Early in my marriage (and midway through an argument), my wife complained to me one day that I talked to her like I would a guy from seminary. By my beard, she was right. I knew exactly what she meant.

Amidst my band of brothers, sword fights were not uncommon. Generals trained us for battle; we could not be afraid to spar. Fights happened, as they must when important things are at stake, but we asked forgiveness if necessary and left the stronger for it. Our spiritual program, a place for serious joy, prepared us to affect untold people and places and eternities. We needed one another for sharper service. To be the men our Lord was calling for, we needed heat and friction and resistance from brothers who were for each other in Christ.

My marriage, however, I confused with this combat training. When we disagreed, I instinctively strategized, mobilizing forces of argumentation and logic here, mounting a brigade of illustration there; war must decide which idea prevailed. When I listened, it was the calculating variety — cold and non-interrupting, as Chesterton once said, “he listens to the enemy’s arguments as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements” (What’s Wrong with the World, 26). A good practice for debate; a poor way to live with my wife in an understanding way.

Though as theologically sharp as many seminary men, she was my wife, not my fencing partner. Though she could hold her own, she did not find the swordplay, even when discussing Scripture, nearly as uplifting as I did. Note to self: I should not duel my wife over doctrine. Good to know.

Of Mice and Men

A man ought not debate his wife as he would a brother. But let’s add another truism: a man need not disagree with brothers in the same way he would with his wife. It is one problem to talk to wives like men; it is another to talk to men like wives. It is one loss to forget how to live with our wives in an understanding way, another to forget how to live with men according to the nature of men. Are we losing the ability to talk to men as men?

The writer of Ecclesiastes writes that for everything (speech included) there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to build up, plant, laugh, heal, embrace, and make peace. But this is not all he says. At other times, you must sit among your brothers to pluck up, to kill, to die, to break down, to refrain from embracing, to weep, to lose, to attack his darling sins or cherished unbelief (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8).

God’s rams still need to butt heads; his lions still need to roar. We can’t always play two-hand touch. Nathans need to tell Davids, “You are the man!” Pauls need to oppose Peters to their face or stand aghast at the Galatians. We need Nathaniels in whom exists no guile or flattery. We need men whose “letters are weighty and strong” (2 Corinthians 10:10), servants not tickled by man-pleasing (Galatians 1:10). We need Judes able to contend for the faith because they’ve learned how to contend with their brothers in seminary classrooms and with men who hold them accountable.

Where are the Luthers, the Spurgeons, the Ryles that roused sleeping generations with masculine boldness? We have few and need more. When masculine directness, Christlike candor, and warlike speech fade from the mouths of good men, the world and church suffer rot.

The Man Christ Jesus

Imagine our Savior’s deliberation the moment Peter, his second-in-command, stands between him and the cross. Heaven’s cheers had not yet died down at Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ,” before Peter tries to confront this Christ (Mark 8:29, 32). Jesus plainly taught that the Son of Man must suffer and be rejected, yet Peter, trusting his assessments too much, “took him aside and began to rebuke him” (Mark 8:32).

Do not miss the phrase preceding Christ’s masculine reply:

But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Mark 8:33)

Jesus commends Peter, the rock, in one breath (Matthew 16:15–20), and administers the strong rebuke in the next. Notice where he looked before he struck: at his other sheep. He considered them as a good father considers the other children who witness a sibling’s defiance. Peter needed to hear this; the disciples needed to hear this. To withhold it would fail not only Peter, but them. We imagine Peter’s eyes following his Savior’s to the other disciples in that intense moment, only to reengage with the blow: “Get behind me, Satan!”

Modern-day disciples trained in a generation of safe spaces recoil: Jesus, don’t you see he only cares about your welfare? He was only considering group morale. Did you really have to call him Satan and belittle him in front of the others? Jesus, don’t you think that was a little harsh? He did well just a minute ago; I wonder if you missed an opportunity to encourage him.

But Jesus, perfectly concerned with God’s glory and the eternal good of his sheep, struck the rock before the others. He had manly words and a manly tone for his chief man and friend. Seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter to teach them all. A man bold only toward his enemies is not yet as Christlike as he needs to be.

And take note: nobody ran away crying. No one took to blows. No one challenged another to a duel. The truth was spoken, the rebuke taken, and men moved on, better for it. How can we establish fellowship like this? A couple of starting points.

1. Set terms in peacetime.

Unlearning the coddling of modern speech, especially within male circles, need not be done overnight. We do not put gloves on, sneak up behind a brother, and sucker punch him in the name of courage. In my experience, rules of engagement should be established beforehand. When some men and I formed a group years ago, we drew from an old meeting covenant and agreed in the affirmative:

Are you willing to charitably rebuke, chasten, and instruct each other?
Are you willing to take rebukes, chastening, and instruction from others?

We make it clear at the beginning that we must have priorities higher than comfort. Here we strive for a culture concerned with grace-giving but also sin-slaying so that we might be more God-pleasing. We resolve — God helping us — not to let personal ego or weaker-brother sensitivities stop our ears from hearing (or giving) a discomforting word, a naked question, or a plain rebuke.

Bold speech had been a weakness of some in our brotherhood; now it’s a strength. Caring they remain, but without the coddling that shelters sin and harbors — for the sake of “unity” — God-belittling theology and practice.

2. Consider the goodness of correction.

Yes, confrontation is unpleasant. To some it feels like a slow suffocation. To others, a frozen chill climbing the spine. To others, the kindling of a flame to devour culprits offering this strange fire. To still others, the words replay in the mind as hammer blows, driving them down and down into the floor.

After the initial tremor, a man’s pride usually demands satisfaction. Criticism, disagreement, correction all seem to drag our reputation into the contest. I’ve felt what Richard Baxter describes:

They think it will follow in the eyes of others that weak arguing is the sign of a weak man. . . . If we mix not commendations with our reproofs, and if the applause be not predominant, so as to drown all force of the reproof or confutation, they take it as almost an insufferable injury. (The Reformed Pastor, 129–30)

“A man bold only toward his enemies is not yet as Christlike as he needs to be.”

In the heat of the moment, I’ve found that cool reflection on the goodness of correction helps me summon the cavalry of humility. In my disagreement, am I loving the truth, the church, my brother, my God, or myself? If the former, the jousters may need to take another pass. If the latter, I should be suspicious of my urge to swing back, slow to speak, and willing to disengage for a time to drown my pride in Christ’s blood.

Love Peace, Go to War

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jude 3)

Jude did not live to fight, but he would fight. He wished to discuss the thing that brought him the most joy: their common salvation in Christ. He wanted to explore the treasury of Christ’s excellencies, the bliss of the new birth, the grandeur of God’s glory, and the wonder of the cross. He wanted to drape these glories over all of life (and he does some), but alas . . .

There is a time to discuss our common salvation and revel in Christ. And there is a time when we must draw a sword and defend the Savior and salvation in which we revel. In our times, the spirit of the age scolds that the masculine tone is toxic, aggressive, and unnecessary. Boys should not be boys — much less, someday, men.

Brethren, we are chiefs of our tribes, leaders of families. If we cannot spar over the greatest, most urgent verities of this world and the next, where can we? If we are to hear “you’re wrong” or undergo cross-examination or hear rebuke, should it not be over these truths and with brothers who love us? “A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool” (Proverbs 17:10). Let hard words sink in, men of God. Speak them with patience; deliver them for each other’s good; remember to speak to men as men. Learn not only to endure them but to cherish them.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15666541/five-reasons-for-marital-faithfulness

When we give someone our full attention — our patient, focused, self-forgetful gaze — we look a little like God. The glory of God consists partly in the fact that he, unlike the gods of wood and stone, pays attention to his people (1 Kings 18:29; 2 Chronicles 7:15; Psalm 34:15). No distraction averts his gaze; no interruption snaps his focus. The true God is a perfectly attentive God — and when we offer our full attention to others, we look a little like him.

At the same time, of course, our attention is amazingly unlike God’s. God can give his full focus ten trillion places at once; we must choose one among the trillions. God’s sight can range through all space and time; our two little forward-facing eyes frame our sight here and now. God can walk through the million-acre orchard of life and see every piece of fruit; we must stop before this tree, this branch, this apple.

Which means human attention is one of the most precious gifts we have to give. By it, we offer another creature the dignity of our loving regard. We humble ourselves to know and be known. We invite someone or something to stamp us, even for just a moment, with their unique, surprising existence.

And perhaps never more so than in an age like ours, when human attention is an endangered species.

Lessons for Stewarding Attention

Over half a century ago, the great Martyn Lloyd-Jones groaned,

The world and the organizations of life around and about us make things almost impossible; the most difficult thing in life is to order your own life and to manage it. . . . There are so many things that distract us. . . . Every one of us is fighting for his life at the present time, fighting to possess and master and live our own life. (Spiritual Depression, 209)

There are so many things that distract us. Lloyd-Jones had distractions like the morning newspaper in mind. What would he say of a society where most live with a newspaper-television-camera-telephone-radio-mailbox strapped to our hand? We are all fighting for our lives — and whether we realize it or not, fighting for our attention, fighting to possess and master and give our attention, rather than having it taken from us.

And fight is the right word, for the stakes are high. We cannot follow Jesus without giving him our attention (Mark 4:24; Hebrews 2:1). We cannot become like Jesus without attentively beholding him (2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 12:1–3). And we cannot love like Jesus without offering others our unhurried, undistracted, calm, attentive regard.

How then can we steward our limited, precious, endangered attention? In short, by living as humans made in the image of God, rather than as gods made in the image of the Internet.

Simplify your inputs.

If you’re like most people in the digital age, you take in far too much information every day — at least, far too much information to process, much less store as long-term knowledge. You wake up every morning subtly tempted to attend to the world as God does. And as always, those who reach for deity forfeit their humanity: by trying to give our attention everywhere, we weaken our ability to give it meaningfully anywhere.

“By trying to give our attention everywhere, we weaken our ability to give it meaningfully anywhere.”

We could look for support from neuroscience, which assures us that an abundance of information, especially the kind shot at us from the Internet’s hundred firehoses, impoverishes memory and addicts us to distraction. In his landmark 2010 book The Shallows, for example, Nicholas Carr writes, “The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing” (194).

But neuroscience only confirms the anthropology we find in Scripture. Humans are far more tree-like than computer-like: information becomes knowledge and wisdom only as fast as water becomes fruit on the branch. Water cannot travel into roots and up trunks and through limbs in a moment; it takes time, and often requires the painfully slow process of meditation (Psalm 1:3). An abundance of information processed rapidly makes for distracted, superficial souls; a limited amount of information processed slowly makes for knowledge and that increasingly rare quality so lauded in Scripture: wisdom.

Consider, then, simplifying your inputs. Read less, but read better. Learn less, but learn better. Listen to less, but listen better. You cannot eat all the apples in life’s information orchard; you would be foolish to try. So make peace with your gloriously limited humanity, and learn to choose and savor just a few.

Prioritize near over far.

For most of history, humans had no choice but to give their attention to those people and things that lay near at hand. Adam and Eve not only did not know what was happening outside Eden; they could not know. There was no Ancient Near East Times back then. So, what could they do but spend their waking hours devoted to what they could see?

Today, we are just as limited as our first parents, with just as many hours in the day and just as much capacity for focus, but with billions more objects vying for our attention. We no longer need concern ourselves with people who can talk back or with the sensory world. We can spend all our time on the digital side of the globe.

Such availability, however, has not fundamentally changed our responsibility. Though we can know nowadays about matters far beyond the garden called home, God still holds us responsible, first and foremost, for how well we love, care for, and attend to those people and callings within arm’s reach.

What was once an inevitable fact of creaturely life now needs stating: proximity heightens responsibility. The Ephesians were to care for the whole church’s households, but especially for their own (1 Timothy 5:8). The Galatians were to do good to all, but especially to fellow believers (Galatians 6:10). Israel fell under judgment, not for neglecting Edom’s poor, but the poor within their own gates (Amos 8:4–6).

“What was once an inevitable fact of creaturely life now needs stating: proximity heightens responsibility.”

And if you are a normal, busy person, your nearest circles likely need all the attention you can give. Few of us can attend well to spouse and children, church members and neighbors, while also attending well to digital controversies, international news, and high-school friends’ Instagram posts. Something must give, and we need not feel guilty for prioritizing the near over the far.

Don’t just see, but notice.

The muscle of attention strengthens or atrophies, in part, during everyday, ordinary moments. What do you do when you arrive somewhere five minutes early, or when you wait in line at the grocery store? Like so many, I find myself reaching for my shiny pocket rectangle, that beloved window into distant realms. But this window is also a shutter, closing my eyes to the realm right in front of me.

Creation has grown dim to many. We see without seeing and hear without hearing. The world’s ecstasies have become a background hum; the color spectrum has turned to shades of gray. We have grown unrighteously unlike the God of Psalm 104, that Wonderer who never grows weary of gushing springs and valley beasts, branched birds and growing grass, schools of fish and the hidden deeps (Psalm 104:10–11, 12, 14, 25–26).

We have also become unlike the attentive Jesus, that Psalm-104 God made flesh. He had a way of noticing what others only saw, didn’t he? The disciples saw some birds and flowers; he noticed God’s fatherly hand (Luke 6:22–31). The crowds saw seeds and yeast; he noticed the coming kingdom (Matthew 13:31–33). The multitudes saw a blind beggar; Jesus noticed Bartimaeus himself, in all his desperate need (Mark 10:46–52).

In Jane Austen’s Emma, as the heroine finds herself waiting at a storefront with only a dull street outside, the narrator tells us, “A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer” (174). Yes, a mind lively and at ease — a mind attentive — need not reach compulsively for the pocket. It can do with seeing what seems like nothing, because in that “nothing” is the handiwork of God, ready to answer our gaze. Do you notice?

Live in the attention of God.

Scripture’s charge to “pay attention” almost always includes God or his words as the object. So, he calls his people to pay attention to “all that I have said to you” (Exodus 23:13), “my words” (Jeremiah 6:19), “the prophetic word” (2 Peter 1:19), or simply, “me” (Isaiah 51:4). Yet when we give him our attention, we find that he has already given us his (Psalm 34:15).

Perhaps many need a Hagar moment, a moment of waking up to the presence of El-Roi, the God who sees us (Genesis 16:13) — and in Christ, the God who sees us graciously, ever and always. We do not find, when we look to him, a God who gives us half his attention, or half of himself, but all: his full gaze, under his full grace, now and for endless ages.

Nothing so shapes our attention like living — daily, adoringly — in the loving attention of God. Turn your eyes upon him at first rising, and see his eyes turned to you. Speak to him in the day’s lulls, and find his ear open. Return to him before shutting your attention off for the night, and then lie down knowing his will not.