Devaluing Dads, Discrediting the Father

Great post from Wednesday at The Gospel Coalition on the value of fathers. The secular trend is to argue that fathers are not necessary. So children raised by a single woman, or two women in a relationship, will not lose much of anything by not having a father around.

As the oldest son in a family marked by divorce, I can testify to the loss of not having a father around. Some have diagnosed this as a "father wound."

We dispense with fatherhood, a basic building block of family and society, at our peril.

So why all the momentum to undermine fathers? I wonder if our discomfort with the idea of human fatherhood is a sign of a problem deeper in our souls. Bible scholars say that God is a mysterious Trinity of three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In his sovereignty, God the Father runs the universe and has set in motion the only sure plan of redemption.

Maybe we devalue our earthly fathers because we are estranged from our heavenly one. We prefer to walk Buddhism’s Eightfold Path, obey Islam’s Five Pillars, or practice our own atheist morality than answer to a heavenly Father. We’d rather invent our own salvation than acknowledge his.

Maybe we evangelicals, who do a good job of emphasizing Jesus the Son, haven’t done as well talking about his Father and ours. It was Jesus, after all, who told us not only that the Father is holy and able to cast us into hell, but that he loves us and knows our every need even before we ask. Far from a ridiculous bumbler, this

Father combines wisdom, power, and grace.Are fathers necessary? Yes, on earth—and in heaven.

Read Guthrie’s whole column at Crosswalk.com.[SDG-JS]