Father’s day is two weeks away and already I’m thinking about the impact of Fathers for good and for ill on their children. One reason that is the case is a song a niece of mine in Nashville wrote and released as a music video. The song, for those knowing the backdrop of the lyrics, is a lament over her relationship with her father.
I will give you the lyrics below.
However, at this point, I want to reinforce to men how much they can mess up their children by being a terrible human being. Children are wet cement and will be shaped in accord to the way their Father treats them. Some children can rise above that but in my experience in the ministry that is rare to see. However, again, God’s grace can overcome the deepest wounding of a Father upon his children.
Often (not always) a Fathers mistreatment of his children will reveal itself in their children’s broken sexuality. Ill-treated daughters will often (not always) become sexually promiscuous looking for a man to give them the affection that their Father never gave them. Mistreated sons will often (not always) turn to sodomy as the fractured Father-Son male bonding continues to reveal itself as fractured with twisted male bonding.
Fathers, be a positive presence in the life of your children. If you have standards live up to them yourself. Your children will smell every whiff of hypocrisy. When you discipline your children make sure and do so firmly but calmly. If you make mistakes (and you will) admit them to your children and ask forgiveness. Don’t be afraid to be transparent with them. They’ll see through any attempt to not be transparent. Talk freely in front of them about your weaknesses but don’t take an odd pride in those weaknesses. Spend quality and quantity time with your children. Prioritize them. Pass on to them the Faith by giving them both orthodoxy and exhibiting before them orthopraxy. Love your wife in front of your children. There is no better catechism for them in their future choice of a spouse than for them to see you love your wife (their mother) well.
We lose our children to alien faiths and ideologies for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we are faithless as fathers. Don’t let that be the reason that your children as adults become strangers to you.
Here is the song I was speaking of earlier. It breaks my heart for a host of reasons.
I know you’re still somewhere up in Michigan
Filled with pain but they still call you Evelyn
Anointed words preaching hate down on Shepherd’s lane
Tired eyes you passed down to me
passion blue with sparks of envy green
Does Missy have them too?
Are they the shade of you that you just can’t stand to see?
But I don’t hate you (no) more than you hate yourself
No, your claims to be the victim
they won’t change the pain I have felt
And now your garden is overgrowing with all the secrets that you’ve kept
But your loveless heart will only leave you lonely on your deathbed
Lonely man
Lonely man
Lonely man
I’m imagining now in your leather chair
time passing you by like your thinning hair
Well your daughter’s made it out now
And there is no one to blame now
With your chauvinist mouth
Head of the table that I dare not disrespect again
And yes I know my place is in the kitchen
But I only been good at having too many thoughts up in my head
Does it bother you that you helped to raise me
And then I grew up and became someone you hated
No one was here to break my fall from this family tree
But I don’t hate you (no) more than you hate yourself
And all your claims to be the victim
they won’t change the pain that I have felt
And now your garden is overgrowing with all the secrets that you’ve kept
And your loveless heart will only leave you lonely in the dark
Lonely man
Lonely man
Lonely man
I love you past the standards you couldn’t meet
Now I’ve gotta draw a line
Even though you love me
Author: jetbrane
I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling.
I am postmillennial in my eschatology.
Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity
Reformed in my Soteriology
Presuppositional in my apologetics
Familialist in my family theology
Agrarian in my regional community social order belief
Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief
Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic
Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern
Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview
One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics
Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place
Some of my favorite authors,
Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc.
My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture.
Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.
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