Easy Chair Series

Christian Manhood

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 28-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC330

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, December the 31st, 1994, Easy Chair number 330.

We have been at this for some years now and we are enjoying it more and more each time and we hope that you are, also.

Mark Rushdoony, Colonel Doner, John Upton and myself will now discuss Christian manhood, a very important subject and one of increasing concern to more and more men. We have reached a crisis where in our culture Feminism is taking its toll on the Christian community and at the same time the childish macho image that many men in and out of the church are affecting is also taking a very deadly toll on the life of the faith.

The essence of Christian manhood is responsibility under God. At all points a man must be governed by the knowledge that he is under God and is always responsible to him. One of the things that troubles me and I encounter this even in some members of the clergy in conversations and in telephone calls that they see the headship of the man in radical isolation from his obligation to be radically under the Word of God, faithful to God and manifesting Christian grace, love, charity and a concern.

Manhood is essentially a mental and a religious matter. This morning John and I were discussing the matter at breakfast and his questions led me to point out that some of the most remarkable men in history have been robbed of their manhood in a physical sense. One of the greatest men in Chinese history was the admiral Cheng Ho. He was a eunuch, but he did not allow that to keep him from being a man. He extended the Chinese power throughout South East Asia and actually took Ceylon or Sri Lanka as it is known.

The Chinese Empire reached its height under Cheng Ho the Magnificent. He was a eunuch, but he was a better man than any of the unneutered or men around him.

Or, still another one who has been rated as one of the greatest generals of all history, Narcess. Narcess was an Armenian from an important family and we don’t know how when a young man he was by some enemies castrated, but he was. He never talked about it nor any of his family. His family was a distinguished one. Five of his brothers were generals in the Byzantine Empire under Justinian the Great. And he became a top official in the administration and a very great one. He would be remembered in history just for his accomplishment in the administration of Justinian. But when he was an old man in his 60s the western front of the empire was collapsing and Germanic peoples had conquered Italy. And all other defenses having failed and other commanders having failed, Justinian sent Narcess who had never had anything to do with the military in all his life and was an old man. In no time he turned the war around.

The Germanic people snickered when they heard of his coming and they thought that Justinian was, indeed, getting to be senile to send a eunuch out against their powerful troops.

Well, he defeated one group after another and finally besieged a sizable number of them in one fortress city. And finally when they were near starvation he offered them terms. He said, “Continue to hold out and you are dead to the last man. I keep my word. Surrender and I will give you free passage out of Italy on your promise not to come back and to wage war against the empire.”

Well, they knew that Narcess was a man of his word and they turned over to him all their armament, everything. But he let them go out as they were. He gave them food and no other Germanic army could persuade them to go back on their word. They left the country. In time Narcess mopped up on every army in Italy. He was a eunuch, a small man, never having commanded an army until he was an old man and yet this is what he did. And military historians rate him as one of the two or three greatest generals in all of history.

Manhood is a question of faith, a question of action in terms of your belief that God has given you something to do so that there have been eunuchs in history who, unlike others who have been beaten men, have been triumphant men.

Now I begin with that, because I feel it is so important to realize the spiritual and the psychological aspect of manhood.

Well, God created man, we are told in Genesis, to exercise dominion, to subdue the earth. The Garden of Eden was to be a pilot project wherein man was to learn dominion, the scientific task of naming or classifying the animals, of tilling the earth and pruning the trees and learning how to tend for all the garden and advance its productivity. Man sinned and the very earth was cursed for his sake. And now man has a difficult task as he works to establish dominion. But his calling is not to domination as ungodly men believe, but to dominion. And we are told by our Lord how to define that, that he who is greatest among you or Lord of all is to be the servant of all, a very different concept. Masculine authority is real, but it is an authority of service, of consideration, of thoughtfulness.

Today the macho idea is an evil one and it goes hand in hand with the very degradation of manhood that we see so common in our time.

Well, with that introduction, Mark, would you like to say something?

[M. Rushdoony] Well, what I was going to say what you touched on already and that is that work was not part of the curse. Adam was created to work.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[M. Rushdoony] And the curse was that the work that man did would not always be productive. There would now be thorns and thistles in the garden. Now but he would eat only by the sweat of his brow. The work would be difficult and not always fully productive. But when Christ restores us to our original calling, that original calling for Adam was to the work that God had assigned him and to fulfill that calling. And so man has to view his primary function in life as doing God’s Work.

And too many Christians, I think, tend to, when they talk about the role of the man, the role of the husband, they view it in terms of the family and man’s work is told to take a back seat to his family life. But man’s original calling was to work for God and to do God’s work and his family responsibilities are in terms of that work. Now work can be... work can become a god for some men. And we can’t have an incorrect perspective on our own importance in our work. And sometimes that can be, you know, the workaholic can... can ... is... is a genuine problem and that can be a distortion. But work is our primary function.

[Voice] Let me ask you if ... and I am ... just really as a question, you know, but I have tried to frame this in my own thinking on the subject in terms of being a steward, that God created us in his image and as God has responsibility for the world, he has given us moral responsibility for caring for his... all of his creation. And you go back into Matthew 25 and the parable of the talents which I call managing for growth. Whatever God has given us or put us in contact with, we are to manage for growth. But my point is, Mark, that, you know, if... I look at it from being a steward which is a caretaker, a manager for God. Then that forces me into some sort of balance, because I need to take care of my family. I also need to work and do my work. I need to do what I can for God’s greater kingdom and creation and each of us is gifted much differently in that in both in different arenas and in terms of scope and depth of gifting. But we all have gifts.

But if I... one of the things as I look at it, a steward and say, “Ok, my job is to manage a family, my work, my community to the extent that I can, you know, for God, for the kingdom.” Sometimes I am going to be cast in a servant role. I mean, very often as a servant. Sometimes I am going to be a warrior, you know, if I have to either physically or in some other way protect my family or just go to, you know, what would a warrior role be? Now, you know, protecting the community against evil, pornography or crime or drugs, getting involved in the political process today would be a warrior.

But anyway, what I... I tend to look at it as our job is to be a steward of everything and we need to learn how to balance that, but, of course, if we are to be a steward, which I would like to ask you what you all think, then... then there is still a balancing problem, because it is difficult, you know, to balance.

But does that...does that framework work, Rush, in the steward?

[Rushdoony] Yes. We are stewards in everything. We are commissioned by God and the problem with man today is they are ready to claim authority, but they don’t want to acknowledge their stewardship under God and that they are to be servants under God, ministering.

[Voice] Yeah, they just want to be the boss.

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Voice] You shall be as gods and man tends to want to make his own path and do his own will and to be as gods in every area of his life and that was the original sin. So what you are saying is that rather than playing God over our wives, playing God over our children, we need to be God’s stewards.

[Rushdoony] One amusing side light on that, of masculine idiocy. It is not as commonly used as it was when I was younger, references to the wife as the little woman. And it used to baffle me that men whose wives were, well, dangerously close to 200 pounds would still speak of the little woman. It was kind of patronizing and stupid.

[Voice] Well, you know, it ... it seems as if secular man and Christian man have each kind of claimed out, claimed different ends of the pole and polarized. In other words, men that aren’t Christians tend to be pretty much off in the macho man, you know?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] The woman is going to do what I say or I am going to punch her lights out. And Christian man tends to, you know, be at the other end of that extreme, oh, you know, I have got to be meek and mild and gentle and ... and he becomes more feminine, you know, in some ways than ... than the woman. So it is either... there is two extremes. Either I am macho man or I am Mr. Rogers. And there seems to be no happy medium which is, of course, what I think the biblical model is, is to be that steward which as Christ who is gentle, but, you know, can also get in somebody’s face.

[Voice] We have to accept the rank that God has given men. We don’t deserve the rank that he has given us, but we have to accept it and we have to exercise it. And what I am interested in is how many of us has married as pagans and have put up with Feminism in the home and then have become Christians and realized that you can’t put up with that. And one of the very dangerous things, I think, one of the most deadliest things that enemies that we face is Christian Feminism.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Women who call themselves Christians that are Feminists at heart and use the Church to geld their men and pastors who play along with that game.

[Rushdoony] I had an essay in a book which was reprinted this year Towards a Christian Marriage, edited by Elizabeth Fellerson and it first came out, I believe, in ’78. And I was amazed at the number of women from reformed churches who took violent exception to certain things in that book and were militant Feminists so that it is not the modernist churches with feminist pastors, but some of the orthodox ones that are seeing {?} of Feminism. I don’t think they would have expressed themselves that way to the their pastors in their churches. I knew in one or two cases that the pastors would have been horrified to know that a prominent woman in their church felt as she did. But they definitely had imbibed of the contemporary Feminist doctrines.

[Voice] Which is what, Rush? Can you capsulize for us what that is, the Feminist doctrine? What is that all about?

[Rushdoony] The Feminist doctrine is a part of the equalitarian temper of the modern era. It insists that male and female are equal in every respect. Well, the book by Stephen Goldberg, Why Men Rule which is a reprint but also an expansion of his book of the mid ‘70s, The Inevitability of Patriarchy. It is quite an important work. He deals with the subject from the standpoint of a physical anthropologist and he finds that contrary to the modern attitude, there are differences between male and female that women by and large equal or excel men in every area that standardized testing covers except two. The tests, by the way, as we get them, are doctored so that sexual and racial differences will not be detectable. But men excel only in two areas. We would call dominion. He gives it other terms such as status. Men are able better to exercise dominion. The other area where men excel is in abstract reasoning. When it comes to practical reason women run circles around men. Men are not practical the way women are. In every other area of the testing women either equal or surpass men. Only in those two areas—dominion and abstract thinking—do men excel.

Well, equality is the name of the game in the modern world and equality is a myth, because the term comes... the word is used in the Bible. In the English you find “equal” about four or five times cited, but it has a different meaning in the Bible.

Our modern term “equality” and “equal” comes from mathematics. Two plus two equals four. On both sides of the equation you have an abstraction. In mathematics you are always dealing with things that are abstractions, but you cannot say two Englishmen equal two Germans or two Africans. They may be criminals or they may be men of science or pastors. It is impossible to apply the term equality on the human scene.

You can speak religiously of gifts. You have certain gifts, Colonel, which I don’t have. John has gifts I don’t have. Mark has gifts I don’t have. Each of us have gifts that mark us. And they are termed gifts, scripturally, because they are from God. And we are not to glory in them.

Well, Paul says, “What hast thou that thou hast not received? Having received it from God, why then dost thou glory in it?”

So we have to take ourselves as a gift. And the other person has been given a gift in God’s wisdom, differing from ours. And, therefore, we don’t use the term equality or inequality. Both are inappropriate. They are mathematical terms.

[Voice] Well, you know, well, let’s not be abstract. Let’s talk about the created order. It is God. It is Christ. It is man. It is woman.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes.

[Voice] A man was created in the image of God. A woman was created how?

[Rushdoony] In the image of man.

[Voice] Exactly.

[Rushdoony] The reflected image of God.

[Voice] Right, now God didn’t make me to be a Michael Jordan. I would love to be Michael Jordan. But I have to live within the confines...

[Rushdoony] I prefer you to Michael Jordan.

[Voice] ... that God made me. Well, as an athlete I would love to be Michael Jordan.

[Rushdoony] [affirmative response]

[Voice] I think we get confused and you are... and Dorothy has helped me with this, is that why argue about that? That is what the case is.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] And if you are a man, you have authority.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] If you are a woman you have to live under a man’s authority.

[Rushdoony] And if you refuse to exercise your authority or surrender it, surrender it, you are sinning.

[Voice] Exactly. And... and I would love to have someone who has the burden of the authority. I would in a lot of marriages today you have a lot of rebellion by women, because, well, I am not going to serve under your authority. But what they don’t understand is that there is safety there, because the man is responsible for his calling to serve God. The woman’s calling is to serve the man and the woman’s calling is to be obedient. Even if she doesn’t seem to think that that is the right thing to do.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] But what is not understood is that the man is responsible for it.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] If he makes the wrong decision, it is his neck that is on the line.

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Voice] And that is where you get the safety and the comfort and the security. But we don’t understand that today in the... in a modern culture.

[Voice] Well, let me jump in there, John. Isn’t... and let me provoke this. Don’t you think... and I shouldn’t say that. I think ... I am suspecting that a big part of the problem here that while I agree with what we have just said is ... is... is the biblical truth, but what you just said is men need to take the responsibility. I think a lot of Christian men I have seen, number one, they don’t want the responsibility. They like not having the responsibility.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] They have ceded their responsibility to their wife on one hand. On the other hand and let’s get this conversation up. I would like to hit this one on the head. And nobody will ever want to listen to me again and that is fine. I can go back and ... and let my wife run my life. But the... the... the point is she would do a better job at some turns than I.

Anyway, haven’t so many men that we see at least that I see impeached themselves as a leader? If I was their wife, I wouldn’t want to follow them either, because they have proven themselves to be total numbskulls and nitwits.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] They have screwed up the family finances, time and time and time again, not true some spectacular stroke of bad luck, but just through plain irresponsibility or immaturity and they have proven themselves for years not to be good stewards not to have common sense, not to have, you know, basic planning skills or, you know, whatever. And then all of the sudden they hear a tape by us saying, “Hey, man is in charge.” They go home and quote, unquote, tell the little woman that after 20 years of ceding responsibility to her or 20 years of being a major screw up that she is supposed to lay all down and follow them.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Under heavy enemy fire.

[multiple voices]

[Voice] You know, but that is...

[Voice] But if I was that woman, I would, you know, as Arnold Schwarzenegger said to Sharon Stone as he pointed a gun at her, “Consider this a divorce.” I mean, what are we... what do we do with the fact that Christian men, while, you know, have... have... have... have made such a mess of it that ... that a woman would... would rightfully fear putting herself under us. What do we do?

[Rushdoony] That is right.

[Voice] Well, here is what we do. First of all, we take responsibility for the authority God has given us and we count upon other men whom we respect to teach us what the heck we are supposed to do.

[Voice] Which means we have to care enough to ask.

[Voice] Right. So if we take the leadership of an R. J. Rushdoony, he tells us, number one, it is your calling, pal. You know, don’t... don’t get into this stuff that you are supposed to. .with this family routine, this, this focus on the family. The focus is on the family. The focus is on serving God, number one.

[Rushdoony] A man who knows how to exercise authority knows how to listen. He will listen to men under him in whatever work he is doing and to his wife, because he is not afraid of his authority. He knows he is in charge and he is not surrendering his authority when he says to a subordinate in the work he is involved in or to his wife, “What is your thought about this?”

And that is what is lacking in a great many instances. It doesn’t mean they are going to ask for orders from their wife, but they are asking for counsel and they should.

[Voice] And the man who doesn't ask for counsel from his wife or ignores that counsel is also the man who hasn’t asked for counsel from other men which is why he has made so many mistakes....

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] ... in his business or his marriage or whatever, because he just hasn’t gone after wisdom period.

[Voice] When we flip the tape over I just spent two hours listening to tapes of a seminar with pastors that you gave which It think is critical towards understanding the connectedness that men need to have that fellowship and that discipleship that ... that Christian men need to have to be able to lead their wife.

[Rushdoony] Before we flip the tape over, I need to tell you that... something I have heard often, but the classic example of it was from a woman married and divorced six times and there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between the men she chose and she kept saying, “I wonder why I am so unlucky in love,” as though it were all luck, not something wrong with her and picking that type of man.

In between while the tape was being turned over, Dorothy reminded me of something that R. E. McMaster said and she said he is a very wise man. He observed that his wife is a remarkable judge of character and he would never go against her judgment of any man. So that is the kind of mutual understanding and co working that is important in marriage. The war of the sexes is a totally modern idea and the idea of fallen man. It is not the war of the sexes. It is the cooperation of the sexes that godly marriage is made out of.

[Voice] And, Rush, let... that {?} am I interrupting premature? That cooperation is based on, I think Dorothy was quoting R. E. as saying that his wife and, of course, Miriam and I know both of them, his wife and he agree on the work to be done in the kingdom. They have that same world view and ... and but what I wanted to say is that I think a lot... getting, again, back to the man and his lack of taking responsibility as a steward for God’s world is that most Christian men I know, don’t have the slightest idea what their mission on planet earth is as a man. I didn’t for 40 years as a man, 20 of them in the evangelical church. So if I don’t have an idea of what my mission is, how can I integrate my wife in as a partner in helping to achieve it. If I am president of this little enterprise, how can she be executive vice president? What happens is, is it seems to me is that because I have no understanding of my role, I can’t call her up or ask her assistance in accomplishing anything and so therefore she just will naturally get off into a drift on her own or maybe take responsibility for my children or something. But first I have got to understand my identity and this is what modern man has failed to do. The great thing with modern man, as we all know, is the so-called crisis of identity and how modern man is now identified by sociologists as he is made to consume. We are producers and we produce so we can consume. We go to work so that we can buy. And the evangelical man is not much different. He simply produces and consumes so he can wait to go to heaven. He still has no ... from what I can see, the evangelical man which I spent 20 years as one, hasn’t... has no better idea what he is here to do more... more than the secular man, other than, as John Upton stated, we are told to, quote, focus on the family.

[Voice] Right.

[Rushdoony] One of the things... this goes back a few years, that endeared your wife, Colonel, to me and to Dorothy was when Miriam remarked that she had seen so many people whom she knew and loved who had messed up their lives with bad marriages that she waited 17 years until she could find a man who defined his life in terms of the faith. And that was you. So when I heard her say that I knew I thought the world of you both.

[Voice] Well, I am glad you reminded me on this last day of the year. Now I know what my new year’s resolution is, Rush, to recommit myself to that... that that...

[Rushdoony] And she will help you.

[Voice] Well, clearly we all fail to do the job that we know we ... we should do or that our wives would... would want us to do as part of that leadership and stewardship role. But, you know, what I would like to ask you, Rush, is: What has happened here where men... where we should have been able to go, particularly Christian men, where we should have been able to go to get the mentoring. John Upton was just saying, “Well, you know, to learn to be responsible, to learn to be the leader of our home and our wife, to learn that where you go.” And John was saying, “Well, we go to other men.” But ideally we should have been able to go to the church.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] It seemed to me the church should have been teaching this. This is what it means to be a steward under God and here is, it is not focus on the family, it is focus on God’s creation and your family is a big part of that, but it doesn't end there.

But we have gotten no, it seems to me, no guidance from the church. If anything the church has become part of the problem by... by simple... by encouraging our emasculation. We are told that we are aliens on the planet. I would say it is the spiritual equivalent of no trace camping where we are taught not to leave a trace of ourselves on the planet. We are just passing though waiting for heaven. We are... our ... our image of the Christian man is not a mighty steward. Our image is held up to us when we think of being conformed to Jesus for 20 years my training was being conformed to Jesus is not being Joshua, not being Moses, not being a mighty man of God. It is to be Mr. Rogers. I speak sweetly. I am gentle. I always turn the other face when I get kicked in the groin, slapped, or any other, you know, offense and I am to be a wimp. This is my image.

So where has the church gone in terms of training us to be men, Rush?

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all, you have to realize that in the pagan world, the Greco Roman world the woman was nothing until she rebelled and you had total Feminism in the world and total immoralism in the Roman world. But the woman and the children were slaves to the man.

Christianity altered that. Remember, in the book of Proverbs the wife, when her husband sits in the gates, which meant he was either a judge or a member of the town counsel, because that is where they met and to sit at the gate was to be a ruler. She managed the affairs. She conducted trade with foreign countries. She guided all the activities of the business and of the farm and so on. And when you look at the activities of Christian women in the Middle Ages and at the time of the Reformation, you find a great deal of versatility and talent exercised. And yet at the same time a recognition of the headship of the man.

Well, the change in the status of the woman which has affected church life to this day began with the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment worshiped reason. Reason was their god. And men were regarded as the creatures who manifested reason. Remember what Steven Goldberg has said in recent years that men represent a great ability in abstract thinking, women in practical thinking. And they Enlightenment thinkers did not value practical reason, because they were either heavily subsidized or rich lords or heirs of the lords and so on. So to them it didn’t mean much practical thinking. And they regarded women as rather stupid.

And a consequence of that was the church became a place for women and children, because men as reason were above faith. But women, since they were not thinkers would want faith and superstition and that sort of nonsense. It as for women and children. And so the church from becoming... being a masculine province, became the area of woman. This reached its height in the last century when preachers were regarded as really feminine, beaus they dealt mostly with women and there was a saying about the three sexes, men, women and preachers.

So we still have that all around us. And a pastor who too clearly and obviously exercises masculine authority is not liked and by masculine authority I don’t mean pushing people around, but by being decisive, clear cut in a gracious godly way.

So we have inherited an Enlightenment view which we tend to call Victorian.

[Voice] Right.

[Rushdoony] But which brings us back to the Enlightenment philosophers who were very often men who never went near women. The number of Enlightenment figures who never married is startling. And their attitude towards woman while formally correct, was philosophically very bad.

[Voice] Also to answer your question, we had dinner the other night with one of the 435 Congressmen in our country and this was with a Christian man and a good man. And when I asked him about self government, he had no idea what I was talking about. He said, “Well, are you talking about limited government?” And I said, “No, I am talking about self government. Do you understand the concept?”

He hadn't even heard of that. And... and, you know, Rush, then, maybe you could explain it again, but Rush explained it to him and the man could not understand. There is no concept of it at all.

[Rushdoony] Yes. From an historic, biblical and theological position, the first area of government is the self government of a Christian man. That is your basic government. The basic governmental institution is, second, the family which is the most powerful government in the life of man. Then, third, the church is a government. Then, fourth, the school is a government. Fifth, your job, your vocation governs you. It tells you when you are going to go to bed in order to get up in time to go to work and so on. Then all the private associations in society, connections and so on are a government. And then, seventh, the state which our forefathers never called a government, but only civil government.

To use the term “government” as we do now meaning the state, is implicitly Totalitarian. We re reducing government to the state when the heart of government is in the first two, the self government of the Christian man and in the family.

[Voice] Rush, it occurs to me that a major problem within evangelical circles and... and John, what you said, here is a Congressman that doesn’t even understand some of the basic concepts...

[Rushdoony] And he is a good Christian, really.

[Voice] But isn't the problem that the evangelical church because it denies dominion mandates...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] If there is no dominion mandate, why should we be stewards of God’s creation? If we are going to go to hell, if we are all destined for destruction...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] We are out of here in a few years. Jesus is coming back. Our only job should be saving souls. So instead of becoming stewards, we have become revivalists.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] And the other thing I would like to suggest is that something else has filled that void. There is now a void. With no dominion mandate we really have no stewardship mandate. What I say has filled that void is that we are now to be conformed to Christ’s image from a pietistic perfectionistic mode.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] ... which is now dominating Evangelicalism and what that means is the when we are conformed to the image to Christ, it is no longer as warrior king, as conqueror, as dominion, or even as servant steward. It is now... I just... I just completed a study on Perfectionism. Actually, Rush, you may have read the book and, of course, you have read 1000 times more than I have, but Douglas Frank in Less Than Conquerors. He is a professor at Trinity. Had a fascinating section on pietistic Perfectionism and what the came down to is under this theory that we can be perfect and we are to live above sin and as Christians were are just always, you know, striving to be more and more perfect as opposed to actually helping people and to doing good works and so forth, that the ... what do I want to call it? The trademark, the earmark, the measurement of whether or not we are attaining this Christ likeness was not what we did with our lives, but how we spoke. In other words, did we speak lovingly, meekly, sweetly at all times? Essentially saying were we feminized? You know if we... if we were masculine and assertive and got angry and made and hated evil and so forth, this couldn’t be reflective of Christ who we know was always very gentle when he dealt with the Pharisees.

So what I am suggesting is the evangelical church has trashed the dominion mandate, told us that we don’t need to be stewards and in place of that has suggested some form of ... of feminized model of Christ for us to emulate and that is why we have no idea as men or at least we had no idea, I had no idea what it is all about.

[Voice] Well, tell us what you are doing to correct it, Colonel, because you are talking... you just did a conference and you talked about classical Christianity.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] And you are getting men together. I mean, I think that is a good antidote to what we are talking about.

[Rushdoony] You are... you are holding conferences for men to teach them to be men.

[Voice] Yes. Dr. Monty Wilson from Florida and myself and some others, Joseph McAuliffe, Bill Mickler, a number of us all in our 40s dealing with these issues ourselves, have now developed a men’s workshop. We have run about 400 men through it. It lasts... starts on a Friday night and goes Friday nigh, Saturday, Sunday. And just dealing with these issues. Letting men talk, doing the basic teaching. This last November is what John Upton is referring to. We brought together 40 men, about half of them pastors and half of them business men just to talk about how can we meet more often to network and to mentor each other. What John Upton mentioned earlier, unfortunately, we don’t... there are not very many Dr. Rushdoonys around. There are not very many older men to give us wisdom. And we really have to start, those of us who are in our 40s we... we have to try to mentor each other to the extent that we ... that we can. We don’t have those senior men in our... in our local churches or our neighborhoods.

So we are, myself and a few others, are beginning to work on this issue, just amongst leaders and then also putting together a men’s workshop. So I think at the end of the tape we will probably let you know how to... how to write us if you are interested in exploring this issue more.

[Voice] It is important to stick together, because, first of all, we are all odd balls. We don't believe what most of the so-called Christian men believe. We certainly don’t believe what women believe. And we have no resources to go to, to talk and that is important. The elders at the gate, the whole concept, I am sure that the elders at the gate, Rush, were talking about the problems in the community.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] They were helping each other. They were teaching younger men who were coming up through the ranks what to do and... and, you know, we have lost that. The... the... I read an interesting book called The New Individualist and it talked about the generation after the organization man, which his our generation, Mark’s generation and anybody born, the baby boomers, anybody born after 1946. And they... we are characterized as self expressionists. All we want to do is express ourselves.

What is interesting is that the generation after us, the generation X-ers, are trying to connect themselves. They want to be connected. And.... which is not a bad thing. Hopefully we will be in a position to provide the leadership to them to connect to... you know, to connect them with something, because what they have seen they have seen nothing but divorce, failure, social systems deteriorating and their most important thing are friends, these younger people. They cling to... their cling to friendships.

So we have self expressed ourselves to death. That is what this eschatology is all about. It is about self expression. It is about being a part of the last generation of earth, that we are the most important. And that is nothing but self expression. So hopefully we are going to snap out of that and start teaching, first of all, learning ourselves what our calling is, secondly exercising our calling and, thirdly, teaching young men to do the same. And that is the way out of it and you are a part of the solution there.

[Voice] And we have got to network and come together and meet together and that is... that is what you are referring to we did in November at the beginning. We are going to be doing this more often if people are infested in beginning to bring men in particular, but everyone, just leaders together to talk like this.

[Rushdoony] Let me just throw out something that came to mind. It is a recollection from my days on the Indian reservation. There was this one old Indian, really an old timer who lived way, way out and he rarely said anything. And I asked some of the old men in the church about him and they laughed and one of them said, “I rode cattle on a round up with him for two or three days once and the only thing he ever said was when my back was turned to him when he had a cup of coffee in his hand and reached out towards me and said, ‘Coffee?’” And he said that was all he had to say and his attitude was he ... when he had something to say, he would say it. And he regarded most white men as like old women. They talk all the time. And he said, “Most Indians are getting to be like white men, old women.”

I sometimes think about that. I...

[Voice] Especially... especially after Colonel talks, right?

[Rushdoony] I am very much part of the modern world and I enjoy talking and it is a form of communion I value. But, in a sense, talk has become very cheap and men shoot off their mouths too much and the earlier picture of men as strong silent types is very remote in our day.

[Voice] I hope my wife is listening to this so when she wants me to talk at the end of that day, you know, I will say, “No, I am returning to that strong silent type load.” But, you know, speaking... what comes to my mind, you know, speaking of the old timer is this is real old time, but I was amazed, Rush, to find what I considered to be the best well balanced description of a man in the book of Job, of all places. And I just urge our listeners to look up Job 29. It is about half way thought that chapter. But Job 29, Job is describing himself, who he is and there is this beautiful section where he is talking about, you know, he sits at the city gates. He is one of the leaders, but he is the eyes to the blind. You know, the ... he its he hero to the widows. He feeds the poor and it is all this imagery that he is meeting the needs of the needy.

And then it comes to my favorite part. And he breaks the fangs of the wicked.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] About to devour the helpless. So here is a man straight out of Isaiah 58, you know, a man who is helping the needy, protecting the innocent, fighting evil. This is God’s man. You can see in chapter 29 of Job he is servant. He is a steward and this guy is definitely a warrior. This is no Mr. Rogers Christian.

Of course that is Old Testament and as Dispensationalists we...

[Voice] Yeah, right.

[Voice] ...we disregard that.

[Voice] I mean, this is the 90s, you know. We... we are living in the 90s. Be realistic.

[Voice] Sure, let’s just get a church growth seminar and quick, then, what do we need this conversation for?

[Voice] In fact, you haven’t helped me today.

[Voice] Yeah, well, I am not going to either. What sort of deodorant have you been using?

[Voice] You know, a related topic to this we have been talking about man in his covenantal responsibilities under God and marriage is... the marriage covenant is a related covenant. It is another covenant that we place ourselves under God, husband and wife covenant under God.

And that is that whole issue of dating and the... the whole issue of finding a life mate becomes so romanticized. Too many young Christian kids and even kids who grow up in Christian schools still have the idea that you find a good life mate by finding a good date and a good date can often be a lousy spouse, because on a date we are looking for entertainment, we are looking for flattery. We are looking for someone who feeds our self esteem. And an extreme form of that is a young man who will find himself entrapped by a girl who will latch on to him and they may be incompatible, but this girl latches on to this young man and won’t let go until this boy finds himself permanently attached to this girl who is no good for him or his covenant responsibilities under God and that leads them astray.

And this whole idea of the romantic view of dating in relationships is very destructive of... of ... of a man’s calling.

[Voice] How... how are you going to help Isaac though that?

[Voice] Well, we have to have a.... we have to have our kids understand that their whole life is one of service to God and they have to focus eon everything in their life is measured in terms of are you serving God and are you doing this to further your... your service to God. And their... their marriage is not a means of serving God then it is... {?}

[Voice] So you are going to tell your son that he needs to find a woman that will help him in God’s service.

[Voice] Right.

[Voice] That is going to be the number one criteria.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] And if she happens to be attractive and funny and all those other things, great. But the first priority is to have a help mate.

[Rushdoony] And as far as you can, arrange the marriage.

[Voice] And a good dowry, I might add. That is...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Voice] Yes.

[Voice] That is {?}.

[Voice] What do you mean? You were supposed to put up the dowry?

[Voice] Was that how it works?

[Voice] Yeah, you see, you put up the dowry and then when you screw up, if you screw up, she has her protection.

[Voice] It is a matter of when.

Well, you know, what... what... what Mark said really is not... as a young man that was... as a teenager that would have saved me... that realization and hopefully I can save my son that frustration, but ... and that gets back to if we don’t know what our job is, if we don’t understand, you know, stewardship mandate and dominion then why should we seek out a wife to help us in that?

[Rushdoony] Yes, God did not give Eve to Adam until he had found himself in terms of his calling.

Well, our time is up. Thank you all for listening and thank you for helping us with this subject, Colonel.

[Doner] You are welcome.

[Rushdoony] We are very grateful to you. You are very welcome here as often as you want to come.