Challenge for Today`s Fathers
Challenge for Today`s Fathers
By Richard D. Kahoe
Psychologist, Writer, and Pastor, Woodward, OK
My Father`s Day thoughts this year were influenced by the fact that this was my first Father`s Day to be a grandfather. I feel I have tried to be a better father than my own was, and am sure my son will try to be a better father than I was. (My son will undoubtedly have the easier task).
If every generation of fathers strives to be better, fatherhood should soon reach some level of perfection. Right? Not necessarily. In the fast-paced twentieth and twenty-first centuries, each generation sees the failures of their own fathers in the light of new realities. Every father seems to run one or two generations behind the needs of his particular time. Resolutions to be better fathers largely reflect the need to be more up-to-date.
My thinking tied in with the sermon topic I planned for June. As part of a series on prayer, based on the Old Testament Psalms, I was scheduled to deal with the Psalm laments that cry for deliverance from one`s enemies. Earlier, reflecting on this group of Psalms, I wrote a psalm-like "Lament over Modern Enemies." Our twentieth-century was not quite so brutish as Old Testament times, when personal and national enemies often preoccupied the minds of Psalm-writers. My "Lament" focused on more currently-relevant modern enemies:
"O Lord, . . . my enemies are not like those of old. They seek not to trap me in the harrier`s snare, nor savage my mortal flesh like a pouncing lion. . . . My enemies . . . would destroy the province of the heart; they reduce the life of spirit like blighted corn. . . . Deliver us from the oppression of bigots, who value people by the color of their skins. We fear not them who march under an infidel flag, God, But judge legalists who fly the banner of the cross Yet lay leaden burdens on other believers. Save us, O Lord, from shrill defenders of abortion Who value license over life. Spare us, too, from strident abortion opponents Who profess to value life but feel no pity For a woman trapped by more than her own sin." I went on against warmongers, arms merchants, rapists of the environment, and "ideological propagandas masquerading as truth."
As I prepared a sermon on the Psalm laments over enemies, I found that one of that group, Psalm 64, is surprisingly modern and psychological. It seemed to anticipate my 1994 "Lament Over Modern Enemies."
I won`t lay out the sermon that I eventually wrote on Psalm 64, but I realized that the Psalm lament illustrates the changing role of fathers. Fathers (and other males) have traditionally filled the role of warrior-defending the cave, the village, city, or nation against mortal enemies. Most of the Old Testament laments against enemies, emphasized the threat of those who would destroy both body and soul. Psalm 64 and the realities of twenty-first century life stress modern threats that do not directly attack the body, but threaten the soul and spirit.
Even now, most fathers would fight a physical threat to his household (as infrequent as those mortal enemies may be). Yet-lagging behind by a generation or two, as I suggested in the beginning-they may overlook the cultural and psychological enemies that threaten their children.
Fathers today, to keep pace with changing times, should address any number of threats to the human spirit. Extremes of both the right and the left diminish quality of human life-whether the issue be gun control, militarism, environmentalism, or right-to life/choice. (My earlier psalm lamented both extremes on the abortion issue).
Ironically, the testosterone-fueled defense against the wolf at the door or the hoard of Huns at the city gate is now often counter-productive. Our biological territorial defenses fuel road rage, neighbor rage (from a recent TV special), and workplace or school shootings. It even feeds into harassment against underdogs that so often leads to workplace and school shootings. Today`s fathers need to harness their animal instincts and lead family, community, and national movements toward greater civility, greater tolerance of those with different skin colors, languages, cultures, or religions.
Fathers, mothers and other adults, lay and clergy, political and community leaders in the twenty-first century-in the spirit of Psalm 64-may utter our prayer laments a new set of enemies. Likewise, we need to muster all our wisdom and political acumen to battle those ideological and cultural enemies.¢
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