Where is Dad in America?

It was 4 o’clock and we knew we were in trouble. My brother, Chuck, and I had just returned home from the baseball fields after having lost all track of time. The lawn had not been mowed. The trash cans had not been emptied, and we never did pull the weeds by the string beans and radishes. There was no way we would get everything done by 4:30. You see, at 4:30, Dad would be home and he would not be happy. Dad hated hot summer days because he had to spend 10 hours in a taxi cab with no air conditioning driving people through the crowded streets of Cleveland. When Dad pulled in the drive and saw the lawn wasn’t mowed and the trash hadn’t been collected, he would bite his lip and angrily tell chuck and I that there would be no dinner until everything was done. And he meant it. You might think that I am telling a story about a tough father who was overly harsh on his kids. But I’m not. What I want you to hear in this story is that my father came home every night at 4:30. And stayed home. And cared about how his sons had spent their day-holding us responsible for contributing to the needs of a family with six children and low income. And dad loved mom. We saw that. And mom respected Dad. We saw that too. Our often angry, hard working father was an honorable man. He gave all he had to his family. He was always there and, though we wore hand me down clothes and had no money for extras, we could not have felt more secure.

That was a long time ago. I grew up in the 1950s and 60s. It was a time when men, especially fathers, were still seen as honorable and respectable. Then it all changed. Was it Vietnam, the washing machine or the pill-who knows? What I remember is that in the 60’s our culture changed from one that respected authority to one that despised and mistrusted all authority. Fathers meant authority. Authority was bad-so fathers were bad.

Listen to the words of a famous song from the 60s written by Bob Dylan:
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
(AND WHY CAN’T YOU UNDERSTAND IT? BECAUSE PARENTS ARE STUPID AND OUT OF TOUCH)
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command (YOUR AUTHORITY IS MEANINGLESS)
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand (YOU ARE IRRELEVANT-YOU MUST FOLLOW US BECAUSE WE WILL NEVER FOLLOW YOU)
For the times they are a-changin’.

The 1960s left us with a culture of adolescent children who have dismissed their father and taken over the house. Since that time our society has warred against men in general and fathers specifically. But I wonder if you realize it. In 1999 the American Psychologist published an article by two researchers, Louise Silverstein and Carl Auerbach entitled “Deconstructing the Essential Father”. In their article they stated that fathers are NOT ESSENTIAL to child well-being. They suggested the best route to go was to basically replace fathers in the traditional family with government funded day care and other subsidies. The article provided the fertile intellectual ground for the rallying cry that it takes a village, not a father and mother, to raise children.

In 1940, 89,500 children were born to unmarried women. 3.8% of all births. 96% of all children were born into a family where there was both a father and a mother. In 2000, 1,347,043 children were born to unmarried women. 33.2% of all births. And this is even after abortion has been legalized and made readily available. That means that in 2000, 1 out of every 3 children were born into a home without a father. (Over 21 million children are being raised in single family homes-that’s 26 % of all children in America.) In divorce, 84% of the custodial parents are females. In Cleveland 70% of the births are to single women where a significant father figure will not be part of the children’s lives. Since Culture has attacked and diminished the role of and need for fathers.

We certainly misunderstand the goodness of a strong father I think we have warring forces within us: one force springs from the depths of our hearts: I long for a good father’s involvement in my life. The other force counters with the powerful lie that fathers are bad and their strength is destructive. And this is where our culture clashes not only with our hearts, but with scripture-because scripture teaches the same thing today it did almost 2000 years ago: Children, honor your parents. Wives respect your husbands. But how do we offer honor and respect if fathers and husbands aren’t around and our culture is doing its best to portray them as dishonorable? But before we can consider HOW we honor and respect fathers, let’s think about WHY it is important we do so.

Remember God is the designer and creator of the universe-and of you and me. God has a design for how we are to journey through life, and Dad’s play a crucial role in that plan. The reality is that lack of connection with an honorable father deprives us of something essential to our being: the strength of a loving father who is FOR us. While God exists as Spirit, he portrays himself to us a Father. Our Father. He gives us a flesh and blood father to point us to Himself, the eternal Father. Without an honorable father, we live with an emptiness and go through life with a nagging insecurity. Something will always be missing within us. As we learn to respect and rejoice in our flesh and blood father, we will learn to trust the strength and security of the one who is our father for eternity.