In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile
than usual.
Tom: Last week I came across a U.S. federal government site designed to be a resource for fathers and
families. While of course we applaud any such effort in a period when the
family is relentlessly under attack from all sides, it seems obvious secular governments
are not well-equipped to teach the more spiritual aspects of fatherhood.
Fathers do not exist simply to pay the bills and do the heavy lifting around the house.
The last time we talked, we compiled a list of fatherly responsibilities from
scripture, and it was not a short one. God did not intend fathers to be
dispensable, whatever our society may think.
Good Things About Fatherlessness
Immanuel Can: Now I’m going to ask a difficult question: are there any circumstances under which a fatherless
household is actually the right option?
Tom: Well, sure. Where a father is violent, has substance management issues, is an out-of-control gambler
threatening the financial welfare of his household, is provably involved with
another woman, or is engaged in breaking the law and is endangering his family
in the process. For me, the issue is not that such a man is failing to model
God’s fatherhood perfectly — we all do that from time to time — but
that he poses a material danger to his children or wife.
IC: Yes. It’s not that one needs to make no mistakes in order to be a good father. Perfect parenting is neither
possible nor needed. One can make many types of mistakes without harming
a child.
Tom: Right. Now, in Christian circles serious paternal misbehavior needs to be proven, not just alleged. That’s a tough one for a church’s elders,
if they’re confronted with it.
IC: Elders are not marriage counselors though, and it’s not evident that they have any stake in
intervening in a marriage unless it becomes dysfunctional as regards the church
itself. So it’s not a bad thing if they keep their involvement down to the size
of their real knowledge and mandate.
Tom: Very much so. There is
definitely an increase in the number of women advocating for wives to deal with
discontent in their marriages by pulling their elders or pastor into the loop
to keep their “erring” husbands in line. This is where it becomes
important that every word be established in the mouths of two or three witnesses.
IC: And in most cases, nobody really knows what goes on in a marriage except the two people who are
actually living it — though, of course, some marriages become so bad that
it becomes obvious.
Absent Fathers
Tom: Absolutely. Let’s talk about some solutions, or at least helps, that churches might offer families
experiencing fatherhood crises.
First, what about the absent father? I read lots of pastors recommending their
young, single men step up and marry the single mothers in their congregations.
Does that seem a prudent solution to you?
IC: In most cases, I would say that is disastrous advice.
Tom: I agree. It’s one thing for pastors or elders to be asked to weigh in on a potential stepparenting
situation that has developed naturally, and about which both parties are
enthusiastic and committed. I would add that those relationships are
rarely without complications, even when the circumstances are squeaky clean,
like widowhood. But it is quite another thing for church leaders to take the
public position that single-mother remarriage is some kind of automatic “good”.
That definitely remains to be demonstrated.
But tell me: earlier you said everything possible should be done to ensure that single motherhood
does not happen in avoidable cases. Why would you make an exception here?
Reacting to Fatherlessness
IC: In such cases it hasn’t been “avoided”, it has been created. Either through circumstances beyond the
woman’s control (such as death of a husband) or through a situation to which
she has contributed (such as vow-breaking, premarital sex, or just choosing a
bad partner in the first place) the woman is on her own with a child. So we’re
not preventing fatherlessness there; we’re considering the best way to
react to it, after it has happened. And it’s not at all clear that
introducing a second partner and putting him into a situation in which the
first partner’s child is bound to be present, is a good solution. Maybe it
eliminates the appearance of single motherhood; but does not address the reality. If it’s at all in
the interests of the single mother to have this happen, which is not
clear, it is not evident how it’s in the interest of the child to have a
non-parental parent, or how it’s in the interest of the new man to forgo his
own chances at a healthy relationship and sacrifice himself in an attempt to
salvage someone else’s disaster.
Such a situation would have to be looked at very carefully, and on a case-by-case
basis. I certainly would not encourage elders to tell young men that the
general solution is to “step up” and marry into the situation.
Tom: Okay then, if they are not going to function as some sort of real-world Christian Tinder, what can our churches do for fatherless
children in the congregation?
IC: Well, churches cannot fix fatherlessness. Let’s get that clear. But what they can sometimes do is to
abate some of the worst effects of fatherlessness, by helping a committed
single mother to emphasize moral standards to her children, by providing an
effective peer group to the child, and by mentoring young people who lack
fathers. The church will never substitute for a real father; and in any case,
that’s not God’s plan. But it can be witnesses to the fatherhood of God, and
can help to convey an embodied sense of that fatherhood to children who
lack it.
Tom: Amen to that.
The Old Back-and-Forth
Well now, what about the situation where a child in your church has a father who
doesn’t live with his mother, and is seeing both. One or both parents have
married someone else ... or maybe not. Either way, the stresses on
children in a back-and-forth custody situation are tremendous. The kids are
often misfits, and difficult to get along with. I’ve seen Christian parents
impose such children on their own broods to ill effect, and I’ve also see
Christian kids reject the “loser” children of such relationships. Can there be
a happy ending for a young child or teen in those situations? Can someone like
you or me do anything at all for them?
IC: It’s case-by-case. Sometimes it’s possible for a child to discover a surrogate father who becomes all that
is necessary to him/her. But that’s very rare. By the time a child reaches the
teen years, or even middle childhood, the will of the child is an independent
factor in the equation too: you can only help a child if he/she is not consumed
by bitterness, emotionally closed off, or hostile to being helped. We have to
be honest and modest about the prospects of helping unwilling children, and
about anything being able to offset the wounds inflicted on them by a broken
marriage. This is not an easy fix.
Homemaking Dad / High-Achieving Mom
Tom: All right, then. How about something that doesn’t involve the hearts and wills of children. Another common
fatherhood problem in our day and age is the homemaking dad paired with the
high-achieving mother. I don’t want to get into all the reasons stay-at-home
dads are increasingly a thing, but your prospects as a man in that sort of
arrangement are very poor. The divorce rate for couples where the woman in the
main breadwinner is much higher than in any other
domestic situation. Can churches help, or are we all better to keep our mouths
shut when we see young couples embarking on a strategy that is both unbiblical
and highly unlikely to end happily for either partner?
IC: No, I think we can say something about that. After all, that’s not some kind of internal
subtlety of the relationship; it’s an obvious contravention of the divine
provision for child rearing and for headship. We can warn people about how
that’s likely to work out.
Tom: You can imagine the confusion for the kids who result from such a relationship. You’ve
probably seen it. Sure, it’s nice to have a closer bond with dad than your
friends at school, but compared to their fathers, you can’t help but notice
yours seems just a little ... soft ... even if he makes a mean peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. And having a mom who wears the pants is no good for
either boys or girls in terms of gender role-modeling. I think you’re
right: Christians who care need to point the parents toward a more scriptural
way of relating, even if that “intrusion” into their personal space is not
immediately appreciated.
IC: We really need to develop a strong, clear theology of male and female right now — the church and its
families are under assault from the world’s lies lately. And the worst thing we
can do is concede anything to the present day sexually-confused ethos. Fortunately,
the resources for that are in the word of God.
Stepping Up
Tom: What about the other really common fatherhood problem these days: children obliged to live
with a step-dad they can’t stand? Their unhappiness may stem from more than unrealistically
wishing things could just go back to being the way they always were. Sexual
abuse by stepfathers is vastly more common than sexual abuse from blood relations. Did
you ever run into this sort of thing as a teacher?
IC: Absolutely. Only in
Hollywood romances do the kids all line up to get mom a new partner. In real
life, such men are usually intruders.
Tom: It works the other way around
too, even with the best of intentions. I remember a young woman who
married early because she resented the presence of her stepmother in the family
home. It changed her life profoundly, and the results for her were long-term
and not good in any way. The next generation in that family had to live with
the consequences of her hurried exit from her home. Can our churches speak to
these real-life situations in any meaningful way, IC?
IC: They can speak, but nowadays they have little power. When a local church takes a stand unpopular with a
particular person, what he or she usually does is go to another local church
that won’t take that stand. However, that does not suggest the stand should not
be taken.
A Higher Standard
Tom: Agreed. If we come back to fatherhood for a moment, I think it should be obvious from our discussion
that anything the U.S. federal government says about responsible fatherhood
falls far short of what scripture commands. There is a higher standard of parenting
in view in the word of God that is rarely attained or even attempted today. In
many cases, parents are not even aware of the bar set before them. When you
speak of a local church “taking a stand” today, it’s bound to be the rare
exception. And yet ... this matters. Kids matter. There are real, human
lives at stake for which Christ died.
IC: I wonder what God the Father thinks of our present-day conviction that fatherhood is
optional.
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