What He Must Be - A Review and Giveaway

One day, while I was home visiting my parents from college, I ran into a high school friend. She had been one of the "nice kids" in school. She attended the Bible Study that met in the choir room on Thursday mornings, and was active in her church's youth group. She had been engaged for quite a long time, and she was telling me how her wedding was still more than two years away. She and her intended had to finish college first, because, as she put it, "we have our priorities straight".

Now, unbeknownst to her (and I wasn't completely sure myself, but I had a pretty good idea), I was a mere days away from receiving an engagement ring of my own. And since Theodore and I were married about eight months later (before I was *gasp* finished with college), I obviously didn't agree with her reasoning for a long engagement.

I've lost touch with my friend, so I have no idea how things turned out for her. But her story is not unusual. Most people my age were raised with this mindset: get your education, then you can start thinking about marriage. And this advice is given with the best of intentions. Education opens many doors, and it's certainly easier to get an education when you're single and unattached. But somewhere along the way, we started revering education above marriage. In the book What He Must Be...If He Wants to Marry My Daughter, Voddie Baucham agrees:

Imagine a family who did not prepare their children for college. This would be unthinkable in today’s world. Everyone prepares their child for an academic future. Day-care programs boast about the head start they will give children in their “academic careers.” We buy houses in neighborhoods with “the best schools.” Beyond that, many families place their children in expensive preparatory schools, enduring tremendous financial burdens, incurring debt, and commuting hours each day in an effort to give their children an edge in that all-important race for the apex of academia.

However, little thought is given to preparing our sons to be husbands. Thus, they meander through life without the skills or mind-set necessary to play this most important role until one day, having met “the one,” they pop the question, set a date, and—in the rarest of cases—go to the pastor to learn everything they need to know about being the priest, prophet, provider, and protector of a household in four one-hour sessions. In the words of that great theologian Dr. Phil, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

Baucham asserts that marriage is something parents should be actively preparing our children for. He lays the biblical foundation for the parents' (especially the father's) role in raising our daughters to be wives and our sons to be husbands.

Discussions of patriarchy and courtship are often met with resistance. But Baucham is not advocating a godfather-type mentality, in which parents control their adult children's lives indefinitely. Nor is he a proponent of keeping our girls at home and out of college - an extreme view that is gaining an alarming amount of traction among some ultra-conservative homeschoolers. He fully expects his daughter to go to college, and he is very clear that his daughter's future husband is to be the leader of her family. His purpose is to make parents aware of the importance of their responsibilities to their sons and daughters.

I have observed that occasionally when a couple's offspring turn out well, the temptation is strong for them to take an inordinate amount of credit. Not only does this make them obnoxious, it is little help for parents who are hurting. Pastor Baucham does a good job of reminding us that parents should be intentionally raising their children to be husbands and wives because it is their biblical duty before God, and stays away from the mentality that if you do a, b, and c, your children will be perfect and have trouble-free lives.

This book is primarily written for fathers, but I recommend it to any parent. And while it tends to dwell a bit more on protecting our daughters, fathers of boys will benefit just as much.

I highly recommend this book. And, thanks to the generosity of Crossway, I have two copies to give away. If you'd like a chance to win, just leave a comment. I'll draw a winner on Saturday, March 7th.

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