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Fathering Through the Son |
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By Tom Gilbert - June/2004
Why is it so hard to be a dad? What are
the real requirements and true skills to meet them? Where do
we turn for proper training? Often I feel like singer/songwriter Loudon Wainwright III who
laments in his song Being a Dad: "Being a
Dad can make you feel sad/Like you're the insignificant other/Yeah
right from the start they break your heart/In the end every
kid wants his mother..."
There’s a long history behind us, some serious baggage
of unsettled and unsatisfying fatherhood. It’s a heavy
burden that most men would just as soon not carry, let alone
look at.
I don’t think it is mere coincidence that God chooses to reveal part
of his unknowable and infinite self as a Father.
There is a great need, a hunger deep inside each of us, to
have a loving and intimate relationship with a father. Whether
your father is living or even known, the desire is real. All
too often it is suppressed to hide the hurt, but this need
always lives within us. It is part of our longing.
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Wainwright treats us to a less funny and much more heartfelt
insight with his song, A Father and a Son.
“Now you and me are me and you,
And it's a different ballgame though not brand-new.
I don't know what all of this fighting is for;
But we're having us a teenage/middle-age war.
I don't want to die and you want to live;
It takes a little bit of take and a whole lot of give.
It never really ends though each race is run,
This thing between a father and a son.
Maybe it's power and push and shove,
Maybe it's hate but probably it's love,
Maybe it's hate but probably it's love.”
(Copyright ©1992 Snowden Music, Inc)
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A Father’s Touch
Too many lives have been lived without the intimate touch that
only a father can give. Too many men, women and children have
been wounded and desperately need healing.
So, just what is being a dad all about? Let’s examine this God revealed
as a relational, caring creator. The first thing that trips us up is a
Father God too big and abstract to get our limited minds around. So, we
turn to His son, Jesus. The Son of Man/Son of God spent a great deal of
time impressing upon His followers that He and the Father are One. What
you see in Jesus is what we need and want (even if we don’t admit
it).
The pattern of fatherhood is revealed through the remarkable
relationship of Jesus and God. Both are strong and speak
with their own authority. Both are humble, compassionate, merciful and loving.
Tough and vulnerable – what a combination!
In John’s gospel Jesus prays that each of us as followers and disciples
would come to know the great intimacy that the Son and Father
enjoy. An incredible unity that is far greater than mutual respect.
The son is constantly
deferring to the Father and tells us that by doing so he remains
in the Father’s love. Furthermore, Jesus tells his disciples that if
they do the same and obey his command to love others they will
remain in Jesus’ love
(),
connected as branches sprouting from the vine that is continually
pruned to bear more fruit ().
It seems to me that this is the heart of the difficult “father love” men
are called to express. We must be disciplinarians in a totally
committed and continually caring and forgiving way. We have to
prune so our children
will be fruitful. But we musn't kill the vine with excessive
pruning. The whole point is to nurture, a trait typically associated
with mothers.
Over time in our society we men have come to accept the image of the stoic man.
We buy into this myth so greatly that we deny both our emotions and
our natural male nurturing. And it hurts each man/child, but he can’t
really blame his dad who only did what he was, or wasn’t, taught.
Once again it’s important to look at what Jesus teaches us about
Father God. He is the Omnipotent One, yet our Lord daringly
invites us to address Him as “Abba” (literally Daddy). Don’t
you find it fascinating that the son is the one teaching us about
the father? Why does the father wound run deep in so many?
Isn't it because men rarely have the kind of close mentoring
relationship whose greatest reward comes from learning and
passing it on to other men, especially other sons?
All of this can change. It will take a great deal of time and effort.
It takes doing the internal work to discover that we are ok with God, in
fact, beloved. We have to take our own wounds and become reconciled to
them in a way that transforms us. When the wound becomes sacred then it
has the power to help others. The pruning is painful, but the fruit is
sweeter.
If we don’t enter into and continue the lifelong process of fathering we
will miss out on the point of our journey. All of us are sometimes the
prodigal son who strikes out on his own only to discover the
emptiness of living for self. All of us are also the prodigal brother,
quick to self righteously accuse both father and brother. Ultimately we hope
to become the prodigal father, ever watching and longing for the return
of wayward sons so we can celebrate the return and reconcile sons and
daughters to the unity of true relationship.
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| Additional Resources:
Father
Hunger and Masculine
Spirituality by Richard Rohr (featured
at www.malespirituality.org)
Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning
AbbaFather.com from
Gordon Dalbey
The National Center for Fathering
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Scripture taken from the Holy Bible,
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®.Copyright © 1973, 1978,
1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout
the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks
of International Bible Society. Use of either trademark for
the offering of goods or services requires the prior written
consent of International Bible Society.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright ©1996. Used by permission
of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189, USA. All
rights reserved.
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"Listen, my son, to your father's instruction
and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
They will be a garland to grace your head
and a chain to adorn your neck."
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(NIV)
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