‘For this
reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and
they will become one flesh.’ (Gen.
2:24)
The words above from our key verse in Genesis 2:24 highlight
the stage in his life when the man/son gets married, leaving his parents and
joining himself to his bride. This
naturally presupposes that the son has been with his parents since birth and
has been brought up by them.
Furthermore, it also assumes that both father and mother together have
been involved in his upbringing and training, and that they have walked
faithfully and responsibly with him on his journey through childhood and into
young adulthood.
Although there is a very real sense in which no matter how
responsible and caring parents are as they bring up their child, ultimately the
child as s/he grows into adulthood will make their own decisions and live their
own life. This includes making their own
mistakes, and the parents cannot be held responsible for poor choices or
foolishness on the part of their grown-up children. The proverb is very true which says that a
wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son brings grief to his mother
(Prov. 10:1). The bottom line for
parents is that they ought to seek to fulfil their parental role as responsibly
as they can, bringing their children up in the way they should go, in the hope
that when they are older, they will continue in it:
‘Train a child in the way
he should go, and when he is old he will not turn away from it.’ (Prov. 22:6)
However, the corollary to this is that if parents neglect or
fail in their parental responsibilities, then this will necessarily have
consequences in the lives of their children.
It is very true that children (both boys and girls) do not, and cannot
be expected to bring themselves up. They
ought to be brought up, mentored and trained through their childhood and into
adult life in the context of living consistently throughout these years with
their parents. Parents, both the father and the mother, have to be
involved with the lives of their children. This is their God-given role and
responsibility, and it is a responsibility that, whether they realised it or
not, they took upon themselves from the moment their first child was conceived
in the womb.
To neglect or shy away from this responsibility, or to simply
abdicate from it in whatever way, may very well have undesirable or even
calamitous consequences further down the line as children grow up. It is not other teenagers in local gangs on
the streets, or questionable role models on the internet who are responsible to
train, mentor and bring our children up.
Those who are acclaimed as so-called celebrities too often fail in their
own personal, private life, and cannot provide an example for others to
follow. They have little of weight to
say. Neither is it the church’s
responsibility, although taking part in the ongoing life of a healthy church
can and will invest much good in the all-round growth and maturing of
children. This responsibility is something that we as parents must take up: it is
ours to carry. And what’s more, this parental responsibility
is lifelong: it never goes away even after our children get married. Our role will change and develop as our
grown-up children move on into marriage, but our concern and responsibility for
them as parents and then as grandparents to their children never ends.
In particular, men who may feel inadequate in their role as a
father, and especially those who did not have a father who was involved with
them meaningfully as they grew up and who were either emotionally distant or
altogether absent, need to develop relationships with other men with whom they
can open up and find the mentoring they need as they grapple with the
challenges of fatherhood. Being in a healthy church family community provides
an ideal environment for such positive and helpful relationships to develop.
The following blogs discuss some of the
basic lessons we can about fatherhood from several examples in the Old
Testament.
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