Category: Family

A few more comments; a genuine potpourri of thoughts is forthcoming about glory and all. But first, a word of thanks to all the questions raised publicly and privately. I have never desired this space to be a monologue but a happy exchange of ideas. I can’t answer each one, and in fact, I purposefully limit my responses, but I can take them and put them in my soup. I just wanted to let you know that this is my intention here.

Of course, my opinions are rooted in distinct theological concerns and biblical presuppositions. I also understand that the new readers here may need to understand that my meals are full of spices, which are sometimes too hard to consume for some, a pleasing appetizer for others, and an acquired taste for the rest.

So, I take my chances every day, knowing that to some, I will be a bumbling fundamentalist and, to others, something of a tolerable curmudgeon. In a previous post, I warned you that the older I get, the crankier of a Protestant I become. So, there’s that.

On the topic of glory and womanhood, I would like to talk about a few quick rounds of leftovers from curious souls. The first stemmed from two or three folks who wanted me to follow up on the nature of female glory. Here is my unsystematic attempt at coherence.

Paul calls the woman the glory of man because it is the order of creation. The woman is the last thing God makes. She is made to complete man and finish what man starts. And in life, this reflects that men are leaders and women are completers (see a previous post on this topic below). God designed us that way. Women glorify things. This was articulated by Solomon in Proverbs 12 who stated that an excellent wife is the crown of her husband. Glory is a crown. A king views his crown as his glory because it gives him honor. Proverbs 31 says that the virtuous woman is more valuable than rubies. The wife is to the man what the Shekinah glory is to the tabernacle. Israel protected the glory of the tabernacle. Israel cared and elevated the reputation of that glory. Man is to guard what Adam failed to guard. When men don’t do that, not only are they imbeciles, but they are neglecting the care of their masculine soul.

The implication for some unfamiliar with the luggage of my language is that, therefore, I do not believe a woman should pursue this or that. They may think that I am saying that a woman is to be so concerned with her home that she ought to leave her intellect on the tiles near the kitchen sink. Sorry to disappoint you, but I am a Calvinist with Luther-syndrome. I think Katie Von Bora had every right to tell Luther when he was an ass, and she also had every right to be a glorious theological voice in the household.

I also affirm that young ladies should seek to educate their glories. We do not want fading glories, but bright glories–a glory-cloud of glory. If college seems a fitting place, then pursue it wholeheartedly and do it for the glory of God and for the sake of the glory given to you as a woman. Be brilliant like Marva Dawn, make beer like Katie Luther, and be co-heir of the family business (Prov. 31:10-31).

We used to attend a congregation with several women with PhD’s who decided to be homeschooling moms after their doctorates were completed. In an age of weak and abdicating men, there are plenty of cases for women to guide their boys and girls to church on Sunday and lead them in happy habits of grace. Women ought to be happy generalists just as men.

But what I am fighting against is the professionalization of womanhood. I am fighting against fathers who are training their daughters to be kings rather than queens. I am arguing against the idea that women should pursue independence rather than dependence on their head (I Cor. 11; I Tim. 5:8). Now, egalitarians are gonna do their thing with their abysmal tendencies to locate the fault in the patriarchy. As you may know, care doth I not have. But for all the others seeking willingly to follow the mandates of St. Paul, who said that young women should be “busy at the home” or, better, “homemakers” (Titus 2:4-5), we have ourselves a truly domestic definition.

Women ought to be beautifiers. It doesn’t mean they can’t work, but it does mean that the home must be their headquarters of rest and true labor and not just an overly decorated hotel suite for evening sabbaths. No, the home must be the central economy of the woman.

And while I am at it, let me take a baseball bat to the American tendency of the two-income household. I come from a country where most men and women work to satisfy their cravings for financial security, to secure their beach vacation home, and to fancy the newest sports car. Yes, I find it deplorable, and the fruits are households of one or two children. They have chosen the pursuit of favor outside the home because let’s be honest, Mr. Poopy Pants is not gifted in the art of gratitude at the age of two. So, yes, I understand that a woman may feel as if glory is better at the workplace, but she must realize that true glory is domestic glory. The local palace is the training ground to glorify church/community life.

If I told you that there are households where a couple will pay outrageous money for their infant to stay in a daycare just so mom can fulfill her dreams of being an engineer, what would you say? If such a family came to me and asked what they should do and whether one is better than the other, I’d encourage them to go on a retreat with all expenses paid by grandpa and reconsider the question. Then, when they return, they should ask the question again, which is, “What steps can we take so that mommy can stay home with the covenant child that God gave us?” At that point, I will pull out the three secret champagne glasses in the office and offer a toast in the name of glory. Yes, yes, there are exceptions, but wokeness was created because we valued the exceptions far more than the biblical rule.

Christian ladies, you are the glory of man–the doxology of gratitude. Do not let others devalue your worth or lead you to pursue worth in false places. You are the completer of agendas and symphonies and homes.

I have a friend with whom I gather once every 3-6 months to shatter wing-eating records. We did do our best recently. But the best part of it is the conversation. Since we don’t see each other regularly, we often spend 2-3 hours catching up. It’s always a pleasant experience, and we try to give our waitresses a reason to want us back.

We discuss politics, parenting, and religion; the kind that would get you in trouble in the Biden administration (you know, biblical stuff). But we are both in our 40’s and we have lost our sense of niceties choosing to be purposefully offensive to the powers that be. In the midst of our dialogue on Achille’s liberal tendencies, we talked about one of my favorite topics: how to raise boys to be men. To put it in very philosophical terms, how to raise boys to be what they were created to be.

Among the many excursions on the theme, we got into the real source of Achille’s demise–his cell phone use. A modern version of the story would have him weakening his powers every time he stared into the lights of his smartphone in public. Young men can’t carry a conversation well in large part because they have found how not to have a conversation–by looking down.

As we devoured our cajun pleasantries, our conversation centered around the things a young man ought to do in public in a smart-phone age, which leads me to the following scenario. Let’s assume that a young man came to my house to ask permission to court/date my daughter. And then let’s suppose that in the process of our conversation he pulled out his cell phone to check on his Snapchat. Then, let’s suppose that after I kicked him out of the house under threat of excommunication he called me later that night and said, “O, Reverend Brito, why dost thou kick me out from your abode?” I would gently tell him that for him to hold a chance to hold my daughter’s hands, he is first required to hold his eyes on mine and not on Sally3218 on Snapchat.

My friend told me that his boys are currently in college with smartphones, but that they stand out in any public setting because they are not glued to their devices as the other imbeciles. This means that these young men will have the eyes of the prettiest and godliest girls out there because godly women do not want men whose attention is divided. They want to marry men whose eyes are not easily distracted by the magic of the shining device. They want men who will look into their eyes.

The moral of the story is that if you want to raise boys to be men, you don’t give them smartphones as a reward. You train them to steward their eyes well first before the responsibilities of a machine that can get you to free porn in less than three seconds. I can almost guarantee you that however clever you think you are as a dad around your screen, your son is cleverer than you. He can probably figure out how to hack the local city council give or take a youtube video or two.

We will likely make many mistakes raising boys, but some can be easily avoided. Teach your boys to eat lots of chicken wings, and keep their eyes on the real prize by not exposing their heels to the enemy. 

When Eve had Cain and Abel after the Fall, she had no parenting manual, no audiobooks on sleeping habits for babies, no other mothers to confide on the struggles of parenting. All she had was one (perhaps two) days of memories living in a perfect Garden with a perfect Father and savory fruits and vegetables, and unrelenting bliss. Can you form a motherhood curriculum from 48 hours of life experience?

Just as the honeymoon began, she was tempted by a crafty serpent, was deceived by the devil, and at the end was unprotected by her husband. What a way to begin marriage and life! Eve knew life in its most glorious and most miserable.

The lessons of the garden and post-garden are the lessons for all mothers on this day. Eve needed to learn how to bring beauty to a fallen world in a post-Genesis 3 world by taking the lessons of Genesis 1 and 2. She had seen the way things ought to be and now the way things can become.

Mothers continue that mission to carry redemptive beauty to a fallen world by learning from our first mother. To be a faithful mother does not require a perfect garden, but trust in a perfect God in a fallen garden. Our first mother understood, through her own experience, that the seduction of evil comes in subtle and tricky ways; even in the form of questions that seek to take away your love of the true, good and beautiful.

Mothers must see that their home is another Edenic experimentation, their children are their opportunity to avoid the fratricide of the first children, and their God is the faithful father from Genesis 1 and Genesis 3.

Dear mom,

I thought I’d reach out to you to answer what appeared to be a distressing topic. You feel alone, and on top of that, you have several little ones who need you every waking hour. In fact, you may have noticed they love to say your name with increasing consistency. Furthermore, you have repeated a few times that you have no friends.

Well, what you need at this stage is a proper orientation. You see, you will not have—ordinarily—friends at this stage of life. Your husband is a friend, but there are different kinds of friendships. You are looking for a deep female friendship grounded in faith and life experiences. The bad news is that this stage of life will not offer you that. The good news is that what your life offers you now with your children is domestic stability punctuated by community joy. What I mean is that your stage of life is not the stage where you enjoy deep friendships, but where you enjoy gentle and sweet connections around you. Your idea of friendship as someone to whom you can pour out your soul frequently and go out for $6 coffee three times a week is not only unrealistic but even unhealthy. You are at a stage where God will send you people to connect with; perhaps even, the same people to connect with occasionally, rather than consistently.

At this stage, you have a house and children to serve as queen. You need to find satisfaction at this stage of life, or you will always be unhappy moving from one thing to another; one institution to another; one ideology to another. Perhaps your greatest challenge at this stage is contentment. Be content with your motherhood, be content with the connections you have at church and outside, but don’t expect something your stage of life cannot offer.

This, of course, leads me to say that you are loved by God. It’s no accident that you are a mother; God chose you to guide your little ones in the way of truth. Don’t lose heart. Your labors are not in vain. You are loved more than you know. God looks at you with such tenderness at this stage of life. You really need to know that. Pour yourself into your children. Love your husband. Rejoice in the encouraging female souls around you. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening and be well.

Pastor Brito

I begin by simply noting that keeping children in worship is hard work. In fact, virtually all fruit that comes from worship stems from hard work. The word “liturgy” itself means the work of the people. Therefore, a meaningful service will demand much from parents.

There is a principle that we as evangelicals must all understand before we even contemplate the question of children in worship. The principle is that worship is to be a dialogue rather than a monologue. You can apply this principle even to the least liturgical congregation. Once a parent sees that worship is to be engaged, he/she will begin to see the purpose of children in it. Worship is not merely an intellectual exercise, it is an act of communication and communion between God and man. God speaks and we respond. If a parent does not see worship as dialogical, but merely a transmission of ideas from the clergy to the people, then he/she will not see the need to keep children in worship.