Author. Father. Teacher. Essays, reviews, and fiction at https://xitter.cf/t.co/9a0sindeLW. Helping men become better fathers at https://xitter.cf/t.co/YOibUIkrDS.
USA
Joined October 2020
- Tweets42.3K
- Following367
- Followers67.5K
- Likes34.9K
Pinned Tweet
Children will not kill your ambition. They give it a purpose beyond self-aggrandizement and material success.
M.A. Franklin retweeted
Education is warfare.
Every book a weapon.
Every classroom a battlefield.
Every teacher an ally or an enemy.
The spoils are the souls of our children.
Education is warfare.
Every book a weapon.
Every classroom a battlefield.
Every teacher an ally or an enemy.
The spoils are the souls of our children.
Sometimes, all you want is 5 minutes of peace, and then the second the house goes quiet, you miss everybody.
"Please clap with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm and ironic detatchment. I desperately want your approval."
It's impressive. I spent a few days at Skywalker Ranch for work about a decade ago.
The library is just around the corner from the cafeteria. You pass authentic movie props and paraphalnalia from Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
Don't be one of those men who is full of great advice that he never applies to himself.
Everyone is a hypocrite at some level, but nobody listens to such a transparent hypocrite. Especially kids.
Aim to hire men, not worker bees.
John Wesley said: "Give me 3 men with a heart that burns for God and we'll conquer the world."
When I build a team, I want men whose hearts burn for glory. I'm not hiring insects based on a checklist. Small, insignificant dung beetles tasked with only rolling and rolling and rolling.
Man is made for greater.
And it is these great men whom I wish to befriend and beget on this journey into eternity and into email, recording set, camera, publication, landing page, and average view duration. Men who burn to be faithful with what God has put in front of them RIGHT NOW, and then enter into the glory of their master.
My parents did a lot of things right, but they got some major things wrong.
This is the best we can hope for.
None of us are perfect. We can only hope to learn from the mistakes of our forebears so we don’t repeat them. After all, we have mistakes of our own to make.
But one of their worst mistakes was assigning the transcription of a work of literature as punishment.
I don't even remember why I was being punished. I'm sure I deserved it. But I had to copy, by hand, the entire book of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
I understand the reasoning behind it. If you are going to have your kid write something as punishment, to make sure he never makes the same mistake again, why settle for boring, rote sentences?
Why not have him write great literature instead? Some of it may rub off on him. If he remembers any of it, so much the better.
The actual result?
I absolutely loathe the idea of The Old Man and the Sea. I have a visceral reaction to any hint of reading it. It has taken the better part of 20+ years to reach a point where I can entertain the idea of the book.
I guarantee this was not what my father had in mind.
foundationfather.com/p/dont-…
"I don't care about grades. I care about my children's character."
"Sounds like you're just making excuses for them and for yourself."
"No. In the long run, grades don't matter."
"You don't really believe that. If your son came home failing every class, you would care very much. And you *should* care."
"That's an extreme example. No way my son would fail every class."
"Ah, so you do care?"
"I guess, but grades aren't the most important thing."
"I'd agree, but they are a useful tool and can give you a gut check about the child's character."
"How?"
"Does your son strive for excellence? And if he doesn't hit the target, does he make excuses for himself and complain about the teacher, or does he honestly evaluate his performance? Those are at least 3 character traits potentially wrapped up in his school grades."
"The grades don't tell you that alone."
"That's why I said they are a tool. The parent has to dig deeper. A son could also not be trying at all and still get good grades, and if so, you might have an even bigger problem on your hands."
"...but it sounds really pious and enlightened to say that I don't care about grades..."
"I know, buddy. But it's all a performance. You can cut the act."
Obviously this should be the case.
The punishment for the false accusations should be the same as the crime they accused someone of, up to and including the death penalty.
It's that serious.
A woman who falsely accuses a man of sexual harassment and/or rape causes enormous harm not just to the man, but to all women who have actually been harassed or raped as their truthful claims will sadly be perceived to be less credible.
The result: fewer guilty rapists will be convicted, and more innocent accused rapists will be punished with extended time in jail for a crime they did not commit.
And yes, the same is true regardless of the gender of the accuser and the accused.
As such, the punishment for such a false accusation should be extremely severe, i.e., jail time, to discourage such behavior.
Tell me why I am wrong.
M.A. Franklin retweeted
Artists, mathematicians, intellectuals, but especially childless careerists who've poured their entire souls into their work and material achievements are about to experience a level of ego death previously reserved for religious mystics and psychedelic casualties.
This quoted post is unavailable.
I'm going to need more of you to homeschool so there are more normal people for my kids to marry.
Right now, the pool is full of kids raised by screens and algorithms, and if they're really unlucky, by a school guidance counselor. Kids taught that it's "normal" to have 17 genders on a form. Kids taught lies about reality and how to defend those lies fervently.
No thanks.
I listened to the book. @dmichaelclary 's argument might be summarized as:
Maybe Christians shouldn't punt on 2nd down. Maybe we should play the game as best we can and train for it and try to win. And maybe, when the situation calls for it, we should even go for it on 4th down.
We might not win the game, but we shouldn't give up and pretend that giving up is a virtue.
My friend @dmichaelclary wrote Loser Theology, and as expected, the book has received some pushback. Some of that criticism seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding of his argument.
Michael isn't arguing that faithful Christians always win politically or culturally, or that suffering and persecution are signs of failure. Nor is he advocating postmillennialism. In fact, Michael is an amillennialist. His argument is that there are certain kinds of theological emphases, often dressed up in pietistic language, that celebrate losing, romanticize suffering, and turn passivity into a Christian virtue.
Some of this teaching may be intentional, coming from bad actors who themselves want power and influence while encouraging conservative Christians to surrender theirs. Some comes from well-meaning Christians who simply haven't taken into account everything Scripture teaches about courage, dominion, and victory. And some comes from faithful Christians who rightly want to remind us that God loves His people, even through suffering. But the cumulative effect of all this teaching can create a theological atmosphere that downplays action, boldness, responsibility, and what Michael calls high agency.
Rather than encouraging Christians to take responsibility and fight for what is right regardless of the outcome, it can end up baptizing retreat and calling it faithfulness. Michael is writing out of his own experience with this kind of thinking, an experience I share.
That's why I found The Gospel Coalition's recent review rather disappointing. It begins fairly enough, acknowledging some of Michael's legitimate concerns, but by the end, the review almost becomes an illustration of the very loser theology Michael is criticizing. The reviewer appeals to the suffering of the early church and the martyrs in Revelation as though this somehow undermines the expectation that Christianity might actually transform nations and cultures. But the fact that the church conquers through suffering does not mean that suffering and apparent defeat are the only historical results of its conquest. The martyrs died, but Rome eventually bowed before Christ. The gospel didn't merely comfort individual souls while leaving the surrounding world untouched. It transformed families, institutions, laws, and civilizations.
Now, unlike Michael, I am a postmillennialist, and I believe Scripture gives us every reason to expect the progressive triumph of Christ's kingdom in history. But you don't have to be a postmillennialist to reject the idea that cultural defeat is somehow more spiritual than cultural victory. Nor does believing in Christian victory mean denying the reality or necessity of suffering. The cross itself should settle that question. The cross is the means of Christ's victory, not a theological argument against the historical expansion of His kingdom.
And here's the point that keeps getting missed: The opposite of loser theology isn't some triumphalist theology where Christians are going to win so much that we're tired of winning, to borrow a line from Donald Trump. The opposite is high-agency, courageous faithfulness. It's the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing before Nebuchadnezzar. Our God is able to deliver us, but even if He doesn't, we're not bowing down. We're going to obey God, stand firm, and fight for what is right, whether He grants us victory now or calls us to suffer. But we're going to fight to win! Nobody goes into battle hoping to "lose one for the Gipper." And nobody is inspired to courage, sacrifice, and bold action by the constant refrain that Christians must lose. We don't measure faithfulness merely by worldly success, but neither do we make worldly defeat the measure of faithfulness. Unfortunately, I think this review ends up demonstrating why Michael's book needed to be written in the first place.
Parents are excited to get a "neurodiverse" diagnosis because it absolves them of responsibility. They haven't failed their child; they were just born that way!
Kids (and their parents) are faking their way to extra time on college admissions tests. Don’t game the system, writes Katie Davis, a neuropsychologist in New York City.
Read her full essay here: bit.ly/47SPrqK
I read everything he wrote and tried to read everything he read. My instincts now align with C.S. Lewis's.
Greta Gerwig on preparing to write Narnia: The Magician's Nephew:
"I read or re-read everything Lewis wrote. Then I tried to read everything he read."
She also retraced C.S. Lewis's life and steps in Belfast, Cambridge, and Oxford, hoping to better understand the author so that "my instincts would align with his”.
Full report: narniaweb.com/2026/10/greta-…
"But we are still a team as parents and will do everything for them!"
Except act like adults and stay together. That's just too much.
Though there's a chance this is all one-sided from the wife and he's just putting on a brave face. Seen it before. But if so, why do a public social media post about it?
Just don't.
My wife and I decided to get a divorce.
There were no fights, just two adults who realised they drifted apart from each other.
This is probably the hardest thing I had to go through.
First of all, telling our girls...seeing them so sad was heartbreaking. But we are still a team as parents and will do everything for them!
Also we have to sell our house, the house I wanted to live in forever and raise my kids in...
Going back to a smaller appartment will be rough.
I still have a lot of to handle, that's why I wasn't active here on X.
I'm really grateful for all the people who reached out and asked where I was 🙏🏼
This women will always be a part of my life, she gifted me with two perfect daughters.
I wish her all the best, great memories were made in those years!
I'll be back soon. Thank you everyone 🙏🏼
Similar to how widescale acceptance and celebration of homosexuality changed the culture so much that it demolished normal male friendships and intimacy.
When discontented moms aren’t humble-bragging about the huge mental load they’re carrying all the time, they're complaining about the growing piles of laundry and how it grows exponentially with every child. Or about how a room looks like a tornado went through it about 15 minutes after tidying up.
Some of these are good-natured and relatable. They come from a place of gratitude, understanding that even blessings have a weight and need to be carried and cared for.
But many complaints come from a dark seed of bitterness. To look at a child and seethe about “extra laundry” is obscene.
No amount of organization or help can root out bitterness. Even if you hired a maid, that person would not be able to clean the inside of a soul. It evinces a deeper spiritual problem.
However, there are people who need a little help because they were never taught properly, or they are so caught up in the daily humdrum of life that they can’t envision something different. So I want to help.
foundationfather.com/p/there…
