Made to Lead

by Robert Cossins

  If you’ve begun meeting with that strong, godly mentor I suggested above, there is some likelihood that his wife could counsel yours: “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”[181] If you need help, ask for it. But always step into your problems, facing them like a man.

  If your wife files for divorce, immediately seek godly counsel. If it’s possible to save your marriage, by all means, save it. If she refuses, realize that she has just declared war on you and will be employing the courts to control you, remove your kids, and put you in divorce slavery. Find and engage the best legal counsel available and use every means to preserve your financial assets and secure custody of your children. To ensure clarity, I shall state what should be obvious: Once she steps out from under your umbrella of protection, she is no longer under it. Do not become complicit in her sin. Do not help her! Her car have a flat? Too damn bad. Let her figure it out. If she’s in an unsafe predicament with the kids, go pick up the kids, but you no longer have any obligation to protect her from herself or anything else. When you solve the wayward wife’s problems, you’re further enabling her to destroy, not only your marriage, but your children. Albeit a slim chance at that juncture, letting her immediately experience in full what life is like without a protector is probably your last chance to save your marriage. Let your pastor know what’s going on. If a well-intentioned churchian helps her, let him know that he’s enabling the destruction of your marriage. There are times when it’s quite biblical to withhold assistance. It’s called tough love.

  Realize that your former lover is now your biggest enemy, her future lovers the most likely people in the world to sexually abuse your daughters. Most states have sex offender registries; you should check out any man your wife is involved with against these registries. Private investigators can provide you a criminal background check for a reasonable fee. Your children are innocent and deserve your protection and precedence in all your decisions. Concentrate on your children as they’ll need your guidance more than ever. Many kids will feel guilty, thinking their parent’s divorce was their fault. Make certain to actively banish such thoughts from their minds.

  If you find yourself in divorce slavery, pray that God will help you live a joyful single life. If you believe it within your right to remarry, do not seek to interact romantically until you’re in a place where you can be content to live as a single man, at least a year after the divorce is final. You are wounded; you are likely broken. Seek healing. In the meantime, improve yourself.

  It is great irony when a woman’s hypergamy drives her to divorce a good man, as she most often ends up with a lesser man, usually a string of increasingly lesser men, while her former husband recovers and, if he remarries, usually marries better in every respect. Female divorce hypergamy is a logical failure of immense proportion, her completely uncoupling natural consequences from the decisions that brought them to be.

  Above all, if you find yourself navigating these tricky waters, remember your children. God help us. Remember your children. Always remember your children. They are deeply wounded. Be their rock in the tempest. And point them towards your Rock.

  Conclusion

  When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?[182]

  — King David

  When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.[183]

  — Frédéric Bastiat

  Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

  — Alexis de Tocqueville (Credit disputed)

  I hope reading these chapters has refined your worldview, increasing its accuracy. A man living in obedience and genuinely seeking truth pleases God: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”[184]

  In Samuel Adams’ speech before the formal signing of the Declaration of Independence, he stated, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down, and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set light upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” What a man. Regrettably, America’s former liberty, for which so many paid so dearly, has been squandered and we now live in a culture spiraling down by almost any measure. Most pertinently for the subject of this book, we’re inarguably living in a full-blown LSR culture, a significant predictive marker of a culture’s doom in and of itself. On de Tocqueville’s scale, as a society we are clearly moving from apathy to dependence and major segments of America are fully prepared to accept bondage, so long as it’s a comfortable bondage (always promised but never fulfilled.) Any society that sets aside its God in pursuit of man-made idols and their attendant worldly pleasures either repents or is destroyed.

  The widely held moral fiber present during America’s founding has long since vanished from ubiquity, now residing in but a remnant. America’s future is not bright, her decline evident in myriad ways: Her moral decay, the rot of her cities, the loss of her manufacturing industries, her families failing, her unsustainable debt load a veritable Sword of Damocles, her bankers counterfeiting her currency, her future commitments to her citizens impossible to keep, the growing dependency of her populace, the corruption of her leaders, the undefended invasion of her borders, her love of liberty extinguished along with Lady Liberty’s torch. Yes, it is sad, even tragic, particularly given the heights she had attained, likely the greatest social experiment in all history. People lived well and attained much. The Founders (sans but a few) must be honored and history informed. Almost to a man, they sacrificed for posterity, many while serving their God. Hopefully the next generation seeking spiritual truth will learn from America’s failures and liberty will prevail once again if our Lord tarries. Never forget Jesus’ promise that he will build his church and “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”[185] Gates are defensive in nature, meaning that God’s Kingdom (that includes us) must be on the offensive, attacking the Enemy’s fortifications.

  But what are we, as individual men, to do in such times? All is not lost even when living in a declining culture. Dominant nations rarely die overnight, and America won’t either, for even an unopposed invasion takes time. Use this time to prepare and teach, for it’s always possible for the wise and considered man to live a more worthy and impactful life than would that same man had he been content to live in ignorance and haste. Become the wisest, most knowledgeable man you can become. If God has blessed you with exceptional abilities, don’t rest easy in them. Put them to work, blazing a path for others, giving them their “chests,” planting seeds of liberty in a remnant that may someday rise again.

  Invite the Potter to form your clay, even with a heavy hand, for God often trains his warriors in the wilderness. Follow Him. Seek eternal perspective. Live on a mission. Continually thank Him for your many blessings. Learn. Love. Marry well. Suffer well. Pray often. Laugh even in misery. Observe. Think for yourself. Enjoy. Fail. Succeed. Seek wisdom. Live free. Teach your children well. Look forward to hearing those proverbial words which every Christian should strive to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”[186]
/>
  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

  Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

  And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.[187]

  In this passage, it’s easy to focus on what’s obviously important: faith, hope, and love; however, there is more, much more. Thinking people oftentimes ponder about how things really are, but we are informed that even Paul knew only “in part,” yet someday we shall know fully. Rest easy knowing that, in God’s good time, the Christian man will know fully!

  And now I leave you with my personal mission, one which I keep in the forefront of my mind by reading it nearly every single day:

  To love and serve my God with all my heart, mind, and spirit.

  To love, cherish, teach, care for, and provide for my wife and my children.

  To serve my fellow man with my time, talents, and treasure.

  This book exists because of my mission, my God not letting me rest easy until these words were written. May He use them.

  If you don’t have that invaluable wise father or grandfather, let me close by standing in but for a moment, to pronounce a blessing upon you:

  “Be strong and courageous…Be strong and very courageous.”[188] May you find and live for your mission. May you love well. May you change eternity for the better. May you put yourself in Bondage to God’s will and nothing else, so that you may live free. Live free, my brother. Godspeed.

  “By their fruits ye shall know them.”[189] Choose the Red Pill. Always choose the Red Pill. Seek the Truth!

  * * *

  [1] Proverb 22:17

  [2] Vince Lombardi and Vince Lombardi, Jr., What it Takes to Be Number One (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2012), page 17.

  [3] Acts 2:40

  [4] Titus 1:15

  [5] Acts 9:18

  [6] Matthew 7:13

  [7] Ibid.

  [8] John 12:42

  [9] John 12:43

  [10] Acts 9:18

  [11] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (C. S. Lewis Pte, Ltd., 1944), page 26.

  [12] 1 Timothy 2:12a

  [13] See Gilbert Bilezikian, Beyond Sex Roles: What the Bible Says about a Woman’s Place in Church and Family (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006) for a thorough, if flawed, treatment of the positive case.

  [14] National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 61, Number 1, August 28, 2012, Table I-4.

  [15] Ventura SJ., “Changing patterns of nonmarital childbearing in the United States,” National Center for Health Statistics data brief, No. 18, Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2009.

  [16] John 17:17 (Emphasis mine.)

  [17] Elohim is one of God’s numerous names: God as Creator, Preserver, Transcendent, Mighty and Strong

  [18] Stephen R. Covey, Principle-Centered Leadership (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1990), page 171.

  [19] Proverb 24:32

  [20] The author may be contacted at Cossins@Made-to-Lead.com.

  [21] Hebrews 5:8

  [22] Isaiah 64:8

  [23] Ecclesiastes 1:18

  [24] Ephesians 5:15

  [25] Proverb 4:7

  [26] Matthew 25:21

  [27] C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (The Trustees of the Estate of C. S. Lewis, 1970) Part 1, Chapter 12.

  [28] 2 Timothy 1:6

  [29] Deuteronomy 31:6

  [30] Deuteronomy 31:7

  [31] Joshua 1:7

  [32] Joshua 1:18

  [33] Joshua 10:25

  [34] 1 Chronicles 28:20

  [35] Psalm 31:23

  [36] Acts 23:11

  [37] 1 Corinthians 16:13

  [38] Proverb 19:2

  [39] Psalm 139:13

  [40] Genesis 25:34

  [41] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908), page 55.

  [42] Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos, Yeager (New York: Bantam Books, 1985)

  [43] I am most pleased to report that we met our goal.

  [44] Malachi 2:15

  [45] Ibid.

  [46] Jeremiah 32:35

  [47] Jeremiah 51:45

  [48] Proverb 14:1

  [49] Proverb 30:20

  [50] Proverb 12:4

  [51] Proverb 31:10

  [52] Deuteronomy 22:20

  [53] 1 Corinthians 6:18

  [54] Proverb 5:3

  [55] Proverb 23:28

  [56] Matthew 5:28

  [57] 1 Chronicles 28:9

  [58] Job 31:1

  [59] Proverb 6:25

  [60] 1 Corinthians 6:9 (KJV)

  [61] 1 Corinthians 7:1

  [62] Matthew 19:6

  [63] Genesis 2:18

  [64] Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict (United States: A Judith Markman Book, 1987), page 125, provides a riveting synopsis of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church.

  [65] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison (New York: Touchstone, 1997), page 41.

  [66] The author is not seeking to endorse the vasectomy procedure.

  [67] 1 Corinthians 11:3

  [68] Ephesians 5:33

  [69] 1 Corinthians 7:12

  [70] Ephesians 5:22

  [71] Ephesians 5:21

  [72] 2 Peter 3:16

  [73] Acts 17:23

  [74] 2 Timothy 3:16

  [75] Acts 9:1

  [76] Romans 1:1

  [77] Philemon 1:1

  [78] Ephesians 6:20

  [79] Acts 9:15

  [80] Philippians 3:5

  [81] Ephesians 6:1

  [82] Ephesians 6:5

  [83] 2 Peter 3:16

  [84] Titus 2:4

  [85] Luke 12:48

  [86] Hebrews 10:31

  [87] John 5:30

  [88] Isaiah 3:12 (ASV)

  [89] Luke 5:4

  [90] Matthew 4:18

  [91] Matthew 27:32

  [92] John 14:15

  [93] John 5:26

  [94] Harvey Mackay, Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990), page 40.

  [95] Proverb 28:1

  [96] In Malachi 2:16, God states, “I hate divorce.” I believe it logically follows that Satan must love it.

  [97] 1 Corinthians 15:33

  [98] W. Bradford Wilcox et al., Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences, Second Edition (New York: Institute for American Values, 2005), page 32.

  [99] The Life of St. Antony, an ancient work often credited to Athanasian, page 198.

  [100] Proverb 31:12

  [101] Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri, has been widely quoted as stating, “Fifty percent of first marriages, sixty-seven percent of second marriages and seventy-four percent of third marriages end in divorce.” The motivated reader can search census data, any number of surveys, and numerous academic articles for more detailed information.

  [102] Xenia Montenegro et al., “The Divorce Experience:
A Study of Divorce at Midlife and Beyond,” AARP The Magazine, May 2004.

  [103] Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas W. Allen, “These Boots Are Made for Walking: Why Most Divorce Filers Are Women,” American Law and Economics Review, 2000, volume 2, pages 126-169.

  [104] W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Williamson, “The Cultural Contradictions of Mainline Family Ideology and Practice,” in American Religions and the Family, ed. Don S. Browning and David A. Clairmont (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), page 50.

  [105] Joshua 9:11

  [106] William J. Doherty and Leah Ward Sears, Second Chances – A Proposal to Reduce Unnecessary Divorce (New York: Institute for American Values, 2011).

  [107] Ibid.

  [108] Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin , Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study (New York: Hudson Street Press, 2011), page 80.

  [109] Ludwig von Mises, Profit and Loss (Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), page 18, based upon a paper written in 1951.

  [110] Helen Nelson Carcio, Management of the Infertile Woman (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1998), chart effects smoothed.

  [111] For the record, Joe did score a big contract a month after his Super Bowl victory, history’s most lucrative NFL player contract at over $20 million dollars per year for the next six years. Nice.

  [112] General Patraeus’ recent affair with his biographer, twenty years his junior, is a good example. Though in his sixties and no handsome man, his status kept his SMV high while his same-aged wife looked positively grandmotherly in comparison to his illicit lover.

  [113] S. L. Brown et al, “Age Variation in the Divorce Rate, 1990-2010,” National Center for Family and Marriage Research, 2012.

  [114] 2005 Michigan Occurrence Marriage Files from the Michigan Vital Records and Health Data Development Section.