Of all of the many troubles that afflict America, if not the world, is a deep, often unfulfilled, yearning for a father.
To be human is to be insecure. The struggles of everyday life prove it—from ordinary annoyances to the gnawing ache caused by profound hurts.
In the best of all worlds, the word “father” means protector, provider, just but merciful leader, moral guide, educator, confidante and wise counselor, a secure passage to adulthood. It’s seen in the image of the toddler sleeping on his father’s shoulder.
Even the best fathers will in some way disappoint us, and that’s not counting the self-absorbed, abusive and absentee fathers. And we as fathers and grandfathers are bound to disappoint, despite our best intentions. We’re human after all, and to be human is to be incomplete and flawed.
“Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation,” writes David Blankenhorn in his 1995 book Fatherless America, noting that, even then, 40 percent of children went to bed without their father living with them.
“It is the leading cause of declining child well-being in our society. It is the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child abuse to domestic violence against women.”
If personal fatherlessness weren’t bad enough, I believe we as a people are feeling fatherless. Our faith in the father-figures of our society is often shaky at best. Our economy is tottering. We are uncertain about our nation’s future.
We have put our trust, often naively, in government to provide for us, to make us safe from anything bad. Politicians, who often just want lifetime jobs, are only too happy to oblige. So they run us deeper in debt, mortgage our future. They write laws to protect us from bad things. Bad things keep happening so fast that regulations can’t be written quick enough to keep up with them. But if we continue to pile up laws to cover every possible danger, won’t we wake up one day in a gulag?
“Bad news makes a good press” is an old dictum in the news business, and we get plenty of it. Sex scandals, poor performance, and swindles besmirch so many in public life: politicians, business people, celebrities, teachers, clergy, newspeople, and so on. Then there’s the chorus of voices offering conflicting solutions. Who can you trust? What can you trust?
So many of us have worked hard for our employer, enduring stress and extra hours, sometimes at the expense of family life. Then we’re let go. We realize that employment is just an economic arrangement, but we still feel like a jilted lover. And we’re jobless besides.
Earlier generations admired the men who founded our nation. The founders gave us the ideals and political mechanisms that helped make our nation great. But somehow we become insecure when historians tell us they had human flaws just like we do.
Mircea Eliade, a historian and student of religion, once noted that in primitive polytheistic religions, the father god, the creator, often faded into the background before lesser gods that were supplicated to meet practical everyday needs. But when the community was in peril, it beseeched the father.
The danger is that false fathers may arise when a nation is in great distress—such as Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Russia’s Vladimir Lenin and his successor Joseph Stalin, causing millions to perish.
I am convinced that our nation’s present sorrows will lift when we learn from Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), a story about God and us and forgiveness. The Prodigal Son returned home broken in spirit, having looked for happiness in all the wrong places. He was now willing to be a mere servant in his father’s house.
You can imagine how he felt, how tears bathed his cheeks, when this happened: “But while he [the son] was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him…
“… the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
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