Here is yet another sign of the times. The New York Times reports that even the youngest of girls are being targeted as consumers of cosmetics and beauty treatments. The elementary set is showing up in trendy salons for pedicures and manicures. As the paper reports:

Traditionally, young girls have played with unattended M.A.C. eye shadow or Chanel foundation, hoping to capture a whiff of sophistication. In the recent past, young girls have also tagged along on beauty expeditions by their mothers and teenage sisters.

But today, cosmetic companies and retailers increasingly aim their sophisticated products and service packages squarely at 6- to 9-year-olds, who are being transformed into savvy beauty consumers before they're out of elementary school.

The idea of young girls as "savvy beauty consumers" is inherently troubling. But marketers refer to 6-to-9-year-olds as a "starter market." Television shows like "America's Next Top Model" have become a fascination and aspiration for many young girls.

More:

Reality programming like "America's Next Top Model" often hinges on the segment devoted to a hair and beauty transformation for the contestants, Ms. Skey said. On social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, members' intense self-focus and their attention to how they present themselves also affect 6- to 9-year-olds, even though technically, they aren't allowed to set up profiles on the sites, she added. "We live in a culture of insta-celebrity," Ms. Skey said. "Our little girls now grow up thinking they need to be ready for their close-up, lest the paparazzi arrive."

The tragic story of adolescent girls and young women estimating their own value by criteria of outer beauty and cultural expectation is bad enough -- but now elementary-age girls are asked to join the party? This is sick.

Some observers relate this all to the "KGOY" trend -- "Kids Getting Older Younger." But in this case it is not just a matter of getting older faster, but of being tragically misled about the purpose of life and the truth of beauty.

Here is a cogent word of warning from author Rosalind Wiseman, as cited in the article:

"Mothers and fathers do really crazy things with the best of intentions. I don't care how it's couched, if you're permitting this with your daughter, you are hyper-sexualizing her. It's one thing to have them play around with makeup at home within the bubble of the family. But once it shifts to another context, you are taking away the play and creating a consumer, and frankly, you run the risk of having one more person who feels she's not good enough if she's not buying the stuff."

This raises the issue of parental complicity in this pernicious cycle. Why would parents allow, much less encourage, the sexualization of their young daughters? True beauty is a matter of godly character, not of external appearance. We are setting these young girls up for disaster in more than one form.

Last Thursday, the Lutheran Church in Finland celebrated an anniversary that will most certainly receive great applause from contemporary culture: the church marked 20 years of ordaining women to the pastorate.

In 1988, seven cathedrals around Finland ordained some 90 female ministers. Today, their numbers have increased to the point that one-third of the country's pastors are women.

Though the issue remains somewhat controversial within the Lutheran Church there, the complementarian position is disallowed: last month the church's Supreme Administrative Court passed an edict that renders ineligible for the pastorate anyone refusing to work with a female pastor.

"Lutheran bishops don't view opposition to female pastors as heresy," a Finnish news report remarked. "But they say such convictions are not grounds to refusing to work by the side of women of the cloth."

Opposition to female pastors as heresy? This is practically the view held by leaders of the Finnish church, for they have proven that conscientious objectors will be punished. This rang clear in December when a Finnish district court charged and fined three dissenting pastors for refusing to work with female pastors.

 It is indeed a sad day in the church when culture trumps truth in so sweeping a manner as it has taken place in Finland. The Lutheran churches in that Nordic country have swapped a proud heritage of standing upon the Scriptures for a mess of cultural pottage, for it was Martin Luther who was the great father of the Reformation, the man used profoundly of God to recover the cherished principle of sola Scriptura.

And it is an even sadder day when the classical, biblical role of women in ministry and the term "heresy" are used in the same sentence. Let us humbly pray for a biblical awakening in Finland.

[Mike Seaver is a pastor at CrossWay Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and posts regularly at Role Calling.]

A few months ago, I did a post on Semigalitarianism. This is a view where conservative Christians have claimed to believe in Biblical inerrancy, but functionally believe that a women can teach God's Word to men if she is "under the senior pastor and her husband's authority." In my post I told you of a Southern Baptist friend who encountered Semigalitarianism at his church and how he was struggling with this teaching. He saw the inconsistency that was taking place. Since my post, my friend has gone to the Senior Pastor of this mega church and has pleaded to have pastor change his mind. He briefly explained how Biblical Inerrancy and Egalitarianism cannot hold hands. They are mutually exclusive.

The pastor listened, but his mind was not changed. However, another man in the church also came to him and this man is seminary trained and knows Greek and Hebrew. He explained to the pastor that he was not doing proper exegesis to passages to justify his semigalitarian position because that position cannot be biblically justified. The Pastor humbly decided to reconsider his thoughts on this topic. He said that he did not originally think that having a woman teach was that big of a deal, but now he sees the importance how it ties to other beliefs about the bible. The church staff has decided to pull back and study their beliefs on these "gender passages" and to not allow another woman to teach men until they thoroughly study the topic.

I am thankful for my friend and other lay leaders in churches who are willing to come forward and stand for the bible even when others will not. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to specifically tell your Senior Pastor that he is not being biblical. This must be done humbly and with an ear to hearing out the pastor. We never want to bring a charge against a pastor, but pastors are sinners just like everyone else. I know, I am one. We all have blindspots and all need others to speak into our lives. I have been adjusted by godly men for my teaching before and now I wholeheartedly disagree with what I once taught. I am praying for this senior pastor to do the same.

[Owen Strachan is a former intern at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and is presently a Ph.D. student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in historical theology. He and his wife live in Highland Park, Illinois. You can read more of his thoughts on biblical masculinity at his blog. - David Kotter]

"A man who really gets Ephesians 5 is the kind of man who will be willing to work two jobs and live in a trailer to enable his wife to be the primary caregiver of his children."

This line from a recent post and JBMW contribution by Dr. Russell Moore affected me profoundly. I would imagine that this comment would sound strange to many ears. Why on earth would anyone live in a trailer park if they don't (absolutely) have to? In a materialistic society (and a materialistic church, maybe?), there is perhaps no sharper ideological razor to be applied in making familial decisions than that of economic concerns.

What do I mean? Simply this: many of us in American evangelicalism so prize material comfort that we will allow almost nothing to impede our pursuit of it. So, for example, when it comes down to determining such basic questions like where we will live and how we will live, we are often quite ready to sacrifice things like family time, home life, and discipleship for things like a nicer home, more cars, better accouterments. I am not against these things or a nice standard of living on their own terms, but I am against them when they compromise the quality of our family life We don't realize in making this exchange that we have taken the culture and its ideals as our guide. Accordingly, we have left the Word and its wisdom behind. The Scripture teaches us that the things that truly matter cannot be measured in dollars and cents, even though many--the Proverbs famously groups the materialistic masses under the moniker "fool"--believe the opposite. The result? Husbands and wives alike work themselves into the ground, and the children suffer and grow angry, and the family slowly falls apart, the cycle to be damningly repeated again a generation later.

Against the backdrop of such tragedy Dr. Moore makes his helpful point. If we could accept a little less luxury, many of our families would know far more health than they do. If we would accept a lower standard of living, more of our mothers could mother, more of our children could flourish, and more of our churches could know a fresh level of quality by the investment of older women in the lives of young women. If we could reject the American "dream" of material prosperity and see a trailer-park or an apartment complex through gospel lenses, we would see that it is no horrible thing to live as poor people when we have a joyful, gospel-centered, God-glorifying family that pulses with love and hope. Nowhere do the biblical authors instruct us to see such circumstances as a curse. No, if God is the Lord of the home, and the husband and wife fill their roles, and the children obey their parents, then the family is rich, rich beyond the wildest dreams of the wealthy secularists up the street who have great wealth in the bank but tragically little in the heart.

Again, this is not to say that wealth is wrong. It is not, and some Christians have a great deal of it and do not allow it to compromise a healthy home. Sadly, though, many do allow earthly values to drive their decision-making and home life. This problem--and its solution--begins with the husband. If he will commit to taking on the burden of the family's finances, to providing for his home though it may cost him much, then he sets his family up to flourish. If he gives them a vision of life together that is not driven and dictated by the culture and its ideals, but a biblical vision that prizes the principles of God's Word as they relate to the home, then he charts for them a course of great blessing. With his family, he may know times of great hardship and trial. He will have difficult nights, and sleepless days. He will see others entertaining themselves more and exhausting themselves less, and he may even question the wisdom of his path. But he will turn over and over to God's Word and its vision for masculine leadership and provision, and he will know, if only by the mustard seed of faith, that if it must be, a trailer park is not only enough--it is just right.

The problem with preaching on manhood and womanhood in most evangelical churches is that it is simply not being done. Sure, pastors will preach on "gender" occasionally, including on male headship and on female submission, but it is done in an abstract, vague manner that doesn't hit at the cosmic seriousness of this issue. Abstraction cannot replace the avalanche of cultural influences toward feminism on the one hand and a predatory form of pagan patriarchy on the other.

A pastor must be willing to lose his pulpit in order to save it. He cannot simply denounce the same "culture war" opponents that might be demonized by Fox News. He must talk about issues that will be sensitive to people in his own congregation--a dating culture that by its very definition anticipates fornication, the outsourcing of parenting to daycare "professionals" in order to carry out dual-income households, and so forth. A pastor who addresses such issues will find some hostility, but he will also find Christians--and seeking lost people--who are willing to give him a hearing because of his honesty and conviction.

This means, first of all, that complementarian pastors must give up on the notion that one can be comfortably anonymous in the ambient culture and still hold to biblical ideas of manhood and womanhood. If that ever were the case (and I doubt it), it is not the case anymore.

A man who really gets Ephesians 5 is the kind of man who will be willing to work two jobs and live in a trailer to enable his wife to be the primary caregiver of his children. A woman who really understands Proverbs 31 is going to seem to be a "Stepford wife" to those who are accustomed to women making ribald jokes about men and loud complaints about incompetent husbands. A college student serious about biblical manhood and womanhood is going to set parameters for his interactions with the opposite sex that will seem ridiculous to his roommates.

It also means that the pulpit cannot be the only place where discipleship in this area is carried out. Our pastors must give time and attention to discipling younger men, not through some curriculum purchased at the local Christian bookstore but through spending time in an authentic Paul-Timothy type friendship in which the pastor has the credibility--earned through proven wisdom and undisputed love--to encourage and to rebuke.

Christian women must put Titus 2 into practice, not with simply another DVD series from a female celebrity but through women spending time with one another, learning together what it means to be daughters of Sarah.

That takes more time than a stadium event or an emphasis Sunday, but it will change our churches for the better.

This is adapted from a forum from the Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Fall 2007), 55-56.