Yes, he’s done it again.
John Piper has said something that stirs controversy.
See this report of his speeches during the latest “Desiring God” conference, the topic of which was “God, Manhood, and Masculinity”, after which you presume the assembled pastors took a trip to the nearest tool store.
I read the extracts from Piper’s remarks and have an immediate response. Here it is:
“God speaks of Himself in the masculine (though sometimes with feminine metaphors), Jesus came as son, the apostles were men, they appointed men as their successors, and they emphasized male headship in marriage for one simple reason: Women weren’t taken seriously in the culture(s). To be feminine, to use female witnesses, to appoint women as leaders over men, simply would not have worked. (Look how well it does two thousand years later in much of the world.) In short, John, you put too much weight on evidence that won’t bear your supposition.”
Piper’s kind of view used to make me a little uncomfortable, but I’ve definitely moved more in the direction of “complementarianism” over the last few years. The selling point for me, really, was seeing how the men from my home church embraced leadership (in every form). An awful lot of problems in our society stem from a general lack of male leadership in the home and the church (think of the divorce rate, the number of single mothers, the number of wimpy “Sunday only” Christian men, etc.). In my experience, men who accept the Biblical challenge to be leaders grow into stronger fathers/husbands/Christians. It definitely shouldn’t be with the kind of attitude or mentality that devalues the role of women, however.