( All Scriptures are ESV from Biblos.com)
Malachi 4:5-6
5“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.
II Timothy 3:1-5
”But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
The enemy is subtle. Sometimes he is sudden in his destruction and at other times patient, deliberate and strategic. I work with offenders often and I have witnessed first hand the impact of absent fathers. Many gang members have cited this as a catalyst that leads to their violent lifestyles that may cost them their very lives. The assault on fatherhood has been a long term strategy yielding powerful results for the forces of darkness. The age of enlightenment, industrial revolution (and corporations that sprang from it) and sexual revolution of the 60s all contributed to fathers being less connected to God and their families. The AE period, placed man and the empirical approach at the center of the universe. The Industrial Revolution brought men out of the homes for longer periods of time, later women followed. Financial parity, career and status became primary values and drivers of esteem — trumping family life. Finally the sexual revolution codified the norm of sex outside of marriage. Access to pleasure became the pursuit of young men, and as they aged, this itch continued within and outside of marriage unabated, society simply winking at men who strayed, or worse yet, expecting them to.
This is what a father has become in the eyes of many. When we say God is our Father it brings many things to mind, but they may not always be pleasant. There is a contextual framework and schema in the minds of people when they reflect on being raised by their parents, and their relationship with their father in particular. We know that God instituted marriage with the man as the head. We can consider these three axioms as we continue with this post:
1. Earthly fathers are necessary for our development, but they are imperfect and like us, sinful.
2. Malachi prophesies of a time before God’s judgment when people will not respond to parental authority without divine intervention of some type. We are living in such an age.
3. II Timothy also focuses on the last days and people becoming progressively worse. In the passage above Paul points out that disobedience to parents is one of the characteristics of this group. This too is a feature of our age.
The role of a father is not genderless, rather it is gender specific, regardless of modern day mental constructs and political inclusive speech that attempts to remove the significance of a male’s influence in the lives of his children. I believe fatherhood is under attack because it is a common grace salt and the primary driving force that enables a young person to understand authority. When young people cannot bring themselves to yield to the authority of a male figure, they fail to learn to submit to authorities outside of the home.
I have seen this over and over again and whenever I encounter a young person who has in some way violated the law, I ask them this question, “How would you describe your relationship with your father?” The majority of the time the answers are the same:
Having spares at your disposal at all times while there is bending and lifting. levitra generika The most dynamic element display in this medication is Sildenafil Citrate. viagra no doctor These are a few causes that make pamelaannschoolofdance.com buy viagra a connection between age and poor erection health. Any company can produce the medicine by generic buy viagra overnight name. “What about him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“I can’t stand him.”
“He beat my mom.”
“He’s in prison.”
Over time they may open up and share, but the void is palpable in their voice. The absence of fatherhood becomes a social driver for all types of social ills too numerous to name, and men failing as fathers has also become one of the primary reasons we have so many in prison. Society has sought to redefine the traditional family and the role of males in church, family and society. I will not argue against the primacy of sin in the lives of people in general, but when you are a father or a father figure of some type, our sins wound and impact the people we are responsible for; namely, our children — in pronounced ways. One more scripture should be discussed here:
Matthew 24:9 states: “And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold.”
This is the third scripture that speaks of the last days and moral human nature devolving at a rapid rate. The Spirit has linked the moral decay of the last days with a lack of parenting, although not implicitly stated here, we see it in the first two passages mentioned. So I’m sending this distress call out, specifically to men who are fathers, father figures or mentors that want to change the course of their children’s or young people’s lives.
“Houston, Kansas City, Portland, Boston, Los Angelas — we have a problem.”
Will we do something about it?