Fathers, do not vex your children, less they may be disheartened.
Colossians 3: 21, Concordant New Testament
I had a brief conversation with a good friend this week about the regrets we often face over the actions of our parents. Indeed, this is a subject which I am all too familiar with. For my own father forsook our family when I was quite young to follow his own desires. Consequently, I grew up never knowing whatever positives my father may have known in his life. All I routinely saw of him was the negative, selfish side which he seemed to exhibit very well. For my father, it seemed that it was all about him. Yet there were brief moments where, as if peeling back a layer, I caught a glimpse into the man who himself was obviously hurting. My mother once told me that whenever he would come upon an accident in his job as a sheriff deputy, his first thought was of his two boys at home. It was in these moments that I would catch a rare glimpse into the rough exterior of the man I knew as dad. One of my uncles once shared with me the torment he and his siblings faced growing up at the hands of my grandfather. It seems that my grandfather would often demand obedience from his own children to the point of verbal abuse. Seeking a way out, my father left home when he was eighteen years old for a hitch in the navy. It does not take rocket science to see that the actions and attitudes of my own father were influenced by his own parents. The sins of his father begot the sins of my own. Now, this by no means guarantees that everyone who grows up in a abusive home will turn out like my father did. My father made his choices and he had to live with them. Consequently, what he learned growing up he sometimes enacted in his own family. Over the years I have learned to focus more on the positive side of my dad than on his negative actions. I have come to realize that, like my friend, he was seeking help in his own way. The old age idea that we were created to fend for ourselves is a myth. Growing up, my dad was fed the lie that men were strong and never show emotion. Another lie. Some call it the generational curse, which keeps cycle going until someone is brave enough to break it. Again, this is something I know well.
"If God made us for connection, one of the cruelest things we can do is to withhold our affection from someone who needs it."
Wayne Jacobsen
I have often wondered if my dad had anyone around who would speak positively into his life. If he did I never heard of it. So, I can only assume that he surrounded himself with people whom he knew shared his ideals. If you can imagine the attitude of men in the late 70's and what it supposedly took to "Be a man" in the eyes of the world. The drinking, brawling and womanizing brutes who populated our cities and towns. These were real men, so they say. This is how my dad grew up. This is all he knew. To him, God and Jesus were something for the weak minded. I'm guessing that were my father still with us today that he might not approve of the direction my own life has taken. One of the promises I made to myself so long ago was that I would NEVER be the man that my father was. I had lived the path of destruction which he left behind him. My father was stuck in the idea that he was in charge of his own life. The very same lie spoken by our accuser in the garden {Genesis 3:5-6}. The lie Satan spoke to Eve was that by partaking of the forbidden fruit that she and Adam would "Be like God." This immediately put into action the lie that we are separate from God. Nothing could be further from the truth. For we are not separate from God, but alive IN HIM {John 17:21, Galatians 2:20}. This is the desire of the Lord our One true Father. The choice we have been given is to continue to live the lie of the accuser, or accept what we know in our hearts to be true. The cycle indeed can be broken.
For ritual clean and undefiled with God the Father is this; to be visiting the bereaved and widowed in their affliction, to be keeping oneself unspotted from the world.
James 1: 27, Concordant New Testament
~Scott~
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