Subtle title, I know. I go for the tricky stuff on this blog. Seriously, everybody contextualizes. If you’re not familiar with this term or this conversation, I’m saying that everybody adapts the gospel to their own particular region and culture. Not that we know that we’re doing this, necessarily–my whole point is that most of us don’t realize that we’re contextualizing. Even when we criticize other churches for contextualizing, we don’t realize that we ourselves have already pre-fitted our church... Read more

Here’s an interesting question: does your church target a certain group or type of person? Or do they claim that they are only interested in reaching Christians and saving the lost? This question is relevant today because a group of evangelicals known as the emerging church have drawn a good deal of heat for targeting the twentysomething generation. One of the primary charges against emerging church congregations is that they draw only type of person, typically the goatee-wearing, emo-band listening,... Read more

I think girls are wonderful. I live with one full-time. But I don’t think playing serious athletics with girls is fun at all. I don’t care if I ever do it again. The cultural project to advance feminism has slyly struck many blows against complementarianism through the medium of popular culture. One of the weak spots it has found involves athletics. I recall seeing a recent Gatorade commercial in which Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm went head-to-head in a number... Read more

Yesterday I talked about the men of Friends and how I disliked the image of manhood they each represent. Today I turn my attention to another masculine character, the character of Zach Braff in Garden State. For those who haven’t seen this movie, it’s a coming-home story of a young postmodern man struggling to deal with the darker realities of life: familial death, broken relationships, and over-medication. Braff stumbles his way through the movie before he realizes he’s found true... Read more

“Men are pigs.” This little phrase is probably familiar to you. It’s been hammered into your brain by those you might not necessarily suspect. Gloria Steinem et al have done their part, yes. But more than her and her feminist friends, Hollywood has moved the feminist ball up the field. Think back on the way the arts have portrayed men in the last twenty years. You needn’t think too hard. The portrait is pretty uniform: men are idiots. There are... Read more

Many men today believe that being passive is a virtue. Physically, socially, romantically, and spiritually we think that if we put off making decisions and evade definitive action, our action (or lack thereof) is consonant with Christian maturity. We have grown up believing that men are stupid, boys stay boys for roughly thirty years, and decisions should only be made when excessively thought through. We’ve subscribed to a soft version of Jesus, Jesus 2.000, who is soft, mild-mannered, and endlessly... Read more

There have been, of late, a number of provocative questions launched in the comments section. I want to take a day and answer some of the fair and interesting questions that I’ve seen. We are concerned here with the idea that girls should be raised to be homemakers and moms. Claire, a dear friend from college and an awesome Christian girl, asked what I meant by saying that many Christians raise their girls to be economically and politically ambitious. She... Read more

My dear friend Claire asked for some scriptural support for my convictions that girls be raised to be homemakers. As with numerous biblical doctrines, I take my position not from one whole book of the Bible that deals only with this topic, but with a smattering of biblical texts that together inform our discussion. I would say at the outset that in order to fully understand this position, and more broadly complementarianism itself, I think a full study of Scripture... Read more

Myth: Boys and girls should be raised to be people. Wrong! Boys should be raised to be men. Girls should be raised to be women. That’s what the Bible teaches. The myth is taught by the culture today. Boys and girls are thrown together in the public and private school blender. Sixteen years later, they come out not as distinctive representatives of their God-given gender, but a finely chopped puree of “person,” with the requisite identical attributes of true God-hatred,... Read more

Here’s another myth many men believe today. College lasts for twelve years. What do I mean by that? I mean that many men have bought into the contemporary fiction that they don’t need to grow up. It’s that simple. Many men today think that they can put off family and steady work for as long as they want and then pick these things up when they please. They feel no sense of duty to God, family or country and act... Read more