When I started the series on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood I said

But that’s not really what interests me the most. You see, both of these views on gender within the church do not simply address the questions of “how do a husband and wife relate?” and “can women be pastors?” Both views offer answers to much, much deeper questions that are relevant to any man or woman whether or not they are married or desiring to be a pastor.

Piper has asked before, “What do you tell your little boy when he asks you, ‘Daddy, what does it mean to grow up and be a man and not a woman?’ or ‘Mommy, what does it mean to grow up and be a woman and not a man?’” Piper has said that if all you can respond with is an anatomical answer, then you are setting your children up for disaster.

Mark and I have taken a bit of a break from reviewing the book and, yes, we need to get back on track, but let me give you an update of where I am at. I am still uncomfortable with drawing lines in stone of what manhood and womanhood is without strong Biblical warrant. I still am not sure how exactly God describes manhood in Scripture or even if he does with the precision that I want, but I am more convinced then ever that it, manhood, masculinity is real.

I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but while reading the article bellow I was fighting back tears. There is a depth of character and honor that the article describes that I long for and by Gods grace I believe I will understand more and posses more. While the article is not purposefully christocentric by any means (oh and I wish it was!), I could not help but feeling the weight of His glory hidden behind it.

7 Lessons in Manliness From the Greatest Generation

Every generation has its share of men who fully live the art of manliness. But there may never have been a generation when the ratio of honorable men to slackers was higher than the one born between 1914 and 1929. These were the men that grew up during the Great Depression. They’re the men who went off to fight in the Big One. And they’re the men who came home from that war and built the nations of the Western world into economic powerhouses. They knew the meaning of sacrifice, both in terms of material possessions and of real blood, sweat, and tears. They were humble men who never bragged about what they had done or been through. They were loyal, patriotic, and level-headed. They were our Greatest Generation.

Tom Brokaw gave them that name, and while it’s a bold claim, I wholly support it. They weren’t perfect by any means, of course, but as a whole they were a cut above the rest. One of the inspirations for Kate and I starting the Art of Manliness was our grandfathers. When I looked at them, and then at the men of today, the chasm of manliness seemed jarring. These are men cut from a different cloth of manliness; they simply don’t build them like that anymore. Their extraordinary manliness is not something you can scientifically measure. But you can sure feel it. And you can see it in old pictures. It seems every man back then was dashingly handsome; their manliness practically leaps off the page.

When I was taking a tour of the USS Slater in Albany last summer, Uncle Buzz and I were looking at the tiny, closet-sized kitchen where a couple of men prepared meals for hundreds of sailors as the ship rocked to and fro, and at the giant guns the men used to blast the enemy and knock planes from the sky. One tends to picture 30 year old guys doing that stuff; Tom Hanks and Co. always leap to mind. But a lot of them were just 18, fresh from the prom and varsity football.

In Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation, he remembers his mother telling him the story of the day Gordon Larsen came into the post office where she worked. Larsen was typically a cheerful and popular member of their community, but that day he had stopped in to complain about the rowdiness of the teenagers the night before, which had been Halloween. Brokaw’s mother was surprised at his tone and asked him good naturedly, “Oh Gordon, what were you doing when you were seventeen?” Gordon looked at her squarely in the eye and said, “I was landing at Guadalcanal.” He then turned and left the post office. These were men who were surely mature beyond their years.

There’s a saying that each generation is most like their grandparent’s. And while we’re not there yet, I do see a lot of people these days who are dusting off the values of the Greatest Generation and embracing them once again. What were those values? Today I’d like to take an opportunity to enumerate a few of the Greatest Generation’s lessons in manliness, using some of my personal observations along with various stories and quotes taken from Brokaw’s book.

Lesson # 1: Take Personal Responsibility for Your Life

While today’s generation often shirks responsibility as too much work, the Greatest Generation relished the chance to step up to the plate and test their mettle. One son of a WWII Medal of Honor winner remembers of his dad and his peers, “For them, responsibility was their juice. They loved responsibility. They took it head-on, and anytime they could get a task and be responsible, that was what really got em’ going.”

And when the Greatest Generation accepted responsibility for something, they also accepted all the consequences of that decision, whether good or bad. They were not a generation of whiners or excuse makers. They took pride in personal accountability. In a time where individuals and businesses reach for a bailout or the easy fix of bankruptcy to make things right, stories like that of Wesley Ko inspire. Soon after the war, Ko started a printing business. After 35 years of working hard to transform it into a successful company, he decided to relocate his business from Philadelphia to upstate New York. Ko personally guaranteed the 1.3 million dollar loan needed to make the move. The transition did not go as expected, and Ko’s company faced several setbacks; after only a year, he was forced to go out of business. Ko said, “It was a big decision making time. I couldn’t retire. I hadn’t taken out Social Security. So at the age of seventy I had to go get a job and start paying back that million-dollar loan. I just didn’t feel comfortable with declaring bankruptcy. I just didn’t think it was the honorable thing to do, even though it would have been easier.”

Lesson #2: Be Frugal

If your grandparents are anything like mine, then their house is stuffed with doodads and boxes of stuff. They have a sort of pack rat mentality because they grew up in the Great Depression where the next canister of oats or pair of pants was not guaranteed. They learned to live on less and be grateful for the things they had, no matter how humble. It didn’t take a new Wii to brighten their Christmas morning; an orange at the bottom of a stocking was enough to knock their socks off.

This was not the generation that purchased Corvettes to soothe their mid-life crisis, nor the generation that equated success with the purchase of a McMansion. This was the generation that was thrilled to move into the small houses of Levittown, which at 750 square feet were as big as some people’s garages are today.

One of the mottos of the Greatest Generation was “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Of course, it’s hard to “make it do” if you don’t know how to fix it, and thus handiness was also central to this generation’s frugality.

Tom Brokaw remembers this about his own dad:

“My father, Red Brokaw, was a blue-ribbon member of that fix-it generation. My mother learned not to say aloud what she needed, say a new ironing board, because my father would immediately build her one. She liked to buy something from the store occasionally. When I was a young man in need of spending money I mentioned that I could mow many more lawns if I had a power mower. I had a snazzy new model from Sears Roebuck in mind. My father went to his workshop and built a mower using an old washing machine motor, welded pipes for handles, a hand-tooled blade, and discarded toy wagon wheels mounted on plywood platform. He painted it all black and it was a formidable machine. At first I was embarrassed, but then as it drew admirers I was proud of its homespun place in a store-bought world.”

Lesson #3: Be Humble

Typical of the Greatest Generation is the story of a son or daughter who finds a war medal stashed in the attic after their father passes, he having never told them about it. Even if their exploits had been brave and heroic, the Greatest Generation rarely talked about the war, both because of the difficulty in remembering such carnage, but also from the sense that they had simply been fulfilling their duty, and thus had no reason to brag.

Brokaw observes: “The World War II generation did what was expected of them. But they never talked about it. It was part of the Code. There’s no more telling metaphor than a guy in a football game who does what’s expected of him-makes an open-field tackle-then gets up and dances around. When Jerry Kramer threw the block that won the Ice Bowl in ‘67, he just got up and walked off the field.”

Lesson #4: Love Loyally

The men of the Greatest Generation took their marriage vows seriously. Brokaw wrote, “It was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option. I can’t remember one of my parents’ friends who was divorced. In the communities where we lived it was treated as a minor scandal.” The numbers bear Brokaw’s anecdotal evidence out: of all the new marriages in 1940, 1 in 6 ended in divorce. By the late 1990’s, that number was 1 in 2.

This was a time where there was no hanging out or “hooking up.” Men asked women on real dates, and had serious intentions in doing so. When a particular gal caught a man’s heart, he proposed, and they got hitched. And they were married for the next 60 years.

Peggy and John Assenzio had the kind of commitment to marriage typical of the Greatest Generation. They were married right before John headed off to basic training. Peggy kept her husband constantly in her thoughts while he was away. “I never went to sleep until I wrote John a letter. I wrote every single day. I wouldn’t break the routine because I thought it would keep him safe.” When John got home, he and Peggy picked up right where they left off. John would sometimes have nightmares about the war, and Peggy was always there to comfort him. John said, “The war helped me to love Peggy more, if that’s possible. To appreciate her more.” Their commitment to each other was unshakeable. Peggy believed that young couples today, “don’t fight enough. It’s too easy to get a divorce. We’ve have our arguments, but we don’t give up. When my friends ask whether I ever considered divorce, I remind them of the old saying, ‘We’ve thought about killing each other, but divorce? Never.”

The cynical among us are apt to think that while the divorce rate was low, that simply means that more men were stuck in unhappy marriages. These days we’re quick to think that anyone who gets married in their early 20’s and is married for decades after that, is bound to be living a life of quiet desperation. Yet I’ve met a lot of Greatest Generation couples and almost all of them are and were quite happy together. They’re companions and best friends. What’s their secret? The answer can really be found in changing expectations. As Brokaw observes, “When they got married and began families it was not a matter of thinking, “Well, let’s see how this works out.” Some would argue that marriages were less happy because divorce wasn’t an option. But could it be that the opposite was true? That with the divorce option off the table the whole tenor of your marriage would change? Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t think there was an escape hatch, and you knew that whatever bumps in the road you hit, you had to work through them together.

Lesson #5: Work Hard

In war, these men had learned to focus on the objective at hand and not give up until that objective and the mission as a whole was accomplished. When they got home, they carried that focus over to the world of work. They didn’t fall into the fallacy that Mike Rowe has been busy denouncing, that you have to find “your passion” to be happy. They could find happiness in any job they did, because they weren’t just working for personal, self-fulfillment; they labored for a bigger purpose: to give their families the financial security they hadn’t enjoyed growing up.

As soon as they graduate college, many men today want the things it took our parents and grandparents 30 years to acquire. But the Greatest Generation knew that going into the debt was not the way to get the things you want. They understood that the good things in life must be earned by honest toil.

Lesson #6: Embrace Challenge

The Greatest Generation wasn’t the greatest despite the challenges they faced, but because of them. Today many men shirk challenge and difficult pursuits, believing that the easier life is, the happier they’ll be. But our grandfathers knew better. They knew that one cannot have the bitter without the sweet, and that true happiness comes from overcoming the kind of challenges that build character and refine the soul. The challenges they experienced made their joy all the more sweet because it was tinged with the gratitude of knowing how easily it could all have been taken away.

Image by iamthelorax

Lesson #7: Don’t Make Life So Damn Complicated

If there’s a common thread in these lessons, it’s having a common sense and a level-headed approach to life. In our day, when men are obsessing about finding themselves, their holy grail of a woman, and their “passion,” the Greatest Generation’s uncomplicated approach to life is refreshing. They didn’t go on a diet, they simply ate whole food; they didn’t exercise, they worked around the house; they didn’t obsess about their relationships, they just found a gal they loved and married her. They always looked sharp, but never fussed with fashion trends. They didn’t mull over which appliance better suited their personality and image, they just bought the machine that worked the best. They didn’t think about how to get things done, they just got em’ done. When Joe Foss, a celebrated and daring WWII pilot and then governor of South Dakota was asked if he missed his younger days, he said, “Oh no. I’m not a guy who missed anything from anywhere. I’ve always been a guy who just gets up and goes.” Instead of spending you time navel gazing your life away, just get up and go!

Via the Art of Manliness

This post is part of a larger series of posts by Dwayne Forehand and Mark Tubbs on the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (RBMW). The entire book is available online for free here or buy it on Amazon. For a complete list of posts in this series Click here for the series index.

Mark and I are alternating every week on who posts on Monday and who posts on Wednesday. On weeks where I post first (like this one) I’ll be sure to add a small post (like this one) letting you know when his parallel post is up. For weeks where I go second you can just look for a link to his post at the top of mine.

Marks post is up on the Discerning Reader site.

This post is part of a larger series of posts by Dwayne Forehand and Mark Tubbs on the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (RBMW). The entire book is available online for free here or buy it on Amazon. Click here for a complete list of posts in the series.

The Prefaces
The preface for the first edition of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was written by John Piper and Wayne Grudem. You can read it here.

The authors state that since the ’70s the feminist movement in society at large has increased and that the resulting movement of “evangelical feminism” has also increased. By “evangelical feminism,” the authors are speaking of those who hold to the tenets of feminism and also profess Jesus Christ as their lord and hold the Scriptures to be the authority on truth.

A large body of work had been produced during this time by evangelical feminists that the authors noted as being “persuasive to many Christians.” Though the vast majority of evangelicals had rejected this view, a controversy of huge proportion was only getting hotter.

It is towards the solution of this controversy that Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was written. The authors hope the book will not only answer the varied arguments of evangelical feminists, but also to “help Christians recover a noble vision of manhood and womanhood.” This view they call “complementarianism,” for they say the term carries both a suggestion of equality and also beneficial differences.

For those who are largely unfamiliar with the controversy in general, Bruce Ware has provided a concise paper summarizing the differences between the complementarian and the egalitarian (evangelical feminist) position that I think is fair to both sides.

When RBMW was re-released in 2006, the new preface made it clear that while the authors believed complementarians had offered up an impressive body of theological argument, they were losing ground and fast.  From evangelical publishers to campus ministries, a feminist viewpoint was becoming the norm, not the exception.  In many denominations, this controversial issue is, well, no controversy at all.

My Preface
At this point, I think I should preface what I am doing here with all of this, or more precisely why I am doing this.  My wife and I have spent most of our Christian lives at Mars Hill in Seattle, and, for those who don’t know, Mars Hill is complementarian (some would say hyper-complementarian!).  I picked up the view there myself, but it’s easy for young Christians to share pretty much any and all views of their beloved pastors and friends though, right?  That being said, a closer personal examination of the relevant passages would be good for me.

But that’s not really what interests me the most.  You see, both of these views on gender within the church do not simply address the questions of “how do a husband and wife relate?” and “can women be pastors?”  Both views offer answers to much, much deeper questions that are relevant to any man or woman whether or not they are married or desiring to be a pastor.

Piper has asked before, “What do you tell your little boy when he asks you, ‘Daddy, what does it mean to grow up and be a man and not a woman?’ or ‘Mommy, what does it mean to grow up and be a woman and not a man?’”  Piper has said that if all you can respond with is an anatomical answer, then you are setting your children up for disaster.

I’ll let a bit of the cat out of the bag right now:  I don’t have an answer to that question that really satisfies me, and I am not yet convinced that that is a problem.

Update!
Mark Tubbs parallel post is up now on Discerning Reader.

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This post is part of a larger series of posts by Dwayne Forehand and Mark Tubbs on the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (RBMW). The entire book is available online for free here or buy it on Amazon. Click here for a complete list of posts in the series.

About 2 weeks ago Mark Tubbs asked if I would be interested in doing a joint blogging series through a book. After some prayer and encouragement from my wife I’ve decided to do it.

The Book
The book is Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This book was a group effort to say the least. Among those contributing are: John Piper, Wayne Grudem, J. Ligon Duncan III, Randy Stinson, John Frame and D. A. Carson.

The book is broken into 26 chapters or articles written by various authors. Each chapter/article can stand on its own in that one can read it separately from the rest of the book and have it still make sense.

There are numerous issues that relate to gender and the Bible that this book tackles. As a father, husband and brother I need to have a robust understanding of what God says to these topics so that I can first of all obey Him myself and then be able to encourage and correct those that I love around me.

The Format
Mark and I will be working through the book cover to cover. Each week we will both post our separate thoughts on the same chapter. We will take turns with one of us posting on Monday and the other on Wednesday.

What Do We Want From You?
Part of the reason Mark said he wanted to do this book with someone else was for the purpose of challenging each other to be faithful to the Scriptures. I’d simply ask for you to help with that as well.

Also this will be a long series (at least 6 months!) and so the encouragement of interacting with you can go a long way in keeping the endurance going. The entire book is available online for free, so if you’d like to read along for all or just part of the series then you can – for free!

With regard to the image of God, Koessler writes,

“It is often said that men and women bear the image of God equally.  But it might be more accurate to say that men and women bear God’s image together. Men and women collectively reflect the divine image; one with out the other is incomplete.”

We believe it is inaccurate to describe the image of God in this ‘partitive’ fashion. The Bible does not say that God created humanity in his image. Rather it says he created males and females in his image: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27). In other words, each person bears the image of God fully. The image of God lacks nothing in a woman; just as it lacks nothing in a man.

As Wayne Grudem points out (on page 453 of Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth) if men and women each bore the image of God incompletely, then Jesus Christ as a man, would only bear a part of the image of God. But the Scriptures declare he bears the image of God, not in part, but fully (John 14:9, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Colossians 1:15, Colossians 1:19).

Read the rest here.

I’ve been wrestling with the concept of Biblical manhood and womanhood for some time now. Right now I am not at a place where I can say that I agree with it, but it may simply be semantics. Let me try and explain.

Terms and definitions
The Manhood and Womanhood definitions from Merriam-Webster are very similar. For womanhood it says:

1 a: the state of being a woman b: the distinguishing character or qualities of a woman or of womankind

1a seems similar to saying that a piece of aluminum has entered toasterhood. The aluminum is in the state of being a toaster. In that sense I agree that I posses manhood, but if that is the sense they mean then what is biblical manhood? Believing that it is God who has made me a man? If that’s all it means I agree.

Definition 1b talks about the distinguishing character or qualities of being a woman. These are the characteristics or qualities that distinguish or set a part womanhood from manhood. If we exclude physical characteristics and qualities are we left with any that distinguishes men from women?

Why you?
I asked some friends a while back “Why do you think that God chose for men to lead rather then women?” Their answers were not all that surprising: Men are less emotional, more temperate, they are wiser, men are better decision makers. When I asked where the Bible said that I was met with bewildered looks and shrugs.

God tells all of us in Scripture to strive for certain character attributes, the fruit of the Spirit. We fall short of them because we are sinful. Certainly both men and women are called to be wise as opposed to fools, but were men designed by God to be less effected by sin in this regard? I can’t find anywhere in Scripture that says as much.

Does the Bible say anywhere that men have a designed in edge over women for any fruits of the spirit? Does it reveal this about women?

What I am not saying
Understand that I ask these as a convinced complimentarian. A complimentarian is one who believes that the husband is the head of his home and not his wife and that qualified men are elders and by virtue of the fact that a woman is a woman she is disqualified from eldership.

Egalitarianism holds that the gender of a Christian plays absolutely no part in what function they have in a body. There is no head in the family and being female does not qualify nor disqualify a woman from being an elder in the church. I believe holding the Egalitarian view point requires one to distort numerous sections of Scripture that speak clearly to the place of gender helping to define roles in family and the local church.

Why does this matter?
If I have an underlying, vague assumption that by virtue of me being a man that I am wiser then my wife then how will that effect my relationship with her? When a decision needs to be made and my wife (who is naturally less wise then me of course) is offering her thoughts how much weight will I give to her input?

When my wife says that she thinks I am leading in the wrong direction will I, at least internally, say “Sheesh, poor woman. Does she not know that God made me the leader for a reason… “

On the other hand, what if I don’t have an underlying assumption that I am wiser, etc? Would that effect how I interacted with her and the value that I placed on her thoughts for a given matter?

What I am looking for
Am I misunderstanding the concept of Biblical manhood and womanhood? Is it simply a view towards complimentarian roles (which I agree with) or does it enter into definitions like Merriam-Websters (which I can’t find biblical support for?)

Is there Scripture that speaks of distinguishing characteristics or qualities between men and women that are designed by God into the created order? Are there Scriptures which call men and women to pursue different or distinguishing character attributes?