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Three
kids are in the schoolyard, bragging about their fathers.
The first one says: "My dad scribbles a few words on
a piece of paper ... calls it a poem ... and they give him
fifty dollars." The second kid says: "That's nothing.
My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper ... calls
it a prescription ... and they give him a hundred dollars."
Leading the third kid to say: "I've got you both beat.
My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper ... calls
it a sermon ... and it takes eight people to collect all the
money."
My daughter
is in town for Father's Day. And I trust she will note that,
before the morning is over, it will have taken 24 people to
collect all the money.
*
* * * *
It's Father's
Day. Which seems worthy of a word. Or two. Or several. But
let me clear the decks before I begin by mentioning a couple
of things I could say ... perhaps should say ... but have
no plans to say. Assemble those words under a heading called
"Deadbeat Dads." They exist. They shouldn't. God
expects more of `em. I tend to frown on `em. The courts ought
to go after `em. And women ... especially those who don't
want to be hurt ... ought to steer clear of `em.
I'm talking
about the abusers and the abandoners. I'm talking about the
neglecters and the non-payers. And I'm especially talking
about those who won't own up to paternity or think that paternity
has nothing to do with responsibility. In this great garden
called "life," you have your seed planters and your
plant tenders. Men who aren't willing to do the latter, have
no business being the former.
Are there
a lot of those dudes out there? I suppose there are. But,
given the slice of the culture to which I preach, I don't
see many of them. So I do not feel inclined ... this morning,
anyway ... to scold or indict them. Another day, perhaps.
It has
occurred to me ... in the churches I have served ... that
I am seeing more and more men taking fatherhood seriously.
I see them expressing fatherhood creatively, while maintaining
it responsibly. Not all men, mind you. But more, with each
passing year.
I don't
know all the reasons for this. But something must be working.
Demographics may play a part. The grooms at my weddings are
older than they used to be. Which may make them more settled,
more focused and more mature when they start their families.
It may also mean that they are more rigid and set in their
ways. But that's another sermon.
Certainly
the urgings of the Women's Movement have not been lost on
men. "Treat us like equals," they said. "Learn
some new skills," they said. "Express your feminine
side," they said. And they were right. So we did. Or
we tried.
Promise
Keepers, too, did its part (quite apart from the controversy
that sometimes surrounded its rallies). "Shape up,"
men told each other. "Fly right. Give your word. Keep
your word. Then live your word. It's biblical. It's practical.
It will work." They were right.
Which
may account for the fact that I am now seeing males who are
softer and more sensitive than before. Not consistently. Not
universally. But certainly more than occasionally ... even
though the field of professional athletes would appear to
be ripe for evangelization.
Lest you
think I am misreading this trend, Roger Wittrup recently sent
me some research results suggesting that "today's breed
of dad may, indeed, be different." One of the cited surveys
was published by Sesame Street Parents Magazine. Don't
laugh. This is serious stuff. I didn't even know that Sesame
Street had a parent's magazine. But they do. Apparently, a
lot of guys read it. So much so that hundreds of them responded
to questions about how their roles have grown ... how their
tasks have changed ... how their skills have improved ...
and (interestingly enough) how their rewards have magnified.
Today's
dads, statistically speaking, father smaller families ...
claim that their most important function is to be "role
model" rather than "breadwinner" ... and suggest
that the parental task they most dislike is having to discipline
a kid for bad behavior. If I could sum up the survey results
in one phrase, it is that today's fathers give more thought
to bonding with their kids than providing for them.
Which
may speak volumes about who reads Sesame Street Magazine
... who takes time to respond to surveys ... or how "flush"
the local economy has been for the last two decades. The great
majority of fathers I know don't stress out over "providing,"
so much as over "bonding." They figure that in a
full-employment economy, there will always be a way to get
milk. But they fear that, in our increasingly-fragmented culture,
there may not always be time to get close.
One thing
in the survey that made me feel good was that today's young
fathers are not terribly critical of their own fathers ...
who (by all accounts) did it differently. Concerning the sins
of their fathers (real or imagined), they said: "Times
were different then. Tougher, too." Wrote one young dad
about his dad: "As for spending more time with us, he
may have wanted to. But it wouldn't have been easy to do,
given that he worked two jobs. And we needed every dollar
that he made in both of them."
Which
got me to thinking. About my own dad, I mean. He died relatively
young. And, as you have heard me say on previous occasions,
his last years were certainly not the happiest of his life.
But I went back and thought about his early working years.
When he could work. And did work. Those were the years he
worked two jobs. His first job started at 6:00 in the morning
and concluded at 2:00 in the afternoon. Then he came home,
took a nap, ate his big meal of the day, and went off to his
second job (working from 4:30 in the afternoon to 9:30 at
night). That added up to 65 hours per week. Which I don't
think abnormal. But when I do it, I have more control over
it ... and greater reward from it. At the time, he did what
he had to do. Which kept us alive ... if not terribly close.
As concerns
fathers and church, I am not aware that anybody has surveyed
them. But there seem to be more of them. At least that's what
my colleagues say. I can't say firsthand. That's because my
ministerial experience has been abnormal. All during my ministry,
I have seen lots of men ... even when men tended to be scarce
in mainline churches.
It used
to be that Protestant churches were gender-slanted toward
people wearing dresses. Religion was a woman's thing. Men
had chores to do, fields to farm, and (in later years) golf
to play. Most men agreed that their kids needed some Sunday
schooling, but figured their wives could handle that. Which
was how Sunday mornings, in Protestant churches, came to be
filled with women and children. Ironically, during most of
that era, all of the preachers were men ... all of the church
officials were men ... all of the people collecting, counting,
banking and spending the money were men ... but all of the
Sunday school teachers and Mission Committee members were
women. So I guess it evened out. In men's minds, anyway.
My father
always professed great interest in the church, so much so
that he never failed to ask "How was it?" or "What
did the preacher say?" when the rest of us came home
at 12:30. But, for most of his life, he didn't go all that
much. Unless one of us was doing something, then he'd be there
to see it.
Coming
into the ministry, I took all this for granted, don't you
see. So it surprised me when I saw lots of men in the churches
I served. And I took it as a compliment when some guy's wife
would pull me aside and whisper: "I want to thank you
for getting my husband interested in church. You are the first
preacher he has ever been willing to come and hear."
And while I wanted to protest that "coming to hear me"
shouldn't constitute a primary incentive to worship the Lord,
I eventually shut up and accepted the compliments in the gracious
spirit with which they were intended. But, I will confess
that for 35 years I have ever-so-slightly slanted my sermons
so that my subject choices, speech patterns and sermon illustrations
betrayed a masculine overtone ... the better to keep husbands
attending and the compliments of their wives forthcoming.
Occasionally,
over the years, I have heard women say: "My husband won't
come to church with me because his parents always made him
go as a kid." I don't know where husbands first came
up with that line to rationalize their reluctance. But it
has worked like a charm for decades. Believe it or not, women
buy it. As stupid as it sounds, women buy it. Don't ask me
why. It makes no sense to me.
As concerns
those early years of "forced church-going," his
parents probably made him do a lot of other things, too. I
suspect they made him go to school, brush his teeth, take
out the trash, and write thank you notes for ties he never
wore to aunts he never saw. And he managed to get over that
stuff. If some guy were to say that to me ("I don't come
to church because my parents forced me as a kid"), I'd
probably say: "It sounds like your mom and dad really
screwed with your head big time, to the point that you're
still emotionally dangling from their chain. Why not meet
me in my office and work through some of that? It must be
hell to feel so tied to (and controlled by) one's parents.
At age 47, no less."
One man
actually told me that he'd gladly come to church, but his
wife was the soprano soloist (meaning that she sat with the
choir). Apparently, it made him feel uncomfortable to sit
alone. Mind you, this man ran a mid-sized corporation in his
working life. Oh, the stupid lies we tell ... and buy ...
to avoid coming to terms with what is really going on in our
lives.
But like
I said, I have always seen guys in church. And I am seeing
more of them than ever before. Which is good. For a lot of
reasons. One of them being health. Ed Adams clipped an editorial
from last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. Listen to
this:
Why
go to the gym, when you can go to church?
A remarkable
new study by the National Institute for Healthcare Research
analyzed some 29 peer-reviewed studies of some 126,000 people
and found a statistically significant link between churchgoing
and lifespan. You are 29% more likely to live longer if
you're a churchgoer than if you sleep late on Sundays. There
are real health benefits to faith, as scientific research
has long shown. Churchgoers, synagogue regulars and mosque
attendees generally seem to suffer from lower rates of cancer,
heart disease, mental illness and fewer bouts of depression.
Believers
generally have lower blood pressure and stronger immune
systems. (One study compared the death rates of people in
religious and non-religious Israeli kibbutzim; the more
religious ones had a much lower death toll.) What's new
is the connection between religious observation and outliving
the local atheist-club president.
But
why? The study doesn't say, but Dr. Michael McCullough,
who led the research, was willing to speculate. It may be
that religion confers a tight welter of benefits that can't
be easily simulated in the secular world; a conservative
creed that cultivates moderation or abstinence, a social
network that sustains believers in these values, and a strong
belief system that gives hope in the face of hardship. These
things combine to protect the faithful from making dangerous
choices and to relieve stress.
This
study is an encouraging sign that the 20th century
mind-set, to toss overboard any and all religious thinking
as mindless superstition, may have more serious drawbacks
than we ever imagined.
My friends,
I predict two things in regard to such studies. First, we
are going to see more and more of them. Second, we will see
skeptics work harder and harder to debunk them. But those
of us who have long said "This is a better way to live,"
will keep preaching the merits of marrying habits with holiness
as a prescription for happiness ... and there will be fewer
deaf ears on which our sermons will fall.
But more
than that, we will increasingly see fathers coming to church,
not just so they can be healthy for their kids, but so as
to be mentors to their kids. You heard me say earlier that
today's fathers place a greater value on the "role modeling"
aspects of parenting, than upon any other. But role modeling
is multi-faceted. On the surface, it means: "This is
how you hold the saw. This is how you pedal the bike. This
is how you factor the equation." But, at a deeper level,
role modeling (by fathers) is also: "This is how you
love a woman. This is how you serve a neighbor. This is how
you follow the Lord."
Role modeling
is as much about letting your kid see you pray, as letting
your kid see you cry. Every time you sing a hymn ... every
time you take a stand ... you are saying to your kid: "This
life is not just about you. And it's not just about me. It's
about some things that are bigger than you and me. And I can
tell you that till I'm blue in the face. But every time I
place my tithe in the envelope ... my posterior in the pew
... or my life on the line ... I am showing you that life's
pecking order doesn't stop at our front door. I hear you talk
with your friends about whose father is bigger. Come Sunday,
at church, I'll show you the answer."
Thirty
two hundred years ago ... but who's counting? ... Joshua (having
settled in a land where there was, religiously speaking, every
choice available) said to the people of Israel: "Choose,
this day, whom you will serve. Your choices include the gods
your fathers served in Egypt, the gods you encountered in
the wilderness, the gods of the people across the river, or
the gods of the Amorites that were already in place when we
got here. But, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
Which, I assume, meant that he was making a decision that
included his kids.
"Ah,"
you say, "that was all well and good for Joshua. For
in his day ... in his time ... in his culture ... he had more
authority over his house and control in his house." Probably
so. But I have learned (by observing how things go in my house)
that it is a whole lot easier to talk about what I desire
of others, once I become clear ... by precept and example
... about what I expect of myself.
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