The Mark of a Man

This was a great book for men's discipleship from a older woman. Elliot writes letters of advice to her nephew Pete, who is college-aged. She relays various various nuggets of wisdom drawing from Biblical concepts, reflection of her own experience with her three husbands (the late Jim Elliot, the late Addison Leitch, and Lars Gren), and her experiences as a woman and talking to other women. To review each concept would take a while, but essentially Elliot reminds readers through Pete what a Biblical man that is appreciated by a Biblical woman looks like, and where her ideas come from. The topics she covers range from the nature of distinctions between men and women, the call of leadership for men, the call of initiation for men, and the show more role of husbands in relation to their wives.

If you are expecting careful exegesis of the topic like your favorite theologian, you are missing the nature of the book. It's not a theological treatise, but rather a set of letters to a beloved nephew. It is a book with Elliot's trademark warmth and pointedness - simultaneously warming your heart while punching you in the gut. It is almost pastoral in nature, as if an older woman from my church, whom Biblically is akin to my mother, was writing to me. In all of the topics, Elliot doesn't simply give her opinion, but rather points the reader back to the Scriptures and God's design for men and women. Anyone familiar with Elliot's life knows that these are not simply theories or manifestos, but tried and true things of old. Just because it's old, doesn't mean it's wrong.

For all intents and purposes, this book is counter-cultural to today's vision of manhood, and even what is considered to be "Biblical manhood". Read it for yourself, be convicted to pray that God makes you, or the one you love, into the man that God designed him to be. show less

You can find my full review at Quieted Waters.

Elisabeth Elliot is a treasure from a bygone era, although she still lives and writes in ours. Her active, living faith shapes her life in a profound way, and her traditional, biblical view of manhood and womanhood hearken back to a time before modern feminism.

Men and women steeped in feminism and liberal equality will not enjoy The Mark of a Man, but traditional Christians with a complementarian view of the sexes will find a treasure in its pages.

non-fiction