Hungry For Godly Fathers -- And Mothers

One doesn't have to spend a lot of time at the mall, or in "government schools," to notice that there are a great many very sad, very confused, very angry young people in this world. Every one of them is a soul cherished by God and worth the loving effort of the Church to reach them. They are not here among us as object lessons.

I absolutely agree that a young woman who dresses inappropriately in belly-baring tank tops and shorts the size of maxi pads could benefit from loving Christian parents who instill in her Godly self-respect, confidence, and competence -- and she likely didn't get that. Likewise, young men who wear their pants below their butts, tattoo obscene things on their arms, and take their cues on how to treat women from Snoop Dogg, need parental influences that are as strong on affection and warmth as on discipline and punishment (which, by the way, are not the same thing). A kid wearing a T-shirt that says "F--- Off" probably didn't come from a consistently loving, consistently Biblical, family. Probably.

So what, exactly, is my problem with Doug Wilson's near-automatic diagnosis of "father hunger" in these cases? After all, who could argue that dads aren't important, and that too many young people never had a good one? Certainly not me. What I object to in Wilson's tattoo/piercing/fat-girls-in-skimpy-clothing posts is the unloving tone he takes; the belief that there should be no empathy offered to parents of rebellious kids, because it's their fault -- always; and his apparent denial of autonomy, volition, will or personal accountability on the part of young people.

I keep looking for -- hoping for -- a tone of anguish that so many kids, although it appears none in his congregations, are hurting so much. I keep waiting to hear true pastoral concern that focuses less on the judgment required of a diagnosis, and I despair that there seems to be, in his writings, no call for the Church to get out and try to reach these kids for Christ -- for their salvation, their restoration, and their nurture by loving followers of Jesus. I don't see it. On the contrary, I see this most secondary of issues elevated to a status not only above what it deserves Biblically, but also used to further isolate and carve from community a group of intelligent, reasonably affluent, motivated Christians who can take comfort in the fact that THEY don't have "those kind" of kids and, moreover, don't have to do a whole lot to try to bring "those kind" of kids to Jesus. And while I don't see a lot of love for his congregation gushing out of Wilson, I do see a font of a different sort poured out in contempt or indifference when it comes to the great unwashed outside his doors.

I'm reading his childrearing manual, "Standing On The Promises," and he makes a great case for not offering to parents grieved over a child's backsliding any sort of sympathy or comfort -- just an acknowledgment, or, if not, a reminder that Bobby's backsliding is their fault. No expressions of empathy are appropriate, he writes, when talking with Christian friends with troubled children. The truth is out there, easily apprehended by Christians who "stand on the promises" about covenant children and thus refuse to cower under secularism by seeking or offering commiseration when their kids or their friends' kids rebel. There can be none; commiseration requires commonality. The fault is clearly, indisputably, the fault of the parents, particularly the father, and a Godly, Biblical, masculine church will offer its love to hurting and bewildered parents by serving up a heaping helping of blame, shame, and whatever kind of "love" can possibly accompany it.

That leads to my third point -- Wilson's insistence that it's all about the fathers. I'm grieving the loss of the father I had, a vastly imperfect man who only came to Christ a decade or so ago and who drank too much, worked too hard, and yet tried with all his might -- and heart -- to be a wonderful dad, both when I was a kid and when I grew to adulthood. He succeeded. Undoubtedly some of the deficits and hurts of my or anyone else's childhood can be traced to our fathers, but to suggest "father hunger" without acknowledging the very real pain of "mother hunger," or "loving family hunger," or "intact family with stay-at-home parent hunger," is to canonize the role of one parent -- solely on gender -- and thus, whether intentionally or not, denigrate the role of the other, female, parent.

When fatherhood is imbued with such power and such primacy, and when the Bible is read first and foremost through the lens of gender and gender roles, men sometimes take that as license to assure, more than anything, that their position on top is never challenged -- and that can, and does, lead to an emphasis on parenting as a means of exercising and protecting power, not as an opportunity to model the very character and words of Jesus Christ. As I've said before, the only parenting manual Christian moms and dads need is in Galatians 5, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Neither the fruit of the Spirit nor the gifts of the Spirit are based on gender, and when parents are truly partners, truly co-parenting with equal passion, authority, and commitment, the Lord does marvelous things. The absence of parenting-through-partnership is very real, but it manifests itself as a hunger for any number of things not gotten in childhood -- Mother Hunger, Grandparent Hunger, Sibling Hunger, Father Hunger, or the aching spiritual hunger that many of us felt upon becoming adults.

It's an unreasonable nod toward unbiblical patriarchy to presume that the root of every youthful rebellion is father hunger, and to seemingly ignore the profound needs of those youths who don't know Christ. Their Father hunger is a far more solid, far more effective, far more energizing foundation for true Christian ministry to every family that hurts. Especially the ones whose kids Wilson would recoil from.