CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST
June 20, 2010
25424 Aldine-Westfield, Spring, TX. 77373
www.blakehart.com/cypresswoodbulletin.htm
PETITIONS AND THANKSGIVINGS:
God’s will for our congregation Various friends, relatives and co-workers
Our nation, leaders and military The spread of the good news
HAPPY FATHERS DAY
“Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 5:16).
Today is Fathers Day. Some time after the second Sunday in May was set aside to be Mothers Day, someone decided that we should also honor fathers; so the third Sunday in June as been set for that occasion. Fortunately that occurred before the rise of modern radical feminism. Fathers have not had positive press over the last few decades. The general theme has been that women do not need husbands and children do not need fathers. Most Hollywood productions have supported this idea; one rarely sees a happy marriage on television, and fewer yet a stable home environment of mothers and fathers. The recent Seventh Heaven, a series about a preacher and his family of kids and “adopted” kids is an exception -- which won a number of family awards and was roundly criticized from a number of quarters because of both its family and religious themes.
Psychologist Paul Vitz argues that a changing view of God, seen in some liberal circles as both Father and Mother, or ridiculing God as a child abuser and violent, have lead both to the rejection of Him and a misrepresentation of Him as our Father (1). It hasn’t helped either that in the effort to help the poor, government has taken over the role of “father” and now many children have no father influence in their lives as mothers struggle to raise children; if they make any effort to do so (2). Someone stated that women civilize men including male children, and that fathers train and influence their children in a balance view of life that sometimes can be difficult. What influences can a father have as a presence and a non-presence in the life of children? We will look at that but first some ideas from scripture.
The most famous father of scripture is, of course, God. He is spoke of as Father in the Old Testament occasionally. When Jesus came, He spoke in very intimate terms to God as Abha Father. While wanting to be respective in our view of God, the idea is that of Daddy or Dad, suggesting an extremely close relationship between Father and Son. We too are encouraged to develop such a relationship. The difficulty for some is that their earthly fathers have not set a very good example and some have problems relating to God as Father.
There are a number of famous fathers in the Hebrew scriptures. Adam was the first father. Abraham received the promise of blessings through his children that the world would be blessed. The offering of Isaac by Abraham is one of the most controversial situations and Isaac’s response can be debated (see Genesis 22). We do not know about most fathers in scripture. They are mentioned but that is it. Those few that we know about, and about their children, and in particular their sons, leave much to be desired. Jacob had twelve sons and a daughter, yet his favorites were clearly Joseph and Benjamin. One wonders how the ten older brothers could have deceived their father about the supposed death of Joseph for some fifteen to twenty years. Eli and Samuel were the last of the judges, familiar with the voice of God, yet both were lousy fathers. There sons were immoral and rebellious. Likewise, King David was a man after God’s own heart, yet his sons too were immoral and rebellious. David’s son Solomon started off well but was led into idolatry by his one thousand wives and concubines.
In the New Testament, the most famous human father was Joseph. We see his willingness to accept Mary and the ridicule that came with that, to be a father to Jesus. We see him at the Temple when Jesus is twelve, but after that, he disappears from history. Some fathers are mentioned in passing but for the most part, other than advice to fathers, none are mentioned. The most famous parable, the misnamed The Parable of the Prodigal Son, has a concerned father looking for the return of his sons (3). In this parable, God is considered the father.
Paul Vitz wrote a fascinating book a number of years ago about the influence of fathers present and absence, and how that effected or influenced their famous sons (4). He looked at some famous atheists and the father influence in their lives, concluding that some had what he calls the defective father hypothesis. Some of these may or may not be familiar to you. The following had fathers who died when they were young. Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the last half of the Nineteenth Century. He coined the phrase “God is dead” and the idea of “the will to power” (5). His philosophy continues to dominate throughout the 20th Century and today. Philosophers Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus all lost fathers at a young age. The last two were French existentialists who sought to live for now.
A number of famous or influential people had weak or abusive fathers. These include Thomas Hobbs, a socialist philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher who wrote against Biblical faith, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian psychologist, and H.G. Wells, an historian and fiction writer (6). A French philosophy included in this list is Voltaire. In a bit of historical irony, he stated that the Bible would become a museum piece and his writings would be more famous. After he died, his house was turned over to a Bible society to make and distribute Bibles. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, according to her son William Murray, spoke of the hatred between her and her father (7).
Politicians, especially of the 20th Century, had problem fathers. Joseph Stalin had a father who was both a drunk and abusive. His mother pushed him toward priesthood in the Orthodox church but he eventually rejected Christianity and ended up, in one of his reigns of terror, murdering priests. He was responsible for the deaths of sixty to seventy million of his people in peace time (8). Adolf Hitler had a father who severely and regularly beat him and showed little concern for his family. His father died when Hitler was fourteen and he had no positive male influence, rejected Christianity for the occult, was influenced by Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, an atheistic pessimist, and as some have suggested, Darwinian evolutionists. Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist dictator, had a father whom he hated because he was a family tyrant.
The lack of a strong, positive male role model in their lives became destructive, not only to them, but to millions of people. Out of them came such things as concentration camps, the Gulags, an anything goes philosophy, wars, the removal of god from society, and the hatred of fathers, especially God as Father. These ideas continue today and are the background to some of the things we see happening in what we call the culture wars. Some of you might remember the slogan of the 1960s: Trust no one over thirty. Those who stated that are now in power and they are telling us to shut up and do what they say.
There are positive influences as well. Here are a few who had positive father and male role models. Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and theologian whose theology books are still available. William Paley, a British theologian and philosopher defended Christianity in the early 19th Century. Alexis de Tocqueville was a Frenchman who wrote about the positive religious influences in America in the early 19th Century. William Wilberforce made the slavery trade illegal in England after a forty year struggle and his son Samuel was a minister in the Church of England -- he spoke fondly of his father. ;Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who struggled against the deadness of Christianity in his society, much like some do today in our own. G.K. Chesterton was a novelist, theologian, and humorist in Britain in the early 20th Century, whose thoughts were often brief and to the point. His book Orthodoxy is still read today. The German Albert Schweitzer, a musician, theologian, and physician, left Germany to be a medical missionary in Africa. Karl Barth was a deep and thorough theologian of the early 20th Century who wrote thick volumes on scripture. Asked near the end of his life what was the greatest theological lesson he learned from a lifetime of study, said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German minister and theologian who was a member of the Confessing church that opposed Hitler. He wrote a number of still read books including The Cost of Discipleship. He became involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, arrested, and hung shortly before the end of World War II.
In spite of what might be said about various modern disciplines, fathers are important. Honoring them is something that should be important. Like mothers, fathers influence their children. Being a father is difficult and we are not perfect. Most of us will admit that we made mistakes, and looking back would have done things differently. But since we cannot change history, we accept that we did what we thought was best, and look forward to sharing in our children lives, and our grandchildren as well. So happy Fathers Day fathers, May you have a good one and may God continue to bless you and your families.
George B. Mearns
(1) Paul C. Vitz, The Father Almighty, Maker of Male & Female, http://www.paulvitz.com, copied 4/7/2010.
(2) My wife Yevette spent several years teaching kindergarten in an inner city school where some of the children and their siblings had different fathers who they never saw and mothers who were rarely around or responsive.
(3) It is misnamed because there were two sons and the parable is addressed to the oldest, not the youngest. We like the young son because it has such a happy ending but Jesus was challenging the Pharisees who were represented by the oldest son (see Luke 15, especially verses 1-2). The better name would be The Parable of the Lost Sons.
(4) Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless, The Psychology of Atheism. I wrote two articles on this which appeared in the Deerbrook church of Christ bulletin and can be found at www.dbcoc.org/archive/week73.html and www.dbcoc.org/archieve/week74.html. Today’s article expands on these.
(5) See the 8/16/2009 Cypresswood bulletin for more on Nietzsche.
(6) He wrote the books The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds which have become famous movies. The second was the bases for a famous late 1930s radio broadcast by Orson Wells about a Martian invasion that some took to be real and panicked many in the New York region.
(7) Vitz’s book was written before the death of O’Hair, who was murdered along with her granddaughter in Texas.
(8) See R. J. Rummel, Death by Government. He has revised his figures upwards due to new information on the Chinese red terror. He states that no democracy goes to war with another democracy; that totalitarian governments are the ones who go to war and those who kill their own citizens in peace time.