This is the second clip in our series from D.A. Carson's talk at the 2009 Different by Design Conference. As he is working through the argument of 1 Timothy 2, Carson deals with the phrase "to exercise authority."

The first clip in the series can be seen here.

You can listen to all of Carson's talk here.

For nearly four years, Tim Tebow has presented a dilemma in my home. He is an all-American quarterback, perhaps one of the two or three best players ever to play the college game. He is, as we say in my rural Georgia hometown, "tougher than pig iron," often battering his body and willing his troops to victory like Aragorn at Helms Deep. Opposing players see Tebow in the huddle and shudder. He plays every down as if it were his last. I really like that.

But, herein lies our dilemma: he plays for the Florida Gators, the national champions, and my family has for decades bled the red and black of the Georgia Bulldogs, my alma mater's entry in the toughest sports conference in America. For us, the operative equation goes something like this: Dawgs plus Gators equals mortal enemies. But here is my recent problem: Tim Tebow is my brother in Christ. He shares the Gospel, undertakes missions work, and seeks to live a Godward life with the same tenacity that he displays when it is third-and-goal on the opponent's one-yard line. Tebow wears eye black emblazoned with John 3:16 and he plays football the way a Christian should: smash mouth, grit-and-gunpowder, all out all the time, to the glory of God. It is exceedingly difficult to root against such a brother. Tebow's full story is available here.

Last season, after Florida suffered its lone defeat of the year, Tebow publicly shouldered the blame for the loss. In a memorable post-game press conference, he pledged to apply every ounce of his strength toward winning the remaining games. Florida won 10 straight (steamrolling our beloved Bulldogs along the way), its final victory coming in the national championship game against Oklahoma. Florida's streak began with Tebow exhibiting a concise summary of biblical manhood - tenacious humility. And Tebow's tenacious humility became the tracks upon which the streak rode. Last weekend, Tebow suffered a concussion against Kentucky, but I suspect he'll be back very soon. He's not the game-missing kind.

Recently, my oldest son asked me if it would be okay if he adopted Tim Tebow as a hero so long as he maintained his primary allegiance to a certain team from Athens, Ga. (where, incidentally, head coach Mark Richt, a vibrant follower of Christ, is also a wonderful example of biblical manhood). I didn't have to think very long. "Absolutely," I told him, wondering if I had really just signed off on such a request. This dilemma has stretched me; it has made me pray for the grace to live in accord with the difficult imperatives of Romans 12, which is always a good thing. In the same manner as Paul admonished believers to imitate him insofar as he imitated Christ, I want my boys to be like Tebow because he is a very clear and winsome example of what biblical manhood should look like in a young man.

One does not have to delve very deep to find a vibrant and orthodox faith living within college football's brightest star. This past summer, Tebow was asked about his commitment to stay pure until marriage. Could it be true? "Yes," he told a cynical media corps, without blinking. Tebow believes the Bible teaches that sex is the exclusive privilege of a man and woman within the bonds of marriage. He said so without blinking, later admitting that he does not date. And so authentic was his answer and so authentic has been his walk before a watching public, the usually snarky fifth estate received the answer without the customary ridicule. "How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word." (Ps. 119:9)

Tebow is unashamed of Christ and all the implications that come from following Him. He is willing to endure mockery and ridicule for Christ because, as he recently told ESPN in an interview, living for Christ is life and death. And football?  Well, he told ESPN, it is just a game and it is by no means ultimate; Christ and the Gospel are.

This is what biblical manhood does. Biblical manhood carries out assigned tasks with diligent effort to the glory of God. It walks unashamedly with Christ and risks alienating the city of man on issues such as sexual purity because it lives with a greater city in view. It lovingly, humbly, and with biblical tenacity, leads and protects those placed under its care, manfully shouldering the blame and repenting when it fails. Biblical manhood enjoys the good gifts God has given while worshiping the Giver as the supreme treasure. And it pushes fathers to teach their sons that love for the body of Christ trumps affections for their favorite football team.

Go Dawgs, but God bless you brother Tim. Thank you for giving my sports-crazed son a snapshot of Christ and a reminder of the supremacy of the Gospel.

[Editor's Note: This post originially appeared on Owen Strachan's blog on September 24, 2009. For more of Strachan's excellent commentary, please visit his blog here.]

I have blogged about this before-mainly because it keeps coming up-but I've just read a fascinating piece called "Blue Is the New Black" by NYT op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd in which she briefly explores her thesis that modern women are unhappy.

Here's a synopsis of her argument:

[T]he more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?

According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans' mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.

Dowd outlines what modern women must juggle in their quest to be happy today:

When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands - and stress - on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties - and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.

"Choice is inherently stressful," Buckingham said in an interview. "And women are being driven to distraction."

Finally, Dowd suggests that one major complicating factor is children:

One area of extreme distraction is kids. "Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children," said Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness." "It's true whether you're wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early. Yet I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn't had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness."

The more important things that are crowded into their lives, the less attention women are able to give to each thing.

Read the whole piece.

I don't know if you care about this piece. But it's a hum-dinger. Maureen Dowd is a very influential cultural voice. She is a feminist. She is highly successful and driven, as evidenced by her weekly column for the Times. She is admitting, in public, that modern women are unhappy. This is essentially an admission-hold your breath here, deep breath-that feminism is not working. Coming from a feminist, that's astonishing.

Dowd's words about children are so telling. Women must work very hard to raise children well. This endeavor entails considerable sacrifice and hardship, especially relative to the kind of libertarian, narcissistic, no-commitment happiness that our culture so chases after. But the problem is this: raising kids is hard work, and unlike many men, they have a hard time leaving responsibility behind (evidence: "deadbeat dads").

Modern women would hugely benefit from returning to traditional roles. Their current state of unhappiness, as Dowd characterizes it, is a direct result of the influence of feminism. God did not give us roles as a kind of sexual prison; He gave them to us for our good and flourishing. If we reject this plan, coded into both our design and the Word of God, then we will surely suffer.

Modern women are unhappy. Feminism is not working. It is the call of the church of Jesus Christ to image the kind of happy (though by no means easy) life of the biblical home. We do so not merely as a means of witness, in these strange days, but as a means of rescue.

Over the years, as my wife and I have sought God's wisdom in raising our four children, two things have become abundantly evident to us: it is a profoundly difficult task and the Gospel must be foundational in our home if we are going to succeed at any measurable level. We have been blessed to have many godly guides over the years in the form of excellent books, and William P. Farley has just given us a brand-new one - Gospel-Powered Parenting: How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting (P&R).

As the title indicates, Farley's work seeks to show how the Gospel provides the strong foundation upon which the superstructure of parenting is to be built. While there are truck loads of books on parenting available, Farley's work includes some unique aspects that make it a "must read" for dads and moms who want to build Gospel-centered homes. One major note that sounds throughout the book is grace-centered parenting vs. legalism. Farley promotes a grace-centric approach to parenting that takes an offensive, non-isolationist posture in preparing children for life in a fallen world. A Gospel-centered home is as much a staging ground for battle as it is a fortress, Farley argues:

Either we can focus on preparing our children to enter the world and conquer it, or we can concentrate on protecting our children from the world. A defensive mind-set worries about the evil influences of Halloween, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or non-Christians on the Little League team. Although parenting always involves some protection, this should not be the main focus for biblical parents. Often this defensive mentality is the fruit of legalism. The legalistic parent usually assumes that his or her children are born again. But this parent has little confidence in the power of the new birth. Therefore, parenting is all about protecting the children from evil outside influence. This approach can be deadly.

Farley also emphasizes the crucial role that fathers play in raising children and he spends four central chapters on fatherhood and the Gospel. To postmodern ears, Farley's emphasis upon patriarchy may sound provocative and Neanderthal-like, but his arguments are compelling and uncompromisingly biblical. The bottom line is both fathers and mothers are vitally important to healthy families, but God places the heaviest responsibility in raising children upon the shoulders of dad.

Throughout Scripture, fathers are the parents, and their wives are their assistants. The wife is a crucial assistant. Parenting is a team sport. It is very hard to do alone. But in a two-parent family, Dad is the chief parent, the one accountable to God for his family. Mom is there to assist him. Western culture used to assume this arrangement. Before 1830, virtually every manual on parenting was addressed to fathers...Why did previous generations assume the father's lead role? Because culture assumed that the Bible was the primary instruction manual for parents, and the Bible addressed its parenting instructions not to mothers, but to fathers! The unstated assumption in the modern evangelical church is the opposite: Mom is the chief parent, and Dad is her assistant.

The concluding chapters examine discipline, teaching children and loving your children-all with the Gospel as the center of gravity. Overall, Farley proves to be an excellent guide for those of us who are raising children and who are desperately in need of the Gospel as our own daily treasure and as a "how to" guide. Gospel-Powered Parenting is cross-centered, counter-cultural and Scripture-saturated. I enthusiastically commend it to every parent.

Gender Blog continues with the latest installment of our "Unchanging Truth" series. These articles, while not as current, are still beneficial, and they demonstrate the consistent application of biblical truth by complementarian scholars, authors, and pastors through the years.

The following is an excerpt from an article by Mary Kassian, entitled, "Father of the Fatherless: Women Approaching God as Father." It was first published in 2000.

Does every child need a father? Increasingly, our society's answer to this question is no, or at least not necessarily. Each night, about forty percent of American children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live.And not only have we as a society lost the presence of fathers, we have lost something more fundamental: We have lost our idea of fatherhood. We are living in a culture of fatherlessness.

Unlike earlier periods of father absence caused by war, our cultural loss is more than physical and it affects every home. The most important absence our society must confront is not the absence of fathers but the absence of our belief in fathers. Few idea shifts in this century have had such enormous implications. At stake is who we are as male and female, what type of society we will become, and even more importantly, the way we understand and relate to God.

God is our Father. Why do we call Him that? God is not male. He is a spirit. And does not the Bible use a number of maternal metaphors to speak of how God relates to His people? Did He not give birth to the Jewish nation (Deut. 32:18)? Does He not have compassion on us like a mother has compassion on the baby at her breast (Isa. 49:13)? Does He not nurse, nurture, and comfort us like a mother does (Ps. 131:2; Isa. 66:13)? Because so many women, particularly those who come into Christianity from non-religious backgrounds, wrestle with the idea of addressing God with masculine pronouns, shouldn't we refer to God as Mother, or at least as Mother and Father? Why do we address God as Father?

You can read the rest of this article here.