Fatherhood

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.

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

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

...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...

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...