Fatherhood 101
This is not being written from the perspective of someone who thinks they have fully mastered fatherhood. I have made my share of mistakes, and my share of unwise decisions. My perspective is, instead, that of an observer of the high cost of spiritual and emotional orphanhood.
Over recent weeks and months, I have had conversations with people whose mental image of God is tainted by negative experiences with their earthly fathers. Rather than focusing on the negative, I would like to take a little bit of time to look at some of the things that every father should be doing. My desire is to challenge the reader to embark upon their own personal course of godly fatherhood.
Why focus on fathers? Part of the reason, admittedly, is the fact that I am a father myself, and feel more equipped to speak on this topic than on motherhood. There is another reason, though. God has chosen to identify Himself to us as our heavenly Father. There are other titles, but the title "father" is one that carries a personal picture of some sort or other for everyone. Whether a father was present or not, whether he was living during a person's childhood, whether or not he was kind, or patient or loving, are all things that will affect the way a person feels about the word father. By extension, it can have a profound affect on people's feelings about God.
I know a young man who was recently engaged to be married. He is not my son, but I am invested in his life, and in some ways, think of him as a spiritual son. I would like to address this article to him, but the truths that are expressed here will be applicable to all fathers, both present and future. I'll call him Richard.
An Open Letter
Dear Richard,
I was delighted to hear of your engagement. When you experience joy, it gives me joy as well. I still remember the joy of hearing of your decision to follow Christ, and this joy remains one of the greatest joys of my life.
You may ask why I am writing to you about fatherhood when you are just newly engaged. The reason is that fatherhood will be one of the most important and enduring thing that you ever do in your life. There will be plenty to learn about the practical day-to-day details of parenting when it happens to you, and I want you to be as prepared as possible for the spiritual role of fatherhood when it happens. As I mentioned in the introduction, my hope is that this will challenge you to begin a lifelong study.
While being a godly father is a lifelong study, the basic concept is simple but not easy. The concept is to devote yourself to the task of growing into a reflection of the image of your heavenly father.
Both you and I were raised by dads who desired good for us, and I believe I can say we both respect our dads. We need, however, to avoid the natural tendency to shape ourselves after other men and stop there. They may point in a good direction, but we need to look at our prime example of Fatherhood, God Himself.
A good place to start is to learn about Him, as I know you are doing. Pay attention to places in the Bible that refer to God as our Father. In fact, any scripture that mentions the attributes of God should be a place to stop and ruminate.
To be a godly father, and the best we can be, we need to be practical. Any knowledge that we have about the concept will need to be applied before it will do our children any good. With this in mind, I took a few minutes to talk to my children today, to see what they could tell me about how I have helped to shape their picture of God.
One thing that they mentioned was the fact that I leave no opportunity for them to doubt the fact that I love their mother. Since I am commanded by God to love her as Christ loved the church, I need to be reflecting divine nature in this area. (Read Knight in Dented Armor for more on this.) You have the opportunity to prepare yourself for marriage and possible future fatherhood by loving your fiancée now.
Another point mentioned by my children was the fact that I protect them. To me, this is hugely important. How can they feel safe as adults if they feel that "Father" refers to someone who is unconcerned with their physical, spiritual, and emotional safety, or even worse, causes them harm himself.
Presence is another idea one of my children brought up. I know many young people whose fathers are physically absent, because of abandonment or divorce, but in other cases, the fathers are out of the picture because they are spiritually or emotionally absent. I will be honest and admit that I have been more spiritually and emotional present at some times in my life than I have at others. Those times where I did a poorer job at engaging with them are times that I know they suffered.
A couple of additional points can be classified under the heading of love. My children can see that I am concerned for their wellbeing, that I know them, and that I can see their strengths. Love for your children needs to go beyond being a warm fuzzy feeling, and become something that is self-sacrificing.
I'm including a verse here that I find helpful:
Fathers, do not exasperate [stir to anger] your children, so that they will not lose heart. [be dismayed] - Colossians 3:21 NASV (Brackets are alternate translation.)
Yes, sometimes I need to do things that my children are not happy with. I work hard not to exasperate them though. The warning here is that doing so may make our children lose heart, or be dismayed. This loss of heart can be long-lasting, as I have found when talking to adults with fathers that did not heed this advice.
Your brother in Christ,
Peter
Conclusion
This letter and accompanying introduction and conclusion barely scratch the surface, but hopefully it is enough to challenge the reader to search for more.
I will close with a couple of points:
Sons need their fathers to be examples of the best definition of manhood. Strength under control, godly wisdom, fierce desire to protect women and children. Fathers must demonstrate respect for women, starting with their wives. As young men mature, they need to be given the opportunity to make the transition from boyhood to manhood. Fathers may not be able to make this transition easy, but we have the ability to make it more difficult. Let us trust in God to help us not to do that.
Daughters need to have their fathers protection. As they grow, shower them with love, and celebrate their beauty, letting them know that beauty starts within. Fathers must let their daughters know that nothing will ever cause them to lose Dad's love. It is important to get your wife's perspective and input, since she has the experience of being a young girl, where you do not.
Both sons and daughters need loving and gentle correction. Sometimes they will need to be jolted awake in ways that will make them uncomfortable. They must always know that your love is present during times of correction and discipline. Children need to be taught from the Word of God. The responsibility for this lies with parents.
Every father will make mistakes. When you do, go back to your children and apologize, and ask for their forgiveness.
Above all, trust in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside of you. This Holy Spirit is the spirit of God, THE FATHER. God is our example, but He also gives us the desire and the power to follow His example.
Taking off the Mud-Colored Glasses
A lot has been said over the years about the power of positive thinking. Change the way you think, and it will change your life. Think happy thoughts. Chin up. Turn that frown upside down.
When it comes to teaching children to have a positive self-image, parents often take the approach of protecting their offspring from anything that might reflect negatively on them. Schools have "contests" where every student comes out a winner, with the thought that this will help to build self-esteem, even though the ribbon the student takes home really doesn't represent any special distinction or individual value.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the thinking that winning something is the key to self-respect. From this viewpoint, we have over-achievers who destroy their health and peace in search of that "win" that will give them the personal boost that they are looking for. Others may try to bolster their image of themselves by performing an endless series of good deeds.
With the "everyone wins" approach, no one is given a sense of personal value in the area that is so important: one that says that no one else could ever replace them. With the self-effort approach, people are lured into a frantic lifestyle that promises something but fails to deliver. Or, if they don't achieve their goals, that serves as reason to believe that they are, indeed, failures.
The fact is, however, that a positive opinion of self cannot be bestowed upon us by ourselves, nor is it something that can be forced upon us by others.
It is interesting that positive thinking seems to work at times, but other times it seems to be a hollow attempt to pull one's self up by the bootstraps. What makes the difference between helpful and unhelpful optimism?
I personally have struggled with a sense of not measuring up, somehow, of being second-rate. I had a sense that everyone around me was doing a better job at living life than I was, and that somehow I had been lost in the shuffle when it came to receiving God's grace.
God worked in my heart in areas of faith and confidence in Him. In some cases the process was gradual, taken in small steps, and other times He brought things my way that helped me to take a large step. One of the most significant of these came about two years ago. I had been doubting my worth, doubting God's love for me, and doubting His power within me. In preparation for a significant life lesson, God reminded me that all that is good comes from Him, and that all of His power was in me through His Holy Spirit.
In a conversation about two years ago, an old friend pointed out the impact my friendship made when we were much younger. I came to realize that God had acted through me to be an encouragement in ways that I could not have guessed at the time. It got me to thinking about the fact that God had been working in me and through me for a long time.
As a result of this, I was able to make the choice to begin to look at myself the way that God sees me. This is where truth comes in. The truth about me is this: Because of the work of Christ, God sees me as without fault. My mind wants to say, "Of course I know better: God sees me through rose-colored glasses". When put this way, the idea is ludicrous, but how many of us actually do this? We believe in Christ, and yet fail to believe the promises about what that faith means in our lives. God's perspective is correct, and yet many of us accept Satan's view of us rather than God's.
The truth here is so much better than trying to better ourselves through self-effort, or trying to make our children feel valuable by giving them meaningless ribbons. It goes way beyond just "positive thinking". The fact is that sometimes the truth can be painful, and it is possible to fear the truth because we fear pain. One of the amazing things about truth is the fact that it includes not only what is, but also what will be and what can be.
One example of this is God's law, which is true, but painfully cuts across human nature. Because of grace, however, we don't have to stay in that painful place. In that sense, truth hurts for a while, but hurts so that it can heal. This is because God's law "... has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith." (Gal 3:24 NASV) Once we encounter Christ, we are transformed from the inside out. Confidence in our value is no longer self-confidence, which is a form of pride, but God-confidence.
In my case, as I accepted the truth that I had already been transformed by God's grace and the truth that His power was within me, I was able to take off the mud-colored glasses that I had been looking through for many of the years of my life. Now I can look at myself and choose to accept what God told me He sees: a redeemed child of His that reflects His image, and an instrument of His power, love and grace towards others.
To quote John 8:32, "And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (NASV) Positive thinking, then, will only be effective if it is true. Let us search God's word for the truth about Him, and the truth about ourselves. Doing so has been a source of great joy in my life, and will be for anyone else who loves truth and pursues it.
Earthen Vessels
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Oh the sixth day, God created a special treasure. The first man and woman in the garden bore the stamp of His image in similar and yet distinct ways, and because of the image they bore, they could be nothing but beautiful.
As creatures made by God, they were physically amazing, but the thing that set them apart from the rest of creation was the fact that God had given them eternal spirits, and infused them with the capacity to reflect His qualities. A holy, loving, creative, and perfect God, made Adam and Eve to be holy, loving, creative, and perfect.
It is difficult to understand why God would choose to do such a thing. Divine qualities now inhabited something that had been formed of dust. Something of great value was contained within something that had the potential for corruption — earthen vessels, as they are described in Scripture:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. 2 Corinthians 4:7, NASB
God is wise, and what He does is always good, but it wasn't long before these earthen vessels, or jars of clay, became marred and dirty. Adam and Eve's immediate action after their sin was to cover up and to hide. What they did literally, we tend to do figuratively. In our lives, we struggle with the continual temptation to cover up and hide the dirt and scratches that arise as the results of our sin. If we give in to this temptation, it is like putting a veneer on the dirty and marred clay pot. It looks a little better on the surface, but in reality, it only serves to further obscure the beauty that lies deeper than the surface and deeper than the container itself.
There are times in our lives that we feel that our experiences are stripping away our dignity. Think of the picture of having the veneer come off. Sometimes when this happens, we work carefully to replace it, and even paint over it. We don't want people to see the "real us" (the clay pot).
If we allow it, however, God will succeed in pulling off the veneer, exposing what is scarred, ugly and defiled. He washes off the dirt. What He does next will hurt more than having the veneer pulled off: He breaks the earthen vessel. We lay in pieces, mourning, until we realize that our true identity in Christ had finally been revealed. In the sense of living in an earthly body, the treasure is still in an earthen vessel, and yet, in a sense, it no longer matters to us, because the focus isn't on the clay pot any more, but on the beauty inside.
This can be challenging. There is the pain of maintaining an illusion, in fear of what people might think if they know what we are like inside. The fact is, though, that all of us are descended from Adam and Eve, and all of us have inherited the brokenness and sinfulness. We can't hide this from God: in fact it was for this very reason that He sent the Redeemer. The work of Christ restores the nature and image of God within us. The very thing that we do to protect our image, obscures His image.
May God inspire us as we go through the experiences that break us. In the midst of pain, may we rejoice in the fact that His beauty, grace, and strength are being revealed in us. May we welcome the process, and turn our focus away from what people think of us or what we think of ourselves. May we wholeheartedly embrace the truth that when the Father looks at us, He sees the image of His Son.
This article is a personal testimony. God broke me so that I would get out of the way, and so that He would be glorified. As hard as it was to accept this when I was going through the most painful part of it, I now live with the joy of actually seeing His image within me. Although the work of God continues, I have learned to be more accepting of the process, which may still be painful, but is no longer accompanied by fear.
If you would like encouragement as you go through times of difficulty, or if you would like me to pray for you, head over to the contact page, and leave me a message. May God bless you.