Father’s Day

Soon it’ll be Father’s Day.  Well, perhaps it’s really needed now, because it seems to me that fathers are suffering an identity crisis!  Most of the 40% divorce rate leaves children normally in the mother’s care; in the rest, both spouses are out earning, - sometimes only the woman finds employment.  With feminism claiming equality of the sexes, men are often not sure what their function is any more.  Even their job has overtime or shift work that makes their presence in the home only occasional or erratic.

Well, at the risk of being hounded out of the neighbourhood, let me put in a plea for fathers.

First of all, it seems to me that totalitarian authority is a bad thing for any community, be it nation, or church, or family.  Old Testament politics made sure that neither king in the nation, or priest in the Temple, would have sole responsibility.  And in the home, the original language about the creation of Adam’s partner in Genesis indicates that she should be ‘a match’ for him.  So kids need two voices to rear them, two perspectives on their needs.  They need nurturing in a relationship of a mother’s understanding and persuasion; but behind that they need the security of being under control - even, in the last resort, by force!

Another thing is how as children we absorb life’s values from our parents - normally values for relating to our environment come from Mum; but an instinctive vision of a supreme authority derives from Dad.  As a personal example: a dominant factor in my spiritual life has been the sense that you can’t fool God: he sees through every excuse and cover-up.  In retrospect, I remember fooling my mother, but I never, but never got away with a lie to my father!  Tragically, nowadays, a lot of children have a dominant image of God as absent, sometimes violent...

My experience of conservative Jewish homes appeals to me.  At the wedding, they are ‘King and Queen’.  In social life, Dad rules the place of the home; so in society; she says, ‘Yes, dear’.  In the home, mother reigns as queen: he says, ‘Yes, dear.’  Of course, they have their own agendas...  but it seems to work very well...      

John Peck