On Being Fathers in These Times
Pastor Eric J. Hanson: 2017
Here in the Western World, it is no secret that Fatherhood has been under siege for many years now. Many people do not remember a time when Fathers were honored in everyday life.
It was not always this way. In previous eras, Respect for one’s Father was a cornerstone of American & British culture. Down through the centuries, children worked side by side with their parents as they became able to do things which helped the family survive. Mothers and Fathers both imparted essential skills of life to their children by example and by doing these things together.
In Colonial and Early American Times
Little boys would begin learning to be effective workers by helping Dad in the family shop in little matters such as bringing over a fresh supply of nails, a slab of leather which Dad would then cut into useful shapes to create a pair of boots, or gathering sticks from under the trees around the property for the little wood stove in the shop.
As these boys grew bigger, their Fathers would teach them how to use clamps, saws, measuring instruments, hammers, and screwdrivers. They would teach them how to cut and stack wood properly, so that it would not fall, and so that varmints could not build nests in there.
They would also teach them how to do the bookkeeping needed to keep the small family business financially sound. Thrift, honesty, and making things last by taking good care of them, were foundation stones of life in the shop and small farm economy of the pre-industrial but post-Reformation age of the 1600s and 1700s.
At the same time, Mothers were teaching their daughters to be experts at tending the kitchen fire, preparing potatoes for cooking, repairing holes in the household clothing, and learning how to spot a good bargain on cloth, or even how to weave it at home using wool from the family’s few sheep.
Both girls and boys learned how to care for those sheep in feeding and watering them, keeping them free from ticks, cleaning their pens, and making sure that the fences were kept strong. Both girls and boys also learned all the same skills from their parents concerning the family’s cow, plus milking skills were taught from an early age, along with cleaning all the tools each day.
Speaking of the tools, skills in using, sharpening, and even repairing axes, scythes and sickles, and knives were taught little by little as the children grew.
Both genders helped in the garden, in planting and watering, weeding, keeping pests at bay, and harvesting. In fact, by the age of 12 or 13, most youngsters were highly skilled and highly responsible.
The Bible was used to teach youngsters to read. Every evening there was time set aside for this. By the light of the fire and the oil lamps Mother and Father would carefully impart both reading skills and life truths to their brood from God’s Word. As neighborhood schools came into being, the same was done there. God’s Word was the standard for life, and the main textbook as the schools of the time served the local people in reinforcing Mom & Dad’s values, helping parents in raising their children.
Through the Years
Over the sweep of time, the main ideas of respect for Fathers and Mothers, and of living in such a way as to honor God with one’s life choices, helped strengthen our nation and its culture. This type of thinking served our nation and its people well, up through the hellish cauldron of the Civil War, the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, and the Global conflicts and Great Depression of the long period between 1860 and 1950.
However, unseen by most, in the halls of elite academia, a great undermining had been going on. It really started way back 1807, when the Unitarians gained control of Harvard University, which had been founded by Puritans, and run by them ever since 1636. One by one, other Universities also gradually came under the philosophy of humanism; which is the exalting of human reason above the Bible, and the gradual pushing away of God; replacing Him with human-centered elitist thinking. Over time godless professors and board members came to hold positions of power in these once God-fearing institutions.
This was made worse in the early 1900s as most major seminaries also came under the sway of humanism and the gradual pushing away of the Bible as our source of truth from God. By the 1930s there were many elitist humanists in influential pulpits throughout our major cities, and in the years since, this has spread into rural areas too. Many entire denominations have abandoned the Bible, and today preach humanism instead, championing leftist causes and denigrating all who have continued to believe the Bible.
The high courts, the teachers’ colleges, and the schools of the arts (acting, broadcasting, journalism, music, political science) were gradually taken over by people who had been taught and trained in these humanistic Universities. Though making up only a small % of our nation’s population, these elite humanists came into positions of huge influence in our nation’s thinking.
The Tipping Point
By the 1960s, the majority thinking in newsrooms, courts, academia, and Hollywood was in line with the godlessness which had begun its rise to power in our nation in 1820. Things emerged into a stark spotlight, shocking millions, when in 1962, the New York State supreme court ruled that school led prayer was unconstitutional and ordered it stopped. Then, just 1 year later, in ’63, the US Supreme Court did the same thing, ending school prayers nation-wide. The writers of the Constitution, who strongly advocated for the Bible and prayer as essential in the schools, were conveniently dead, and not able to refute the bold-faced lie that the progressive justices forced onto this nation.
Then, that fall, the murder of President Kennedy, who was very popular with college-aged people, began to disillusion some of them. The next summer, president Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin incident (in which one of our ships was attacked) to get us into the ongoing war in Viet-Nam on a combat level. The draft was expanded, and by the summer of ’65 there were 100,000 American troops in Viet-Nam. By 1968 there would be 600,000. Johnson ran our part in that war as a micro-managing politician, rather than letting the generals run it, as they had done so brilliantly in World War II. Soon tens of thousands of our men had died there; eventually it would be 53,000 Americans dying in a losing, poorly run cause. Most young people turned against the war effort by ’66.
Suddenly, in 1966, the counter-culture, led by college-aged newly minted progressive elitists, burst upon the scene. It quickly spawned the hippie movement, the drug culture, and new left communists, and despair-based popular nihilism among a couple million young adults and older teens. John Lennon, infamously said that people over the age of 30 were not to be trusted. Black leftist activists were quick to jump on with those who were calling for revolution and the overthrow of our government. All of these prongs of the counter-culture grew, until, in 1968, our nation almost descended into a new type of civil war. Cities and campuses became battlegrounds to some extent.
With the election of President Nixon, came a policy de-escalating of the war, while still trying to win it. Things began to cool off a little, but only a little. Then came the fall of 1970.
Television and Fatherhood
Television had remained a steadfast promoter of respect for Fathers all through the fifties and sixties. Even though some of the TV dads did some foolish things, the main way that these men were depicted throughout the era was as wise, hard working men, who genuinely cared about their children and their teens. Think of such programs as My Three Sons, Father Knows Best, the Donna Reed Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and Leave it to Beaver.
Suddenly CBS axed all of their traditional sitcoms in the fall of 1970, and they replaced them with programs designed to make father figures look like idiots and unthinking bigots. The most famous of these shows was All in the Family. This program made Mother figures look pretty stupid too, as it generally targeted the over 40 crowd. Soon a spin-off of this highly influential program came into existence, called The Jeffersons. The major adjustment in this show about an upwardly mobile black family, was that the father and husband was consistently portrayed as an unreasonable foolish man, while the wife and mother was wise and smart. Even the maid was wiser than the man of the house. The other older men in this program were portrayed as foolish or as wimpy too.
The other networks quickly followed CBS’ lead and soon the world of sitcoms was snarky against Fathers, businessmen, power figures in general, and United States Government authorities, but Fathers and Husbands got the worst of it, and have ever since.
Today, it is much more than just television and popular music which puts down Fathers. From the courts to the politicians, Traditional men are lampooned and denigrated. Traditional homes are dismissed and sniffed at as a curious and inferior relic of less enlightened times. College professors, writers, and actors who have never met a payroll, started a business, or worked in a factory pass judgment on things they have no understanding of, as though they are far above all of us. In many trendy circles, fathers are said to be not even needed for the raising of children, and are said to be a bad influence, since traditional maleness is associated by the cultural elites with anti-social behavior. In their colossal conceit, a new generation of feminists declare masculinity to be a disorder.
Being an Excellent Father in These Times
Dr. Kevin Grant recently spoke at a pastors’ conference which Nancy and I were at, having been invited by the Hibbards. He was speaking on manhood, and began his remarks with his observations concerning three major forces which hinder men today. These 3 are as follows, with my comments written in.
1. The man/boy syndrome works to prevent stepping into adulthood. The life stage from age 18 until 25 is a time to do big things. It is the time to earn your degree, to begin your career, to get married and have your first child or two. Dr. Grant interviews and/or interfaces with large numbers of young adults. He says that it is not unusual today to speak with 25 year old men who have never held down a real job with real responsibilities. 40 years ago, this was unheard of, but today it has become common. They have a room in Mom’s basement and they have a great collection of video games... Adolescence has been extended way into adulthood in our culture. The age 26 guarantee for health insurance on the parents’ policy is a potent symbol of this. To note that this man/boy syndrome works against effective fatherhood is putting it mildly.
2. Pornography is another force destroying real manhood and undermining good fatherhood. It is everywhere, and the only way to stay out of it is by a concerted effort. Most young men today have gotten drawn into it, often way into it. It turns people into mere objects and machines. It takes away all sense of moral virtue as a positive and protected quality. It attacks monogamy and the sanctity of marriage. It warps the perspective of the young man/boy into something totally alien to that which is capable of creating a healthy home, where his wife is loved and protected, and her purity valued; and where little ones are invested with a clean & virtuous upbringing in this dirty World.
3. The Culture is Emasculating its men. I have already noted above that men, for nearly fifty years now, have been putdown and disrespected in TV, movies, and pop music, to the point where the average young man grows up with a negative view of genuine masculinity. The behaviors expected of boys today at school, have nothing to do with learning rugged outdoorsy virtues and everything to do with trying to be like the girls, in order to gain teacher approval. The great majority of young men have not had tough, God honoring masculinity modeled into their lives. Most of them have never been trained in it. Most simply do not have a clue how to be a real man who is an assertive but loving husband and father.
Where do we start to do this right?
Let’s consider 2 Bible passages which are Ephesians 6:1-4 and Colossians 3:20-21.
Read Ephesians 6: 1-2. These 2 little verses come directly against the views of the sixties counter-culture which are now the establishment views in Government, Social work, and the Schools. (Now read verse 3). This should give you some idea of how important this really is. Back when God first gave this command in the Ten Commandments, He attached a special blessing to it, which was long life in the New Land He was providing for Israel. -Important stuff indeed!
Let’s all honor our parents. If our habit has been to complain about them and be bitter, we need to repent. Even if they are dead and gone, we can and should honor their memory and speak well of them. We need to forgive them (with God’s help) if we are holding anything against them, and thank God for them.
Read verse 4. A man who is secure in his God-given role as a man and a father can give guidance and direction; even correction, in redemptive ways which do not provoke wrath in his children.
Read Colossians 3: 20-21. Here the command to honor parents is directly given to children, and the main way that it is walked out, is the area of obedience. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. This is the true beginning of honoring your parents.
As for the command given here to fathers, I believe that we Dads tend to not be as good as Moms are at really listening to our child’s heart when that child is talking with us or just being around us. We need to develop the fine art of truly being there in the child’s life. This goes for grandfathers too. We need to really tune in so that we do not exasperate or frustrate these children. This takes both effort and time. -Do things with your kids and show them how to do things too, with joy and encouragement.
You older fathers whose kids are grown up and long gone, hear me now. If you were distant, harsh or unpleasable, or not engaged with your kids, you need to get God’s help with any underlying issues that may still be there in you. Then you need to begin to be the encourager that you should have been back along. God, and maybe your wife, can help you with specific impressions of where to start and how to keep improving.
Moving On From Here
I have covered a lot today. This is all very important stuff, and it means a great deal to me personally as a son, a husband, a father, and a grandfather. Let’s all truly honor our fathers today in our hearts, in our words, in our actions, and with the Lord’s help as needed. Let’s all help each other to walk these principles out in our lives, for the sake of the generations to come. -Let’s pray.
