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Father’s day is lame, and yet I always enjoy it.  It is lame, I believe, because it is another ploy for corporate America to generate some fake emotions and then cash in on them.  I enjoy it because I really like my kids and as their father I am very proud of them.  My upbringing, my experience, my deeply felt beliefs, and my reading of the scriptures tell me that children - any children - are a gift from God.  My place as the youngest of six informs my feeling that one should be open too all the gifts that God has planed for you.  Karen and I take the raising of our children very seriously and have some very specific ideas about how children should be raised and regarded.  Here are some that I thought about on fathers day:

• When raising children, the parents come first.  Marriage is work and children add tension and distraction to a marriage.  Your children need you to love each other first and best - it gives them the model of a healthy marriage and it makes them feel secure.  Also, the children will go away someday - you better have a good relationship by the time that happens.
• As parents, we are meant to equip our children to make decisions (to be free moral agents). In the ancient world, children reached adulthood at the age of 13.  Our culture perpetrates the lie of adolescence.  Karen and I never bought into that artificial construct; instead we concentrated on equipping our children to become adults.  That meant responsibilities (like jobs from about 12 on), access to knowledge (very little to no censorship), engagement (that means spending time with them and talking to them as fellow adults), and always authority.  We never wanted to be their friends (Erin cried the first time I told her that); we are much more. I could write a book on this, but instead I will give you one sentence: Love demands that we give our children the unabridged truth with humility and authenticity; opening ourselves up to vulnerability beyond friendship.
• Be prepared for their bad decisions. Hey you made bad decisions  - well if you didn’t, I made plenty of bad decisions for all of us.  Here is what I know and what I hope I can teach my children: you will make bad decisions (some with horrible and life alerting consequents), but God will honor your efforts to move back to his way. As parents your job is not to sit in judgment of your adult children, but to come along side of them.
• Love unconditionally. You have a divine teacher here. Love them as God has loved you.  Yeah, it is not always easy, but understand that love does not mean approval. Your children are people with their own personalities, and you may not have children that you would have chosen as friends, but you can love them.

Those are just some notes that I’ve made. Seeing children abused by privilege, neglect, unrealistic expectations, too much freedom, and too little freedom, makes me think about how our own journeys must be alternately tended to and let go of.   Last night we all went out together for a big father’s day dinner, and as we sat around the table laughing and talking I saw glimpses of heaven and its bliss. There are no people on Earth that I would rather be with.

- Written by Matt Brown

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Understanding Culture, Understanding Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.