We’re proud to introduce an excellent new CD message by our brothers Isaac, David, and recently-engaged Benjamin.
What Our Father Taught Us About Girls
How to Relate to Sisters in Christ: A Practical Guide – by Isaac, David, and Benjamin Botkin
You can tell a lot about a nation by the boys are trained to treat girls. Will boys grow up with the ability to respect, cherish, and lead women into the future, or will young men continue to exploit and degrade women? Is it possible for American boys to rediscover the ways men were created to honor women the ways God intends for women to be honored?
This message reveals the attitudes three young men learned to cultivate as they listened to their father’s instruction, studied Scripture on their own, and then interacted with the fair sex with confidence, gallantry, and manliness. Get practical advice on how to obey the command to treat young women “as sisters, with all purity”: how to view girls; how to interact with girls; how to protect girls; how to handle flirtatious girls; and how to encourage and edify your sisters in Christ. Gain a vision for how to have meaningful and edifying friendships with those who are “heirs together of the grace of life.”
“About Girls” can be purchased here. Get a discount when you buy the bundle, including the companion CD:
What Our Father Taught Us About Boys
How to Relate to Brothers in Christ: A Practical Guide — By Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin
Why is it hard for girls to find the balance between flirting and shunning? How can girls keep their hearts pure? What responsibilities do they have toward young men? Is it possible to be “just friends”? Hear practical advice from Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin on navigating the tricky waters of relationships with boys, and how these relationships, properly conducted, can be edifying and strengthening.
[I] highly recommend it for parents striving to help their daughters navigate what can be (but certainly don’t always have to be) the tricky waters of boy-girl friendships and young women who are seeking biblical encouragement and advice on the subject. . . . a very important disclaimer: if you’re not ready to be convicted, to alter your perception of the young men in our life, and, by extension, to alter your behavior . . . don’t purchase it. — Jasmine Baucham
Dad talking with the little boys at our church. One of the defining verses of our father’s life: “So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.” (John 21:15)
This Father’s Day, we would like to re-post a tribute we wrote to our father last year.
Our Father: Geoffrey Botkin
This Father’s Day, we would like to talk a bit about the man we are privileged to call our father.
All our lives people have asked us what it’s like to be the daughters of Geoffrey Botkin, a man who inspires people with both awe and curiosity. Today he is becoming known as a visionary with seven activist children, a background in nearly every area of study, and a plan for international reformation. However, his understated modesty and relatively low profile make him mysterious to some.
Our father has led a remarkable life – we continually find out history about accomplishments that he never publicized. He has never sought fame or spotlight, but he has been influential in everything he has ever done. It so happens that much of his past professional work as a political advisor, and a pastor, involves confidential information about a large variety of people, from heads of state to royalty to rock stars. As a man who protects people’s reputations, that part of his life will always remain confidential.
And that is only part of what makes our father’s history enigmatic to some. That he is not the product of any group, denomination, organization or institution makes him impossible to pigeon-hole. Geoff Botkin doesn’t fit in any biographical box known to modern media.
So who is Geoff Botkin? First and foremost he is a family man, with an intense interest in the church and the condition of the suffering. Whether serving as an author, filmmaker, entrepreneur, mentor, or pastor, he is ultimately a shepherd whose whole life is about the essentials of the Great Commission.
From the beginning of his Christian life, which began in 1975, he understood the stakes in the culture war and wanted to take his place on the front lines. His is the story of a man who would raise or lower himself to any position to do what his times required of him. In our lives, we’ve seen him rise to meet any challenge, learn any skill, wear any hat, and go any place.
Man of many talents: Geoffrey Botkin snow-sculpts one of the great Reformers
Some people find him intimidating — until they get to know him. Beneath his gravitas and self-command, he has a heart for people that is unusually tender and loving. As children accompanying him on various outings and business trips, we were often astonished by the kinds of people he would stop to talk to. He could connect with the bums on the street, hardened D.C. power-women, teenaged neighborhood hellions, high-school cheerleaders, Army generals, and little children on the playground.
Almost 30 years ago Dad married his boyhood sweetheart, Victoria, and began the best adventure of his life: his family. Geoffrey Botkin loves being a daddy. The days of drawing with us and telling us Cowboy Joe stories, though, have given way to new adventures — traveling the country speaking together, making films together, fighting the culture war together. Instead of helping us build tree forts and doll houses, now he’s helping us start our own businesses and write our own books. Dad has always been a strong and visionary governor of his household, but a servant-leader with the compassion and humility of a man who understands that he, too, is under authority. He taught us honor and obedience primarily by his own example of it.
His uncompromising devotion to God’s Word has always brought him a share of enemies, cynics, and persecutors, but no one who knew him personally could reproach him for his character. We heard even his political enemies describe him as “an honorable man.”
Our father and brother Benjamin give a presentation illustrating the Seven Attitudes of the Auteur
Dad always taught us not to fear having critics or sparking controversy — by his example he showed us that the only thing that mattered was saying and doing what was right, and the only one to fear was God. Mammon also has no power over him. Consistently indifferent to fame, money, and worldly “success,” he has always reminded us of the heroes of the Faith , “Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.” (Hebrews 11:26)
His most striking characteristic is that he has no selfish personal agenda. He seeks to find and advance Christ’s agenda. More than any other man we have ever known, he has died to every part of himself. In Paul’s words, he has emptied himself out as a drink offering. From the day of his conversion he gave up all his own interests, ambitions, and desires, to be single-minded in the mission of making manifest the reign of Christ.
People who are products of post-modernism will have a hard time understanding this modest, self-effacing and understated man, sometimes interpreting him as mysterious and enigmatic, for he is of a character that was largely stamped out by modernism.
So who is Geoffrey Botkin? A devoted and gentle father, and a humble Christian gentleman. The kind of man our world has a hard time understanding, but future generations will remember with gratefulness.
Biblical Principles for Girls in Difficult Situations
When we were in our mid teens, we befriended several high school and college girls of diverse backgrounds – some from Christian families, most not. As we got to know them better, it became more than just our friendship they sought: they couldn’t stay away from our home.
At our home, they were able to be part of something they did not have. Some of them had never even seen it before. We had an intact, happy family. We had an involved, loving father who protected and provided for us. We had a mother who was an example of godliness and femininity. We had a family that worked together toward an important goal that involved us. While our friends struggled to know where they were going, who they were supposed to be, and where they fit into an egalitarian, dog-eat-dog society, we were discovering a world of stimulation, fruitfulness and purpose within God’s family economy. These girls felt the difference.
One of them, a previous valedictorian, U.N. honors student, and R.A., told us after one of her meals at our family farm, “I would learn more if I lived with your family and dug holes in the ground all day than I learn at university.”
We realized God had given us something most girls did not have – something we did nothing to deserve.
We also realized that happy families don’t happen by accident, and that ours was built from scratch by two people who started out like these college kids, but were willing to pick up the pieces of a broken model and build a different kind of family on biblical principles. We knew that it was possible to build God’s order out of today’s disorder because we had seen it done – through faith that His ways are perfect. “He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” (Deut. 32:4)
It was girls like these whom we wanted to help when we started writing our book, by showing them there was hope – even in tough situations, even in dysfunctional families, even in a broken society. There are answers. There is a better way. There is so much more.
We knew our message wouldn’t be an easy fix for their problems, however. When a girl embraces biblical principles, her problems don’t automatically disappear. In fact, when biblical principles come head to head with the ugly reality of a society ravaged by feminism and socialism, it can mean war. It can bring, not peace, but a sword (Matt. 10:34).
Many girls are left with nothing to do but try to hold their families together, and are confused about how the “visionary daughters” vision applies to them. We often get emails from girls with abusive fathers, girls with fathers who leave, girls with hateful mothers, girls who have been orphaned, and almost every other painful situation, asking, “What about me? How do you practice biblical principles in a compromised world? In compromised situations?”
Making the Most of 2010
What we would like to do in this post is offer hope and encouragement to girls in difficult situations. As much as we would like to be able to offer specific suggestions, we recognize that every situation is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all girls. This is why in the past we have mainly focused on casting a vision for the ideal, recognizing that every girl’s journey to the ideal will look different. Whether the ideal is attainable soon or only years into the future, it is a goal we all should have always before us. As we stated in our book, girls should have hope for something better than mere survival.
Scripture, wisdom, resourcefulness, wise counsel, motivation, and faith are not out of any girl’s reach, and they are the key to bringing the best out of our circumstances. The truth is that no girls start out with perfect situations. Even the ones who seem to have “ideal” circumstances have had to work for them. In our experience, these girls are the ones who:
- Stop focusing on themselves
- Look to the big picture
- Stay focused on the goal
- View their situation as an opportunity, not an excuse
- Are grateful for what the Lord has given them
- Embrace hardship, trials and hard work
But there is more than that. To make the most of a challenging situation, you must master the three big temptations crouching at your door.
1. Don’t Become Bitter and Compromise
The temptation is to believe “God has failed me, so I guess that clears me of any obligation to Him.” Sometimes it manifests itself as “I did everything right and God didn’t come through so obviously it doesn’t work”; sometimes as “God clearly hasn’t given me what I need to be able to do everything right.” But God is not an equal with Whom we can make deals and haggle over moral standards.
There is also the false presupposition that circumstances have anything to do with personal righteousness (or that circumstances themselves impute righteousness). Because God is the One who gives circumstances, there is no “more holy” circumstance (e.g. having an intact family, though a blessing, does not make you a better person than the girl whose parents are divorced.) We may not be responsible for our circumstances, but we are responsible for how we use them, and we are responsible for our attitudes. We all have to do right with what God has given us.
But we may need to reevaluate our idea of “doing what’s right,” when it comes to moral dilemmas and quandaries, remembering that our standard is Sola Scriptura – not what popular speakers teach, not what our friends are doing ,and not what makes us “feel feminine.” Girls can make things frustrating for themselves when they set up a bunch of external measurements of “rightness” that have nothing to do with biblical principles.
There are principles in Scripture that suggest that we should be distinctively feminine, honoring parents and authorities, trying to serve God within a home-and-family context, preparing for wifehood and motherhood, praying for a God-honoring marriage and a godly husband with whom to build a better future for your daughters, building up men, and seeking after a useful education. Simply living with your biological parents or doing homemakey things, however, doth not a biblical daughter make. You can discourage your family, dishonor your parents, serve no one but yourself, run men down, waste time, neglect the needy, cultivate personal uselessness, and prepare yourself for a wretched marriage, while living self-righteously at home baking muffins in a feminine apron you made all by yourself.
People compromise when they decide that being principled is not going to work; they will have to “be practical.” In other words, when they lose faith. We need to stay strong in the faith that His precepts/instructions/directions are right, and that He “preserveth the faithful.” (Psalm 31:23)
“But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children; to such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His commandments to do them. (Psalm 103:17,18)
2. Don’t Judge Others and Assume that They are Judging You
Girls have a tendency to size one another up. When confronted with a girl who makes us feel our own inadequacies, either by her own merits or by her perceived advantages, the temptation is to seethe with resentment, and to cultivate scorn by filling our minds with imagined deficiencies. It’s an easy way to justify our shortcomings, nurse our egos, and absolve ourselves of any need to try harder.
Worse, girls can tend to size up one another’s parents, siblings, homes, bank accounts, opportunities and lifestyles. This is good fuel for discontentment and excuse-making. When we measure, say, our fathers, against what we imagine other girls have, they’re always going to come up short. Comparisons are often based on presumptions, which are usually wrong. Girls in what may look like the “ideal” situation still deal with the effects of the fall and a broken society in a big way – we may just not know what those ways are because they don’t complain about it. Nobody actually has the ideal situation, but it’s easy to assume things when you don’t know the details, and that makes it easier to dismiss an example that would have been good to follow.
The biggest fault we often want to level at those “privileged” girls is that they’re hoity-toity snoots looking down on us for not being them – for (gasp) JUDGING US.
There may truly be girls who lack understanding and compassion towards girls in situations they don’t understand, but they’re not the ones whose opinion you should care about. Ultimately, God is the only One we should be trying to please, and whose displeasure we should fear. He will not judge us for the situations He gave us (though He well may be angry with the way some of us are responding). If you have been given a challenging situation, and are using it in faith, perseverance and integrity, you will be pleasing to God, and have the respect of His saints.
3. Don’t Break the 10th Commandment
The 10th commandment is one of the most interesting – and under-rated – of the commandments.
“Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17)
We may fail to take it seriously because it doesn’t seem that bad, next to murdering or stealing, or it may be because we think we’re doing fine on this one (we’ve never really wanted our neighbors’ livestock.) But try replacing “your neighbor’s ox” with “your neighbor’s perfect hair,” “your neighbor’s designer clothes,” “your neighbor’s visionary father,” “your neighbor’s like-minded friends,” “your neighbor’s perfect, non-aggravating family,” “your neighbor’s engagement ring,” or anything else you resented another girl’s having that you didn’t.
Coveting is, in fact, a sin which God often lists alongside murder, adultery, blasphemy, sodomy, idolatry and more (Mark 7:22, Rom. 1:29, 1 Cor. 5:10,11, 1 Cor. 6:10, Eph. 5:3,5, Col. 3:5, 2 Tim. 3:2, 2 Pet. 2:14). The Bible even mentions entire nations being judged for covetousness (Jer. 6:13, Jer. 8:10, Jer. 51:13) – presumably because it’s one of those sins that can become part of the national consciousness.
In our nation today, it’s PC to covet. Our society encourages us to venerate fairness, to want to see everything leveled so that nobody has what other people don’t have. This may be why we don’t take it very seriously as a sin. However, in his economic treatise Eat the Rich, P.J. O’Rourke writes, “A liking for fairness is not that noble a sentiment. Fairness doesn’t rank with charity, love, duty, or self-sacrifice. And there’s always a tinge of self-seeking in making sure that things are fair.” (Further, he tells his daughter, “You had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.”) A fixation with making sure everything is fair is not just petty – it can be deadly. It was the chief idolatry that created the bloodiest century in history.
Here’s the other lesson the 10th commandment teaches. The tenth commandment is not about squelching desires and aspirations for a better life. It’s not telling us that it’s wrong to desire houses, livestock, wives, husbands, beauty, success, skills, gifts, or any of the other things that the Bible tells us are good things. It’s not advocating Gnostic or self-righteous pietism (“I’m too spiritual to desire such paltry things”). The message of the 10th commandment is this: Don’t begrudge others the fruits of God’s blessing and their hard work – get out there and work towards those for yourself.
Coveting can consume our thoughts and eventually our life. If we give in to it, it will:
- Kill our gratitude
- Kill our incentive to work for what we desire
- Kill our ability to rejoice in other people’s good
- Kill our love for God, who clearly is ‘not fair’
“Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” (James 4:2,3)
Conclusion
In the same way that God designed all of creation in its undeniable perfection and beauty, He handcrafted each girl’s situation with exquisite precision. He chose the exact parents, position, and opportunities that would best fulfill His purposes for her life and bring Him glory.
This does not mean that there won’t be trials and tests, not even for the seemingly “more fortunate.” We are all tested. “The LORD is in His holy temple, the LORD’S throne is in heaven: His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men. The LORD trieth the righteous…” (Psalm 11:4,5) The very trials He gives us are signs of His love for us in the advantages they ultimately produce.
After all, we’re not the only girls struggling. All over the world girls are being thrown out (and worse), wives are being abandoned, widows are being neglected, and another generation of daughters is being raised by women who married in desperation to escape an unhappy situation – perpetuating the cycle. Those who have had more personal experience with these kinds of problems will know better how to help. They will know better how to raise their sons to be responsible leaders and protectors. They will know better how to raise their daughters to be strong and full of faith. As girls face their situations by re-hauling their attitudes and actions, in faith, they prepare themselves to be warriors in the work of re-hauling a broken nation.
It’s because it’s so hard to live out biblical principles in a crooked and perverse generation that we have to persevere and “make it work.” The future of our children and other young women to come may depend on it.
We can’t promise anything – but God does promise some things to girls in difficult situations. In His loving mercy, He promises that He will be “a Father to the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows” (Psalm 68:5). He promises that He makes “all things work together for good to them that love God, and to them who are the are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). He promises that if we “seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness… all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33). And He promises that if we “do not be weary in well doing,” “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” (Gal. 6:9)
