Stopping to Think

  The 5 Masculine Instincts: A Guide to Becoming a Better Man by Chase Replogle My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a really good book. Chapter four alone is worth the price of the book. I appreciated Replogle's discussion of manhood through the lens of these 5 instincts, with the understanding that the instincts simply are . The question is not whether these instincts exist in our lives, the question is: will we master them, or be mastered by them? Replogle points us - through a skillful mix of question asking, and drawing from narratives both inside and outside of Scripture - to the source of true character and manhood: Jesus, the man who died for us. As I said, the chapter on Adventure, focusing on Samson, was particularly good. The only chapter I struggled with was the Ambition chapter, as I'm not sure that shoe quite fits on Moses' foot. Lots of what Replogle says in that chapter about ambition is really helpful, I just kept getting hung up on the use of Moses which doe...

 Dick Lucas, commenting on Colossians 3:18,  “All this is not to say that the woman will always find the sacrificial giving of herself in loyalty to another congenial. But if we are right in seeing this entire ethical section as a sustained exposition of the rule of Christ, the significant truth about a Christian woman’s relation to her husband is that it mirrors her commitment to her Lord. What Paul is really explaining is what it means to call Christ Lord. In his concept there is no possibility of a married woman’s surrender to a heavenly Christ which is not made visible and actual by some submission to an earthly husband. To claim (as I have heard it said) that the discovery of a new loyalty to the Lord made it imperative (apart from exceptional circumstances) to be disloyal to a husband is to enter a pseudo-spiritual world of double-think.” (R. C. Lucas, Fullness & Freedom: The Message of Colossians & Philemon, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsit...

Mansfield's Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self by Stephen Mansfield My rating: 3 of 5 stars After listening to an interview with Mansfield, I commented to my wife that this book sounded interesting, and she purchased it for me. I was disappointed. His telling of biblical stories (all the stories, actually) is thin. Not in a cliff notes, skip-the-fluff way, either. Lots of froth and extra words and not enough actual narrative. That said, I learned about a couple of guys I was previously unaware of. There are some good quotes. And he reproduces a few poems that will hopefully spark the interest of a few readers. View all my reviews

The following are my notes from a training session I led at a meeting of volunteers for a youth ministry. We discussed the pervasiveness of porn, its devastating effects, and how to help someone struggle against this sin. Hopefully some of the links are beneficial to you, as well. The Problem of Porn Why Does Pornography Matter? Statistics 1 : Pornography would matter, if for no other reason than the staggering number of people who access it regularly. Asking if pornography matters, in this sense, is like asking if Facebook matters or if cars matter. It’s important to understand simply because of its ubiquity. 13% of all internet searches are for erotic content; that number jumps to more than 1 in 5 for mobile searches. 20% of 16 year olds and 30% of 17 year olds have received a sext. 66.5% of young men and 48.7% of young women said viewing pornographic materials was an acceptable way to express one’s sexuality, according to a 2007 study. [Note: thi...

"Men don't carry things because they happen to have broad shoulders. Men have broad shoulders because God created them to carry things." Douglas Wilson Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

"Those creatures who wept like women were the creatures who laughed like men." GK Chesterton Commonplace Monday is a series of posts wherein, on Monday mornings, I share short quips, sentences -perhaps as much as a paragraph- which I have collected in my various commonplace books and files. If I wrote down or recall where it came from I will certainly give attribution. However, sometimes I write down things and not where they came from. So if you see anything like that here and recognize it, that's what comment sections are for. 

Throwback Thursday is a series of posts, wherein I will on (some) Thursdays post a piece of writing from back in the day. Generally not from this blog. I will edit lightly for readability, but my intention is to allow each piece to stand basically as written. Over the years my mind has shifted on many things, as my knowledge of life, the Scriptures, and myself has grown. I'm not in the business of hiding this fact, so these will probably (at least on occasion) contain some things which even I think are crazy. Originally posted on Facebook as, "Night of the Mighty Men", April 24, 2010 So tonight a bunch of us guys had an ultimate guy's night. We dressed in ridiculous outfits, some in kilts, some in torn shirts, some in things not fit to be mentioned in polite company. We had jousting, caber tossing, ax throwing, and hand to hand combat. We ate meat off the bone, cooked beans over a fire, ate them without silverware, and put our root beer in a wash tub to dip our cu...

What I am about to say applies in large part to women as well, but I want to address men. Most men have a vision for their life that is far too small. Perhaps you are among them. Many of you may have no vision for your life at all. I want to get at what lies behind that. There obviously can be many reasons for not having a driving vision for your life, but what I want to propose is that many of you simply need to wake up to the reality that you think far too little of God, and consequently, you expect far too little of what He can do in you and through you. Perhaps you hope to be a nice person. Perhaps you hope to raise a nice family. Perhaps you hope to be a good worker. Perhaps you hope to go to heaven when you die. These are all nice things. But it that is all you expect out of life, something is missing. In the book of Ecclesiastes chapter seven, Solomon says this: "A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better ...