorality, suicide, and the rest of the list.
In the same way, men should lead and protect their wives. When men neglect their wives, the world often sees the results of the husband's sin in the wife. When the results of this neglect show up in an obvious way through the wife's infidelity, drunkenness, gluttony, etc., everyone shakes his head and wonders what got into her . But the hardness of sin in her was brought into the world through the softness of his abdication. Men must be masculine for their wives and children.
But at the same time, our culture is at war with this masculinity. This means that the men who are equipped to maintain peace in their homes will be men at war beyond the front door. A man who has what it takes to provide peace, stability and security in his home will be just the kind of man who is embattled outside. Our world system is hostile to the kind of masculinity which is capable of guiding and protecting the godly home. Centuries ago, in the great battle over the Trinity, Athanasius was told at one time that the whole world was against him. Then let it be known, he said, that Athanasius is contra mundum against the whole world. In the same way, the biblical man should know that his scriptural hardness, the necessary protective fence for his family, will always provoke a hostile response whenever he is out in the world.
The points of battle will obviously varybusiness, academia, union meetings, political campaigns, the op-ed page of the local newspaper, etc . As a result, there will be many who take a dim view of your uncompromising stand, and they will assume that at home, you must be an ogre right out of Grimm's Fairy Tales . One time my wife was visiting with a woman in our community and slowly the light of identification began to go on in the other woman's head. The woman then asked my wife if she were married to the present writer of this column. When my wife said she in fact was, the woman said, "But you seem so nice !"
Jesus taught us that if everyone thinks we are wonderful, then we are doing something seriously wrong (Luke 6:26). Unfortunately, the false identification of truth and haughtiness can be found in the church as well. Because the culture at large considers the emasculation of men to be the norm, effeminate expectations for men have inundated the church.
So confusion reigns. Because there is a dearth of godly examples, some within the church have resorted to chest-pounding substitutes for biblical masculinity. Instead of a biblically confident leadership, we see arrogance, pride, overweening conceit, self-centered financial habits, boasting, and so forth. This sort of counterfeiting is from men who are not mature in their masculinity; they are blowhards.
To complicate matters further, a Christian man who is living out a biblical masculinity will be slanderously accused of being proud, arrogant, too logical, self-willed, etc . In a very real way (and this is a central part of the tragedy of our modern church), we are put off by masculinity. We insist upon being led by women, or, if that cannot be done, by men who are like women. Isaiah spoke of the problem this way. "As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths" (Is. 3:12). A mark of how thoroughly we have been propagandized can be seen in how we react to such passages. Instead of seeing such biblical language as a slap at cotqueans, we think it is an insult to women . We've come a long way, baby.
So men who are men before the Lord will seek, by His grace, to establish homes which are havens of peacein a world which declares war on all who will not cave at the knees.
Used By Permission - Credenda Agenda