Now I don’t know what it means to be a father, I hope to some day, but in the past few years I’ve wrestled with being a man and what that means. The more and more I think about being a man I see how my own father has shaped me and that often paralyzes me with fear that someday I might misshape my son! All of us men have had a dad! I mean we couldn’t be here without one, but all of our fathers have had positive and negative effects on you and I as men (and this goes for women too, but I’m specifically referencing men). This morning I read a great blog entry from Anthony Bradley’s blog over at THE RESURGENCE and it challenged me to think about my dad and the men I seek to minister to in the college arena.
As you could imagine each day as I meet with young men I see the lasting effects of their fathers. Either an absent father or a father that didn’t step up to the plate and be the man he had to be for his son and very often do I hear men speak positively about their fathers. Thus, many of the men I meet are scared by their fathers and to take it further you can still see how the sin of the father is affecting them as young men, but praise God as we enter into relationship with the Heavenly Daddy, GOD, through Jesus Christ we can be transformed! This reminds me of a verse from 1 Peter:
Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1:18-19)
Praise God that we can have these scars healed and we can move into real, authentic and godly manhood! Check out Anthony’s post by HERE. I’ve included a couple of sections I thought were interesting, but czech out the whole entry! Blessings…
Not being fathered well is simultaneously sinful and violently traumatic. Absentee fathers physically, emotionally, or spiritually disconnected from their sons pilot Boeing 757 right into their son’s heart. Passive fathers, sons of divorced, abusive fathers, silent fathers, busy fathers, spiritually dead fathers, unhealed fathers, wounded fathers, emasculated and feminized fathers traumatize their sons, often unintentionally, by sabotaging the initiation process that God intends for the masculine maturity of a God-made man.
American Fathers, now for a few generations, have not intentionally guided their sons through the stages of the masculine journey. The trauma has left generations of young men lost, bored, scared, frustrated, angry, anxious, isolated, lonely, unknown, unpursued, and apathetic. Feelings of inadequacy rule men. Men secretly ask, “am I the real deal? Am I really a man? What does my father think of me? Does my father approve of me? Is he proud of me? Is he stoked that I’m his son? How do I do this life thing?”
And two more that I just had to throw in!
America’s emasculated and feminized evangelical churches are complicit with their pink and purple interior walls, grooming boys to be nice, sweet little boys who never bleed, and presenting a Jesus who is not a warrior fighting for a kingdom but a holy “Oprah.”
This is the Enemy’s strategy to destroy the world. Kill the men, win the war. Unless the church takes off her apron and picks up a rifle to fight for men expect more violence, drug abuse, sexual perversion, suicide, and passivity from men. God-made men fighting for the love of God and neighbor is the best thing for women and the world.
May God bless you fathers out there and enable you to love and be the men your boys (and girls) need! May God bring transformations to each of our lives as we are in relationship with him the perfect Father!
Alright off to campus to be the healing balm that God would use me as to help heal the scars of some young men…