The Lost Art of Fatherhood

This is an article I wrote for Father's Day for the newsletter last year.  I revised and updated it and wanted to share it with you all.

We all have one…well, sort of.  My Mother never knew her father.  He died in a logging accident when she was still being knit together in her mother’s womb.  But she still had a father, who played a large part in her development.  Our culture is reaching a crisis point with the majority of a generation that will be growing up without full-time fathers in the house.   All of these kids have a father – dead or alive, present or absent, they all have one.  They all have fathers who have played a large part in their development.  Even the father that decided to bail has played a large role in a child’s life simply by his absence.  Sigmund Freud taught that a person could never get past the inevitability of putting the characteristics of our human fathers into our perception of God.  

Before my wife was promoted to motherhood she was a social worker for adolescents with various psychological disorders.  It was very obviously not coincidental that of her 16 clients, 15 of them had been abused in some way by an elder family member.  There fathers (or absence of fathers) played a large role in their psychological development.  Almost on a weekly basis my wife would come home and share the story of her day and through tears ask me how in the world we got so lucky to be born into such fortunate circumstances, while there are those who are born with seemingly no hope.  While she was thinking on the psychological side of the matter, I began to think on the theological side of the question.      

As I read through the Old Testament I am struck by the immense responsibility of fatherhood.  When one thinks about fatherhood in the Old Testament, thoughts are automatically drawn to Abraham holding the knife above his miracle child Isaac, or to Adam the first father, or even to Ham, Shem, and Japheth’s father who built the ark and invited them on board.  My thoughts are drawn to the cause of the flood.  Genesis 6 says that God destroyed the world by flood because, the LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time (v. 5). Follow me for a minute.  

According to Genesis 5 there is only 9 generations between Adam and Noah.  Adam had a personal, physical relationship with God in the garden.  As the aforementioned verse tells us, something happened in those nine generations that caused God to be grieved that he had made man on earth (6:6).  For 9 generations fathers dropped the ball.  Fast forward a few years.  Noah and his 3 sons saw God miraculously save them from destruction.  The entire earth was populated by those 4 men.  By the time Christ was born, monotheism was the extreme minority in the world.  Even today in the world’s most populated country Christianity is not the majority religion (yet).  Somewhere in the chain of humanity, fathers dropped the ball.  I realize this is an extreme example but God knew the importance of fatherhood when he inspired Moses to write,  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deut. 6:4-9).      

The burden of fatherhood is serious.  I realize that there are fantastic fathers whose children reject God.  I also realize that there are kids without fathers who love and fear the Lord.  The good news is that links in the chain that have been broken can be repaired - I just met a girl who told me she was the first Christian in her family - ever.  I take very seriously my spiritual role as a father to Keegan and Reese.  I took very seriously my spiritual role in the lives of the fatherless students at KRBC.  Also, a large part of our motivation in coming to China was so that I could in some small way fill a void in these orphan’s lives that their father was supposed to fill.  There are fatherless people in our world who need someone to show them that Freud was wrong.  They need someone to show them the love of their heavenly Father.

I fear for our country of boys growing up without fathers.  I thank God for my father.  I am who I am because he is who is.  Flawed, to be sure, but he was just a small example of my heavenly Father’s unconditional love.  I can only pray that the results of my fatherhood are as good as his.  I love you Dad!  Happy Father’s Day.