Stand Up! A Guide to Biblical Manhood
Randy Stinson & Dan Dumas
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Press, 2011
In A Guide to Biblical Manhood, Randy Stinson and Dan Dumas say that men need to act like men. “We need men who aren’t pre-occupied with their amusements or appearance, but instead are willing and able to take on manly challenges.” These manly challenges primarily have to do with leadership, provision, and protection.
The authors apply biblical examples to men’s roles within the workplace, home, and church. While I have some small disagreements, the overall message is sound, and the advice is helpful. I particularly enjoyed the sections titled, “Twenty Five Things a Dad Should Teach a Boy” and “Eleven Connecting Points between Baseball, Biblical Masculinity and Godly Character.”
The overall theme of this book is that true manhood is about humility and self-sacrifice; we can’t be reminded of that enough. But it has been said a lot lately. Biblical manhood and womanhood top the popularity charts among reformed writers. Anything that can be said has been, many times and many ways. This book offers nothing new, nothing that isn’t already said in many other books like Richard Phillips’ The Masculine Mandate. The strength of this particular book, however, is that it summarizes the others in less than 110 pages. More men are likely to read and benefit from it. And at $5.99, it’s not only a bargain, but the right choice.