As the old saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This cycle can be seen repeatedly going back thousands of years, and it\u2019s something that continues today. As we discuss, write about, and consider the many downfalls of modern culture and the difficulties facing the church today, maybe we should look back to history and see what went wrong in Israel, Rome, Greece, and other societies. Maybe we should reconsider our recent history in America.
\nIt\u2019s easy to say, \u201cpeople strayed from God,\u201d and that\u2019s true, but that\u2019s oversimplifying and offers little practical help for what we\u2019re going to do to change anything. We need to be specific. We need to place responsibility back where it belongs according to God\u2019s Word and help each person fulfill his or her role.
\nAs we look back to Israel, we see that the instructions to preserve a faithful nation were given to the men. Grandfathers and fathers were expected to cultivate a love of God in their own hearts and make that love the focal point of their home lives (Deuteronomy 6). It didn\u2019t take long before the men of Israel stopped leading in the home, and the nation\u2019s faithfulness disintegrated soon after.
\nWhat about America? Looking back over the last century we see a large, nation-wide push for mixed roles for men and women. Accelerated by World War II and the \u201cWe can do it!\u201d mentality, we live in a world today where boys and girls are raised identically. While the effect that has had on women is an article for another day, the effect it\u2019s had on men is undeniably a factor in the nation we\u2019re seeing today. While girls are pushed to be ambitious and \u201cbe whatever they want to be,\u201d boys lag behind and fall into the severely troubling extended adolescence we see so frequently today. There are 30-year-old boys all over the world in this day and age and less men in that age range all the time.
\nConsider the effect once men get married. Because the roles are equal, many men don\u2019t lead. They don\u2019t want to, they don\u2019t think they have to, and so wives step up to do it (sometimes happily, sometimes begrudgingly). Our culture has simply accepted as fact the idea that men simply aren\u2019t as spiritual as women, and so it\u2019s ok if they don\u2019t want to be the spiritual leaders of their family or if they aren\u2019t as interested in church as they are in sports, cars, or other hobbies. Marriage isn\u2019t taken seriously, so fornication, cohabitation, pornography addiction, and divorce run rampant. While women will answer for their own actions, it\u2019s time we start putting the responsibility and expectations for leadership of the family back on men. That was always God\u2019s plan for multigenerational faithfulness, and since we\u2019ve so recklessly abandoned it in the last century we have no reason to be surprised that multigenerational faithfulness is suffering so mightily.
\nIt might be countercultural, it might be considered \u201cbackwards,\u201d and it might be looked at with great skepticism by the world of 2014, but it\u2019s time we shifted our expectation of young men. Deuteronomy 6, 1 Corinthians 11:3, Ephesians 5:21-33, 1 Peter 3:1-7 and a number of other verses and accounts illustrate what God wants for the family, and men and women fulfilling the exact same role is not it. Egalitarianism and feminism are killing the home, the church, and the culture, and it\u2019s time we stand up and say something about it. Men, it\u2019s time to stop depending on someone else to spiritually lead our families. It\u2019s time to stop making excuses as to why we can\u2019t train our children in the way they should go or as to why our wives are left to themselves in the areas of discipline and training or providing and leading.
\nAs long as the church and the family are led by men who don\u2019t love God with all of their hearts, souls, and might, the church and the family are going to continue to decline. Both ancient and recent history show us exactly what happens when men shrink back from their God-given roles. Don\u2019t let culture\u2019s definition of manhood keep you from being the man God wants you to be and the man your family needs you to be. Don\u2019t let culture continue to keep us from placing expectations on boys and young adult men. Something has to change, and that change has to occur among God\u2019s handpicked leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the old saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This cycle can be seen repeatedly going back thousands of years, and it\u2019s something that continues today. As we discuss, write about, and consider the many downfalls of modern culture and the difficulties facing the church today, maybe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,59,52,26],"tags":[49,120,210,244,245],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-christian-living","category-family","category-marriagehomosexuality","tag-church","tag-family","tag-home","tag-leadership","tag-men","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n