Family – Page 2 – No Other Boast

Tolle Lege: Father Hunger

Readability: 2

Length: 207 pp

Father famine is upon us. The hunger many suffer from is beyond the need for an after-school snack. If there were a camera that could capture the souls, a moving commercial could be made picturing gaunt souls.

Better to starve of food than of fathers. When famine strikes a land its peoples can relocate. Father famine though not only also causes a loss of food, with the loss following you wherever you go, but is also the scourge of a host of societal evils. Even if you are father fed, you cannot ignore this famine around you, it will impact you indirectly.

Father Hunger was my favorite book read in 2012. It was satisfying not simply because the need for such thinking is urgent, but because it is so well prepared. This isn’t a case of going to the grocery store hungry. This is a richly nutritious and exquisite feast.

All this is to say that fatherhood has a point, and that the point goes far beyond the services provided by a stud farm or a fertilization clinic. Fatherhood has a point that extends far beyond the moment of begetting. That point extends into everything, and if we are baffled by what the point might be, wisdom might dictate that we should read the manual—the Scriptures God gave to us. But modernists want to keep that intricate device we call fathers and, when stumped, consult a different manual entirely. This is akin to troubleshooting problems with your Apple laptop by consulting the Chilton manual for a ’72 Ford pickup truck.

Trying to fix society without addressing the central issues of worship is futile in the extreme. A comparable exercise would be somebody who tried to establish a new hive of bees without organizing the new colony around a queen bee. It is not possible to go out into a fresh meadow and organize the bees there by waving your arms. The queen is essential. In the same way, worship is an essential principle in establishing any human culture. Everything else is just waving your arms in a meadow.

Feminism is therefore, at its root, a Trinitarian heresy. God the Son is subordinate to God the Father, but subordination is not inequality of essence. Jesus Christ, the one who submitted and obeyed, was fully and completely God.

Christian men who are taught the ways of Christian masculinity are being taught to imitate Jesus Christ. But when Jesus taught us masculinity, He did this by submitting Himself to the point of death. Biblical authority knows how to bleed for others. So masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility, and this is what Jesus established for us.

Matthew 12:46-50 & Jesus’ Blood Is Thicker Than Ours

For Jesus, regeneration trumps generation, that is the new birth is bigger than natural birth.

Blood may be thicker than water, but Jesus’ blood is thicker than ours, creating a newer, truer, eternal family. By blood we are all related to Adam, and in Adam we are all guilty and polluted. By His own blood we are now related to Jesus, and in Jesus we are justified and cleansed. In Christ we are adopted. Our primary identity and allegiance is no longer to any earthly family, but a heavenly one.

Better Than We Deserve

C.J. Mahaney and Dave Ramsey oft reply to the social grace, “How are you?” with “Better than I deserve.” I like that. I thought about copying it, but I think it would come off as insincere because I would probably say it hypocritically most of the time. Some may be down on others saying such statements saying they are down on themselves. My response is twofold: 1. Don’t we have plenty to be down about (i.e. sin)? 2. They are not seeking to be down on themselves are much are they are seeking to be up on Christ.

It was a few weeks ago on a Saturday night. Bethany was cooking supper and I was upstairs trying to balance the checking account. Thirteen cents off! Isn’t amazing how such a minuscule figure can cause such disproportional stress? Any other time I would think thirteen cents insignificant. If something is on sale for thirteen cents off, big deal. If something cost thirteen cents, no problem. Lose three pennies and a dime, oh well. But thirteen cents when balancing the books is a major stressor. Then Bethany’s phone rang. A grenade was about to go off in my soul sending my emotions in a thousand different directions.

Our adoption caseworker called saying that they had two brothers, ages two and five, and wanted to know if we would be interested in adopting them. She then proceeded to tell us their story, a story that would melt your heart, but that’s their story. As she told us about the boys we were instantly in love. During the conversation it clicked, I had misdated the interest we had earned that month. How much was it? Yep, thirteen cents. We took some time for the emotional side to calm down and the rational side to process. We called family, consulted our pastor, and prayed to our heavenly Father. Later that evening the sewer backed up in our downstairs half-bath; so while Bethany was calling family, I was called the plumber.

Monday morning we let our caseworker know we were in. The emotional rollercoaster continued for a couple of weeks. Finally, yesterday we found out that it is final, the boys are ours. We will go get them next week. Our heavenly Father has blessed us with two beautiful boys.

We don’t deserve these two boys, they are a blessing. The Christian faith is not about desert, it is about grace. Again, I don’t deserve these two boys. I don’t deserve stress over thirteen cents or a backed up sewer either. I deserve worse. I deserve hell. I deserve wrath. I deserve judgment.

The reason I thankfully don’t get what I deserve is because God gave me something infinitely more valuable than these two sons. He gave me His Son. The Son who took my just deserts so that I might be justified.

So when we say “we don’t deserve this,” it’s not simply because we are down on self, but because we are rejoicing in the bountiful mercy of God to us in Jesus Christ. It’s not because we are negative, or pessimistic, labels I have issues with, but because we are full of joy and overwhelmed by grace. There is greater joy contemplating my Lord’s merits than in deluding myself into thinking I have any of my own.

So pray for these two sinners raising two younger sinners. Pray that the grace of God would be mighty upon us, not because we deserve it, but for His glory.