Louis Prats
tells this story. “ ‘Daddy, draw me a spider,’ said my
two-year-old daughter. So I drew her a massive spider with
eight huge, hairy legs. ‘Draw me an airplane,’ she said. So I drew a large
airliner. ‘Now draw Daddy.’ So I drew a man with a washboard stomach,
Popeye-like muscles, and a chiseled chin. After admiring it for a few seconds,
she said, ‘Now, draw MY daddy’ ” (Readers Digest, 9/05, p 129). He drew a picture
based on his fantasy but she wanted him to draw based on the facts! There is
often a gap between fantasy and fact when it comes to daddies and husbands (and
also mothers and wives)! Perfect ones do not exist. That being said, good men
do exist, in spite of the diminished and demoralizing way many in our culture
depict and characterize men in general. Male- bashing came into vogue decades
ago when radical feminists began to define and depict women and men as
competitors with one another instead of complimentary to one another. There has
been a prolific amount of philosophical “sowing to the wind” and now we watch
as our culture “reaps the whirlwind” of distorted thinking and behavior (Hosea
8:7).
Society has undergone a dangerous disconnect with common sense
and Biblical teaching about gender differences and the unique roles and
responsibilities of men and women, especially in marriage and parenting and the
church. Powerful personalities and politicians in our land, including the
current President of the United States, are now unwilling to define marriage
the way the Bible does – as a God-designed relationship between a man and a
woman, ideally to last a life time (Genesis 2:18ff; Matthew 19:1-9). God’s plan
for marriage and the home and the church requires two complimentary but
distinctive components – males and females – and no amount of pompous
pontificating to the contrary by a high and mighty judge or court, a church
council, a president, popular practice, or pop culture personalities can change
that fundamental fact. In God’s plan each gender has a unique and God-given
work to do.
In the
middle of moral confusion and controversy there occasionally come words worth
noting from unexpected sources. Consider Camille Paglia. Paglia is an American
academic and social critic and a self- described “dissident feminist.” Although
a lesbian, her criticisms of modern feminism have angered many radical
feminists. In her TIME article (12/30/13;
p 26), “2013: The Year Men Became Obsolete?”, she wrote:
“Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now,
invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that
makes their work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty,
dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring
roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting
and clearing trees and bulldozing the landscape. It is men who heft and weld
the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the
hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate- glass
windows of 50-story skyscrapers . . . Surely women are strong enough now to
give credit where credit is due!” Men may be obsolete in the perverted, fuzzy
thinking of a world out of touch with God. But God’s plan calls for men who
will not abandon their call to love their wives and lead their children to
faith in God (Ephesians 5:21-6:4). Such men will never be obsolete or replaced
with a “same-sex” substitute. God give us more of these men.
--by Dan
Gulley, Smithville, TN
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