You Can’t Lead Without Serving

I just realized this is the weekend when rappers descend on Miami Beach. If there ever was a good time to visit South Beach, this is not it. Unless you want to see fights and a lot of confused young black women in front of video cameras, shaking their bare rear ends to bad music. I wonder if we’ll ever give up the stupid notion that all music is inherently good. You can’t separate a musical genre from the sentiments expressed in its song lyrics or the culture of depravity embraced by its adherents. Let me know when classical music punks flock to a city and make fools of themselves for three days, and I’ll say I was wrong.

I wonder if I’ll hear about this weekend’s festivities when I go to church tonight. “Christian rap” is the only thing about that place about which I can complain. That, and the giant bread factory next door that makes the whole neighborhood smell and always makes me want to get food.

Has rap produced even one “artist” who can play a musical instrument? Jazz gave us Art Tatum and Charlie Christian. Who has rap produced? Far as I can tell, when rappers want music in their tracks, they find it and steal it.

My family is going through a rough spot, and I would appreciate prayer. It’s something I saw coming. I consider it a growth pain. I can’t be specific because I am so important, a malevolent individual who is too scared of me to confront me scrutinizes my blog daily for items that can be used to drive me and my sister apart.

Every family has problems, and one problem that is extremely common is a kinked-up chain of authority. Two symptoms are feminism and the arrogance of youth. God designed authority to run in this direction: God, pastor, man, wife, oldest son, other kids, dog, Satan. The family is like the human body, which has a dominant hand. The left hand is just as important as the right, but the body works better when the right hand leads. This should be obvious from human nature. For example, women expect men to tell them what to do from time to time. They like it and need it. I’ve had women thank me for it. If you refuse to lead, a woman will feel contempt for you, and she will resent you. Publicly, women claim this isn’t true, but privately, they admit it. On the other hand, a woman who dominates her husband will make him miserable and destroy the confidence he needs to satisfy her physical needs. She’ll drive him to women with whom he feels stronger. And kids are happier when their parents give them clear, strict rules. And few things can make your life more miserable than a untrained dog that believes it’s as good as a person.

A man who won’t submit to God and his pastor will rot inside, and he’ll leave his family starved for guidance. The error that made feminism possible was the insane notion that a position at the head of the family was purely a reward and a privilege. That’s idiotic. It’s a tremendous duty. It’s a burden. You’re supposed to put your wife and kids first, but a lot of men think being born male entitles them to give orders and lie on the couch watching TV for six hours a night. No wonder feminists found an opening.

A couple that isn’t led by the husband is like a man with a right hand that has lost its cunning. That is a metaphor with more than one level to it.

My mother is gone, but my dad is still around. In my daily prayers, I ask that he be restored to his proper position as our spiritual leader. I ask that my sister and I be helped to honor and even obey him, and that he be guided to give us good counsel. I ask that God restore the correct order in this family. Judging from the Bible, that order is supposed to persist even after a child becomes an adult. Think about it. Isaac was supposedly in his late thirties when he was bound up for sacrifice, and Jacob was in his sixties when he left his father to marry.

Authority issues have been a problem for us. My dad is not a Christian, so I used to think the proper thing was to behave as though he were out of commission as head of the family. I thought I should do as I saw fit, because I was enlightened and so on. But now I believe that’s a dangerous, fatuous oversimplification. I think a father is always a father, unless he is hopelessly corrupt, and the correct thing is for a child to work with his father and try to help him become a strong, unselfish, God-fearing family leader. I believe God will honor that kind of effort by changing the father and the rest of the family. Sooner or later, God’s wisdom will start to flow to the family through the father, as God intended from the start. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I see it.

My sister and I have both been too willful. It has been easier for me to change. She is having more trouble than I am, and that’s why we’re having problems right now.

We’re both single, even though we both believe in marriage. I think we may have sabotaged ourselves through our attitudes toward authority. My sister has never been willing to let a man lead, and I have not understood the importance of being a leader. I was corrupted by feminism. I bought into the poisonous total equality myth. If you really believe that nonsense, it can drive women away. They sense that you won’t give them what they truly want. A lot of men only pretend to believe it, so it isn’t a major problem for them. Women will usually give you what you want, if you’re willing to tell them comforting lies. It’s no way to live, but it works.

Again, I can’t go into what is actually happening, but a tangled chain of authority is at the root of it. A family is like a pipe through which God’s power and blessings flow. The members of the family are like the axe heads through which Odysseus fired his famous arrow. Everything has to line up reasonably well, or nothing can pass through. We are not aligned correctly at this moment. It will eventually pass, but I don’t know how long it will take.

By the way, according to Mish Weiss’s blog, cancer isn’t her biggest threat right now. On Mother’s Day, she got a bone marrow transplant from a far-off daughter she gave up over a decade ago, and it appears to be taking. But she is weak and has to be concerned about infection. That sounds like real progress, even if she is still extremely ill. I hope you’ll remember her in your prayers today.