Father’s Day approaches, a day nearly as exciting as groundhog day. I ask myself what it means.
“It’s not unusual,” Tom Jones once said, though he never says it’s not unusual for fathers to feel at a near total loss about how to handle family life in the modern world. The world today offers precious few incentives to get married, let alone start a family, and the threats and discouragements heaped upon those who do are overwhelming. As Arthur Schopenhauer once quipped, “To get married is to halve your pleasures and double your responsibilities.” Why would anyone do it?
Statistically speaking, fewer and fewer men are supporting their biological children, while more and more people are asking, “Are fathers really necessary in the first place?“ Few have doubts about the intrinsic importance of mothers, but fathers? At worse they are thought of as purveyors of a “toxic masculinity,” while at best they are appreciated in a merely social capacity, and so perhaps in a role that anyone is capable of playing. The implication is one of arbitrary substitutionality. Any competent actor who has studied the part can step in. Maybe the script can be rewritten. Maybe it can be dropped altogether.
Meanwhile, the family decays. Marriage has been degraded to signify little more than the fragile tie of affection between a partner and their mate, a matter upon which men and women have seldom agreed. As for any moral or spiritual incentive to marry and have children, the roles traditionally played by men are increasingly taken over by the state, now our omnicompetent protector, provider, and educator.
YOU ARE NOT NEEDED is the message (BUT WILL STILL BE BLAMED IF YOU’RE NOT THERE is the subtext).
Although the Church has sought to resist this trend, even here many have rejected the idea that there is any religious basis for the family, and the abuses of the past have enabled them to portray all older models of the family as fundamentally oppressive, so that it is now acceptable to label anyone who disagrees as a bigot.
How the nations rage!
Marriage and family are symbols for the mystery of God’s love...
Still, the silent spokeswoman for the family remains creation herself, who in her quiet insistent way equips men and women with different minds, complementary bodies, and honors their union with the procreation of children. It is the view of the Bible and has enjoyed the unanimous agreement of believers for the past two thousand years.
Family matters.
Childhood isn’t simply about play, or marriage about needs, or parenthood about self-enrichment through low maintenance ego-gratifying children. On the contrary, it is God’s training ground in the school of love. Parents provide us with an example of what we ought to become, even as our spouses open our eyes to what we can never be, both calling for the development of a love that is truly other oriented. And our children provide us with an incarnate reflection of our own selves, for good or for bad, the rearing of whom calls for the development of the highest forms of sacrificial love – giving without expectation of return.
Need I say all this is a reflection of our heavenly Father, who suffered all for the sake of his bride, and who gave all for the sake of his children? Marriage and family are symbols for the mystery of God’s love for the whole human race, and those who participate in them are participants in the mystery of creation and redemption itself.
“Happy Father’s Day”?
No.
No farther who knows his business could ever be satisfied with a merely superficial happiness on a single day of the year (well, maybe he could. A beer, and a burger, and a game of golf never hurt anyone). Still, at a deeper level, all of us need to be reminded that we’re more than just a bunch of pack mules being taken advantage of for the passing rage of an Angry society. Our commitment and sacrifice are of great worth in the eyes of God – even if the present world does not think so.
By faith we will see it, and in hope we are guaranteed a return for our labor, which is nothing less than a labor of love. A tribute to our fathers!
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