This is what I’m concerned about. I don’t think over-correcting in any direction or from any direction is helpful. Whether hyper-patriarchy or servant leadership is the biggest issue in our circles…I don’t really care (and I’m frankly tired of talking about both). Both groups need to be exhorted to love, to lead, to serve, and to sacrifice for their wives. Yes, yes, I know the Theo-bro-influences and individuals you’re talking about. I also know the history of ‘servant-leadership’ and its abuses among the Evangelical establishment in the last generation (and the abuses that ‘servant leadership’ was an overcorrection to in the first place!). But what I see in our churches today, what I see as a pastor today, what I see in my very own home right now, is that men need to be taught how to love their wives, to deal gently with them, to be tender with them, to lead them yes, but do so as Christ leads his church.
Regardless of the sins of our fathers, we have a responsibility to teach the whole counsel of God well in our day. And in our day (as in every day), men must be taught to love their wives, to be considerate with their wives. Shepherds, whether in the home or in the church, must be taught to exert their authority for the benefit of their sheep. Think of all Jesus’ rebukes to his disciples on how they understood authority. Think of Mark 10.45. There were the same kinds of abuses of authority and abuses of servant leadership in Jesus’ day as there are in our own. There were authoritarian men throughout scripture and there were effeminate men throughout scripture. What are we going to do for the care of our own flocks today?
But today, in our churches, in our circles? I see over-confident men and I see exhausted women. Our churches are filled with men and women who have rejected feminism, but now they have to be taught how to live out of more than just a reaction. The couple who was converted out of a life of college fornication who now have a handful of children, what do male headship and femininity look like? What do marriage dynamics look like for them? They get it! They’re repenting of feminism, both of them. The husband who comes home tired at the end of the day from trying to make a living for his family in an expensive city, how does he need to be exhorted and helped in how he treats his wife? How does caring for his wife and loving her and sacrificing himself for her figure into his understanding of male headship and authority? What does that look like in his home? How does the physically and mentally exhausted mother of a small colony of children need to be exhorted and helped when she has sacrificed through her very body to be fruitful, and in doing so her family has all but rejected her because she’s ‘weird’ now? The woman who is married to a man who’s being an absolute…pain…to her because he thinks that’s what leadership and male headship are all about, what do femininity and submission look like for her?
Men in every age are tempted to use authority for their own benefit, and in our circles we’ve hammered the softness and effeminacy of squishy-evangelicalism (and rightly so). But I’m concerned we’re producing a crop of young men who aren’t biblically solid, they’re rigid, crusty, harsh, domineering, looking down on their wives or on women in general. I’m concerned that it’s a lot easier to talk about male headship than it is to gently and lovingly yet firmly lead a wife. I’m concerned that it’s far easier for husbands to make a bunch of babies than it is to really love a woman and to raise godly children.
Tell me all of us who are pastors here don’t have these problems in our church, and I’ll laugh at you to your face.
Look, who in our churches even thinks Tim Keller’s book is good counsel on marriage anymore? Who still goes to yesteryear’s big proponents of ‘servant leadership’ today? Okay, so we understand the bad. We got that. Lesson learned. Let’s start helping our people understand more of what marriage does look like (without ceasing the warnings about influences that aren’t biblical; yes we need those too).
Otherwise we’re just going to be preparing the next crop of the next generation’s Tim Keller fan club.
