One of my deepest longings in this life is to be a good father to my three boys. And yet I constantly feel like I fall woefully short. It is an unachievable goal, and yet daily it is within my reach. Each morning I wake up, and I have the opportunity to follow the Biblical commands laid before me and to exercise the wisdom of God as I interact with, lead, and guide my children. But I know I miss the mark.
In the moments of losing my temper or speaking too harshly, I may watch their countenance drop and realize that I pushed too far. I may not have provoked them to wrath, but I provoked them. In so doing, I may have encouraged them to sin, but I most certainly sinned myself. I am not averse to apologizing to my sons. In fact, I find myself telling them that I am sorry regularly—which is two parts contrition, one part an example I hope that they can follow.
Still, parenting our boys is richly rewarding. Often times our metaphors for parenting are telling of our larger worldviews. On our worst days, we insinuate that our children are tools to be used; we live vicariously through them to achieve our own ambitions. Or they are burdens that squelch our liberty; we whisper frustrations of how children keep us from living a life of more opportunity. A vision of children as mere tax breaks or party-poopers is a bankrupt vision of parenting.
For my wife and me, our boys are joy and happiness. They beam with joy. Their giggles and jokes, and their half-baked and impromptu performances, will permeate our memories for years to come. They bring real joy to our hearts with their sweet and gentle dispositions. They bring real smiles to our faces with their pure and undefiled humor. Whether they know it or not, our three boys speak and unveil God’s grace in ways I was not ready for.
Shadows of a Greater Father
We tend to think that God as our Father is a commonplace metaphor for how we might relate to God. Talk of “the family of God” or being “sons and daughters” of God evokes a familial bond that speaks to our enduring love and relationship. But these discussions are pointed in the wrong direction. They have the images reversed. For Paul, the metaphor is in our families and fathers here in this world. They are the shadow of something greater, not the other way around. After all, Jesus called Him Father in a very real, true, and abiding way. God the Father is the truer progenitor from whom and for whom all things exist (1 Cor. 8:6).
Therefore, as a father, one of my charges is to point my sons out of the cave to the true light that emanates from the Father of lights. In Him, not in me, come all good and perfect gifts (Jas. 1:17). As mere mortals, we fathers change, and change we do—but not so with God. He does not vary. He does not change. There is no shadow in Him because He is light, and there is no darkness in Him (1 Jn. 1:5). He is our Father in Heaven, and His name is holy (Matt. 6:9), but He is also the Father of all comfort and mercies (2 Cor. 1:3–4).
God the Father so loved the world that He sacrificed His own Son (Jn. 3:16)—a task so incomprehensible that He did not even expect it from Father Abraham (Gen. 22). Sure, Father Abraham might have many sons now, I being one and you being another—but not then. Then he had only Isaac by Sarah, and the entire covenant promise was in jeopardy from the raising of Abraham’s knife and the sound of rustling in the thicket.
God, our Father, was true to His promise. Even so, God does not expect us to sacrifice our sons but instead invites us, with our sons, to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15). God desires us to be home in His Fatherly residence (Jn. 14:2) and to take our children and show them the truer and better Father (14:9). God is the most perfect Father, being the truest Father to the fatherless and a protector to the widows (Ps. 68:5).
Being a Good, Good Father
I have cried when each of our children was born—not entirely unlike my getting choked up when I saw my wife walk down the aisle. While the audiences in the delivery rooms were much more professional and smaller, my tears were the opposite: unrestrained and ample. For nine months, now three times over, my wife had carried the child in her womb. She felt their kicks and hiccups, but I always felt I would miss the movement by a moment. But I did not miss their births.
I watched as they “entered into this world,” though their bodies had already been growing, and their souls crafted by God. And I looked at them each for the first time. And I cried. I cried because I loved them. They had done nothing to earn my love. They could not. But I love(d) them with a fierce, raging love because they are mine. They are my children, my sons.
When our first son, William, was born at a Catholic hospital in downtown Nashville, the doctor asked if he could pray for him. We closed our eyes, and he entreated,
“May the Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace” (Num. 6:24–26, KJV).
I pray this prayer for my sons even today. As they walk into school and make friends, I pray that the Lord would bless them richly and also keep them close to His side. I pray that, in whatever hurts and trials they experience, they would sense the face of their Heavenly Father shining upon them, full of grace and mercy. And even when my words may cause their countenance to drop, I pray the Lord would lift them up and that they would be filled with the all-fulfilling peace of God.
Conclusion
When visions and worlds of meaning are projected on screens in front of us at all times, one wonders if it may be better to be a Mike Brady, an Uncle Phil, or a Taylor (either Andy or Tim). Thirty-minute exposition-conflict-resolution is convenient. But to look to the market, to the television, to the advertisement page is to look in the wrong direction. Anything good about those fathers is wishful thinking compared to the true reality of Father God. Just as all good stories orient the human heart to completeness and resolution, so too fathers, in the best of our human stories, point us to our God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
I confess: I am not a great father. I do not even know if I am a good father. But I worship and am devoted to and trust in the true Father of all. My prayer is that my meager efforts towards my sons are but hints and foretastes of the truer and better Father.
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