Being a Good Father to Your Children
09.25.09
In order to understand what I mean by a good father, I first need to awaken you a bit by bringing up some negative things, in hopes of illustrating what we’re faced with. To that end it is that I will unveil the negative trends and portrayals of fathers we’ve seen through the years.
Parenting Style
One could argue that the alarmists have focused blame on what’s wrong with our youth and pointed to the parental figures in the home as the culprits, in many cases. While this may have been done many times for different reasons, it is extremely appropriate, at this time, to examine the impact of fathering in our youth’s culture.
Today we could ask almost anyone on the street what a good father is really like, and unless we were speaking to the very few individuals who seem to think that we need a strong family leader, the answers would probably be somewhat shocking. You might hear that the father typically gets the sympathy of the rest of the family members and especially the attention of his spouse. He may go about this in a childish manner, begging for attention. This I imagine has been drilled into our population by the one-eyed monster, we call television, that graces most all our homes.
Of course, everything cannot be blamed on television. Over the years, our culture has become so liberal that strength and leadership is shunned by many and avoided by most. Rarely is a genuine person of character with positive leadership skills elected to be our public officials. We can say the same fore the father image, as well. If we see a strong-charactered, God-fearing head of a household reflected in real life or in fiction, we will immediately come to the conclusion: he is going to scar his children by his domineering personality and make the some type of servile individuals for the rest of their lives.
I could not disagree with this more! Conversely to this assumption, leadership is ONLY passed along through example. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one to perpetuate this image as we have lost almost all of our examples as fatherly leadership is concerned. No young man with a weak father figure can identify with the strong paternal image, and so he doen’t truly know what a real man is. He may see dad refusing many responsibilities and neglect his family in many other ways, only for the good mother to be left to do it all.
Family Ministry
So you’re probably wondering when I’m going to get around to tell you what I thing a good father is. Surely by describing what a bad father lacks, gives many clues as to what a good father is. He should certainly be just the opposite of a weak, poor father. I would much rather see a strong-character, righteous man walk by his children, and in doing so, observe them somewhat flinching as they became fearful that he might just swat them, then see the reaction of most children to their father today. Call me old fashioned, but that fearful respect for the father is representative of being accountable for the child’s actions, recognizing that the good father represents values.
Protecting your child in a seductive world
A good father should do some of the things that we commonly picture a father doing. That is, play ball with his son, take him fishing, have a close father daughter relationship with his girls, and all in all, be a kind and sympathetic person. It’s his job to do all of these things, but first and foremost he must be the leader of his family. To take the helm of the family as the leader, guiding the household through the storm times it faces through the years.