Well…as you read this missive, our daughter is now married. We had a marvelous day last Saturday. Of course it was a very emotional experience. In a perfect world it only happens once and this is a good thing; I could not manage another! She is now partnered with another and we believe it to be a God honoring match. I don’t suppose it ever happens exactly how one imagines, but having said that, this was pretty close. With another Father’s Day recently “In the Books” and watching my only daughter get married I have been thinking a lot about Fathers.

So much of the chaos in our world is a result of absentee fathers. Solomon, wrote in Proverbs 1:8 “Hear my son your father’s instruction”. Of course this passage needs to be understood with two applications: 1. Our Heavenly Father speaking to His children  2. An earthly father speaking to his children. Fathers have a method of teaching and play a role that is different from a mother’s. However, in our present-day culture, there is ever declining fatherly influence in the home. For the past several generations, we have witnessed declining marriage rates, increased divorce rates and cohabitation, and acceptance of sexual perversions as a normality.

The number of families with a father who is actually present and involved has declined. About half of today’s children will spend at least a portion of their growing-up years living apart from their fathers. The chaos we see throughout society is simply indescribably tragic. By design (from our Heavenly Father), “Fathering is different from Mothering”. Mothers bring love and nurturing to the family. Fathers bring restraint, discipline, and obedience. Solomon counseled his sons, “I give you good precepts, do not forsake my teaching” (Proverbs 4:2). And again in Proverbs 4:10, “Hear, my son, and accept my words, that the years of your life may be many.” Cause and effect!

Today 50% of our fathers cannot regularly counsel their sons, because they do not live with them. Government bureaucrats, social agencies, politicians, the media, etc;  give scant attention to dealing with the real problem of fatherlessness. Instead, they focus on attempting to deal with the results of the problem: delinquency, skyrocketing crime, mass murders, abortions, suicides, sex crimes, sexual perversion, homosexuality, transgenderism, teen pregnancy, depression, anxiety, mental illness, alcohol and drug use, poor academics (illiteracy), aggressivesness or lethergy, alienation, and family and societal acceptance and well-being (have I forgotten anything?).

Those who study such things strongly suggest that the current generation of children and youth is the first in our nation’s history to be less well-off psychologically, socially, economically, morally, spiritually and by any other standard than their parents were at the same age. INTENTIONAL men of God would not disagree! To these realities, Governmental leaders and Social agencies contribute little. In truth, they are more of a liability than an asset. In fairness, however, many American churches devote very little time preaching and teaching about, and supporting, family and fatherhood! The church can be a part of the problem or the solution.

If a father is to succeed at fathering, he should be supported primarily by his own family and that of course includes that Family of God. Solomon wrote, “When I was a son with my father (King David)…he taught me and said to me, ‘Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments and live'” (Proverbs 4:4). In times past, the father was the head of the household and was, for the most part, much more present in the home and engaged with the process of discipling their children. I realize that we are no longer an agrarian society, the industrial revolution came and fathers left their homes for outside employment, and many mothers left the home to provide needed income.

There is no doubt that the world in which we live provides unique challenges to parents. It is more difficult to be present. But if we were to be honest, the problem is one of priority. I have consistently counseled over the years that the most selfless thing one can do is to be a Biblical spouse; until you have children! But there is little doubt that children are the greatest gift a parent can receive. Having children is an act of obedience within the marriage covenant as parents become stewards of this matchless gift. Then our stewardship must become our priority along with our spouses of course and just second to our relationship with Him.

I realize that there are no perfect parents, no perfect fathers or mothers, no perfect children, no perfect processes to create perfect families, and perfect outcomes are not achievable. But the job remains, and it is an awesome task we are given to instill virtue and righteousness in our children and youth. As I watched my precious daughter and a fine young man promise to love and honor one another all the days of their lives, I was encouraged knowing that if the Lord blesses them with children of their own, the investment we made in our daughter’s life, and the investment our new partner parents made in their son’s life has positioned them to become future stewards who will in turn instill virtue and righteousness in their offspring.