It is hard to talk about fathers and their roles in the family these days without sounding old fashioned. In a society where many of the icons of society, like Madonna, are single parents, in a society where a woman could walk across the block to the sperm bank and buy herself a child, in a society where fathers are charged and convicted for child abuse when all they are trying to do is teach their children the necessary lessons of life, one could as well ask, "Who needs fathers these days?" Today, Father's Day, it would not be out of place for us to remind ourselves that in spite of all the changes in society, the father remains a very essential figure in the ideal Christian family. This is not a global condemnation of single motherhood since we know that many woman are forced into single motherhood by circumstances beyond their control. But we would like to remind ourselves today that the ideal Christian family remains that of father, mother and child.
So, who needs fathers these days? Children do. Today a woman can go to a sex shop and buy herself all the sex she needs. But the children have nowhere to go and buy themselves a dad. This is what people often forget when they discuss divorce. They tend to look only at the interests of the man and the woman. But I think that the party that is most hurt by a divorce is often not the man or the woman but the kids. Kids need fathers just as they need mothers. They need their fathers as role models as much as they need their mothers. A father's love is different from a mother's love, and the child needs both in the same way that our bodies need both proteins and carbohydrates in order to achieve a balanced growth.
The crisis of fatherhood in the family contributes to the crisis of faith in our society today. Even though God is pure spirit and therefore cannot be male of female, the Bible usually presents God to us as father. Jesus teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer to call God "Our Father." Since we go from the known to the unknown, it stands to reason to say that knowing our father on earth equips us to know our father in heaven. The crisis of faith in many young people today could be traced to a vacuum in their early life experiences created by the absence of a good and loving father.
Let us pray for all fathers today that they may be more faithful to their duties in the family. Let us pray God to strengthen them to rise up to the difficult challenges which their role as father places on them today. And let us pray for all kids who miss their fathers, especially for those who are orphaned, that through our loving actions and words they may come to know the love of God the father of us all.
