I think there are two ditches that dads tend to find themselves in while attempting to stay on the road of biblical fatherhood. To the left, there is a ditch of faithless fathering. To the right, there is a ditch of directionless fathering. Neither are entirely distinct from each other. Both are deadly. Wilson addresses both of these ditches in his introduction.

A lot of Christian fathers have a system and a set goals for their children. They are the man with the plan. And that is a good thing. A man should have a plan. Fathering can’t be directionless but more on that in a second.

A plan isn’t enough. Executing a plan isn’t even enough. And it doesn’t ultimately matter if it is biblical or not. Why? Because, as Wilson says, boys take a lot faith. Wilson writes, “Faith conquers kingdoms, faith stops the mouth of lions, faith turns armies to flight, and faith brings boys up to a mature and godly masculinity.” So many dads have a plan but no faith. They are fathering in unbelief…

Why is faith so important? Here are two examples Wilson gives:

Say a boy breaks a chair because he was jumping on it from the bunk bed. Unbelief sees the cost of replacing the chair. Faith sees aggressiveness and courage, both of which obviously need to be directed and disciplined. Suppose a boy gets into a fight protecting his sister. Unbelief sees the lack of wisdom that created a situation that could have been easily avoided; faith sees an immature masculinity that is starting to assume the burden manhood.

Faithless fathering produces rigid fathering. Wilson says, “Unbelief squashes; faith teaches.” Faithless fathering is lazy visionless fathering. Wilson says, “Unbelief cannot look past the surface.” It cannot see the future. It is forever stuck in the present. And, therefore, faithless fathering, even when equipped with the best plan, cannot see how boys can be shaped into future men.

Now, faith, in itself, isn’t good enough. It also must not be a misplaced faith. After all, faithless fathers aren’t really faithless. Their faith is just misplaced. It has the wrong object. It is either place on their plan or on the boy. This is a no-no. Wilson explains:

So faith is central in bringing up boys, but it is important to remember that the object of faith is not the boy. It is faith in God, faith in His promises, faith in His wisdom. Faith concerns the boy, and the boy can see that it concerns him. Parents are to believe God for their sons, which is a very different thing than believing their sons.

So, a father must have a faith that is God-centered. And a God-centered faith is never directionless.

Directionless fathering is just as bad as faithless fathering. In reality, it is just another form of faithless fathering. See, boys have an end goal. They are to become men. This is God’s design for boys as laid out in Scripture. Getting there takes takes the direction and discipline of a father. Wilson writes:

The faith exhibited by wise parents of boys is the faith of a farmer, or a sculptor, or anyone else engaged in the work of shaping unfolding possibilities. It not the faith of someone waiting around for lightening to strike; it is the faith of someone who looks at the present and sees what it will become–through grace and good works.

Everyday a father is presented with opportunities from God for the shaping of his boys. That shaping must be done according to God’s Word. It must follow the pattern laid out in Scripture. So, a father must be the man with the plan. The plan just can’t be of his own creating. It must be derived from the Scripture. Wilson says:

As we look to the Scriptures for the pattern of masculinity that we are to set before our sons, we will find them manifested perfectly in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the incarnate Word, the One who embodies perfectly all that Scripture teaches in words.

A faithful father will direct his son into Christlikeness. He won’t passively wait. He will make the most of every opportunity to shape his son into a godly Christian. Like I said, don’t skip the introduction.

I’ll dig into the first actual chapter next Tuesday.

Oblivious of all the factual evidence that paternal separation causes aberrant behavior in boys, Carol Gilligan calls for a fundamental change in child rearing that would keep boys in a more sensitive relationship with their feminine side. We need to free young men from a destructive culture of manhood that “impedes their capacity to feel their own and other people’s hurt, to know their own and other’s sadness,” she writes. Since the pathology, as she has diagnosed it, is presumably universal, the cure must be radical. We must change the very nature of childhood: we must find ways to keep boys bonded to their mothers. We must undercut the system of socialization that is so “essential to the perpetuation of patriarchal societies.

Pretty crazy stuff, right? Gilligan doesn’t want our boys to be men. She doesn’t want them to be like their fathers unless their fathers are effeminate. She wants boys to be girls or, worse yet, to be androgynous.

Now, what we must remember about Gilligan is that she is flesh and blood. And what we must remember about flesh and blood is that it isn’t where the real battle rages. Our battle is with spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:12). In short, the devil is the one gunning for our boys. Gilligan is just one of his many stooges.

Why is the serpent slithering towards our sons? Well, if Big Cat Diaries have taught me anything, it has taught me that predators tend to first go for the young. A baby Thomson’s Gazelle is an easy meal for a skilled cheetah. Much easier than an adult. Similarly, a hundred men couldn’t push over a Redwood but a small child could snap a sapling in his hand. Strength is preceded by weakness. All predators know this, especially that roaring lion (see 1 Peter 5:8). Boys are an easy meal for the devil.

But that isn’t the only reason boys find themselves the four star entree on the enemy’s menu.

Every godly pastor, general, and hedge fund manager starts out as boy. Before he led the funeral service for a congregant, he prayed for his sick sister. Before he led an army, he tussled with imaginary dragons armed only with a wooden sword. Before he made millions, he sold competitively priced lemonade in the neighborhood cul de sac. Manhood is preceded by boyhood. Every great Redwood started out as a vulnerable sapling. The devil knows this and his motto is get them before they get me.

Do you remember when the first attempt was made on life of Moses or Jesus? It was long before Korah or Judas. They were fresh out the womb.

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, and every daughter you are to keep alive.” Exodus 1:22

Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi. Matthew 2:16

So look, nothing is new under the son. Boys have always been the ground-zero of our spiritual warfare. If the devil can’t kill them with a sword of steel (i.e. the pill & surgical abortion), he’ll castrate them with the sword of effeminacy. Boys need the protection of a father if they are to become future men. Which leads me to the book I’ll be blogging* through twice a week this summer: Future Men by Doug Wilson.

Why am I blogging through Future Men? Because the best defense is a good offense. Because we mustn’t retreat. Christians take ground. We don’t give it. We belong to the church militant. The world wants war? Fine, we’ll give them war. A father armed with a Bible and the sage wisdom of a pastor like Doug Wilson is well equipped to train their sons to be godly warriors. Remember the words of Solomon in Psalm 127:

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
They will not be ashamed
When they speak with their enemies in the gate.

Our sons are weapons. They are arrows in our hands. And Future Men is a crash course in archery.

Read along with me. This Friday I’ll cover the introduction.

*My process is simple. I post twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. I read a chapter, immediately type out my thoughts, and press the publish button. In other words, the content of these posts are little more than my unedited stream of consciousness. My guiding principle comes from Kurt Vonnegut. He said, “If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.” Also, you get what you paid for.

“Independent of everything else, of all other factors, the fatal sickness or accident of a child is simply the occasion for God to do a certain work in him. That work is to take the child home to heaven.

My mother put it this way: “If Jesus were here on earth and told you, ‘I’d like Danny to be with Me; I want to take over his teaching and his training,’ you’d gladly give him up. And He’s done that, by taking Danny to heaven.”

We don’t own our children: we hold them in trust for God, who gave them to us. The eighteen or twenty years of provision and oversight and training that we normally have represent our fulfillment of that trust.

But God may relieve us of that trust at any time, and take our child home to His home.”

The Last Thing We Talk About: Help and Hope for Those Who Grieve, Joseph Bayly p. 65-66

“The primitive rigour of the Book of Proverbs is repudiated by modern manners. Not only in domestic training, but even in criminal law, people reject the old harsh methods, and endeavor to substitute milder means of correction. No doubt there was much that was more than rough, even brutal, in the discipline of our forefathers. The relation between father and child was too often lacking in sympathy through the undue exercise of parental authority, and society generally was hardened rather than purged by pitiless forms of punishment. But now the question is whether we are not erring towards the opposite extreme in showing more tenderness to the criminal than to his victim, and failing to let our children feel the need of some painful discipline. We idolize comfort, and we are in danger of thinking pain to be worse than sin. It may be well, therefore, to consider some of the disadvantages of neglecting the old-fashioned methods of chastisement.”  - W.F. Adeney

“If you want to ruin your son, never let him know a hardship. When he is a child carry him in your arms, when he becomes a youth still dandle him, and when he becomes a man still dry-nurse him, and you will succeed in producing an arrant fool. If you want to prevent his being made useful in the world, guard him from every kind of toil. Do not suffer him to struggle. Wipe the sweat from his dainty brow and say, “Dear child, thou shalt never have another task so arduous.” Pity him when he ought to be punished; supply all his wishes, avert all disappointments, prevent all troubles, and you will surely tutor him to be a reprobate and to break your heart. But put him where he must work, expose him to difficulties, purposely throw him into peril, and in this way you shall make him a man, and when he comes to do man’s work and to bear man’s trial, he shall be fit for either.” – Charles H. Spurgeon

Abortion stops a beating heart. You’ve seen the bumper stickers. And you know that it’s true. But then, so do pro-choice feminists (both of the female and male variety). Because, as we know from Romans 1, the unbeliever suppresses the truth, no matter how evident, in his pursuit of unrighteousness. But some unbelievers are more honest than others. Take a fairly recent article by a woman named Antonia Senior’s in The Times [London] entitled, “Yes, Abortion is Killing. But It’s the Lesser Evil.”

Senior admits that a fetus at any stage is a child and, “any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life.” But does this confession make her repudiate the murder of children? No. She insists that “reproduction rights” (i.e. abortion) are central to the feminist cause and “if you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.” In other words, sure, abortion is murder. But somebody has to die in the glorious name of feminism.

Don’t be shocked by this. . To be a feminist, you must despise fatherhood (patriarchy) and if you’re going to despise fathers, you must despise the family. And if you’re going to despise the family, you must despise childbearing. For example, in The Dialectic of Sex, radical feminist Shulamith Firestone tells us how we can free ourselves from the patriarchy.

The freeing of women from tyranny of their reproductive biology by every means available, and the diffusion of the childbearing and childrearing role to the society as a whole, men as well as women.

That is feminism in all its cruelty. Forget the liberation of women. Feminism is about rejecting the fatherhood of God. And while belivers in the true gospel cry out, “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15), believers in this false gospel climb to a summit of their own success, upon a mountaintop of their own murdered children.

I’m new to Steve Farrar’s ministry and writings. I stumbled across one of his books while researching fatherhood in Puritan New England. The few chapters I read were mostly good.

One chapter that I found particularly helpful was entitled, “Plymouth Rock Coaching Clinic.” Farrar argues, “The Puritans were great coaches. They knew how to teach. And they knew how to motivate.”  Now, I hate his use of the word “coach” here. I’d prefer instruct, train, or father. Fathering defines coaching, not the other way around. Nonetheless, I agree with the underlying point of what he is saying.

Farrar then goes on to state what too many us already know to be true:

“It’s tough to be a good father if you didn’t have a good father. Your ability to father is greatly affected by how you were fathered. If biblical fatherhood was modeled for you, you’ve got a tremendous head start.”

Ain’t that the truth?

I had a dad that loved me but he didn’t model biblical fatherhood. I’ve spent a large portion of my life playing catch-up to my peers who had the opposite experience. That is, in part, the motivation behind the creation of this website. It’s a place for the clueless to get some clues. Anyways…

Back to Farrar.

He doesn’t leave us clueless without hope. He says, “you can still catch up. You really can.” Farrar gives us a list of “fifty tangible and concrete things that [we] can do.” Some of them are a bit cheesy but they are still helpful.

I got thinking about this a lot last year when I listened to an episode of the Freakonomic’s podcast on “population planning.” The bulk of the podcast was dedicated to explaining the unlikely origins of China’s one child policy. This alone makes the podcast worth a listen but it was a short story tacked on at the end that really disturbed me. Here is its synopsis from Freakonomic dot com:

Finally, we talk to Stanford researcher Stephen Quake about a new blood test that can help pregnant women learn if their babies are likely to be born with Down Syndrome. This leads to yet another moral dilemma in baby-making: as parents can learn more and more about what’s in the womb, what kind of decisions will they make? And what will the consequences be decades later?

The answer to those last two questions should be obvious to anyone. What kind of decisions will they make if they find out their baby has down syndrome? They will abort their child. And what will the consequences be decades later? We will eliminate the world of down syndrome and all other birth defects. The West hates the weak, sick, and elderly. Quake’s test will help us move a little closer to ridding us of these troublesome barriers to pleasure.

Do you doubt it? I hope not. It is already happening. Check out this story about a “wrongful birth” lawsuit in Oregon:

On the June 2007 day their daughter was born, Ariel and Deborah Levy were overcome with excitement, then shock when hospital staff told them their daughter looked like she had Down syndrome.

A doctor asked Deborah Levy if she’d had a prenatal test — a chorionic villus sampling, or CVS for short — and Levy said yes, the results showed they’d have a normal, healthy child.

Within days of her birth, however, a blood test confirmed that the little girl, Kalanit, had Down syndrome.

The Levys filed suit against Legacy Health, claiming that Deborah Levy would have aborted her pregnancy had she known her daughter had the chromosomal abnormality.The lawsuit blames Legacy’s Center for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in North Portland and a Legacy lab for allegedly botching the test. The Levys — who dearly love their daughter, now 4 — want Legacy to pay for the extra life-time costs of caring for her.

This is just the beginning of our brave new world where only quality of life matters. And we Christians are spending all our time buying and selling bracelets to stop Kony’s brutality. Such hypocrisy knows no end.

Here are few of the stats:

• Breakdown of male/female visitors to pornography sites: 72% male & 28% female.
• 1 of 3 visitors to all adult web sites are women.
• 9.4 million women access adult web sites each month.
• 17% of all women struggle with pornography addiction.

Keep in mind that these numbers are already several years old. I have read other recent reports that claim female porn users will soon surpass male users. I doubt that to be true but one thing to take away from such predictions is that this problem isn’t going away.

So, what is a father to do? How do we protect our daughters from the dangers of pornography? Here are a few places to start…

Be Involved

In Fatherless Generation, John Sowers writes:

“The fatherless daughter is on a quest to belong. Her wilting heart guides her choices, wishing to be found again. Unguided and unprotected, she lets herself be used, even abused. She gives herself away in promiscuous relationships, looking for Dad.”

Too many of our girls are “functionally fatherless.” What does that mean? It means that they have a dad at home but he isn’t involved in their lives. It is so easy to be this dad because the rigors of life tempt us to check out when we get home.  You must discipline yourself to invest time into your children.

Spend time with your daughter. Listen to her problems. Tell her she is beautiful. Give her plenty of hugs. Teach her the Bible. Make sure she feels loved.

This is the first break in the wall that we must seal shut if we are to protect our daughters from promiscuity. There nothing is more important than this initial step. 90% of your focus should rest here.

Create Speed-bumps

Every father should set up “speed-bumps” to protect their children from illicit material online. Speed-bumps don’t stop people from going faster than they should but they at least make them think twice when pressing down the pedal.

A report by “Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later” found that, “79% of youth unwanted exposure to pornography occurs in the home.” We can make both unintentional and intentional viewing of porn at home more difficult by purchasing a good online filter.  I use this product. You can find a helpful chart that compares some of the other programs here.

Be In-The-Know

Fathers need to keep up-to-date with the trends. Do you know if your daughter is on Twitter, Facebook, or part of an online gaming community? You should.  In a recent blog post, Kevin Outland warned:

According to a USA Today/AP/MSNBC poll 49% of women gave chat rooms as their preferred destination for erotic interaction. I can tell you I have seen some chat conversations between 13 years old girls and teenage boys that were so pornographic in nature it was shocking. And the girls were the ones doing most of the dirty talking. So even if your daughters aren’t going to porn sites do you know whom they’re chatting with and what they’re chatting about? I suggest you find out.

Also, do you know if the Twilight series is something you want your daughters reading? What about Justin Beiber? Should your daughter be listening to his music? How about the ultra popular show Glee? Do you know if your daughter even watches this show? The Chastity Club on Glee has the motto that “It’s about the teasing, not the pleasing.” Yeah, you definitely should know.

You don’t need to know everything. A little will go a long way. Then comes the hard part. You need to be able to explain to your daughter from Scripture why many of these things aren’t good for her.

Intercede Like Crazy

The words of Pastor Tedd Tripp seem fitting for the conclusion of this post. He writes:

Ultimately, you must recognize that in all your efforts at child-rearing, you are at the mercy of God. Your children will never come to faith in Christ because you got everything right in the child-rearing department. If they come to know and love God, you will stand in awe of a God who has mercy on children even though their parents fail.

We can do everything right to stifle our daughters’ appetite for sexual immorality and still see them swallowed up by lust. In Mark 7:21, Jesus said, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications…” Ultimately, a new heart is the only hope for our children and that is something you can’t give them. Give yourself to intercession for daughters. Pray that God would “create in them a clean heart” that hungers for holiness (Psalm 51).