A few minutes ago, I looked in on our Church’s monthly Saturday morning session of Kids Krafts, with a grandmother and several mothers spending time at the Church house guiding children as they made gifts to give to the important people in their lives. The picture shown is so altered that no one can recognize any of the individuals whose faces are shown. In contrast, family and loved ones will have no difficulty identifying the overall body shape, posture, and physical attitude of the person pictured. Kids Krafts was not on my mind several days ago as I began to formulate this iteration of Ministerial Musings, “The Most Dangerous Dads In The World.”
What is the most important task any human being can ever take on? If Revelation 4.11 is any clue, the most essential duty, obligation, and responsibility for any human being is to consciously and conscientiously seek to glorify God. How that is best done depends upon a variety of factors, such as whether you are a child or adult, a man or a woman, married or unmarried, a husband or a wife, a father or a mother. As one’s status changes over life, how one consciously and conscientiously seeks to glorify God must modify.
For this iteration of Ministerial Musings, I want to give thought to a man, a dad, who is very dangerous for his child or children. Most fathers do not seek to be hazardous to their children, but many fathers are inadvertently a profound threat to the spiritual health and welfare, yes, to the eternal good of their children.
What are the most important influences in a child’s life? The importance of environment, parents, siblings, extended family members, and inherited traits and characteristics are recognized. Most of these things, however, are beyond the scope of my present musing. I am a pastor. The Lord called me to the Gospel ministry in 1975. Therefore, I have been in the Gospel ministry for 46 years. I have observed a great deal. I have experienced a great deal. And I have studied a great deal.
While fathers are not the most important person in any child’s life at the outset, they can become the most important adult in a child’s life over time. This is especially true with boys and is confirmed as children age and become somewhat more independent and autonomous from their mothers. As the importance of mothers correctly and appropriately diminishes to some degree, the importance of fathers correctly and appropriately intensifies to some degree. Of course, this is especially true of boys.
At some point in a boy’s life, he begins to recognize (usually below the level of conscious thought) that he is different than his mother. Studies have shown that for a boy to reach his potential as a man, he must reorient himself away from the female world and toward the male world at some point in his life. There is a wide variation of the healthy timing of this reorientation. This reorientation is not necessary for girls becoming women, but it is both complex and crucial to the transformation of boys to men. Therefore, imagine the confusion in our culture from failing to recognize the importance of this transition, either by denying that men are essentially (physically and psychologically) different than women or by failing to provide models and templates for boys to embrace as they step away from their mothers to reorient themselves for life as an adult male.
I am profoundly thankful that my mother was of a generation of women who seemed to understand the importance of this transformation innately, did not resist this transformation in the lives of either of her sons and encouraged her sons to become both manly and men.
There seem to be three kinds of fathers I have observed in the world we currently live in. There is the father with no discernible influence in his child’s life, either because he is not physically present in the home or because he is a virtual non-entity in the home. He is not emotionally involved in the life of his child. He is emotionally distant. He is preoccupied by something other than his wife and child. There are too many such men.
There is also the father with negative influence in the life of his child, either because he is not usually physically present in the home and does a poor job when he does show up from time to time, or he is physically present in the home environment but contributes only in a profoundly negative way by mistreating the child’s mother or mistreating the child. Sometimes both people are mistreated by this sort of guy. There are too many such men.
Then there is the father with a desirable influence in the life of his child. This is the physically present guy in the home who devotes himself to doing what he believes is an excellent job of being a husband to the child’s mother and a father to the child. He is loving. He is attentive. He is patient and instructive. He is conscientious. This type of father is the most dangerous dad a child can have.
Why so? Because there is no interest in or consideration of the spiritual aspect of the child’s life. Consider that fathers are the pattern that most boys will aspire to in their struggle to attain manhood. Consider, also, that the father sets the pattern that most girls will aspire to marry as they arrive at the full blossoming of womanhood, childbearing age, and concerns about marriage matters.
Over the years, I have known and am good friends with many men whose fathers were despicable. Their dads were brutal, cruel, harsh, and unloving in the extreme, yet God has profoundly blessed them to be godly Christian men, husbands, and fathers who were nothing like their dads. Praise God for His grace and mercy.
When these guys first considered spiritual issues, they likely gave no thought of any kind whether or not their consideration of Christ and the Gospel message would meet with their dad’s approval. Their fathers did not figure in their contemplation of spirituality, eternity, the forgiveness of their sins, or any future relationship with Christ. They had already rejected their fathers as manhood models and templates. They had already adopted a model for manhood or were seeking a model for manhood, which was different from their dads. That is a good thing.
On the other hand, what about the dangerous dad? What about the loving and attentive father who takes his kids camping, who teaches his children how to fish, who makes sure his kids go to Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm, or Sea World on an annual basis? This is the dad who consciously and conscientiously involves himself in the lives of his children, yet he pays no attention whatsoever to their spiritual welfare. This father is secular. To him, God either does not exist or is not important enough to pay attention to. Christ is never discussed, considered, or honored. The consequences of this dad’s approach to fatherhood are catastrophic.
This man’s children will grow up and formulate their worldview without considering sin, salvation, God, Christ, or their eternal destiny. The things of God do not fit into their considerations. Should they ever come in contact with a Gospel message, even if they are exposed to the Gospel through the ministrations of their godly mothers, their love and loyalty felt toward their dad will demand that they consider his opinion with respect to the Gospel.
Whether they will receive the Gospel is dependent upon whether they imagine their father approving or disapproving. Whether they consider the Gospel will depend not on the will of God for their lives as it is found in the Bible, but on what their dads say or what they speculate their dads will say.
Very few attractive but dangerous fathers, whose children love them, will admit to their children in a serious conversation, “I was wrong to raise you the way I did. I was wrong to present to you an attractive but secular lifestyle. I was wrong to give you the impression that you could be a good woman or a good man apart from being a Christian woman or a Christian man. I was wrong not to embrace the Gospel and live the Christian life in front of you. I was wrong to not prayerfully and carefully rear you in the nurture and admonition of the Lord in the hopes that you would turn to Christ at a young age and live for God throughout your life. Should you not turn to Christ before you die, you will hate me for eternity for the way I raised you.”
Regardless
of how his children turn out, the attractive but dangerous father who sets
before his children the pattern of a secular man, a secular husband, and a
secular father is an unmitigated failure. The selfish pursuit of his agenda
ignored the fact that the Bible declares that there is a way that seems right
unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. This most dangerous
father in the world succeeds only at setting his children up for their eternal
damnation and everlasting failure.
