Craig Simon

Child of the King, husband of a godly wife, and father of five wonderful children. I have been blessed to be a blessing, and discipled to make disciples.

[The Jolly Brawler @TheJollyBrawler]

A few weeks ago, my daughter was speaking with a recent New Saint Andrews graduate.

The NSA grad told her she used to be a big fan of @Brian_Sauve and his family, until she went to NSA. That was where she supposedly realized Brian and his wife were derelict parents who had “pulled the ladder up behind them” by not allowing their daughters to go to college.

She went on to explain that she grew up in a household that practiced head coverings, and that she supported the practice until she went to NSA. Her family still practices head coverings, but she no longer wears them (though she admittedly feels guilt over it). She has also moved into her own apartment so she is no longer under the headship of her Christian father.

My daughter’s reply was:

“Well, you are unbelievably wrong about the Sauvés, wrong about head coverings, and you seem to have a lot in common with the feminists NSA claims to fight.

But my dad would not want me to argue with you about this, so I am going to go join that line dance.
Have a good night.”

When my Daughter came home, she hit on 3 things:
1. It was really hard to hear her say things about the Sauve's after they have been such a blessing to us.

2. She kept portraying herself as some free and educated woman, but she seems guilty, sad, and miserable.

3. I knew that if argued with her about head coverings, you would not be happy with me. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a head covering.

I love her.

[The Jolly Brawler @TheJollyBrawler]

Ladies,
Learn theology from your Fathers, Pastors, and Husband. Do not give these people a dime of your money, or a portion of your life and time. You will not be better off for it. You will not be a better Christian.

God built you for something, and it wasn’t for this.

Lean in.

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

For years, I expected my family to leave me alone for a period of “decompression” when I got home from work.

I’ve always worked in highly relational, conversation-based roles. I’d often arrive home overstimulated and disappear into my office.

My wife would want me to address a discipline issue with one of the kids or take interest in how her day went. My kids would want to tell me about their day or hit me with a thousand requests needing dad’s permission.

But I just wanted space.

I was fried.

“Give me a minute, guys.”

Looking back, I see that for what it was: a missed opportunity. A failure of leadership. How a man walks into his home after work says a lot about the culture he’s building.

A man doesn’t just bring home a paycheck.

He brings direction and masculine leadership.

So I changed. I started treating “re-entry” as a moment to lead, and I built three habits to help me do it.

Habit #1: I stopped listening to anything on the drive home. I use the silence to pray, collect my thoughts, and gear up to do more work, the kind that matters most. If you work from home, you might need to take a few minutes alone in your office before stepping out. Habits two and three flow from this one.

They start the moment I walk through the door.

Habit #2: I ask my wife if there are any discipline or pastoral issues that need a father’s touch. There are plenty of situations where a mother needs the father to step in. Handle those.

Once I’ve dealt with the kids, I move to habit three.

Habit #3: I tell my wife something about my day. She’s been with the kids all day with no adult conversation. More than that, she’s my main support in the mission I’m called to. I want her to see what she’s helping make possible by being a helpmate to me. Of course, I ask about her day too, but I’ve found that priming the pump helps get a good back-and-forth going.

I hear a lot of pastors scolding men for not doing dishes or folding laundry.

I rarely do either.

Not because I think I’m too good for it.

It’s just already done.

My wife oversees our home well.

Besides, me fathering my kids and encouraging my wife does ten times more for the health of our home. My household doesn’t need a second mother. It needs a father.

These habits help me get to that work the moment I walk through the door. They’re not rules I slavishly follow. Some days, I do need a moment. Sometimes the drive home just isn’t long enough. This is more about building a culture of action.

There are other ways to do this. Find what works for you. The point is to seize every opportunity to lead your home.

And a word to the wives: reciprocate. Don’t be the sort of wife who immediately dumps all, and only, the day’s difficulties on her husband. Be ready to share the wins too. And metaphorically speaking, give him a moment to put on his house slippers. If he moves toward you, and you move toward him, you’ll create a more peaceful home.

Let this be the attitude of both husband and wife: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). That means the husband sets aside his fatigue to engage. And it means the wife doesn’t greet him with a flood of complaints. He moves toward her, and she moves toward him. That’s how you build peace. That’s how you build a home.

[Wesley Todd (Sensible Moderate) @Wesley_Todd_]

Everything about women that is virtuous could be summed up in the word soft. She is to be quiet, peaceable, gentle; she is not loud, aggressive, or abrasive. Even in her biology women have more body fat (soft) than men and less muscle (hard). Their voice is not as strong or as loud. It does not cut the air or have gravitas. She is not to step into the pulpit because wielding authority and pronouncing judgment are contrary to her nature. She is not to wear that which pertains to a man. Everything about the virtuous woman is soft (without being undisciplined), receptive (without being unchaste), and inviting in the proper contexts.

Ironically, it is Allie Beth who is sick in the soul as she heaps on damnation from her pseudo-pulpit. Harsh. Stern. Scolding. Lecturing. Angry.

Thoroughly off putting and contrary to nature.

[Stephen Wolfe @PerfInjust]

@MallardReborn @ShawnMathis1972 Trueman has endorsed a number of bad books and authors: “Extravagant Grace” (antinomian), “Beyond Authority and Submission” (feminism), Aimee Bird, and Sam Allberry.

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

1/ The deepest attention problem in conservative circles is de-location. We've let news make the place we actually inhabit feel irrelevant. Neil Postman diagnosed this in 1985. The cause goes back further.

[Joe Rigney @joe_rigney]

Behold the return of Molech worship.

While this ruling is evil of the highest order, the clarity is refreshing.

Abortion is the bloody sacrament of the Left’s demonic religion.

[William Wolfe 🇺🇸 @WilliamWolfe]

Jay Green is a history professor at Covenant College and a Ruling Elder at St. Elmo Presbyterian Church (where Eli McGowan also attends). /🧵/

He was hand-picked by Kevin DeYoung to serve on the PCA study committee on Christian Nationalism.

But Green is a self-admitted political progressive. That is not me labeling him. That is the label he uses for himself.

He wrote this in 2023: "No one then would have described me as politically conservative. Though theologically conservative in matters of faith and practice, I considered myself broadly progressive when it came to politics and culture. (I haven’t voted Republican since the 1990s.)"

[Ryan Denton @TexasPreacher]

9 rules for family worship from the great Southern Presbyterian, William S. Plumer:

1. Let it be at seasonable and convenient hours, commonly before breakfast and just after tea or supper.

2. Let it not be tediously long. It is sometimes painfully protracted. That is not edifying.

3. Let the reading of God’s word, prayer, and if possible, singing, be parts of each exercise.

4. Let great decorum and decent solemnity enter into all acts of family devotion.

5. Let not the presence of company nor business engagements interrupt the regular order for worship.

6. Let family mercies and afflictions be duly notices by him who leads in the exercises.

7. Continually labor to have the heart right and warm.

8. Be joyful and cheerful in the whole service.

9. Never give reproofs to others in the forms of prayer.

[Eric Conn @Eric_Conn]

The whole John Piper controversy is interesting to me.

The pietist Anabaptists say they don’t have saints like Roman Catholics, that they don’t worship men.

But if you say anything about Piper… “Touch not thine anointed! Crucify him!”

It actually seems like sinful idolatry when we worship heroes and totally overlook their sins. Piper has done some good; he’s also done MUCH evil. His kids are a mess. One son goes to Russ Moore church and the other is an atheist.

He cheerled Somalis in MN. He said he wouldn’t defend his wife from an assailant. He attacked Trump right before the election. He pushed Lecrae on white church people. And he built a Trojan horse to let feminism in—complementarianism. He compromised the church with leftist nonsense.

Oh I know, he also taught Calvinistic adjacent things. He talked about seashells. I get it.

Most people will worship him still. But know this: He held open the gates for the barbarians.

[William Wolfe 🇺🇸 @WilliamWolfe]

Let’s see if I have this right.

The Left gets to:
> Open the border
> Flood America with tens of millions of illegal immigrants
> Many of whom are child predators, human traffickers, and criminals
> Then Blue States elect radical politicians who empower illegals to defraud American taxpayers by the billions
> oh, and the illegals vote in our elections, stealing our sovereignty

Then:
> America has enough
> elects Donald Trump on the explicit platform of the “largest mass deportation in history”
> Trump starts fulfilling his democratically delivered mandate

Then the Left:
> Riots
> Interferes with the deportations
> Tries to maim and murder heroic ICE agents
> Blue states led by clowns like Tim Walz revolt and refuse to cooperate with the duly elected President
> Activist judges release terrorists who stormed churches

And now the “answer” is:
> “It’s Trumps fault”
> “ICE needs to go”
> “Im an immigration restrictionist but this is too far”

Seriously?

Okay so now what? What about the 77 million Americans WHO VOTED FOR THIS?

If we let the Democrats stop Trump from fulfilling his mandate to deport illegals because the Left throws a fit, our elections are meaningless and our constitutional system is a sham.

[𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 🇺🇸 @creation247]

https://t.co/cD9Q8hNazh

[Berith Press @BerithPress]

This was true in 1622:

"Many children well trained up in schools, utterly lose the benefit of all their former education when they are sent to the university, because their tutors altogether leave them to themselves; and so they are made a prey to idle and lewd companions.

By reason hereof, many parents are utterly discouraged to send their children to the university."

William Gouge Of Domestical Duties

[Pastor Rich Lusk @Vicar1973]

The most important earthly work we do in this life is raise our children. Everything else we do, except for the worship of God, is subordinate to this end, and even the worship of God includes it.

Christian parents must recognize this. It does not matter how successful you are, how much you accomplish in work or ministry, how much wealth you accumulate, how many public accolades you get, how much fame you attain —  if your children turn against you and/or turn away from the Lord, it’s all for naught. What good would it do to have millions of dollars in middle age or in your later years, if your children hate you or hate the Lord? What good would a mountain house or lake house be if your kids are estranged from you or from Jesus? What good is a family vacation if your family ends up spiritually fractured?

Obviously, in God’s providence, there are hard situations. I’m not trying to make Christian parents with apostate children feel worse than they already do. Some cases of children who grew up in Christian homes and later apostatized are tough because it can *look* like the parents did everything right. But I’m not concerned here with those difficult cases. I’m much more concerned with helping young Christian parents and parents-to-be focus on the task at hand so they can do it well and experience the full blessings of God’s multi-generational covenant.

Here’s what’s frustrating: Many Christian parents do not take their parental responsibilities all that seriously. And many churches do not help them take those responsibilities seriously. The results speak for themselves: all too many children raised in Christian homes are lost to the world.

Given the reality that having apostate children is perhaps the greatest trial any Christian can deal with, it’s shocking that so many churches give so little time and energy to training parents how to raise their children biblically. Perhaps no other issue (other than marriage, which is equally important in this way) factors into our earthly happiness than our relationship with our children. “Once you are a parent, you can never be happier than your least happy child,” as the old saying goes. But how much teaching do most Christian parents get in their churches about the promises God makes to parents? How much teaching do they get on covenant succession? How much instruction is there about the multi-generational nature of God’s covenant? How much teaching do parents get concerning what it means to raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Or what the Bible says about education and discipline? Or inheritance? The stakes are so high, yet much of the church seems to invest so little.

Certainly a great deal of earthly joy is lost because so many Christians parents simply don’t know what they are doing. So much kingdom growth is lost, since when we lose our children to the world, the aim of creating Christian culture and civilization is made impossible. And of course, souls are lost through parental neglect.

In general, Christian parents need to be more diligent and more sacrificial. They need to be more conscientious when it comes to making decisions about discipline and education. And pastors and church leadership need to make teaching and preaching on wise and faithful parenting a priority. Parenting cannot be outsourced – God holds parents (especially fathers) responsible for how they nurture and train their children, and no one can take this task off their plate. But churches (especially pastors) have a responsibility to help parents as they undertake this massive work.

[Joe Rigney @joe_rigney]

One of the reasons I appreciate the work of @PerfInjust is the clarity of his reasoning. His article on the church-as-nation and church-among-the-nations is excellent. And unfortunately for some of his critics, he's now taken to citing and quoting Scripture all over the place.
https://t.co/iODb1wSR8r

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

Trueman always amazes me. How does a man manage to maintain his “above it all” posture while being neck-deep in the very world he critiques?

Most Christians only know who he is because of the new media ecosystem, podcasts and blogs,the very machinery he now looks down on. He clearly had plenty of time to build a platform through it, and now that he’s wrung it dry, he acts as though he’s transcended it. But he never really rises above what he condemns, only until he’s gotten all the use he can out of it.

Take The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. It’s a brilliant book with incisive cultural critique, including on egalitarianism. But it came right on the heels of his central role in the rise and fall of Aimee Byrd. That’s Trueman’s pattern: participate in a thing, benefit from it, then smirk while dissecting it as if he were a mere observer.

It’s self-exonerating criticism…a performance of detachment that depends on complicity to give it weight.

[Michael Clary @dmichaelclary]

I have a thought or two about Carl Trueman's piece on "big eva" vs. "gig eva."

First of all, I'm a nobody. I'm certainly not part of "Big Eva." I'm just an ordinary pastor who planted an inner city church in 2010. I worked in obscurity for over a decade before I had much online presence at all.

But in 2023, I wrote a book on biblical sexuality and wanted to get it published. So I sent pitches and manuscripts to a few "big eva" type publishers, but didn't get any responses.

No worries, I thought. It was a longshot anyway. After all, I didn't have much name recognition or social media presence, and I've been told bigger publishers won't consider you unless you've got a large social media following. Fair enough. So I started posting.

In the meantime, I found an indie publisher, Reformation Zion, hoping they'd give me a shot. Since RZ published Zach Garris's book Masculine Christianity, I thought surely they won't think my book is too spicy.

As it turns out, RZ was founded by Garris. He never said this himself, but I always suspected he founded his own publishing company because no Big Eva publisher would publish his book. He also published two books by Jon Harris, neither of which would have seen the light of day in Big Eva publishing houses.

Then, I needed endorsements. I asked some big name Christian leaders in the biblical sexuality space (names you'd recognize), but they turned me down. Again, I'm a nobody without much social media following, so I didn't mind. I ended up working a few connections and landed endorsements from CR Wiley, Megan Basham, and Michael Foster, among others.

Once the book came out, ordinary readers gave it great reviews (and not just from my mom!). I was hoping to get some well known publications to review it. American Reformer gave it a very good review, but CBMW's review was dampened by "sober caveats," in the words of the reviewer.

Of course, I didn't expect people to just hand me a big platform and marketing engine. I knew I'd have to promote it with hustle and grit. So I got to work on street marketing. I went on every podcast that would have me, mostly small podcasts, but a few bigger ones. I wrote about sexuality on X, FB, and substack to demonstrate a degree of subject matter expertise.

What's my point?

I became part of "Gig Eva" because "Big Eva" wouldn't give me a shot. The same could be said of so many other Gig Eva guys who were gate-kept out of the Big Eva mainstream and had no recourse but to build their own platforms to reach their audience.

I'm not bitter about this, this is the way things work. What I do find frustrating, however, is when Big Eva sneers condescendingly at men who hustled their way into the public discussion, driven by courage, a love for the church, and biblical conviction, only to have Big Eva guys treat them like children.

When I wasn't able to get a foot in Big Eva's publishing door, "Gig Eva" gave me incredible opportunities to find an audience. I've written for outlets like Center for Baptist Leadership, American Reformer, and Truth Script. Publications (and related podcasts) are not leading the discourse on the most pressing issues of the day without the institutional support of Big Eva, and often despite their opposition.

Time and time again, Gig Eva publishers have been ahead of the curve, oftentimes so far ahead of the curve that they seem crazy to Big Eva types, only to be vindicated in the long run. I'm thankful for them because they amplified my puny voice before anyone ever heard of me.

Yes, they're edgy and often unrefined. They don't have big budgets and editorial staff. But great movements are built on the strength of conviction. They aren't usually top down movements driven by institutional elites, but bottom up, grassroots movements. The gatekeepers know this and don't very much like being outgunned by the punk rockers of evangelicalism.

Thus, the "Gig Eva" moniker seems to be yet another gatekeeping attempt to prevent newer voices from finding an audience. I would have loved to publish my book with a big name publisher, but I always suspected that my book would be considered too conservative for them.

I don't know who exactly Trueman was criticizing because he didn't name names, but I suspect many of them are my friends, or even me. Regardless, I find the characterization insulting.

These men aren't losers with "time to spend living online" trying to "become a celebrity without having proved himself beforehand in any real service to the church." These men are pastors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders of all sorts.

Trueman says Gig Eva guys are "accountable to nobody," suggesting that these people "marginalize the actual church by making their own platforms and declarations the source of all wisdom." Come on. I know dozens of these guys and none of them are the unaccountable rogues Trueman described.

I've got no axe to grind with Trueman. In fact, I quoted him favorably several times in my book. But the condescension in his piece is too thick to ignore, especially when he seems to be indicting men who are not losers with an X account, but accomplished men who who are too conservative to ever get the time of day from Big Eva gatekeepers.

This is nothing new. This year's "Gig Eva" is last year's "Moscow Mood." I'm sure they'll roll out another cute slogan in 2026 to keep the wrong people from gaining too much influence.

In the meantime, the "Gig Eva" guys I know will keep plodding ahead. They will keep building new institutions because Big Eva gatekeepers deem them too controversial for theirs. They will keep pastoring their churches, reforming, writing, speaking, recording, posting and growing because they are confident they have a message worth hearing that will bless and strengthen the body of Christ.

And they're savvy enough to leverage new technology to get the word out.

[Megan Basham @megbasham]

If you as a Christian do not feel some pain at the thought of your nation, once firmly grounded in Christian culture, now witnessing federal government offices honoring Krishna, Kali, and Lakshmi, and telling you you must welcome giant golden monkey gods on the Houston horizon, then I think you have a lot more Bible reading to do.

[David Shane @david_shane]

We have a good one here I think, link in the reply.

[Ryan Helfenbein @RHelfenbein]

This is brilliant and timely. Reflecting on Charlie and Voddie, we know third-wayism is dead.

The false teaching of “neither left nor right” and the “11th Commandment” has been fully exposed.

Thank you @NRBCEO and @ostrachan with @VoddieBaucham @charliekirk11 @ericmetaxas