(What I'm reading inevitably filters down into my writing.
I'll say up front that I just finished What He Must Be by Voddie
Baucham Jr., so consider yourselves warned, gents.)
I'll start by saying I think that sometimes
well-meaning evangelical chicks can unwittingly man-bash just as well, if not
better than, their feminist counterparts.
It's easy enough to proclaim the weaknesses of the other sex without
offering any kind of insight or remedy or plumbing the heart for its true
motives. I have likely been guilty of
this at one time or another, decrying the shortage of gospel driven, God
fearin' men and the abundance of immature, poorly-read, undisciplined boys in
men's bodies without speaking any sort of truth into the situation. That confession aside, that is not what this
post is.
The scene opens on a seemingly tranquil
grassy knoll. Our hero emerges from the
nearby thicket, riding his pearly white steed.
He has the armor as evidence of his extensive knight-in-training course
at the local Community Knights College.
He has worked hard, and no one would argue that. You should see the sweat that boy put into
Jousting 203 - impressive by any standards.
He saved up his pence earned from delivering the daily tidings to buy
his glowing steed, Roger. Fiscally
responsible, that boy. When he finally
got his first quest, he was elated. No
one doubted his courage or training.
That's where we find our young man, on the threshold of battling his
first dragon, the fiery reptile Draco, who has held the small town of
Hamletburgtonville in its scaly grip.
Our white knight descends the grassy knoll,
locates the dragon with his state-of-the-art DragonFinder 3000, slays him, and
is lauded with the praise of the 150 peasants who live in
Hamletburgtonville. He carries the
rather weighty and cumbersome, not to mention bloody and disgusting head of the
dragon back to his professor of knightship at his local college. Professor Secularis congratulates him on his
success and invites him to the award ceremony where he will receive the reward
of his labors.
The night of the ceremony, our knight's
mother helps our young man polish the hard to reach pieces of armor to ensure
he is a walking talking blinding clanking tin man. She and his father sit proudly in the front
row of the hall, waiting for their son's name to be called. He marches confidently across the stage and
is handed the latest Xbox 5600, complete with mind reading technology and bacon
griddle attachment.
At this point, I hope something in you is
terribly unsatisfied. Don't
misunderstand me, I love bacon too, but this whole story just isn't right. So what went wrong? Allow me to escort you to the front row of my
punch line… He doesn't get the girl.
Before your inner progressive feminist starts yelling at me, tell her to
go play some roller derby.
[Whoa.
This just got feisty.] So here's
the problem. Our valiant knight, aka,
well brought up Christian boys, are well on their way to becoming those
epic-worthy brave men who do the right thing despite the consequences and give
voice to the plight of the voiceless.
Yay. Good stuff. High Five.
That's not the problem. The
crisis occurs when Professor Secularis aka silly liberals who don't advocate
what's good for people hold up independence and a no-strings-attached life as a
great goal (enter the Xbox 5600).
Sure, the life of the wild and free - globe
trotting on a shoe string to Manila and Prague and Capetown to practice amateur
photography is fun. Going to see
concerts on the weekends is fun. Buying
yourself the latest ____________ is fun.
After a while, all you're left with is torn ticket stubs and a lot of
stuff laying around your apartment. Life
that is wild and freeeeeee has never been one of God's dreams for His
people. At least, not in the sense I
mean it here. God has called you to a
wild life of faith, trusting Him in everything, with everything, all the
time. He has called you to be freeeeee
from stuff that will leave you broken and wounded and called you to be freeeee
to love people and serve them.
At this moment, I would like to pause and
give you a short collection of things I'm NOT saying…
1.
Everyone has to get married to be who they were created to be
2.
Getting married is the end all/most awesome/important/sparkling thing about
life
3.
Girls are just princess prizes, objects to adorn men's arms
4.
You should never go to Manila
5.
You should get married ASAP
I feel like each of those things could be a
separate blog post, but I'm just going to let them sit for now.
My point in all of this bacon joking,
analogy drawing, bro admonishing is something went south in our estimation of
marriage. Helllllooooo. Whatever happened to "he who finds a
wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD" [Proverbs
18:22]. Or, if you want my own
paraphrase - "the guy who finds a wife is a pretty smart guy, and God is
happy for him". What about this one
"An excellent wife, who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels."?
Follow this line of reasoning… God invented
marriage. God values the institution of
marriage. IF we say we want to love what
God loves and think His thoughts after Him and stay close to His heart and all
those other worship song-y things, we had dadgum better stop listening to the
culture's commentary on marriage and start thinking it's as cool as God says it
is. In short, God values marriage. If we want to value what God values then we will
value marriage too.
You'll notice, I didn't say, we'll all get
married. I get it that some people are
called to serve God as a single person.
Actually, we're all called to serve God as single people because we all
start out as single people. Regardless
of your life calling, married or single or single wanting to be married, we
need to esteem/value/think highly of marriage.
How do we do this?
Well, girls, if you have not been called by
God to be single, then by golly you're probably called to be called to be
un-single. We call that married. If you're going to be married, you should
probably start looking around at the awesome wives you know and ask yourselves
if you have anything in common with them.
Can you communicate honestly? Do
you have some unrealistic expectations or relational baggage you need to sort
through? Are you seeking wise
counsel? Are you spiritually
growing? Then there are more practical
things like do you have a lot of debt?
Do you know how to make something other than cereal and PBJ
sandwiches? On the other hand - if you
are called to be single, uphold the institution of marriage as a wonderful
thing.
Bros… As men who love Jesus and are walking
with Him and pursuing Biblical community etc. etc., maybe you should start
being a little more marriage minded. I
realize, even if you know the final frontier is not the wild and freeeeeeeeee
life, and you know marriage is a good thing, women can be sca-ry. But that's OK. You're knights. You've been to knight school. You're prepped and ready to go. It's a big mission, alright, grander and more
terrifying than any you've undertaken so far, but take the Bible's, and not
insignificantly, the statistician's word for it - it's worth it.
No one wants the knight to ride off into
the sunset with an Xbox 5600 Baconator.
No comments:
Post a Comment