- 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. (U.S. Dept. of Health/Census) - 5 times the avg.
- 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes. (Beyond Belief to Convictions) - 32 times the avg.
- 85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes. (Beyond Belief to Convictions) - 20 times the avg.
- 80% of rapists with displaced anger come from fatherless homes. (Justice and Behavior, Vol 14, p.403-26) - 14 times the avg.
So you see that not having a strong father has an almost crippling affect on children. In an article on PsychologyToday.com, they shared something that I find very interesting. Here is an excerpt from that article (Emboldened text for emphasis):
"Blankenhorn argues that America is facing not just the loss of fathers, but also the erosion of the ideal of fatherhood. Few people doubt the fundamental importance of mothers, Popenoe comments, but increasingly the question of whether fathers are really necessary is being raised and said by many to be merely a social role that others - mothers, partners, stepfathers, uncles and aunts, and grandfathers can play."When I was a kid my parents would shelter me from certain influences that would lessen my outlook on the father figure. Movies like Rosanne, Dinosaurs, and The Simpsons were shows I wasn't allowed to watch because there was constant disrespect for the father by main characters in the shows, and many times the father wasn't the brightest cookie in the jar. Now that I'm older I can see the results of such influences in the teenagers I see in youth and as I'm out in cities. The degradation of the father ideology has changed the way we think as a culture, and without the proper views of what a father really is, things will continue to decay.
I once heard that what happens in the physical is directly related to what happens in the spiritual, so let's make the connection. We have always heard that God is our Father, but do we really understand that and the importance that this truth holds? Studies in psychology have also discovered that not having a father leaves a child to define themselves. A father is not just meant to protect and provide for his family, but also to instill values of self-worth and identity.
"I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." - 1 Corinthians 6:18
"For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father'." - Romans 8:15
The fatherless most likely haven't had a father to establish that self-worth, so to tell them they're worth something usually falls on deaf ears. A boy doesn’t become a man until his father says so, likewise a girl is daddy’s little princess. A father teaches his son how to be a real man and his daughter how to find a real man, without such guidance we find many boys stay womanizing boys, and girls keep running to "Mr. Wrong" because they haven’t been shown otherwise by a strong father figure. The leader of the home is the father, and without a leader a group is left in chaos.
Now as I said previously, God is our Father. He is the One we must look to learn what it means to be a real Christian. Men can only offer interpretations as to what God really means unless they hear from Him directly, and we can easily be lead down the wrong path and find “Mr./Ms. Wrong” in the worldly lusts if we don’t hear from Him directly. God gives us our identity and our purpose; He shows us how to live right and how to connect to the right people, and He gave us a shining example of how to live by sending Jesus to die for us. Notice that Jesus was with God in Heaven before He came to Earth. He was part of the plan and agreed to die for us before He stepped foot onto Golgotha. That is a real Christian. He did as His Father asked of Him, knowing that it would be hard, knowing that it would be painful beyond our understanding, but He went through it anyway because He loves us so much.
"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls." - Hebrews 12:1-3
That is Mr. Right, and God reveals truth like that in scripture time and time again. On the other side of the spectrum is the Bride of the Groom. The Bible relates the Church to a wife for Christ in Ephesians 5:22-33, and we are the Church.
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." - Ephesians 5:22-33
The main goals of a mother are to nurture a child and teach that child how to live. A mother typically spends more time with the child during the development years and in that time period is when the child will learn things like how to respond to authority figures, how to move and react to their environment and even basic survival concepts. As the child grows up, they develop a closer relationship to their father of their own. A mother is there to not just to nurture, but also to teach. That also goes for the Bride of Christ. We as the Church ought to reach out to "baby" Christians and nurture their spirit man and connect them with their Father. At the same time, we must learn to let them go and experience themselves. A baby can’t drink milk all it’s life, eventually it must learn to feed itself. And I think that’s one area where we need to improve. Take your pick of a Sunday service from pretty much any church group in America and if you listen and dissect that message exactly how it’s preached you will see how basic it really is. That is the nurturing role of the Church, but how many churches take that further and teach the members to feed themselves? Now as I spoke on this topic, a friend of mine pointed out that many new Christians tend to bite of more than they can chew. They dig too deep into theology or (Insert steaky bits here. Yes, I know "steaky" isn't a real word.), and what happens is they can start to choke their spirit man and if the nurturing protecting mom isn't there to get that air passage unclogged, the damage will be quite severe. So we should remember that there are steps from milk to steak, and help fellow Christians ween themselves onto the next tasty morsel. Another major goal of the Church is to teach other Christians how to “survive” on their own. Some of the members will go to be missionaries in other countries and if they don’t know how to feed themselves and “survive” in the world, then how are they supposed to fulfill their callings?
That is the identity we have in Christ. We are the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, and we are to act as such. A good wife respects her husband and submits to his authority, and so too should the Bride of Christ. We are part of that body and as a whole that is our purpose, to nurture and teach God’s children, not to save them. Saving a soul can only be done by the One who created it, and we cannot try or else we’ll fail. Our job as the Bride is to love people, and when His love overcomes the darkness in their lives then we nurture and teach them so they can grow and help others in the same way.
