There is such a thing as a former atheist who discovers repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus, then marriage, then father-rule and fatherhood, then female submission, then covenant, then covenant promises in the New Testament, then paedobaptism, then Scotch, then beards, then pumping iron, then bowhunting, then taking pictures of his beard and himself out on the mountain, then his wife’s texts and socials’ posts extolling him as a “godly husband,” the “world’s best father,” “such a wonderful patriarch who is sooo easy to submit to.” Some time passes and his pastor or one of his elders teaches something that angers his wife (say homeschooled children don’t know how to wait in a line, for instance) and he sees what his wife is getting at: their pastor and or elder is going soft and not matching up as well with Moscow and Ogden as he used to, meaning they both see they have to protect themselves and their children from any deleterious influence from that pastor and elder, and the other simpletons of the church who listen to them so trustingly. The wife points out to the husband that some of the children in the kids’ catechism class aren’t well-disciplined, and then askes her husband, "Honey, can’t we catechize our children ourselves? I’d feel much more comfortable if Elizabeth Anyston and Theodore Augustine Calvin were not spending time each week away from our influence among peers whose parents we don’t trust.
“And by the way, my eminently godly patriarch, I think I can see our pastor’s influence on his wife in the women’s Bible study each week. The things she says just don’t set well with me. What do you think, My Great Patriarch?”
Of course he agrees with Eve, and thus announces to the men of the church drinking coffee next Lord’s Day that they want to build their own thousand year covenant succession spiritual legacy, and have decided they should catechize their own children and he should teach his own wife. You know it’s Biblical, right? “Let her ask HER OWN HUSBAND!”
Most of this account is real and I recount it to say I first had to rebuke these things back in 1983 or 1984. The man who had refused to allow his wife to attend the women’s Bible study was in a church with a pastor and his wife whom, to this day, I have less than a handful of pastors and their wives I respect for their godliness nearly as much as these two—and this nearly half a century later.
So what to do? Argue over what to call this sin?
Sure, if the goal is to have arguments. But if the goal is to shepherd God’s flock, which I’m under the impression that most of us have as our calling, then what’s to be done is to grow in our faithfulness and ability to rebuke and censure such sinful pride and faithlesness of fathers and mothers in OUR OWN churches. Love,
PS: After reading this to Mary Lee, a question. I rebuked this man for his sinful abuse of father-rule more than forty years ago, and have rebuked such abuse of authority constantly across the years. Are we all agreed that in our churches this kind of rebuke is needed, and therefore being done constantly, and that this soul-wearying work surrounding the proper uses and abuses of father-rule we all do all the time has caused every one of us to lose at least 25-50 souls (parents and children) from our congregation over the past ten years?
