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[Kalli Amstutz is a contributor to the Gender Matters blog, the new voice of the Gender Matters Task Force at Northwestern College in Minnesota.  The GMTF is made up of college students who live out and promote the traditional biblical view of gender roles in the home and church. - David Kotter]

In a culture that celebrates freedom, limitations are not warmly welcomed. Telling a child he cannot stay up past nine evokes anger similar to the woman who is told she cannot do everything a man can.

In her book Let Me Be a Woman, Elisabeth Elliot points out, "There are those to whom being a woman is nothing more than an inconvenience, to be suffered because it is unavoidable and to be ignored if at all possible. Their lives are spent pining to be something else."

We naturally prefer to be in control and determine who we are and what we do. When another puts limitations upon us we feel belittled and trapped. But what if those limitations were put upon us by the One who created us? Our Creator God designed with purpose, though to us it may at times appear an inconvenience.

Elisabeth Elliot explains:

Every creature of God is given something that could be called an inconvenience, I suppose, depending on one's perspective. The elephant and the mouse might each complain about his size, the turtle about his shell, the bird about the weight of his wings. But elephants are not called upon to run behind wainscots, mice will not be found "pacing along as though they have an appointment at the end of the world," turtles have no need to fly nor birds to creep. The special gift and ability of each creature defines its special limitations. And as the bird easily comes to terms with the necessity of bearing wings when it finds that it is, in fact, the wings that bear the bird - up, away from the world, into the sky, into freedom - so the woman who accepts the limitations of womanhood finds in those very limitations her gifts, her special calling - wings, in fact, which bear her up into perfect freedom, into the will of God.

When we align ourselves with God's design we must accept certain limitations. I am not a man. As simple as that sounds, the implications are real and if I try to live like a man I will be greatly disappointed. We are only satisfied when we live in such a way that fulfills our purpose. Only then will the Creator be glorified and will we be truly free.

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[Owen Strachan is a regular contributor to Gender Blog, a doctoral student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in historical theology, a newlywed husband, and blogger at Consumed. - David Kotter]

A recent Salvo Magazine piece by S. T. Karnick, "Girly Men: The Media's Attack on Masculinity", lays out three stereotypical masculine images found in contemporary culture. Here's Karnick's distillation of the roles currently available to men in American society:

"(T)he war against boys seems to have created three main character patterns for the adult male of our time: sensitive guys who want to please women; weenies and dorks who want only to be left alone to drink beer and play video games with their dork buddies; and thugs who, in rebellion against their unnatural education, are perpetually concerned with proving their toughness through increasingly loutish behavior. There are, of course, examples of decent, positively masculine males in the culture, but they are becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the products of educational and cultural feminization."

It is interesting to note that each of these unhelpful characters contains an element of goodness, as perversions of the original type often do. The sensitive man, after all, is something of a reaction to the cold, emotionless "Lone Ranger" type of man popularized by actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The sensitive man represents a cultural attempt, then, to correct John Wayne masculinity. Where his father or grandfather never wept, never talked much, never said "I love you", the sensitive male weeps readily, chatters away, and reassures anyone within earshot of his love. In seeking an emotionally alive masculinity the sensitive man seems to have sped past "properly balanced emotional life" and landed in the once-foreign land of "traditionally feminine ways of speaking and feeling". The Christian man stands ready to lend him his roadmap.

However off-base this quest may be, at least the sensitive man seeks to go somewhere. The same can not be said for our goofball. Like other useful items strewn around his room in his parent's home, he could not find a sense of self-control, of shame, if offered a cash reward for it. Where men used to define themselves by taking responsibility, by making money, seeking a wife, fathering children, and so on, various factors changed all this.  The rise of collegiate culture unimpeded by institutional Christianity, the booming of anonymous cities that allowed for familial escape, and the rise of the playboy bachelor in the post-World War Two era mixed with the rebellious 1960s to explode responsible masculinity.  With that, the man-child was born, and so too a major missiological challenge.

The third group--the thugs--represents a reaction against each of these stereotypes. More accurately, perhaps, this third group is a subgroup of the first. This type of man prizes action, not talk, unlike both the sensitive man and the goofball. This is the kind of man who exalts deeds, not words, who would rather talk with his fists than his mouth. Though all three of these perversions of true manhood have existed throughout human history, this type has caused the most damage, at least physically. Your conquerors, your tyrants, your bullies from high school? They fit here. Driven by pride, motivated by glory and the opinions of others, this group, when unrestrained, possesses the power to cause great harm to others.

If many contemporary men fall into these three rather frightening categories, how are local churches to respond? First, by affirming the element of goodness found in each type. Men of the Bible are by no means silent or unemotional. The father of the prodigal son, for example, weeps openly and deservedly when his son returns home (see Luke 15:11-32). Christ Himself wept when He heard of Lazarus's death (John 11:35). Christ was compassionate, tender, gentle, and merciful throughout the course of His ministry. So we ought to be a balance of strength and gentleness, not either/or. On the other hand, it's a bit difficult to find the goodness in the goofball, frankly. With that said, we can appreciate the way in which this type lives honestly and often happily, enjoying the arts, sports, music, and more. Perhaps this cultural pattern of manhood shows us that men do not need to be grim and dour to be truly masculine. As with sensitivity, we need to work hard to strike a balance here, but we can surely recognize that the Bible affirms a balanced, happy life--see Ecclesiastes for more on that.  The Christian man ought to be responsible, but he ought also to be happy. 

The thug, for his part, shows us that men were not meant to be wimps. We were meant to be strong, to the best of our capability, and to use that strength for the betterment of others. The patriarchs worked the land, and they worked it hard, in order to provide for their families. Death was a constant threat--to worship in Israel in many ages was to worship with a sword on the belt. Christ Himself stormed through the temple, turning over tables, scourging the wicked. In His second coming, He will arrive as the Warrior-King. Therefore, as men, we should realize that to be a man is to harness one's natural strength, energy, and agency for the betterment of others, namely, one's family, church, and brothers and sisters.

We see, then, that there is a fourth model: the redeemed leader, whose type we derive from the Bible.  In a sense, this fourth model is a composite of the earlier three types--or rather, the three types are all realized in Christ, the God-man, whose model is elaborated in the Bible.  We must not let our children learn what it is to be a man--or a woman, of course!--from MTV, or Hollywood, or the NBA. No, we must embody robust, godly masculinity in our churches. This starts with a pastor who embodies biblical manhood and who then teaches men to do the same. A full commitment must be made to teaching men the rudiments of biblical masculinity--Proverbs, the Gospels, 2 Timothy come to mind here.

Churches must thus teach men not to be feminine in matters of communication and emotion, not to shirk responsibility and maturity, not to mistreat and abuse others, but to emulate the Savior. When churches train men in this way, fathers will trains their sons, leading to sea changes in Christian culture. The pastor is important, but he trains only one family directly. Every Christian church, however, has many fathers, and it is up to them in an earthly sense to determine whether they will raise men of Christ or men of culture. It is not too much to say that all of the above, all of the preceding discussion, rises or falls with the simple matter of what a father teaches his family, what models he holds up before them, and how he lives out that teaching. 

Will our boys be wimps, goofballs, thugs--or will they be a fourth type: Christian leaders according to the dictates of Scripture? The answer depends not on what the culture says, not on what it parades before us on television, but on the conception of man that we teach, that we exalt, and that we embody before the eyes that are always watching, the hearts that are always taking shape and form.

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"Gender-inclusiveness" as a term has finally gotten around to including heterosexuals on college campuses in Oregon, but in a way that is anything but positive.

OregonLive.com reported last week that colleges and universities across that Northwestern state are beginning to allow virtually anyone to room together on campus.

This might indeed be accurately termed "the final frontier" in college dorm arrangements that started with coed dorm buildings, followed by coed dorm floors, followed by coed bathrooms, and finally coed dorm rooms.  In addition, institutions of higher learning in Oregon have already followed a nationwide trend by developing special campus housing arrangements for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.

Many schools in Oregon and in other states already allow for opposite-gender roommates who, as the paper describes it, "do not feel comfortable in a traditional roommate arrangement." The Oregonian accurately describes the move as "breaking the last gender barrier."

A sizable group of students lobbied in favor of the inclusion of heterosexual roomies for the sake of equality-felt it was unfair to allow gay and lesbian couples to live together while shutting out heterosexual couples. Some among them suggest that many young men and women will desire to room together while keeping a strictly platonic relationship.

"It's really just about allowing students to choose who they are most comfortable living with," student Jenne Schmidt said.

"It's just about everyone being equal in who you get to choose to live with," said Michael Reed, associate dean of residence at Reed College.

One factor for which the schools are bracing is the common reality that heterosexual students date for a time and then break up; it is a virtual certainty that many students who are in a dating relationship will room together and then break off the romantic relationship. Bob Hawkinson, dean of campus life at Williamette University sounds a bit more skittish than most when considering this particular implication. 

"People of this age simply do break up a lot," he said. "This is just asking for more trouble than we want to take on."

Trouble indeed.

Besides being guilty of backward reasoning (reasoning from gay, lesbian, bisexual, "transgender" rights to heterosexual rights), this move in Oregon is troubling for the faulty presupposition that undergirds it: men and women are really not all that different. School officials seem to be assuming that a young man and young women sharing the same living space is really no different than two guys or two girls rooming together.

There are certainly profound biblical reasons to be made in favor of keeping unmarried men and women in separate living quarters, but underlying them is one fundamental, self-evident reality: men and women are different. This truth alone is reason enough to keep the more traditional college living arrangements in place.

But the dilemma runs deeper than mere biological differences: when men and women live together, even if their aim is to remain platonic, these differences are in grave danger of manifesting themselves in sinful ways. This is particularly true given the twin realities of a hyper-sexualized culture and the presence of sexual desires that seem particularly robust in the late teen/early adult years.

Bob Hawkinson is indeed correct: these schools are asking for trouble.

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In a positive development, Governing Body of the Anglican Church in Wales failed to pass a bill that would have allowed women to become bishops, according to the TimesOnline. From a human perspective, changes in the church occur in this way one decision at time. In this case courageous complementarian priests, guided by conscience and the clear teaching of scripture, stood firm to preserve the Anglican Church in Wales from error. Only God at this point knows how long this situation will endure.

Egalitarian Anglicans in favor of women bishops were quick to respond with a plan to revisit the issue as soon as possible:  Canon Mary Stallard, chaplain to the Bishop of St Asaph, said: "The moment will come back. We are very disappointed. It is not totally unexpected. But we are looking forward to bringing it back. This issue will not be ignored."

Dr. Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales who proposed the bill, was disappointed that it did not pass. He said, "The same thing happened over the ordination of women to the priesthood 11 years ago. That later went through at the second attempt. It is an issue that is not going to go away or be ignored."

Once a denomination adopts a hermeneutic that allows 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man" to be implemented as, "I do permit a woman to teach and exercise authority over a man," then biblical authority and guidance by truth is lost. Accordingly, Morgan said that after the ordination of women priests he did not see how the church could "logically exclude women" from the episcopate. "That is why I and my fellow bishops will be asking members of the Governing body to vote in favor of the bill,"  he said.

London's Putney Vicar Giles Fraser, was even more stark: "It's an absolute disgrace. If women are good enough to be priests they are good enough to be bishops. Anything other than this is a theological nonsense." Women bishops are permitted in the Anglican churches of Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.

The Governing body consists of the Laity (non-clerical representatives who vote first), the Clergy (clerical representatives who vote second) and the Bench of Bishops (six diocesan bishops who have the final vote on every measure). The bill accepting women as bishops was passed overwhelmingly by 52 votes to 19 by the laity. But in the clergy it passed by a mere 27 votes to 18, leaving it three votes short of the two-thirds majority it needed to become canon law.

Please pray for the Anglican Church in Wales, thanking God for this small victory and asking that the church be preserved from error. As a complementarian, please stand firm for biblical manhood and womanhood in the sphere of influence where God has placed you in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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The Oregonian newspaper last week published an unsettling news story about a man from Bend, Oregon who is apparently five months pregnant.

As it turns out, however, the man in question is no man at all.

"The parent-to-be was born female but identifies as a man, he writes in his first-person account posted this week by The Advocate, a national gay publication. He legally changed his name to Thomas Beatie and married a woman named Nancy...About 10 years ago, Beatie underwent breast-removal surgery and started male hormones, he writes, but kept the uterus and female genitals...Nancy couldn't carry the child because she had had a hysterectomy. So Beatie stopped testosterone injections, and menstrual periods returned within four months. He says he conceived through artificial insemination at home with sperm bought from a sperm bank and that he didn't take fertility drugs."

Beatie is due to give birth to a daughter around July 3. He told The Advocate, "To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child. I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."

In the lead paragraph, Oregonian reporter Don Colburn says the case stretches "the meaning of the 21^st century family and the limits of personal pronouns," and later he points out that "Family dynamics circa 2008 can get complicated."

While this story is certainly extraordinary, it cannot escape the inescapable truth: Thomas Beatie is not a man; "he," is a woman, a person who has merely sought to alter his (I use that pronoun in the universal sense denoting ‘personhood') biological identity; however, the fact that Thomas Beatie is truly a female is absolute, for God did not create men (gender-specific, non-universal sense) with wombs. Women who take testosterone injections will grow beards.  Nevertheless, the irony here is that, in spite of a "gender reassignment" procedure, the female body of "Thomas Beatie" is functioning precisely according to God's design. 

Despite his sinful machinations, man cannot finally and fully altar the transcendent and biological realities that define a family; according to God's all-wise design, only a man and woman together can procreate and all the pronominal gymnastics in the world cannot get around it. Sadly, Thomas Beatie's daughter will be raised by two mothers, and never know her actual father, an anonymous donor.