The Secret Wireless

Is sex becoming boring? My mind pondered this idea a few days ago on my way into Saint Louis.  Before you cross the Mississippi River into Missouri there is a certain strip club one must pass on the interstate.  Said strip club always has a billboard advertising the latest special feature.  As you might guess these billboards do not vary greatly.  The billboard is usually a photograph of a woman from the shoulders up looking rather seductive and inviting any travelers to stop in.  This time, however, was different.  As I passed the billboard there were no women.  Rather than advertising the club’s newest dancer, they were advertising “wrestling midgets”.  So the naked dancing women were replaced by short, clothed, male wrestlers.  I don’t get it.  Has sex really gotten that boring?  A more serious example stuck in my mind comes from a PBS documentary I caught just a few minutes of several months ago....

Fathers, It does not matter if you are married or divorced, if you live with your children or only see them periodically.  If you have children, then you are a father.  And if you are a father you have a calling from God. Ephesians 6:4 is a clear, if brief, exhortation for us all when it comes to being a dad: " Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord ." Perhaps some of our difficulty with fatherhood has come from a confusion over what it means to "discipline" your children.  We tend to use that term as a synonym for "punishment".  We believe that it is a father's duty to punish when wrongs are done.  Don't spare the rod. Yet this seems to fly right in the face of what Paul is saying to the Ephesian fathers.  "Don't provoke your children to anger."  A father who is all punishment and rules is certainly going to provoke anger in his offspring. Rather,...

Gentlemen, It is long overdue that the Church takes a closer look at what it means to be a husband and father.  We have decried the devaluation of men.  We have lamented the dearth of leadership on this subject.  We have moaned and complained, but no one seems to be doing much about it. One major issue is that we too often take our visions for manhood, husband-hood, and fatherhood from the culture, particularly the popular culture, and not from the Scriptures.  Martin Luther started us off on the right track when he filled his Table of Duties in the Small Catechism with Scriptural references that concern our various vocations.  It would be fitting for us to expand on that work, to consider what the Scriptures say concerning the roles, duties, and vocations, of husband, father, and man. The importance of all this was highlighted to me this past year when preparing to teach a lesson on I Timothy 3.  In 7th and 8th grade reli...

You are probably not going to receive what I received.  When I was growing up my parents moved up through the middle class.  They went from working class, to lower middle class, to middle-middle class.  I got to go to college and seminary.  I did not have to put myself into huge debt to do it. I got to go to college when neither of my parents did.  I make more money than my parents did at my age, even if you adjust for inflation.  In other words, I inherited a better world than my father did.  He inherited a better world than his father. But I don't think that is going to be the case for you.  And I am not really talking about economics.  That is just one example.  But the world, not just the USA, is a changing place, and from my estimation, not for the better. Technology is advancing, and this can certainly be good.  Better medicine.  Easier lives.  But it has its costs, and we have largely lost the ability to analy...

There is one word that I cringe at every time I hear it applied to a grown man, especially to an elderly man.   Maybe you have heard this word, or you yourself have used it.   I know it has been used by different people in regards to my own grandfathers and grandfathers-in-law.   This man who has been faithful to his wife for 50+ years, who worked his fingers to the bone to provide for the upbringing of his children, who brought them to the font of baptism, who drove them to catechism classes, who showed them the value of an honest day’s labor, who forced them into the cellar and held the doors shut as the violent winds of a tornado passed by outside.    What word is used to describe him?   Good?   Brave?   Strong?   Virtuous?   No. The word is: “ CUTE .”   I hate that word, or at least when it is misapplied to grown men.   The word “cute” means basically the same thing as “pretty”.   And if there is one t...