The calling of all Christiann men to lead our homes and churches is God’s good, perfect design; there is nothing about the prescribed leadership of men that even hints at oppression. To the contrary, it is a design rooted in the calling to love sacrificially and in the wisdom to know the three sources from which such self-giving love flows.

When I hear the phrase biblical patriarchy today I can’t help but think of Mark Twain’s comment, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Last night, from the Jesus Without Baggage website, I read an article entitled, “How Christian Patriarchy is a Misguided and Harmful Belief that Does Tremendous Damage.” It claimed:
“Christian Patriarchy oppresses and denigrates women and girls. They are expected to submit meekly to whatever the husband demands. This is wrong, oppressive. The idea is that men are directed by God and have the responsibility to direct their wives. But Women can follow the voice and direction of God just as easily as men can. Christian Patriarchy develops an environment for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against women and misrepresents biblical passages. (The author then cites 5 biblical texts that teach that men are to lead their homes and churches.) These passages are used as if they are the very word of God—eternal propositional truth. But these opinions were written by people (not God) to address issues in particular congregations and based on the culture that existed at the time. They are not the eternal Word of God.”
These words are but another example of the phenomenon we examined last week, i.e., the way critical theory’s oppressor/oppressed lens has corrupted so many people’s views of God’s perfect gender design. Also consistent with what we said last week, she is a woman, like way too many, who has been harmed by abusive men. I begin this way because this author and many, many egalitarians believe things about God’s design of gender roles that just ain’t so. The opening words of Paul’s letter to Timothy about spiritual leadership in the church and home directly refute the claim that God’s role assignments inherently harm women. To the contrary, the very aim of his leadership charge to Timothy, Paul states, “is LOVE.”
As we continue our May series, Portrait of Effective Spiritual Leadership, today we uncover three aspects of the spiritual leadership charge Paul begins to give Timothy in chapter 1.

Your charge is to teach others to avoid useless theological speculations but instead stay focused on ordering their lives to accomplish God’s mission.
The aim of your charge is love.
The love you need to fulfill your charge springs from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

 Teach Others to Avoid Useless Theological Speculations: Instead Focus on Ordering Their Lives to Accomplish God’s Mission
Just as I urged that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is by faith, so I urge you now… (I Tim 1:3-4).
Paul comes down hard on theological mind games. The false teachers were not only deviating from the true gospel taught by Paul, they were adding things referred to as myths and endless genealogies. The Greeks loved argument for the sake of argument and intellectual centers in Rome were always looking for the latest teaching. These kinds of man-made theological games, says Paul are useless speculation, which is in sharp contrast to teaching that advances the plan of God, which is of faith. Paul uses a fascinating word for advance the plan, also translated stewardship, (OIKONOMOUS), from which we get economy. It is usually used for household management, a cognate from OIKOS—house + NEMO—to arrange. Useless speculation is the opposite of teaching that empowers stewardship, i.e. ordering our world to accomplish Christ kingdom agenda in every sphere.
Paul’s use of OIKONOMOUS points to his insistence that God’s true Word be applied in Christian’s everyday lives. Just as James calls believers to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, Paul expects us to manage our outward lives in such a way that we implement biblical teaching, i.e. shape our lives by it. Paul would have agreed with Gordon MacDonald, author of Ordering Your Private World, who astutely observed, “If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual MUST GOVERN the outer world of activity.” So, our private, inner world requires ordering, so that it can shape the outer world of activity. “Good teaching,” says Paul, “must help Christians implement their faith plan for seeking first the kingdom in all their lives, living as transformed creatures.”
The Aim of Your Charge is Love (1 Timothy 1:5)
Think of how this stated AIM of spiritual leadership refutes the arguments of those who are brainwashed into thinking that biblical male leadership is oppressive. It just ain’t so. Anyone who looks into God’s gender design objectively, who casts off the dirty oppressor/oppressed lens of critical theory, will see that the consistent call throughout the Bible is for men to love those under their care by devoting themselves to whatever it takes for them to thrive, to die to themselves so those under their care flourish. Consider:
Adam is placed in the garden to cultivate it (AVAD) and to protect it (SHAMAR). His wife, Eve, and their children are in the garden. AVAD means to supply whatever his wife and children (and those he serves in business) need to flourish. He sweats. He dies to himself so that they may reach their full potential. Adam not only is to sacrifice his labor to care for them, his commission is to protect them spiritually, emotionally, and physically. If necessary, he dies to protect them. This vocation of Adam is the definition of AGAPE, self-giving LOVE. It is giving of yourself sacrificially to meet the needs of another.
Jesus, the Second Adam, models the manhood that Adam was to fulfill. He came to earth to free us from the tyranny of sin that was destroying us, giving his life in love so that we might be set free from the penalty, power, and presence of the spiritual cancer, sin. He pours out the Holy Spirit who sows in us the seed of godliness, who cultivates new life on the path of righteousness to which Jesus calls us. And Jesus fulfills the role of protecting us (SHAMAR). He defeated Satan at the cross, ascended to the Father and poured out the spiritual gifts and the weapons of warfare. Jesus interceded for us in John 17 to be kept from the evil one an, in fact, he and the Holy Spirit intercede for us every day. Jeus the head of his bride perfectly LOVES her.
Timothy, likewise, is called to be a leader, in his case of the church. Where does Paul start with his charge? The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. The purpose of male leadership of the home and church given in the creation design and for his covenant people is crystal clear; The aim of our charge is love. Our spiritual leadership, like that of  Adam and Jesus was given for the purpose of loving those under our care. And Christian men have been doing so for two thousand years. Nancy Pearcey, in her book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, reveals objective data that prove that the most loving, caring husbands of any subgroup in America today, are devout men who hold the biblical view that they should lead their homes. She writes,
Read More
Related Posts:

Homeschooling is a completely valid option for a child’s education and should by no means be looked down upon as an incompetent and ineffective teaching pathway that produces brainwashed and socially stunted children. Homeschooling is a lot of work, but it reaps the benefits of flexibility and full transparency.

A short while ago, my Instagram feed was full of reels showing adorable traditional families homeschooling their children. The videos made me smile as I glimpsed the fullness of the bond between the mother and her children — idealised for the digital platform, of course, but wholesome nonetheless. Far less wholesome were many of the comments underneath these videos, which I will briefly respond to in the following.
As for me, I went to conventional institutional schools as a child — public and Catholic schools. However, many of my cousins were homeschooled, and the following comments couldn’t be less representative of them. Having just recently completed my Master of Teaching, I feel prompted to clear the air about some of these homeschooling stereotypes from the perspective of a graduate teacher. So, without further ado, this is a teacher’s defence of homeschooling.
Indoctrination?

First of all, let’s address this “brainwashing” idea. This seems to imply that schools would never brainwash their students — which is a ridiculous thing to believe. In recent times, we have seen woke narratives permeate into school cultures and even curriculums. We have seen religion pushed out of schools. We have seen STEM hailed and promoted as the most important of school subjects at the expense of the liberal arts.
There have been several instances in which students have been discouraged from criticising, questioning, or speaking out against selected narratives — and this is the hallmark of indoctrination. Schools certainly can indoctrinate children, which is why transparency with parents is vital.
Raising one’s own child with one’s own values is not comparable. Children need that stability and support, and parents have the authority to provide this. Schools do not have the authority to step in between a parent and their child. At the same time, however, indoctrination can certainly happen at home, too.
If indoctrination is just teaching a person to accept an idea uncritically, from a biased point of view, sheltered from other perspectives, then this can happen at home if education is narrow. (The age and maturity of the child are also important considerations.) Indoctrination is something that can happen at home just as much as at school. However, only one has the added disgrace of acting behind a parent’s back.
Academic Standards

“Keep homeschooling your kids. I need janitors and cleaning ladies.”

“This is why US education standards are plummeting.”

“Increased homeschooling coincides with the rise in undereducated and misinformation, oddly enough.”

Next, there is the idea that homeschooling produces poorer academic outcomes. This assumption surely has to be born from a simple lack of understanding about how homeschooling works and what kinds of resources are used. As with normal schooling, homeschooling follows a set curriculum. Common content is covered, and students have to meet set achievement standards. It is unusual for parents to write their own curriculum.
Statistically, homeschooling is very often on par with, or above, public schooling in terms of academic performance. According to one study, the home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardised academic achievement tests. 
Read More
Related Posts:

According to WORLD, this year’s conference encouraged attendees to leave churches that do not affirm their orientation/gender identity and to form LGBTQ “affinity” groups in their local setting. Revoice doesn’t aim merely at being a conference. Its organizers aim at being a movement that spreads in churches throughout the country. And if your church doesn’t agree with Revoice teachings about affirming LGBTQ+ identities, then people should leave your church and find one that does.

When organizers announced the program for the first Revoice conference in 2018, the controversy surrounding the meeting was sharp and protracted. It was a conference appealing to so-called Side-B “gay Christians,” and it was founded in part as a repudiation of the Nashville Statement. Indeed, founder Nate Collins told Religion News Service in 2018 that he viewed the Nashville Statement as “pastorally insensitive” and as a form of “spiritual abuse.”
If the organizers of Revoice were trying to repudiate the Nashville Statement, they did a good job of it from the very beginning. The part of the Nashville Statement that seemed to offend so many of them was Article 7, which says, “WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Article 7 was trying to communicate that followers of Christ must not construct an identity for themselves that contradicts God’s design in creation. And yet, forging and expressing LGBTQ+ identities seems to be a central focus of Revoice.
A lot has changed in America and even among evangelicals since that first Revoice conference. Since 2018, Bible-believing Christians have been put on notice about the dangers of Critical Theory and its offshoots in queer theory and third wave feminism. In 2020, Carl Trueman published a watershed book explaining how people in the West have come to think of maleness and femaleness as social constructs—malleable concepts that individuals can shape and adjust by an act of the will. We have all been witnessing radical gender theory trickle down from the ivory tower to main street as countless public schools and HR departments are force-feeding this ideology to their charges. There has been as much as a 4,000% increase in adolescent girls identifying as transgender—many of them still minor children and undergoing destructive “medical” interventions, including double mastectomies and puberty suppression.
In this context, one would think that Revoice might retreat from radical gender ideology and its denial of the male-female binary. And yet, WORLD magazine reports that the most recent Revoice conference—held a couple weeks ago in Plano, TX—has launched headlong into this error. The report says that Revoice has changed, but not for the better:
Revoice has changed, too. Speakers have always emphasized homosexuality as an identity, not just a behavior. But this year, such assertions from the dais seemed more insistent, with speakers assiduously using civil-rights language to present radical change as settled truth. That identity rhetoric extended to transgender ideology. Speakers frequently referred to “sexual and gender minorities” and used preferred pronouns, along with terms such as women “assigned female at birth.” The group’s reach and influence are growing, but leaders now emphasize parachurch activities. Speakers frequently referenced ongoing rejection within the church and encouraged attendees to form their own spiritual communities in local Revoice chapters.
This doesn’t sound like a retreat from radical gender theory, but a doubling-down on it. The report goes on:
On the conference’s first night, attendees formed lines at registration tables.
Read More
Related Posts: