Fatherhood

Error message

The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

android-button.png subscribe_on_itunes_badge-420x153.png


Daddy Tried audiobook now available...

51CzWuHioyL._AA300_.jpg

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce that Tim Bayly's Daddy Tried is now available as an audiobook. If you haven't had a chance to read it for yourself, swing over to Audible.com or Amazon.com, download a copy, and have Tim read it for you.

audible_button.png

We're also pleased to offer a free download of the Chapter 1 audio to Baylyblog readers.

Download-button.png


The good father: so you don't like LaVar Ball?

Have at it. Everyone's put off by him so go ahead and join the haters. Loud? Proud? Profane?

Yeah.

About to set Nike and Under Armour back a few billion?

Likely.

About to give Magic a run for his money, courtside?

After Tuesday, it's done.

The executives of legacy sport brands are howling about LaVar being the worst thing to happen to sports since Tonya Harding smeared peanut butter in Lance Armstrong's helmet.

Actually, she didn't.

When USC complained about LaVar branding his sons while his oldest son Alonzo was playing ball for UCLA, LaVar faced down UCLA and the NCAA—and more power to him, I say. The execs of the NCAA up in Indy know very well what this means. Finally, they're going to have to pay their "student athletes" a few thousand of the hundreds of millions they and their Ph.D.s have been raking in from...


Being a dad is hard...


The good father: the family-centered church movement (1)...

The family-centered church movement can trace some significant part of its beginnings back to my friend Kerry Ptacek at Bethany Collegiate Presbyterian Church outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Kerry and I met when he was working for the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a Philadelphia-based conservative lobbying organization of the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA). The Lay Committee published the Presbyterian Layman and several of its employees—including Kerry—attended Bethany Collegiate Presbyterian Church then pastored by my dear friend, Ben Sheldon.

Kerry and I were talking on the phone one day when he told me he didn't allow his wife to attend Bethany Collegiate's women's Bible study. Knowing the godliness of Ben Sheldon and his wife, Amy; knowing also the orthodoxy of Bethany's history and doctrine; I was shocked and asked Kerry why he'd made this decision?

Kerry responded that Scripture commanded wives to ask their husbands at home...


Polluting our National Mall: the tragedy of the commons...

Some things are so shameful you hate to comment on them because doing so calls attention to them, and thus the shame multiplies.

A pair of bull-dykes protested our pro-life march at the county courthouse last Sunday afternoon and it was exceedingly hard even to look at them. The stomach churned, the face blushed, and eyes were averted as the crowd of fathers, mothers, children, and babes-in-arms walked by these women spewing blasphemies and obscenities.

This is our reaction to the bimbos, dykes, and hussies who marched in pink last week and shrieked on cue for their media pimps. We avoid the news. We turn away from the ugly. We cover our ears. To say these females are shameful doesn't begin to...

touch it. They trample the commons and no one tells them to shut their mouths and go home. This is a classic case of the tragedy of the commons.

So what should the nation's men do? Or rather, how should Christian men respond? 

Thinking about it, at first I fell into my old habit of wishing Christian women would rebuke them...


The good father: teaching your children to submit to authority...

Patriarchal homeschooling enclaves are dogged by rebellion against authority. Ask me. Ask your pastor. Ask anyone.

How does it happen that a movement promoting the authority of the father of the household also ends up promoting rebellion against the authorities God has ordained outside the home?

First, the children of patriarchal homeschooling families grow up being taught not to trust...


The good father: older women and younger women...

A friend and I were talking on the phone one day when my friend told me he didn't allow his wife to attend his church's women's Bible study. I knew his pastor was good and his church was good, so I was shocked. "Why not," I asked?

He told me Scripture says wives should ask their husbands at home. He was referring to 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35:

The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church.

Knowing he hadn't been a Christian long, I probed to see if there was some harm the women of the church may have done to his wife; some emotional slight or alienation that might explain his decision...


An open letter on spanking...

This is in response to a comment just left under the post The Good Father: Fight the good fight (3)... Among other things, the commenter wrote:

"I think spanking a child due to real or perceived manipulation is excessive. Remaining calm and in control- being the adult is imperative here.”

I respond:

Dear Mrs. P.,

It's good to separate the world into Christians and pagans. It clarifies things, especially arguments. So how do we know the difference between Christians and pagans?

There are a number of questions to ask, such as who does a man (or woman) believe Jesus is? What does a man or woman believe Jesus' work was?  Who raised Jesus from the dead? Who killed Jesus? And so on.

Sometimes, though, other questions are needed that prior generations took for granted. For two-thousand years, no one denied...


The good father: fight the good fight (3)...

You can't live in this world one sinner married to another without fighting.

Not bickering, but fighting. Bickering doesn't rise above the personal, but a good fight is principled. (Or should be.)

We bicker over who's pulling the blankets off the other. We fight over how (or whether) to stop our Little Empress from manipulating her playmates and younger brothers.

Your dear wife doesn't think the Little Empress is manipulative, nor does she think it's worth the pain to deal with it. Time will pass, the Little Empress will get older, and if it still needs dealing with, we can address it then. But as you let your wife have her way, you say to yourself that you know where your Little Empress got it from.

What's wrong with you! Say "no" to your wife and spank your precious daughter, already.

If you need help to stiffen your resolve, stop and think about how...


A good Christmas gift for fathers...

Pastoral care is not a high priority in the church today and it's hard to give it from a distance. The Apostle Paul did it through his epistles and most of the New Testament is simply the permanent record of pastoral care by pastors who lived at a distance from those they loved and led, done by means of letter writing in a day when texts, FB, and Skype didn't exist.

Daddy Tried is my own letter providing pastoral care to fathers.1 New fathers who year by year are welcoming their newborn sons and daughters into the world; and also old ones who year by year are welcoming their grandsons and granddaughters into the world; both ages of fathers are the men I want to encourage to walk their fatherhood by faith with love.

Maybe your husband or the men of your church lack anyone caring for them, personally, as they raise their daughters and sons? Maybe no one exhorts, admonishes, or rebukes them with great patience? Maybe no one encourages them to not grow discouraged at the hard, hard work...


Fatherhood during the holidays...

This afternoon from 4-6pm ET, I'm privileged to be the guest of Chris Arnzen on IRON SHARPENS IRON Radio. We'll be talking on the subject, "Christian Fathers Using the Holidays for God's Glory." What do our families need from their father during the holidays?

Chris Arnzen's IRON SHARPENS IRON can be listened to online at IronSharpensIronRadio or www.LeadingEdgeRadioNetwork.com (click CHANNEL 3 for Christian Radio). You can also listen by phone at (401) 283-6754 (press #3 when prompted for Christian Radio. If you have audio problems with live streaming, try clearing your browser caches, then quit and restart your browser.

If you'd like to ask question or two during the interview, please send the e-mail to chrisarnzen@gmail.com including your first name, city, state, and country (if outside the US). Hope you'll join us.


The good father: fight the good fight (2)...

Chesterton is right. Marriage is the melding together of two incompatible forces, man and woman. So there's no avoiding quarrels. The point is to keep them lovers' quarrels.

It's been several weeks since I asked the question, "why do Christian pastors and childrearing experts never talk about battles between husbands and wives over the discipline of their children?" One reason I write about fatherhood is that Christian fathers need help having faith for these fights.

So let me gently say you really must fight with your dear wife for the faithful discipline of your children...


Teddy Roosevelt on motherhood...

In the past few years, several longtime friends—one a nephew on the Taylor side of the family, another a stay-at-home mother and member of Clearnote Indy, and the third a politician running for a congressional seat outside Philly—have each recommended Teddy Roosevelt as good for what ails America. Here's a speech President Roosevelt gave in Washington D.C. to the National Congress of Mothers a century ago.

Times have changed. If you need an incentive to read on:

If you mothers through weakness bring up your sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the future...

No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard...

The speech...


The good father: fight the good fight (1)...

Marriage is the melding of two incompatible forces, man and woman. Quarrels are inevitable. The point is to keep them lovers' quarrels.1

One reason I wrote a book on fatherhood is that Christian child rearing experts never bring up the fights between fathers and mothers over their children. Imagine Dave Ramsey getting through even a single radio program on money without dealing with marital conflict. It's inconceivable. Yet pastors preach and child rearing experts write books giving this and that advice to fathers and mothers on how to raise godly children without ever mentioning fights...


Feminists and libertarians: this is my Father's world...

...for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:29)

Because nature never stops telling the glory of God, authority is everywhere. Keep your eye on the ball.

First, authority is the issue—not sex. Men and women deny the authority of the male of the species not because they prefer authority to be equally shared by men and women, but because they hate all authority. Especially God the Father Almighty in Whom all authority originates and from Whom it is delegated.

Feminists lash out at men because fatherhood is intrinsic to manhood and authority is intrinsic to fatherhood. Patriarchy is not hated because the pater is always a man. Patriarchy is hated because of the arche (rule).

As for rebellion, abdication and rebellion are the same sin even though God demonstrated in his dealings with Adam and Eve that the abdicator always suffers the greater judgment.

Second, although abdicators and rebels think they're making progress when they take the word "obey" out of the bride's wedding vows and preach their wedding homily on "mutual submission," it's a fool's errand. Abdicators and rebels never have removed a single bit of authority anywhere in God's creation because God is the Father Almighty and all nature sings and round us rings the wonders of His sovereign rule. This is my Father's world.

Rebel against authority all you want, but the high point of your success will be the...


The good father: your child has no sexual orientation...

Last time, I wrote of the importance of your child's sex. At the moment of conception, God called your child to live his life obedient and faithful to whom God made him. Whom God made him was either man or woman. God has never given anyone a "sexual orientation." God did not make your son or daughter "gay." Everything else flows from God's decree of male and female assigned at the moment of conception.

If God decreed your child to be male, your son is to spend his life demonstrating his love and submission to the manhood out of which every part of his personhood has its origin. Today, we can't say it often enough: "from the beginning God made them male and female" (Matthew 19:4).

This is the truth placed in the womb of your wife before she had any clue she was...


The good father: the fearful romance of marriage and children...

At first, just the weight of responsibility of marriage is overwhelming. I remember waking up the second night of our honeymoon, looking at my dear Mary Lee sleeping next to me, and thinking "the rest of my life!"

Other than following Jesus, I'd never before consciously made a decision about the rest of my life. But now I'd said my vows and I would be responsible to care for my bride and the children God chose to bless us with, and there would be no running. No getting out of it unless I was willing to face the wrath of God and suffer shame before everyone who loved us.

So I lay there thinking to myself... 


The good father: work with the grain...

As soon as your first son or daughter is born, you'll be faced with work you don't like and don't really want to do. Diapers aren't real bad at first. A milk-only diet makes a newborn's diapers just a mild nuisance. But once your baby starts solids, dirty diapers get nasty. My brother Nathan always used a World War I gas mask. This isn't Nathan—my granddaughter Bayly standing next to me says it's her uncle Ben with his daughter Clementine. It does look just like Nathan. I'd watch him and wonder why none of his kids died of fright.

Not all the work of fatherhood is bad, though. The past couple of weeks I've been reminded what a joy it is to give hugs and kisses to your children when you...


The loss of a precious child...

Fr. Bill Mouser is one of my heroes. He's an odd bird, no doubt. God has shown me that sanctification always produces greater oddities in saints. Never greater conformity. Barbara loves her husband and it would be hard to find a Priscilla/Aquila married couple today who have done better work strengthening the church against the greatest heresy of our day, the repudiation and denial of the Fatherhood of God.

Some years back, Fr. Bill and his dear Barbara suffered the loss of their little daughter, Francesca. I've heard snippets through the years about their loss. Recently I asked Fr. Bill to write a little bit more for us. Here it is from the kindness and generosity of his heart. I trust you will be strengthened reading it, as I was.

* * *

When my eight-year old daughter Francesca (hereafter "Cheska") was diagnosed with an inoperable brainstem tumor on January 9, 1996, we knew two things...