Father and the Wolves: Recent Episodes
B.T. Higgins
Father and the Wolves: A guide to elevate fatherhood, fix families, and save the world! Ep. 1: Introduction This book is for fathers. Most of us aren’t doing a great job and the world has noticed. We’ve garnered a bad reputation. Did you know that as a dad, you have the power to build up your kids or crush them with a few words? That’s sobering! Fathers have a unique influence and sizable power to make the world a better place by investing time and energy into building stronger families. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-higgins4/support
This book is for fathers. Most of us are not doing a great job and the world has noticed. We've garnered a bad reputation. Spend ten minutes around a group of wives and you are likely to hear a handful of criticisms about some guy's fathering skills.
Being a good father is not easy. It doesn't come naturally. Why should dads bother trying? Why are kids important? Why are fathers a necessary part of their lives? Why should we prioritize our kids over our hobbies and work? Is there some goal we are working toward with them or is parenting just haphazard and random? Wouldn't our kids be better off without us? Everyone knows that kids need their mom, but what about dad?
Fathers have a unique influence and sizable power to make the world a better place by investing time and energy into building stronger families. What would the world look like if dads stepped up to the challenge of fatherhood? What if they protected their kids from negative influencers instead of inviting them into the cave?
The world is in desperate need of good fathers. Father and The Wolves: A Guide to Elevate Fatherhood, Fix Families, and Save the World depicts a new kind of hero, one who takes up the spear and steps into the greatest work of his life.
Season one of this podcast ( episodes 1-66) is the serialized version of the book. Each short section is designed to stimulate conversation between fathers and sons and small groups of fathers. The content can also be very helpful for those men gearing up for fatherhood, perhaps as a study during the nine months of your baby's gestation. Whatever your stage of fatherhood, this book is for you.
After each brief section a handful of questions are posed to start the process of applying the ideas to real life. I encourage you to keep a notebook of your thoughts, actions steps, and results to help you apply these life-changing ideas better in the midst of busy schedules and short term attention spans.
You may start at episode one and take the entire journey, perhaps listening to one section each day during your daily commute. Or skip around by topic.
However you listen, I hope it will help you elevate fatherhood in your own lives, so that as we fix our families we can start to heal the brokenness in our neighborhoods, nation and world.
I appreciate your help in spreading this podcast to others by following or subscribing to the podcast. Leaving a five star review, and referring it to your friends and family. Thanks for giving this work legs. I couldn't do it without you.
Find the print version of Father and The Wolves at online retailers or request it from your local book store. This book makes an excellent gift for the men in your circle of influence. I appreciate those of you, that have found it helpful, and keep a couple copies on hand for those that need to hear the message that fatherhood is the most important work any man can do. We need to expand the brotherhood of fathers, you are making that happen.
Amazon link here: https://www.amazon.com/Father-Wolves-Elevate-Fatherhood-Families/dp/1088024246/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1646923414&sr=8-1
You can find B.T. Higgins at bthiggins.com or the e-mail contact bthigginsbooks@outlook.com
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We have covered some important ground in this small treatise on fatherhood. In many ways, the journey of a father is the same as that of the hero on a quest. The call to adventure. Supernatural aid. Crossing the threshold into the unknown. Temptations and challenges. Mentors. Helpers. Revelation. Rebirth. Transformation. Atonement. Returning home changed. The only difference is that fatherhood doesn’t feel heroic. It seems ordinary and common, but that is by no means true I hope this book has helped you to see fatherhood through a new set of lenses.
The Father’s path is a hero’s journey that every man is challenged to walk. Some men reject the call to adventure, declining to have children or refusing to embrace fatherhood. They pursue pleasure, polish plastic coins, or fail to take their responsibilities seriously. These men become old men, full of regret, having missed their opportunity for greatness. Other men are sidetracked by temptations and challenges, trading counterfeit treasures for a legacy. Some men buckle under the pressure of the many hardships that come with fatherhood. They abandon the quest and leave their families to suffer alone. These men are forever incomplete, empty shells of masculinity, without a greater purpose in life, without a cause to die for. Some men reject the revelation when it comes and never rise from the trials having embraced wisdom. Refusing to transform into a better version of themselves, they do not return home with the elixir. Still others, refuse to confront the monsters within themselves and live to see themselves become the wolf in their own kids’ lives. This is the most tragic end of many fathers. But some fathers will answer the call to adventure, battle through the temptations and trials, be reborn in the crucible of battle, receive the revelation, and be forever transformed into a better version of the man they once were. This kind of father/hero lives to love, protect, prepare, and launch his kids, to equip them to thrive in a dangerous world. He returns from his journey and witnesses the good generational fruit of his labor evident in his children’s children. This father finishes his journey with honor, contentment, and a secure legacy.
Which man will you be?
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I recently listened to a podcast where the hosts were debating how to save the world from man-made catastrophic climate change. They questioned whether one person could make any difference or whether the world could only be saved by global action? These apprehensive individuals believed, with extreme religious zeal, that the world was going to spiral into disaster if something, anything, and everything weren’t done. I won’t debate the merits of their arguments here. That is a subject for a different book. But, one of the hosts made a statement so outrageous that it lodged in my memory.
They were discussing how an individual might interrupt and change every aspect of their life to protect the earth. One of their personal actions steps was to choose not to have children. Their logic went something like, “People are destroying the earth. Reducing the population will reduce the damage to the planet. It is environmentally wrong to have children. Therefore, if I do not have children, I will be doing my part in saving the world. I am noble and good because of this.”
One host condemned the other, in humor, for having already failed in this. Paraphrasing here, “You already have two kids. It’s too late for you, but I am not having kids. I’m still environmentally pure.” To my shock the other host replied with a guilty tone of voice, “I know. I’m sorry,” as if he had sinned and fallen short.
How could anyone believe this? I could not fathom the brainwashing needed to view your own children this way. And then, I realized that this is our GIANT DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY! The differences in reproduction rates between people groups are a powerful force through time. Having the advantage of just one more offspring per family can transform a small minority into the majority in a hundred years. Do you have any idea how powerful this tool could be?
Let’s look at how a higher birth rate over time can change the culture. In fact, it is the only way to restore freedom to a land that has forgotten its roots. We must raise freedom and truth-lovers, so they can raise freedom and truth-lovers. It’s just math. Consider the following doubling principle. Two parents have four kids. That is replacement plus two. Each of those kids grows up, marries, and has four kids. That’s sixteen grandkids. At the same reproduction rate, those sixteen grandkids lead to sixty-four great-grandchildren. If we can pass on our values well, we can change the course of our world in a hundred years.
Unfortunately, it is not as easy as the math indicates. Good values are always just one generation from being lost, for every child and grandchild must choose to embrace the cause of freedom and truth for themselves. That doesn’t happen as automatically as parents would like. But even if reality isn’t as optimistic as my math, we can still change the course of our culture. There are a lot more of us than it appears. I believe it would not take long to turn the tide if we, fathers, take a stand for our families and embrace these principles.
Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.
Psalm 127:3-5 NIV
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In times where wrong is declared right, the principles of this book will be ridiculed, if they are acknowledged at all. They may be discounted or distorted. Our culture has removed the trustworthy bedrock of truth and replaced it with shifting sand. We can expect great trouble in the future as a result. That is why this book is so important. No matter what the culture-as-a-whole does, each of us can build our families on the foundations of Biblical principles.
If the whole world disagrees, so be it. Two plus two still equals four. In the course of these chapters, I have leaned heavily on the wisdom of Scripture because it is trustworthy and true. Today, this is considered radical or peculiar by our culture. How strange this seems to me. Only a generation ago the Bible would have been considered, “plain-old common sense.” Two generations ago, it would have been seen as, “The wisdom of the ages.” Before that, “God’s Holy Word.” We have traveled so far from any semblance of moral high ground. Now our culture is building skyscrapers on shifting sand.
We are all that remains of those that love truth. We must preserve it so it is not lost. We can be the counter-cultural movement in these relativistic times. Each family is like a safe house on a network leading to freedom, in the vein of the Underground Railroad in the nineteenth century before the Emancipation Proclamation. Let us wage a values revolution in our families. Restore the truth to our homes, preserve the truth through hard times, and spread the knowledge of the truth through our children. By raising our kids according to the principles in this book, we will disrupt the plans of the world. Even if it is just within our four walls, that is enough.
We must preserve what is important in the hearts of our children, so it will not be lost. Just as the Bible was preserved in the dry caves at the Dead Sea so it could survive the persecution of that time, let us safeguard these transformational truths for future generations.
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When the United States government took silver out of the coins in 1965, the dimes with silver were sifted out of circulation by citizens who recognized that not all dimes were created equal anymore. The value of the dime now depended on what it was made from, not the number stamped on its face. A 1962 dime might look identical to one in 2021, but they are not the same. The silver in one makes it intrinsically more valuable, but the modern ten-cent piece loses around 2-5% of its value every year as the government devalues our currency. Its value bleeds away, year after year. At the time of this writing, one of those silver dimes is worth $1.56, based on the spot price of silver bullion. That is not a great fortune, but it is a great illustration for our families.
What is your family made of? Biblical values are akin to the silver in the old dimes. They have intrinsic value and strength that lasts. If you allow the government, big business, and the secular culture to lead, your family will devalue at the same rate as the society you live in. Currently, our nation is abandoning truth and reason at a break-neck pace. If they are influencing your family, you may expect your family to deteriorate along with them. This is unacceptable to me.
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In normal times, this book would be necessary and important. Good fathers are always needed, whether times are good or evil. In our current time, this book is revolutionary. The forces of government, big business, mainstream culture, and popular opinion are aligned against the Biblical principles that I have outlined in part one of this book. By taking up the mantle of fatherhood in these times, you are taking on an army of opposition, putting your body between them and your kids. It’s no small task, but it is crucial. Only you can do it.
We live in a time of weak men. As I write, my word choice offends even my sensibility. I don’t want to be thought of as weak. Being labeled such stabs at the core of my self-image and identity, but it must be said. Men in our time have grown weak in principles, passive in their decision-making, afraid of work and risk, greedy to control others, and ruled by their lusts. They have traded maturity, healthy masculinity, and character for various dopamine addictions. They have abdicated their responsibilities and, as a result, have remained children in adult bodies. Men wander through life, lacking purpose and focus. They languish in mediocrity because they serve themselves and find that unsatisfying. Men today have no cause to give their life for, no higher calling to channel all that masculine energy into. As a direct result, our families are suffering from severe degradation. The sickness within families ripples out to the neighborhoods and cities where we live. Social rot weakens every aspect of society. As the family goes, so goes the culture and the nation. We have done this. The blame rests squarely on our shoulders.
Many years ago, I was teaching a group of sixth-grade boys with special needs. In the health lesson, we were learning about puberty and growing up. I tried to communicate that growing into a man was important, special, and unique. “There is just something special and important about being a man,” I said, wanting them to get the idea that growing up was an exciting thing. One of the teacher aides interrupted me with a rude comment. “Don’t get them started with that. The last thing we need is more male chauvinists!”
I was taken aback that she thought I was encouraging the boys to grow up and become jerks. I listed several good, masculine traits that I was referring to and the lady crossed her arms and dismissed me. It seemed that m-a-n spelled a bad word and I had accidentally said it aloud in the classroom. I have never been able to forget her response. It angers me, even a decade later. Not that she felt so negatively about men, but that the men in her life had so failed to live up to the standards of true masculinity that she considered man and chauvinist to be synonymous.
This negative opinion of men is not an isolated example. It is a tragedy. We must change this. When men act badly real people are hurt, bearing those emotional scars for life. Men should not be a source of injury. We should be a source of strength to our families. Immature, bad-tempered, and selfish men can become a terror in the household. Nothing that I have advocated for will be possible if the man does not first take stock of his past behavior and cease his destructive habits. Pause here and take an inventory of yourself. Though it might be painful to do so, look your past in the face and confront it.
Write down a list of the behaviors that you must arrest to protect your family from yourself. I’m serious! The uncontrolled man is a great danger to his family, a snarling wolf inside the cave.
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Where do our kids spend the most time during their formative years? Daycare and public school? In front of TV and video game screens? Surrounded by friends with moral standards that conflict with ours? What if we shouted, “Not to MY KIDS,” and refused to offer our kids up to the influences of the world. What if we provided an oasis in the moral desert for our kids to grow in, not to pretend the desert doesn’t exist. Not to cloister ourselves away forever, but to allow our kids to spend their foundational years in the cradle of civilization, the family. Instead of being inundated with the patterns and influences of the desert from birth, they could grow in safety and learn how to be healthy, strong, and confident adults.
How would that one intervention change the outcome of their lives? Imagine it. Kids who live in the desert tend to become children of the desert. Oasis kids, protected from desert influences, tend to take on the values of the parents and become oasis adults. The oasis would expand and flourish in the next generation. And the next. Over time, the fertile oasis would water the desert and reclaim it. Our kids could create a fertile valley, and their kids could create a flourishing continent.
For too long, parents have let other people raise their kids. Their kids reject oasis-thinking because they are taught to love the desert. Why don’t we stand up? Usually, the reason is simple. It’s easier not to. We trade too much for cheap convenience. This is a tragedy of our own making. What if we all woke up today, drew a line in the sand, and shouted, “Not to MY KIDS! Not anymore.” If we all did that, we could water the world! That is a green agenda I can get on board with.
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Safety, security, and stability are the most important life goals for many people. My wife is no exception to this rule. The good/bad circuit breaker in her head, by which my life becomes tolerable or miserable, is flipped by these three factors more than anything else. She craves normalcy and control. She hates risk and uncertainty. While this doesn’t mesh well with my personality in general, I understand why they are important to her. As her husband, I am in a unique position to meet these needs for my wife. The more I can provide safety, security, and stability, the better she can cope with the other aspects of life. That’s the main reason she married me, I think. That and kids. So, I do my best to be dependable.
When life becomes unpredictable, as it is prone to do, I must be the one she can lean on. I must be her gravitational constant. That is a lot of pressure sometimes, but it is something only I can do for her. I provide consistency in the home so she can flourish. From her health, the family can thrive. The aforementioned kids. They need the same thing from me that my wife needs, a stable home. It is worthwhile work to provide this for them, even if it means I must forgo personal prerogatives.
The desire to nurture life is usually more innate in women. It gives them an advantage when it comes to parenting. By the time they’ve carried the babe for nine months, mothers are often so fiercely bonded with their child that the trials of motherhood are balanced by a great affinity. They trade their comfort, sleep, and lifestyle for the crying and pooping machine they birthed. Many women instinctively lean into having children.
It is not usually the same for men. Many men do not naturally crave fatherhood, at least in my experience. More often than not a man must calculate the value of becoming a dad and choose to embrace it. He will be happier for doing so, but it is a matter of willpower and sacrificial choices. Most men do not easily commit themselves to fatherhood. They prioritize other things that are more appealing at the moment. Our nation’s families suffer and crumble in a drought of intentional fathers. I hope this book can spark some men to move back toward their families. I hope it motivates you.
Men are well-designed to provide safety, security, and stability to their families. What would this nation look like if men began to serve and sacrifice for their families? Would wives and kids feel more secure? Would voters keep begging the government to step into the vacuum left by absent fathers? No, I believe that if men were doing their jobs, government officials would offer, “I’ve got a new program that is guaranteed to protect you and your family from XYZ,” and the women voters would reply, “No thanks, I’ve got a good man. We don’t need you.” Big government thrives on citizens who value a false sense of security over basic freedom. Unstable and fatherless homes create a dearth of safety, security, and stability. When men don’t do their job, people seek security elsewhere.
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In South Africa, a group of teenage elephants was displaying extreme violence and causing a lot of trouble. They killed around fifty rhinos at Pilanesberg National Park. It turned out their immature bodies were not capable of controlling their spiking testosterone when they went into musth, a state of heightened hormone levels that causes mating readiness and aggressive behavior. When the managers of the park decided to import six mature bull elephants, the problems immediately stopped. Why did this work? In the wild, the aggression of young males is controlled by the presence of mature bull elephants in the area. An interaction with a bigger bull causes younger males to immediately drop out of musth because they cannot compete. When the young males’ hormone levels dropped back to normal, their aggression ceased. It’s a great illustration of the importance of fathers in our society.
The presence of fathers in the home reduces many negative behaviors in teenagers. Crime, poverty, and achievement statistics demonstrate a stark difference between fatherless households and homes where fathers are present. Kids need to have a model of healthy masculinity in the house. It changes their behavior for the better, making a huge difference in their life trajectory. In this book, I advocate for more than just being present. Fathers should be engaged in protecting and preparing their children for life. The positive influence of the father determines where the budding energy of the kids will be channeled. Will they apply themselves to self-improvement or flounder for a decade or two? The father’s influence can determine this. Will they be secure in who they are? The father’s instruction makes the difference.
What if our culture elevated the importance of fatherhood and every man embraced his responsibilities? Would that have a measurable effect on the nation’s crime, poverty, and achievement statistics? I contend that nothing could do more for the current state of our nation than fathers engaging with their children.
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As a novelist, one of my favorite things to do is ask myself “what if” questions. What if a box of tissues could wipe away your worries? What if a keyboard could transport me through time? What if drawing a thing made it happen? Almost every “what if” I imagine can be built into an interesting story. I love it. This is a very different type of book, but would you indulge my asking the same question?
What if we elevated fatherhood in the culture? What if we protected our children from the wolves? What if we dedicated ourselves to preparing our kids to thrive in life? What if we embraced a biblical framework? What if this idea became a movement that spread through our nation? How would it affect the world?
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Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain.
Psalm 127:1 NIV
Make a list of the things you want your kids to know by the time they are 18 years old.
It may feel overwhelming to implement a list like this. You might feel like it is too much to accomplish, especially if you are starting late. My advice is to choose one item on your list and just start. Rotate through them every week and find teachable moments throughout the week to reinforce each idea. Understand that each of the items on your list is a long-term project. Just like teaching math, you have to start simple and build from there. Counting before adding. Subtraction before multiplication and division. If you keep at it, you will be surprised how quickly the concepts build.
I introduce each idea as soon as my kids are ready. It becomes natural to discuss why we do what we do. Real life has an endless string of inflection points where choices are made. When I explain to my kids why I am doing something, I am seizing an opportunity to build skills. Later, I have them explain to me why they are doing what they are doing. Soon, I hear them repeating back the lessons I taught them months and years before. Keep at it and soon you will see the growth in your kids. By the time your children reach launch time, they will be ready!
Starting late is not the same as starting too late. Kids are learning machines. They can absorb these principles quickly. Just go for it. The rewards of success are great. The consequences of their ignorance are dire. Spend the time. Invest. Prepare them for the future.
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If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
James 4:17 NIV
One of the greatest divides between child and adult is initiative. It is the crucial ability to evaluate and make decisions independently. For example, Kate says, “There is a sink full of dirty dishes. It’s my chore to wash them.” Initiative leads her to wash the dishes before her parents ask her to do them. A child waits until she is asked, and then resists the work. An adult-like attitude sees what is needed and independently acts to do it with a positive attitude.
I cringe when I see parents enabling their kids to be lazy by catering to their every whim. “Little Johnny can’t pick up his toys. He is only three years old.” Oh. No. If Johnny doesn’t learn to clean up his toys at that age, how is he going to learn to get dressed, take care of hygiene issues, do his chores, do homework, obey his parents, or work hard with a positive attitude? One skill builds on another. The exhausted parent rationalizes, “Johnny refuses to clean up his toys. He throws a tantrum. It’s just easier to do it myself.” Danger! Dangerous precedent!
In parenting, every action teaches our kids something. Everything is a lesson. What does picking up after your child, when he is perfectly able to do it himself, teach him? Johnny learns that he is the king, entitled to servants. A parent that doesn’t expect his child to contribute to the family workload is teaching his kid a dangerous lesson. “My parents are my servants. I get what I want by being grumpy and complaining.” And perhaps more dangerous, “The world revolves around me.” These are all wild distortions of reality. Do we want to teach these lessons to our kids?
You first must teach them how to clean up. It’s not too hard to play the cleanup game with them. Once they are capable of picking up a toy, walking over to the bin, and dropping the toy in, kids should be expected to clean up their toys. When I say capable, I mean on a physical level. Can their little hands grasp the toy? Can they walk? Do they have motor control enough to release the toy over the drop zone? I say it this way because the greatest hurdle is not the physical. We should not entertain the idea that our kids are not capable of contributing to family work. “But I don’t want to clean up my toys,” Johnny whines. The savvy parent smiles at him and replies, “No problem. You don’t have to want to. (Long pause for emphasis.) You just have to do it.”
Why is learning to work with a good attitude from the earliest age so important? Because the temptation to say “I don’t feel like it” never goes away. We need to master the skill of deciding “but I choose to do what needs to be done.” Time is running out for Johnny to learn what he needs for adulthood. Every day is important. Don’t miss an opportunity to teach him to work with a good attitude. The clock is ticking. Ready. Set. Go.
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Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Colossians 3:23-24 NIV
I am the fourth child of the Higginite clan from Twain Harte, California. Where I grew up, that meant something. The Higgins were hard workers. People saw us kids, at a young age, setting up for events and breaking down afterward. We ran the harvest parties and the carnivals. My mom organized things and we were her labor corp. Sunday school. Children’s Church. I ran the soundboard. I acted in plays. VBS? We were automatically signed up. Whatever she had in mind to do, the Higginites got it done.
When it came to my first job, my three older sisters blazed a trail for me. I applied to wash dishes at Silver Spur and all I had to say was my last name. “You’re a Higgins? You’re hired. I know Higgins work hard.” And I did work hard! Reputation is a funny thing. It opens doors, but it also lights a fire under you. You have to live up to it.
The Bible gives plenty of instruction about work. If we ascribe authority to the scriptures in general, then we must also embrace its view on work. Whatever we are doing, whether it is a task of honor or mundane labor, we should treat it as “for the Lord.” This idea flips the dynamic on work. We are not doing it well for ourselves. We are working hard because it pleases God and honors Him. You see, followers of God have a reputation to uphold. Are we going to live up to the Bible’s high standard?
The world is watching. They take great joy in our failures, flaws, and hypocrisy. They will amplify every example of it. “See! They pretend to be good, but they are no better than us.” They delight when we soil the reputation of God, through our mistakes. In reality, it is no wonder that we make mistakes. It is a miracle that anyone can elevate their choices above the culture. That’s what is noteworthy, not when we fail to be perfect. Nonetheless, because we strive to live by a higher standard, they will ridicule us. We should not be concerned with their chatter, but we should be cognizant of God’s reputation. We work hard to honor Him. Period.
Teach your kids to work hard without complaining, to be punctual as a matter of respect for the other party, and to provide more value in all they do than is expected for their age and stage. If you set this standard, they will be well-prepared to tackle the challenges of work and life.
The Pareto principle says that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the causes. When applied to the work environment, this translates to “20% of the employees pull 80% of the load.” We want our kids to be amongst the most effective people in whatever field they work in. As a matter of honoring God and as a practical matter of competing for the best positions and having the greatest opportunity. We want our kids to be essential elements of their organizations. Reliable. Leaders. Creative. Hard-working. Honoring God.
To accomplish this, start young. Make them active contributors to the family. Work is a skill set like anything else. If they don’t practice from childhood, how can we expect them to do it well at age eighteen?
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“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard.”
Matthew 10:16-17a NIV
How should we view our relationship with the world? Let’s go to the Bible to inform our expectations on this. Jesus told his disciples, as he sent them out to preach, to be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. It seems to me, we emphasize “innocent as doves” and neglect shrewd as snakes. In so doing, we set our kids up for trouble.
We are not called to stay safe, passive, cloistered, and hidden away from the world. We have a mission and purpose. Jesus challenged us to go into all the world and preach the good news. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 NIV. Jesus intended for us to take ground, not cower under a rock. He wants us to live rich lives, not be ruled by fear. Influence the world, not succumb to the pattern of the world.
Shrewd thinkers have sharp powers of judgment. They are proactive in protecting themselves. They are strategic in their activities. Teach your kids to be proactive influencers in the world while staying on guard against destructive wolves. Modeling themselves after the shrewdness of the snake can help kids live successful lives.
Great! How do you do this? From the earliest stages, present your kids with challenges and difficulties. Do not shelter them from all the consequences of their actions. Let them struggle to achieve little goals. Unless it is too far beyond their skill level, don’t step in to fix it for them. “I can’t do it, Dad.” You reply, “Sure you can, why don’t you try it like this.” When they rise to meet a challenge, applaud them for the courage to try something hard. Give them a mission and purpose beyond just being a kid. Let them contribute to the family. Teach them what the Bible says about God’s mission for all believers. Help them see that joining God in His work is deeply fulfilling.
I want to equip my kids to assert positive change in the world. They are God’s tools to fulfill His plans in the future. My work is in sharpening His tools. Hey! That’s fatherhood. What greater purpose is there in life?
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Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
James 1:19-20 NIV
Talking has always felt very expensive to me as if I had a small budget to spend each day and each word had a high price tag. As a result, I find myself trying to find simpler ways to summarize my thoughts. I don’t tend to ramble. This natural inclination has been a great blessing to me. While holding my tongue for cost reasons, I have observed how quickly ill-considered words damage. A poorly-worded phrase can destroy a relationship. An angry outburst can scar. I could spend years building trust and burn it to the ground with a single sentence. James advises us to be slow to speak and slow to become angry. This is wisdom that few of us heed.
I noticed that when I conserve my words, someone else is keen to fill the space with theirs. This presents me, the listener, with many opportunities. First, I have time to think about what I should say. This, also, helps me to not say something stupid. I can learn about the other person, so I can interact with them more effectively. An active listener is a student of other people. Much can be gleaned. When it is time for me to speak, my words will have more power and influence, because they are well-thought-out and crafted. There is a funny side effect of this practice. People think I am smarter than I am.
Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues. Proverbs 17:28 NIV.
My wife has a deep-seated need to verbally process her thoughts. It takes a force of will for me to actively listen to her, instead of spacing out. She needs to feel heard. She needs to express herself. She needs to unload all the lists in her head. Once in a while, she might want my opinion, but that’s pretty rare. It’s not about me fixing her issues. It’s about her feeling heard. This is the listener’s superpower, husbands take note. When I listen to her well, I give her a gift. I show her that she is loved. My ability to lend a listening ear does far more for our marriage than anything I could say. It is the same with kids. Listening is an extremely valuable, and often neglected, tool for connecting with kids’ hearts. Leadership. Discipline. Guidance. Conflict resolution. It is all easier for the father that knows how to listen.
I once had three co-workers who all suffered from diarrhea of the mouth. They competed so vigorously to talk that it seemed they required speech more than oxygen. They got louder. Each interrupted the other. They rambled through opinions, stories, complaints so rapidly that I wondered if anyone had heard the other. Sometimes they would all talk at the same time. None of them yielding the stage for even a minute. It reminded me of three chickens trying to establish a pecking order. I just ate my lunch, listened, and cringed. Listening is not supposed to be the inconvenient pause between your lines. It is the open door. It is the opportunity.
Teach your kids that listening is a valuable skill. Show them how it can build people up. Demonstrate how it helps manage conflict. They need to know how listening gets at the root of problems and brings solutions to light. Yes, it is important to speak well, but without listening skills, you are missing half of the communication tool. Think of a pair of scissors. How effectively can you cut without two opposing blades? A person who can speak well and listen well will be more effective in all his pursuits.
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“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
Luke 14:28-30 NIV
We are thinking about buying a new home! How exciting. My wife and I find ourselves swinging between excitement and fear. Our current house is small, but life here is familiar and safe. Now, we are contemplating stepping into the unknown. There is a risk in doing that. It is important for us to not let the excitement sweep us away. In our dreaming, we can’t abandon critical thinking. As Luke 14:28-30 teaches, it is important to sit down and calculate the cost before you begin. Our decision-making process has involved a lot of math. Do we have the money for this? That? Is there a margin of safety? Have we taken everything into account? Since we can’t afford everything we might like, what are the most important things? Lists. Charts. Research. Nightly conversations with updates, backtracks, and estimates. Have you heard the expression, “Look before you leap?” That is what we are trying to do.
Our kids have had a front-row seat to all of these conversations. I hope they have seen the process of calculating risk before stepping into something new. Soon, they too will be grown and will need the skills to make life-altering decisions. That’s why we have included them in most of our conversations. They need to see decision-making in action before they can do it themselves. When they launch, almost every step they take will be new, confusing, or risky. Our goal is that they will be able to calculate the landing before they jump.
On the other side of risk-taking is fear. For nearly twenty years we have not moved due to fear. I am a dreamer, so I think of three interesting ideas before breakfast every morning. Fear kicks in when I share them with my wife and she puts the brakes on them. This is not a bad thing. It has prevented us from making impulsive mistakes, so far. But fear of change can also be dangerous. It can cause us to make poor decisions. It can cause us to do nothing when action is needed. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it should be resisted. If we operate from this mindset, we grow rigid and brittle. It’s not healthy, because life is fluid and dynamic. Like an earthquake, it will force us to move whether we desire to or not. Injuries. Job changes. Economic emergencies. Family crises.
We must not let ourselves elevate stability and sameness into some sort of idol. When we worship comfort, predictability, and routine, our faith in God’s provision grows fragile. We will clamp down every variable and control everything. First of all, this is exhausting. Life does not cooperate with our desire for predictability. We will exhaust ourselves in trying, but secondly, there may soon come a time when the ability to adapt is the key to our survival. Let’s build the skill now, so we will have it when it is required.
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Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
Romans 13:1-2 NIV
As a kid, I carried firewood from the woodpile upstairs to the kitchen wood stove all winter long. We made a tall pile along the brickwork and burned it steadily through the cold months. The house had not been designed well for cold, nor for wood heating, so we burned a lot of wood. Though the winters were not as cold or long as I am not accustomed to now in Alaska, I remember it taking a lot of work. Felling the trees, transporting the rounds, splitting the wood, carrying it up the stairs. I have distinct memories of rough cordwood in the arms. I had a method of loading it up that illustrates a salient point for our discussion of government.
With my left hand, I would place the first piece of wood in the crook of my right elbow. It felt light, the sharp, splintered corners did not bite into my skin. Then came the second piece. The weight doubled, I could suddenly feel the sharp edges pressing into my arm. Then the third, the weight got noticeably heavier. With the fourth piece, the sharp edges hurt. I remember many scratches across my bare arms.
Sometimes, my brother would load me up. He got a kick out of piling the pieces higher and higher. Five. Six. Seven. “No more!” I would say. He would smile and say, “You can take one more.” Clunk. The piece landed hard on top of the pile. My arms burned, the wood cut into my skin and I hadn’t even climbed the stairs yet. The last piece rolled when I moved, settling against my face. I had to walk sideways to see where I was going. The splinters hurt. My muscles burned. As I struggled, my brother thought it was quite the joke.
Governmental authorities are much like this. Each level of government is another piece of cordwood across your arm. They are all sharp-cornered and heavy. The more layers you add, the heavier the burden becomes on the citizens. Every new law increases somebody’s load. Every new agency makes someone’s life harder. Homeowners Associations. City Councils. Mayors. State government. Federal government. And now, global governing bodies are being added to the list. It is like a towering pile of cordwood that the citizen must carry.
In an ideal situation, every person would be in control of how many levels of authority are stacked in their arms, so they are not overloaded and crushed under the weight. Even in places that have the right to elect their leaders, this is not how it works. It is much more like my brother piling on piece after piece of firewood. Government officials don’t carry the burden. They don’t pay for the program. Their theory is always the same. “You can take one more.” Clunk.
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No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.Matthew 6:24 NIV
Did you hear the one about the blind football player? It may be the setup to a great joke, but consider this for a moment. How could a blind man play football against sighted opponents? Imagine what that might look like. How long before he gets hurt? Could he successfully navigate the field? The opponents?
We doom our kids to this existence when we don’t teach them about money. It is the most important skill for handling the day-to-day challenges of life. Kids need to understand financial principles. It’s as important to life as speaking, reading, and writing are to communication. Why don’t we teach economics and money management every year in school just like the Language Arts? We are foolish to believe kids will figure it out. The truth is most people are not financially educated. They repeat horrible, life-limiting financial mistakes over and over. Because they do not understand the cause of their money trouble, they consider it normal and inevitable.
Imagine the advantage our kids would have with financial education? It wouldn’t be unlike a sighted footballer, playing against a field of blind opponents. That is not to say that I wish for others to remain blind, but most people won’t teach their kids about money, so in essence, they launch into life blind. Let’s start with the source material.
What does the Bible have to say about money? The following is a biblical perspective on money curriculum. I highly encourage you to have weekly conversations with your kids, starting from age ten until eighteen using these verses. It will take you over two years to finish them all at this pace. Have your kids memorize the verse of the week after you have discussed it. Each week you should choose a verse from a different category to study the topic from all angles each month. When you finish, start again from the beginning. This time have them teach you what each one means. By the time they have finished the third cycle, the Scripture will be engrained in their minds. The wisdom in this list is more valuable than any college degree. Imagine if your kids could have all these Bible verses on board before they launched. Talk about bragging rights!
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May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13 NIV
My wife and I are opposites in almost every category. One that is most stark is the optimist vs. pessimist scale. When I wake up, my default attitude is “something good can happen.” Sure the challenges of the day often tamp down my enthusiasm, but that’s where my brain naturally begins. My wife’s starting line is “Don’t let anything bad happen,” and she goes about her day pushing back the chaos that threatens. I’m not sure which attitude is more accurate to reality, but I know that pessimists often defend their position. They say, “I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist.” As a bona fide optimist, I think that my rosier worldview is more true to reality, but let’s not argue over it. Both sides of the debate have strengths and weaknesses. Both personalities are baked into the cake and cannot be altered.
When I elevate optimism as a goal for my kids, I am not referring to their personalities. If they are naturally like my wife, that’s fine with me. I wouldn’t want to change them. If they are naturally positive, that’s great, too. A father should teach them both how to compensate for their predisposition to more accurately navigate life.
I am talking about an optimistic worldview based on a Biblical understanding of God’s character, His assessment of human value, His plans for the world, and our future with Him. Everyone can be optimistic about this Good News. God has communicated His character through the Scripture. He is just. He is loving. He is patient. He is mighty. He created the universe and humanity to have a relationship with us. The Bible says He loved us so much that He sent His Son to die for us and restore the relationship that had been lost through sin. He is working all things together to complete this plan to bring humanity back to Himself. How awesome is that?! Salvation is offered to each of us as a gift. We have hope for a good future. We have hope in a good God. Hope. That is the kind of optimism I want my kids to possess.
In light of this exceedingly good news, even the pessimist can choose hope. Optimism is a choice. The circumstances of life may be very broken, but God loves us. This truth overrides a mountain of trials, conflict, and burden. The present version of the world may be plagued with evil and suffering, but God is actively working His redemption plan. He is making all things new! See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:19 NIV. The words of this beautiful old hymn speak to this hope.
“My Hope is Built on Nothing Less”
by Edward Mote (1834)
My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
Refrain:
On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand,
all other ground is sinking sand.
In ev’ry rough and stormy gale,
my anchor holds within the vale.
When all around my soul gives way,
he then is all my hope and stay. [Refrain]
Not earth, nor hell, my soul can move;
I rest upon unchanging love.
I trust his righteous character,
his counsel, promise, and his pow’r. [Refrain]
When he shall come with trumpet sound,
oh, may I then in him be found,
dressed in his righteousness alone,
faultless to stand before the throne. [Refrain]
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Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2 NIV
When a person falls victim to a bad circumstance, injury, assault, offense, or injustice it is easy to get stuck. Our pain convinces us of the righteousness of our cause. We were wronged and we feel the offender must be held responsible. We look to outside sources for empathy or justice. If we do not receive adequate remedy, it feels like a second trauma. The cycle repeats and is likely to continue to do so if something is not done to interrupt the pattern.
The victim falls into a thought trap, mentally collecting more injuries as evidence for their case. They rehearse the merits and facts repeatedly in their minds and to others, circling through the injuries which are now piling up. If someone is not willing or able to resolve the injustices, the wrongs are collected like a necklace of bitterness that grows heavier with each affront. Gradually, the victim embraces a new identity that they have crafted for themselves. Victimhood.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, this is “the condition of having been hurt, damaged, or made to suffer, especially when you want people to feel sorry for you because of this or use it as an excuse for something.”
Many people live their lives stuck in this cycle of victimhood. They blame others for everything, whether or not that blame is accurate. They shift responsibility for their circumstances and, more importantly, their response away from themselves. They surrender their volition and look to others to fix things. In this way, they preserve their victim status and embrace their new, toxic identity.
In 1954, Julian B. Rotter developed the concept of Locus of Control. It is “the degree to which people believe that they, as opposed to external forces, have control over the outcome of events in their lives.” Victimhood requires shifting the control of my circumstances from outside forces. The solution involves shifting the sense of control back to myself. I have control over my response to injury. I have control over my thoughts. I have control over my life choices. I can forgive. I can pay the debt from the injury that is owed to me. I can move on with life and get healthy. I will not be ruled or defined by past hurts. I will forge a positive future from the disasters of the past. I will do what is necessary to take responsibility for my life, choices, and reactions.
This is a difficult, yet crucial, skill for kids to learn. A father must be a model they can emulate. Ouch! That’s even harder. He must forgive and ask for forgiveness. His kids need to see him resolving conflict and restoring healthy bonds within the family. He must teach his children how to process through hurt, anger, injustice, and jealousy. They must learn that unresolved hurt leads to bitterness, which hurts the victim, not the aggressor. Kids must practice the process of reconciliation when they are young or they will have a life of unresolved trouble and fall into the toxic cycle of victimhood.
Teach your children to reject victimhood and embrace responsibility.
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And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him… Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Colossians 3:17, 23 NIV
The other day, I sat with my two oldest kids in the chiropractor’s waiting room. A lady on the other side of the counter stood transfixed, watching my son solve his Rubik’s cube. The click, click of his rapid moves and the colors shifting did have a mesmerizing effect. It seemed like a magic trick when fifteen seconds later all the colors had migrated to their correct sides.
My daughter sat nearby, sketching on her tablet. The scene for the picture book she was illustrating took shape before my eyes. It seemed to grow like a living thing from an idea in her head to a fully fleshed-out character. It felt like I was watching pure creation, something from nothing. I marveled at her talent. The proud papa inside me strutted around as her fingers guided the pen with dexterity and precision.
I am a little jealous of both my children’s skills. My son taught me how to solve the Rubik’s Cube, but I am still slow, clumsy, and constantly forgetting the algorithms. I don’t understand how his brain can calculate the moves so quickly. His speed solving is a product of a naturally-gifted mind (his mother’s side) and countless hours of practicing.
With art, I have wanted to draw as well as my daughter since I was a kid. I realize now it just isn’t going to happen. I haven’t got the time to build the skills. Her determination, focus, and high standards inspire me. A skill set like drawing combined with modern digital tools has unleashed her gifts. Each year her prowess grows. How fun is that? I think kids should be encouraged to develop a few of their interests to mastery. It is a different kind of learning than what they are required to do in school.
Starting when they are young, a father should observe his kids interacting with the world and take note of the things that light them up. He may be discovering a natural talent. Provide more exposure time, materials, and instruction so they can explore. Are they still lighting up? Do they ask about it? Do you catch them doing it during their playtime? Bingo!
Teach them to be self-motivated learners of that subject. This is like kindling a flame. Provide the encouragement they need to excel, but you don’t need to force it. Too much pressure will smother the flame before it can spread. We want our kids to identify skills that they enjoy and choose to pursue them. The magic of this is that their learning will become internally motivated, the flame will grow to a roaring bonfire of enthusiasm and skill acquisition. Once they learn how to learn, they can apply that spark to new endeavors. A self-motivated learner rips through obstacles that would stymie the average person. This talent will serve your children well in life.
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If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
James 1:5 NIV
Decision-making often feels like driving in the fog. The future is murky and indistinct. It feels risky, sometimes scary, yet time does not stand still. It drives forward. How do we successfully navigate the unknown? Clear thinking is a skill set that must be learned. Our kids need to practice it for years before playing for real. Let’s discuss some of the factors that get in the way.
The first thing we must manage to make good decisions is fear. I think of fear as a strange creature that grows to fill all the space it is given. Give it free rein and it will fill your thoughts, rule your mind, and corrupt all your decisions. Fear cripples your ability to use logic and analyze data. When it sits at the wheel, you can barely do anything at all. Should fear be banished, then? No! A healthy level of fear keeps us from doing dangerous things. It serves the useful purpose of crash avoidance. The key is to give it a voice, but not too much power. A wise person buckles fear into a backseat. A fool lets fear drive.
What about optimism? Does it have a place in clear thinking? Optimism tells us the sky is blue. The sun is bright. The roads are ice-free and well-maintained. It blasts its exciting music through the stereo and urges us to speed up. It sings at the top of its lungs, “The future is bright. Dah Dum. Dah Dee. Filled with endless possibility.” It fills our minds with images of boundless horizons, certain success, unsoiled fun, and, always, perfect visibility. Drive fast. Cruise on. Embrace the ride. I must confess that I am an optimist. When I open my eyes each morning, my default settings are hopeful and confident about the future. I feel as if the world must be full of joy and rich experiences, made just for me! The problem with unbridled optimism is that it can’t see the world as it is. It misses the hazard signs, the hairpin turns, and the black ice.
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Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6 NIV
A new game began the moment my child was born. I imagined a timer floating over her head. As it ticked off the seconds and minutes I realized how limited my time was. The timer counted down the years, months, and days until launch. I could not pause the clock. As a father, I felt the urgency that the deadline provided. Every kid is a fresh game. We are all playing.
Let me explain how the game works. Player One, the child, observes the people around her and learns the normal ways of acting, thinking, and valuing things. We call these societal norms. They vary from place to place and person to person, sometimes sharply. This introduces choice into the child’s world. Every value system she observes will be considered and tested. Player Two and Three are mom and dad. They are closest to player One and have the first-mover advantage. They draw player One into their value system through the power of their love, provision, and proximity. If all goes well with the game, player One will internalize the value system of Two and Three before the clock runs down to launch.
But wait! It’s not as easy as that. The game has many more players. Every one of them competes with Two and Three to imprint player One with their value system. In chapter two, we discussed many of the more dangerous players in this game. In this book, I refer to them as wolves and they are playing to capture the heart and mind of player One, as well.
Gradually during childhood and adolescence, player One will internalize the value system of someone, but who will win? The countdown begins. Eighteen years. Click. Seventeen years, eleven months, and thirty days. Tick. Tick. Player Three must not be passive in his gameplay. Fathers have a tendency toward passivity when it comes to standing for the truth and leading their families in Biblical choices. We cannot let this continue if we hope to win the heart of Player One.
The methods and strategies we use as parents have a lot to do with the outcome of the game. Remember the parenting styles we discussed? Authoritarian, Permissive, and Uninvolved parents will serve player One into the hands of the wolves by damaging the child/parent bond, allowing the wolves into the house, or leaving an influence vacuum that the other players are happy to fill.
Step one is to be a positive, consistent and reliable example for your kids to observe and identify with. The more they see you following Christ and living with integrity, the more they’ll identify a Biblical life as a safe, healthy, and beneficial way to live. Focus on being a Christ-follower. They will enjoy the fruits of your life and be convinced of its value. Lead them by example. Teach them the value of a Christ-honoring lifestyle. Hopefully, player One will launch into independence with a firm understanding of the way to go.
Then comes the hardest part of the game. When surrounded by a field of opposing players, how will grown children live? Will they fold to the pressures of the world or be strong enough to stand for the truth in a world that despises Christ. How will they live? If kids have internalized a strong value system, they are more likely to resist the influence of the world.
What happens then? The game starts over. Your kids grow, get married, and have kids of their own. If you played the parenting game right, you can influence the lives of your descendants for generations. I hope you are beginning to see how important the father’s job is. I hope that you will embrace fatherhood and send a rich legacy deep into the future.
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Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 12:28 NIV
This skill has been a difficult one for me. I bristle against anyone who asserts authority over me. My homeowners’ association tells me I can’t raise chickens in my backyard and my hackles raise up. The government steals my money through a myriad of taxes and fees and then dares to present itself as philanthropic. My wife gives me a list of things to do and expects that I am grateful for the opportunity to serve.
Grrr. Submission is a difficult skill. I remind myself that I chose to buy a house with an HOA. I tell myself that Jesus specifically addressed the paying of taxes in Matthew 22:15-22 NIV. “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” I know that I am supposed to love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Ephesians 5:25 raised this goalpost for husbands. This is the most challenging thing a man does in life, to sacrifice himself for another is not convenient, comfortable, or easy. But it is good. If biblical admonition doesn’t motivate me today, my HOA will fine me $10 per day that I violate their edicts. The IRS or other government entities will not be denied. They will fine me, garnish my paycheck, take my property, ruin my life, and eventually put me in jail for not paying my taxes. And my wife? She can turn the screws, too. There is a reason for the saying, “Happy wife. Happy life.” It’s probably not a wise idea to dwell too long on this point. She might read this book.
Kids need to understand the principle of submission. When do we need to submit and when do we challenge authority? God made and sustains the world. On this basis, He has the only valid and irrevocable claim of authority over his creation. So first and foremost, we must obey God. I choose to submit to God’s will on these matters. As the children of Israel did in Joshua 24:15, I choose to lead my family in obedience to God, the legitimate, universal authority. The Bible has a great deal to say about which rules I should follow. It has the answers on how I should live.
I choose to submit to God’s authority, so life may go well with me and my children. As I do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord, my life will become more healthy and fruitful. That doesn’t mean it is easy for me to submit to the many authorities put over me in this world. The shackles still rub me wrong. I may feel free to pursue my freedom and general welfare, as long as it does not violate God’s laws. This reassures me, I am not a slave to the demands of others. I can stand up for what is right and true. Fathers should teach their kids to do the same.
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Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance.
Proverbs 1:5 NIV
Information is cheap and getting cheaper every day. I would say that the cost of education has dropped to nearly zero. That doesn’t mean people aren’t still paying for it, but it is available for free if you want it. Many parents send their kids to school to LEARN. They think that kids need to pile facts into their heads for thirteen years to be successful in life. “Do your homework.” “Listen to your teacher.” “Get good grades.” Parents think all those worksheets add up to an education and they want their kids to be educated so they can succeed. This is a mistake. Kids don’t need to go to school to learn. All those facts and figures don’t make them into complete humans. What do they need? Your kids need to learn HOW to learn. That’s the secret sauce!
There was a scene in the first Matrix movie that illustrates how we want our kids to act after they have been educated. Trinity and Neo have fled to the roof of a skyscraper, trying to escape pursuing agents that wanted them dead. A B-212 helicopter is on the helipad. “Can you fly that thing?” Asks Neo. “Not yet,” Trinity replies and walks confidently toward the chopper. She doesn’t know how to fly the helicopter, but she knows how to learn to fly it. Our kids need to be fluent in acquiring skills, confident at finding the answers, proficient at sorting through information and discerning the truth. We want our kids to be as certain as Trinity when faced with new challenges. “Do you know Trigonometry?” “Not yet.”
In the real world, it’s not as easy to learn as in The Matrix. After all, Trinity could have the program downloaded into her mind in seconds. But, consider the era we live in. If someone from any other time in history saw how we can access nearly all of human knowledge in seconds for free, they would call it magic. We need to cultivate the love of learning in our kids. It’s more important than anything else they learn in school, aside from basic reading, writing, and math. Teach your kids to take advantage of learning opportunities. Show them how knowledge can unlock doors and reveal new opportunities.
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Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.
Proverbs 25:28 NIV
Among the pictures from my childhood, I found a photo of a little boy wearing a pair of giant headphones. The moment that I saw it, I was transported back in time to my childhood. I loved listening to records on those headphones. Not much has changed in that regard. I still love listening to music on a pair of noise-canceling, over-the-ear headphones. Antshillvania, Bullfrogs and Butterflies, and Music Machine were among the handful of albums we owned. I think I wore those records out listening to them so often. I can still remember the words to many of the tracks. Here is one on self-control: “Once I had a knot in my shoe. And it would not come loose. I tried and tried and pried and pried. But it would not come loose. I got so mad I kicked the door and stubbed my little toe. Ohhh! If only I had learned a little bit of self-control. Self-control is just controlling myself. It’s listening to my heart. And doing what is smart. Self-control is the very best way to go. So I think that I’ll control myself.” Singing these words was how I learned about self-control.
I should say, this is how I learned that controlling myself was a good thing to do. I’ve spent every day since that time trying to do it. There is a big gap between singing the song at the top of your lungs as a little boy and living a self-controlled life. But why do we need to be controlled? Why can’t we just enjoy our whims and fancies without limits? Let’s break it down.
Freedom is precious. We should enjoy the freedoms we receive in Christ to the fullest extent, but let’s not confuse our freedom with a license to encroach on another’s freedom. My liberty to swing my arm wildly in the air ends well before I hit my neighbor in the nose. Self-control helps me to regulate the line between myself and others. It protects others from my selfish words and actions. I have no right to assert my will upon my neighbor by force. I have no right to invade his space or take his possessions.
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Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9 NIV
Pain is a strong motivator of behavior. If something hurts, we do everything we can to stop it. Too hot. Too cold. Too sharp. Too heavy. Too fast. These things present risks to our bodies and pain is our early warning system. Something bad is happening. We must act to make it stop. It’s a great system overall. Could we survive for long without the ability to feel pain? I think not.
The problem arises with the way our brains react to discomforts of the non-emergency variety. It experiences psychological discomfort much the same as physical pain. Emotional distress feels real. We experience it in tangible ways. Stress, worry, and fear are like this. Even boredom is experienced as a kind of pain. Hunger and thirst gnaw at our minds until we respond. Loneliness makes us feel hollow and empty. Pain. These are all signals that something needs to be done to alleviate the suffering. We instinctually move away from discomfort and seek pleasure.
Do you see the problem yet? If we treat all discomfort equally, it creates new problems. Think about work. It induces levels of pain. “I don’t want to be getting up,” or “I don’t feel like carrying this up that hill,” or “Do I have to sit in front of this computer today? It’s miserable.” We experience these feelings like pain, but an adult must learn to endure this kind of malaise if he wants to provide for the needs of life. What about exercise? It takes work to strengthen the body. It causes aches and fatigue. It takes time away from more enjoyable activities, but what would happen to you without it? The body would be stunted and weak.
Sometimes we have to override our dislike of pain. We have to push through it to achieve something of importance in the future. I must stretch my body, which consumes my time and hurts a little, so I don’t injure myself during exercise. Oh, who am I kidding? Stretching helps me bend over to pick up a pencil without throwing my back out. It’s not like I run marathons. The point is that some pain must be inflicted to maintain health and proper functioning life.
No pain. No gain. It’s not true 100% of the time, but if you want to move forward in life and reach your goals, you will have to endure some pain. Fathers need to embrace this truth for themselves and live accordingly. I believe this life skill must be demonstrated if you want your kids to understand how to delay gratification. It is a habit that is caught more effectively than taught. When kids see their parents working hard, striving toward self-improvement goals, enduring difficulty for a worthwhile purpose they will mimic the behavior. What does the Bible say about this? Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24 NIV. A father should focus on following Christ’s example, so his kids can see what it looks like to live for a higher purpose.
As skillsets go, the ability to delay gratification is a reliable predictor of success in life. If we can teach our kids to endure the discomforts of life with a good attitude, they will tackle challenges more effectively. They will be willing to do the work today for tomorrow’s touchdowns. This doesn’t come naturally for any of us. From the time your kids are young, put challenges before them. Cheer them on. Teach them to complete what they begin. Help them learn that doing a quality job is honoring to God and therefore admirable and worthwhile. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24 NIV
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The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Proverbs 12:18 NIV
Wisdom usually comes with age and experience, though that is not guaranteed. Children start with none of it. It falls to the parents to teach them how to negotiate the difficulties of conflict. Without wisdom, kids have only one thing to guide them. Natural selfish desires. This is the first ingredient for conflict. “That’s mine!”, “No, I had it first.” The battle ensues. Tears and wailing follow. Two selfish creatures battle for their way. Whether arguing over toys at four years old or teenagers fighting over who gets the best seat in the van, conflict blooms at any age. If you start with selfishness and add any circumstance whatsoever, conflict will ensue.
It is crucial to teach your children how to resolve conflict. Without a toolbox full of strategies to play well with others, they are doomed to a miserable life. How many individuals with great potential and skill have torpedoed their lives through misunderstandings, overreacting, arguing, backstabbing, manipulating, and betraying those they needed to succeed? Open doors of opportunity are slammed shut when this kind of behavior is present. A selfish, greedy, thoughtless, or presumptuous person abuses the good will of others every time. Soon, the helping hands are not offered and it becomes difficult to advance in life.
I have heard some people complain about rotten luck and how hard their life has been. Even a casual observer can identify how they have poisoned all their opportunities and relationships by creating friction. They can’t recognize their habit of self-sabotage. These individuals push others away through various selfish habits like general grumpiness and irritability, being overbearing and presumptuous, demanding too much, ignoring boundaries, always taking and never giving, steering every situation to their advantage, prioritizing their agenda over others, and offering little value in return. People who act like this are poisoning their prospects. If we act badly with others, we should not be surprised when others don’t want to be around us. We aren’t victims; our negative behavior has sabotaged us. Life is filled with more opportunities for the peacemakers.
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Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
James 3:5-6
Last night I had a nightmare. It had something to do with computer hackers and it felt extremely real. As is usually the case with my dreams, I was unable to fight back. My dream state kept me as their victim. I raged against their evil schemes until my discomfort woke me up. Half-awake and freed from the shackles of dreaming, I crafted a counter-attack. I had to resolve the nightmare. They needed to pay for what they did. Justice demanded it. I turned over in bed and half-imagined, half-dreamed my battle plan. It involved my wielding several superpowers and employing harsh vigilante justice. When I felt that I had made my point, I woke up entirely. The HVAC fan kicked on. I opened my eyes. My alarm clock looked over-bright. A light rain pattered against the window. The hacker battle evaporated in my mind. I felt silly for taking it all so seriously.
Language is a miracle. Isn’t it amazing that I can so easily communicate what happened inside my head this morning? It’s already fading in my memory, but here you are experiencing my hacker battle years later. How astounding is that? The power of language to transfer an idea from my brain to another across space and time is… how should I describe it? Communication is a superpower!
Despite being a quiet, introverted person, I learned to wield the powers of communication years ago. Public speaking for example is not comfortable for me, not natural. I’ve learned how to do it effectively because I had to. Now, I consider it a good tool on my tool belt, but not my favorite. It serves me well in the right circumstances like Superman’s laser eyes. When I am asked to present something to a group of people, I switch off my shyness for a few minutes and take on the persona of the extrovert communicator. Like an over-tight pair of shoes, I can manage public speaking for a short while. Afterward, I feel embarrassed and unsure again. It’s funny how my awkwardness over public appearances will linger in my mind for years.
Whether your kids are introverted or out-going, they need to learn the art of communication. It is a mighty superpower that will allow them to present themselves well to others, explain their feelings, ideas, opinions, and plans. Good communication skills help build and maintain relationships, lead, and resolve conflict. The ability to articulate will open doors that remain locked to those who can’t communicate effectively.
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I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:11-13 NIV
In 2018, Alaska experienced 54,000 earthquakes according to the Alaska Earthquake Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. On average every fifteen minutes or so the earth moves somewhere in the state. You might think we would be paranoid about earthquakes, but whenever something is so common it does the opposite. It is baked into life and our expectations. To be honest, the state is so massive that I only feel a few quakes a month while sitting in my Barcalounger at home. If they don’t rattle the dishes, they aren’t a thing. “We are having have an earthquake!” I might announce. “Cool. What’s for dinner?” comes the reply.
When the big ones hit, I am struck with how inaccurately we perceive the world. We have the perception that the ground seems is firm and dependable. We build expensive houses on it and expect them to last for a lifetime. In reality, all that we think of as stable floats on an ocean of magma. It slowly adjusts to the shifting pressures of different plates grinding against each other, seeking an equilibrium from the catastrophic movements of the past. The soil beneath us can liquify in the vibration of a large earthquake. Building foundations sink, houses split in half, and roads are ripped apart like tissue paper. Everything that we consider strong and immovable is vulnerable to the incalculable forces beneath our feet.
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Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6 NIV
When each of my kids joined the family, the nurse assessed the baby and declared, “It’s a beautiful, healthy baby girl or boy!” All the pieces were in place. Four limbs, ten fingers, ten toes, normal everything. Perhaps they should inform the parents differently. “Congratulations! You’ve given birth to a baffling mystery. It is a new combination of your DNA so it may look familiar, but don’t be fooled. It has a hidden personality, unseen giftings, and undeveloped dreams and desires that you must decode through inference and deduction. You get to spend the next twenty years, like a detective, figuring out what makes this little bundle tick. If you fail to customize your parenting to this child’s needs, you might scar him or her for life. Congratulations though. Here’s your baby!”
The physical needs of a child may be more universal, but kids aren’t the same. Their personalities vary so widely it often feels as if you need a new set of keys to unlock each kid’s heart. As they grow and blossom, it becomes more apparent that each child has unique giftings and aptitudes. They think, feel, and relate to the world differently. Fathers must understand how each of their children was created and cultivate their child’s gifts to their full expression. This is challenging, but can also be a lot of fun.
A key metric of success in fatherhood is the degree to which your kids know, understand, and operate in their giftings. Help them explore different kinds of activities and observe how they react to them. When they light up, it is probably a clue that you are getting warmer. Give them experience, tools, and time to gain new skills. It will soon be apparent what they have a talent for and enjoy. Encourage them to develop their aptitudes.
I think that every child should be advanced in one to three skills in their areas of gifting by the time they graduate from the house. That’s eighteen years old, not thirty, so there is no time to waste. I want them to be well ahead of their competition for jobs, a spouse, opportunities, life skill fluency. To achieve this they must understand the strengths and weaknesses of their personality and have years of experience in self-governing their emotions, drives, and decisions. This is a major undertaking for parents. How do you build these skills into your kids? The short, and possibly frustrating answer, is one day at a time. The truth is that cultivating your child’s giftings is fraught with its own dangers, uncertainties, and pitfall.
For now, just understand that the degree to which your children understand themselves and have developed their skills is a key measurement of parenting success.
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I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
Psalm 119:11 NIV
The Bible is extraordinary. I think everyone could agree with that. It has sold over 5 billion copies. It has survived through time, like no other book. Considering how and when it was written, it is a miracle that we have so many ancient copies from which we can validate modern translations. Its accuracy is important because of the claims contained in the Bible. While there are a few older books like the Epic of Gilgamesh and The Iliad and The Odyssey, the Bible stands above all the others in terms of influence. No book is as loved and hated, so revered and so reviled. The claims of the Bible are a wedge between those who accept its message and those who find it foolish, offensive, or impossible. I won’t spend my time defending the Bible. It stands up for itself well. Many honest skeptics have sought to disprove and expose it as a hoax only to find that it is highly reliable. Some have believed as a result of their study. The Bible is extraordinary in its ability to change the human heart. It brings wisdom to the reader, unequaled by the best philosophies of the world. It is more divisive than any book ever written. It demands a choice of its readers. The results of that choice create the greatest divide on earth. Those that are lost and those that are found.
A father should prioritize scripture in his home. If we want to hide the Word in our hearts, we must bathe our minds in Scripture daily. We must internalize its message and ethics. I have spent my whole life studying the Bible, not in a scholarly way, but as one who values God’s Word. Every time I listen to a sermon, I take the verses to heart as God’s instruction for my life. Every time I read the Bible, I do the same. For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 NIV) The Bible is an unparalleled guide for life.
I have noticed something interesting while writing this book. As I am working out ideas on the page, Bible verses pop into my head that support or illustrate the ideas I’m trying to communicate. I don’t have to search them out or discover them, they are already in my head. Relevant verses jump to the surface at the appropriate moments. This has been true for this book and is also true in my life. I believe the Holy Spirit brings Scripture to our minds, but if we don’t spend time internalizing God’s Word, it won’t be in our database for recollection. That doesn’t mean God can’t guide us to the Scripture and help us discover key verses in the moments of conflict, confusion, and decision, but isn’t it better to have the data on our hard drive already?
As a father, I want to provide my kids with a vast Biblical database to reference in times of trouble and in times of plenty. There is no better source of wisdom. It will guide them through murky waters, storms, and disillusions crafted by the world. I suggest you make Biblical education a top priority. Your kids will thank you later.
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Life is short. Seize the day. Carpe Diem. How many times have you heard this admonition? The old can do the math. They see their days dwindling. Each day becomes more precious. When they say Carpe Diem, the old usually mean treasure every moment, enjoy every day, and don’t waste a minute. Those who live without hope mean something along the lines of “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Corinthians 15:32c NIV) The hopeless feel as if life is slipping through their fingers. They can’t claw back even one day from the past. Knowing this, the old man grumbles how youth is wasted on the young.
Maybe this sounds like good advice, but it is flawed. Time is not a limited commodity. We are not running out of time. Humans consist of soul and spirit dwelling in the body, according to the Bible. Only the body dies when it stops breathing, so only the flesh is running out of time. Paul referred to the body as a tent that we dwell in for a short while. God has a heavenly dwelling for us to occupy in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:1-10). We should not consider ourselves trapped in time, for only our bodies are. The soul and spirit do not expire. Therefore, an accurate view of life is the eternal timeline. Time is not a limited resource. So, how then should we be spending our time? We should pour our lives out in service to others, doing everything to honor our Creator.
There is one deadline before the earthy tent dies, one thing that can’t wait until later. Forgiveness of sin for salvation through Christ Jesus. It is something that determines the eternal destination of our soul and spirit. Do we wish to live forever with God in heaven or live eternally separated from our Creator in hell? This decision must be made before death, because of the sin problem. Sin cannot exist with God. It must be separated from His holiness. It follows that a sinful man cannot dwell with God until his sin has been paid for. John 3:16 explains how Jesus paid the penalty of sin with His death on the cross. His resurrection from the dead proved his victory! Now, the way to heaven has been opened. Each human must either accept Christ’s solution for sin and follow Him, or refuse the gift and reject Jesus Christ. This decision is the primary objective of life, and therefore the chief aim of fatherhood.
Carpe Diem. A more accurate translation of the Latin is “pluck the day [as it is ripe]” A day is a vine heavy with ripe fruit. A father should harvest each day’s opportunities. Teach your kids about God. Study the Bible with them. Help them to understand that they must choose whether they accept Christ’s payment for their sin and follow Him or reject him. Teach them to measure the importance of that decision. There is nothing more important in life than knowing and following Jesus Christ.
When your kids are grown and gone from your home your main window of influence will be closed. Will you be able to rest easy? Will you be satisfied that you gave them the knowledge to make decisions on an eternal playing field? You will probably not agree with all their life choices. Jobs. Finances. Purchases. Friends. Spouse. All those decisions won’t be in your hands anymore, but if they love Jesus you can be at peace. The primary objective has been met.
The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him.
Proverbs 23:24 NIV
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It’s time to get more specific. After all, if we aim at nothing, in particular, we will hit it every time. What do we want our kids to be able to do? What skills are important? How do we want them to act? Should they go to college? What career should they choose? Who should they marry? There are so many life decisions that need to be prepared for, even if they are well into the future. How do I know if my kids are measuring up? How can I feel confident that I am doing everything I need to do? A father needs to set up the goalposts, so he knows when he is scoring points and when he is off his game. “What’s the score?” If we track the points in a football game, we should be able to do the same with fatherhood.
In this chapter, I will discuss the fatherhood goals we should set for our kids and how to help them achieve them. Let me admit at the outset, my list is incomplete. Every kid is different, so their list should be customized for their aptitudes. Every father is also different, valuing different things and having different skill sets. This will alter the list, as well. At the end of this chapter, I will challenge you to make your own list.
It’s important to set up your goalposts. What do you want for your kids? Start drawing up your game plan. What are the most important skills? What does a successful person need to thrive in life? What does success look like? What do I need to teach them so they are set up for success? What can I do today to help them score some points?
In addition, it is equally important for a father to understand what goals are not his to set. A father should not attempt to manipulate his child’s interests and personality. He should not demand that his kid become a plumber or a surgeon just because he thinks they are good jobs. The child will have to make his own choices in life, career, marriage, and family. Instead of planning the path his kids should take, a father should concern himself with building good decision-making skills in them. It may be difficult to hand over control to a teenager, but if you have spent eighteen years building character you can have confidence that they will be fine. No matter the career they choose. No matter where they live. No matter (Fill in the blank)!
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Having finished this chapter, you might be thinking, “That’s too simple. There must be more to it.” There may be more to it. You may discover a sixth ingredient to the Fatherhood Formula. That’s great! I encourage you to begin implementing the five steps of The Fatherhood Formula I have provided and see how it changes your family. Test whether it alters your interactions with work, hobbies, and everything in-between. If you are anything like me, it will take time to make changes in your values, priorities and habits. Don’t be impatient with yourself. You can do it, but not all at once.
Remember that you are dealing with other people who also have the freedom to choose their response to you. If they don’t jump on board with the new you, don’t be surprised or discouraged. You have spent many years being you, setting patterns, establishing expectations, and falling short. It may take time to undo your mistakes, regain trust with those you’ve hurt, or win over your family to a new way of making decisions. Focus first on changing yourself. That’s where many of the problems lay and that’s also where you have the most control.
Secondly, the Fatherhood Formula may be simple, but let’s not confuse simple with easy. Being a good father is relatively simple, but make no mistake, it is the greatest challenge of your lifetime. Just keep using the principles in this book to inform your decisions and you will see improvements. The benefit of principles and formulas is that they apply to all circumstances. They are flexible and resilient. If you dedicate yourself to them and do the work, they will bear good fruit.
I recently learned how to cook the perfect steak at home. Talk about a light bulb moment! It was so simple. So delicious. So repeatable. Why hadn’t I been cooking steak this way all along? I’d wasted so many years. I had assumed that the steak could only be done well by restaurants that had commercial kitchens and trained chefs or by backyard BBQ masters. I had accepted that I wasn’t one of the gifted few.
You might feel this same way with parenting. You’ve accepted the idea that some people are good parents and you just are not. Hogwash! If there was ever a moment to use that word, it is now. Hogwash. (It’s kind of fun to say that word.) You are capable of raising excellent, world-class kids. No matter how you were brought up, your life experiences and past choices, or your personality, you can learn to become a great father.
Your kids need you to be better. Time to step up.
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Step five in The Fatherhood Formula is: Prepare your children so they can stand strong when they are grown. My wife and I are very different when it comes to parenting. She is instinctually loving, nurturing, and comforting. She didn’t have to develop these skills, they were in her from the start. I watched the switch flip on when the first chickadee came along. I marveled at how she could surrender her comfort and sleep for the baby. She craved the cuddling. She relished every moment and milestone. She wanted the kids to stay young forever, to always come to her for comfort. Her fiercely loving mother’s heart hasn’t changed, even with four kids and sixteen years of parenting. It is an admirable and beautiful thing to behold.
Fatherhood didn’t come so naturally for me. I didn’t fall in love with the kids at first sight. I had to work hard at being comforting, gentle, and loving. I guess the nurturing instinct didn’t come with my programming, as it did with my wife’s. As I learned to cradle the baby and change diapers, I wondered why I felt less emotional connection than my wife. What was wrong with me?
This changed when the kids began to talk and interact. Around one year old, I felt a rising enthusiasm. I got to know them and began seeing their personalities. I began to see the miracle of their growth, budding skills, and personalities. My father’s instinct activated. “Wow! Look what this kid can do! She’s walking! She’s talking! She’s actually interesting now!”
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Step four in The Fatherhood Formula is: Protect your children from pernicious wolves. A father is endowed by his creator with strength and a more aggressive nature so that he can stand in the gap between his family and the wolves. In the last chapter, we described some of the influencers that work tirelessly to steal your kids’ loyalty and subvert the truth of the Bible. A fundamental job of the father is to be on guard against the evil schemes of our enemy, Satan.
The Devil has one agenda in this broken world, to disrupt God’s plan while he still can. Satan can have no hope of victory, but he seeks to destroy as much as he can before his final judgment. Here is a description of that punishment from Revelations. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Revelation 20:10 NIV.
We need to understand the relationship between the Evil One, in the spiritual realm, and the world of influencers, in the physical realm. Most people, governments, and influencers plant their flag in opposition to the things God values. This is not a coincidence. The world is under the influence of the Father of Lies, the Devil.
Here are three clues to help us identify how the Evil One works in our culture. We must identify the relationship between God and the culture we live in, to see what we need to stand against. 1) God’s creation is layered with infinite organization and beauty, so the devil and our culture value disorder, chaos, and death. When we elevate the value of life and take a stand for its sanctity, we are making a significant statement about which side we are on. 2) Satan hates what God loves. God loves humanity so the Devil has determined to debase it. That’s why he deceives humanity into thinking we are only animals, unimportant and even grotesque. When we champion a higher moral standard of behavior, we counter this agenda. 3) The Devil champions selfishness because God desires that we serve others. The more that we live according to God’s principles the more we demonstrate that His way is THE way in contrast to the culture which is lost in the wilderness of self-worship.
It’s a simple oppositional relationship. The Devil hates because God loves. We should not be surprised when our culture reflects Satan’s values. It does not know God. Humanity’s broken, sinful nature is bent toward depravity and salaciousness. Our culture naturally falls in line with the Father of Lies.
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Step three in The Fatherhood Formula: Love your children as God loves us. Polaris, usually called the North Star, always appears stationary in the northern sky. As the earth spins, the other stars appear to rotate around it. For thousands of years, the North Star has been used as a navigational constant to guide sailors. In the southern hemisphere The Southern Cross, Sigma Octantis, serves this same purpose. The one stable thing in a sky filled with change. The waves and currents may be in constant motion. The earth may be moving. The moon may be moving, but travelers can use the North Star to calculate direction. In the same way, the Bible provides navigational constants for our lives. That is why I’ve been using scripture to guide our exploration of fatherhood.
The Fatherhood Formula consists of timeless principles that can be applied to all parenting decisions. Use them as your North Star when you are making decisions. They will guide you through difficult situations, keeping you on course when you are uncertain. We will discuss more specifics in the later sections of this book, but we have to start with the constants.
The Bible is the story of God revealing His character, purpose, and plans for his creation. According to Hebrews 13:8 NIV, “Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever.” That sounds like a navigational constant that we can use to guide our fatherhood choices, just like the North Star for sailors. It is crucial to study what God says about fatherhood.
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Step two in The Fatherhood Formula is: Make your children your treasure. We must appeal to the treasure hunter’s heart in every man. Every father must learn the true value of family, children, and a lasting legacy. Then, he will pursue it all his life. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21 NIV
Most men have mistaken plastic tokens for gold coins, valuing the wrong things. Each man must look within and address this error in his own life. The results of mistaking trash for treasure are manyfold and uniformly negative. Just read the news for a sampling of what this twisted valuation has caused. It’s human nature to protect that which is most valued. A man guards his treasure. He works to get more. He polishes his coins and protects them from thieves. It is time men learn to value their families and stop polishing their plastic tokens.
Fatherhood has fallen out of favor with most men and the culture we swim in. Our nation has fallen into chaos because men have abdicated their responsibility, allowing the State to move in to fill the influence vacuum in our homes. The State has become a father to us all. Too many men have accepted this, leaving their families vulnerable to the wolves.
We must reverse this trend if we hope to heal our nation, but what can one man do? I don’t hold the levers of power over others, but I do have authority over myself, my attitudes, and my choices. This is the only place to begin.
What about you? Have you been gathering and polishing plastic tokens? Make a list of the things you have valued too highly.
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
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Step one in The Fatherhood Formula is: Turn your heart toward your children. For a man, there is nothing more significant he can invest his life in than his family. Nothing has more reach. Nothing has more value. I understand that many men can accomplish great and influential things in their work lives, but being a father is ultimately more important than that. Family is a man’s first circle of influence and responsibility. I believe his success will be measured, in time and eternity, by his accomplishments there before all else.
I have many ambitions and dreams for my life. My sense of purpose has been simmering inside me since boyhood, sometimes boiling over. It pushes me ever onward. It drives me to reach for a better version of myself. It hungers to accomplish things of significance in the world. Because of this, I am inspired by the stories of the great makers, inventors, artists, builders, and world-changers. They build amazing things. These are the people who improve the world. I read their stories with awe. In the fabric of my soul, I want that, too!
There is often significant flaws in the family lives of these great achievers. They accomplish extraordinary things and yet usually fail at home. It turns out that the plant you water is the plant that grows. The so-called movers and shakers are so devoted to achieving their ambitions that their families wilt while they are away. It is a tragic outcome that many of them lament later in life. Divorces. Affairs. Estrangement. Broken relationships. Dysfunctional kids that reject them. The structural integrity of the family has rotted from the inside while they were “conquering” the world. No matter how enormous their accomplishments. No matter how much they are praised and admired, I have never heard of one that thought the trade-off was worth it in the end.
This pattern is so common that every man should see it as a warning sign. Beware! Danger ahead! If you don’t devote yourself to your family and cultivate it like an orchard, it will not flourish. Your wife and children will feel neglected or abandoned. You will hurt the ones you love by your absence and apparent disinterest. You will stunt your family’s development and legacy. Don’t repeat the mistakes so many others have made.
To avoid these problems, fathers need to redefine success. It is good to work hard and do significant things in the world, but you must also strive to be a great husband and father. Two goals. It divides your energy and makes it impossible to devote all to one thing. Yes, doing this will blunt your effectiveness in endeavors that require endless hours. Prioritizing family will cut into hobby time and social activities. These sacrifices must be made. Your family needs you. Remind yourself daily that the plant you water is the plant that grows.
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The formula of the soda I am drinking is kept in a high-security vault and only two people are allowed to know it. This is understandable since the formula is the key to a vast business empire, but it is funny. Every other brand on the planet has a cola flavor that’s close enough to pass my taste test. It feels like the secret is already out, but whatever. Perhaps the vault story is more of a charade. I don’t know. Think of all the different products with secret sauces, recipes, and proprietary designs. No one else is allowed to use the formula and this maintains the companies competitive advantage. The fatherhood formula is not so well-hidden or guarded. Nothing would be better than to have you take the following formula and integrate it into your little family company. Here is my Fatherhood Formula.
1) Turn your heart toward your children.
2) Make your children your treasure.
3) Love your children as God loves us.
4) Protect your children from pernicious wolves.
5) Prepare your children so they can stand strong when they are grown.
In this chapter, we will look at each of these ingredients and show how every father can up his fatherhood game, by focusing his energies on these five principles.
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A father would do well to guard his children against the wolves that I have discussed in this chapter, but my list is not comprehensive. Wolves, like candy, come in many varieties. I hope that you have gleaned some sense of the danger of letting the cultural influencers have free access in your home. Perhaps you have become more aware of where you’ve been believing their messaging personally and recognize the necessity of weaning yourself off some technology or entertainment. If you have let the wolves into your house, it is time to chase them out the front door.
Warning! Making drastic changes like banning social media or certain kinds of entertainment will be met with resistance. If you have allowed unfettered access in the past, your kids will not understand unless you explain yourself. They will not agree with you, so be careful how you do this. Don’t be authoritarian. You don’t want to turn your kids against you and encourage them to reject your authority. If you make drastic declarations and throw devices in the trash out of the blue, your kids will feel injured and resentful.
Instead, I suggest you take the gradual approach. Spend a month having discussions with your family about what you are learning in this book. Do some more research and start seeding the ground with messaging of your own. “The more I learn about social media, the more concerned I get about how it’s affecting our family.” At the end of the month, have a meeting with your family and present a new direction for social media use. The specifics of the new plan are up to you, but you must emphasize the reasons why you feel a new approach is needed.
You will likely get a great deal of pushback. Listen to your kids’ counter-arguments. Write them down. Discuss them. Think about them. “I am going to think about your arguments this week, and we will have another family meeting next weekend.” Write down your arguments and ask them to think about them during the week. Come together again. It is your job to build consensus and lead your family. Explain to your family the adjustments you’ve made in order to be a better example in the home.
For other wolves, it may not be possible to ban access. Your children will be exposed to some influencers, no matter what you do. You must educate your kids about what the culture believes and how it seeks to spread its belief system to everyone. Help them identify the lies and distortions as they arise. Turn it into a game. The cultural influencers toss up a message. Your family sees it, targets it with the truth, and blows it out of the sky. Have you ever seen the sport of skeet shooting? Look up a video on the internet, if you are unfamiliar. The shotgun sports are a perfect metaphor for what your family needs to do with the half-truths, distortions, and lies. Prepare them to stand strong in a world that disagrees with the Bible.
It is time for action. I want you to strongly consider whether sending your kids to public school is the right decision. The intensity of the indoctrination grows every year. The system is designed to wrestle your kids from you. They may still act like your kids, but their minds, hearts, and ethics will be stolen by the system. You cannot compete with six hours of propagandizing a day. It’s just not possible. You won’t know what messages your kids are receiving. It’s impossible to counterbalance all of them in the few minutes you have each evening. I recommend pulling them out of the system. It is the number one thing you can do for your kids’ future.
I realize it is a big ask that requires a great sacrifice of time, money, and lifestyle, but you cannot compete with the indoctrination your kids are receiving in public schools. It’s not possible. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. We live in a world that actively seeks to crush our values and beliefs. What will you do about it? Will you step into the gap between the wolves and your kids?
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What if I told you that I’d invented an apparatus that lets you access all of human knowledge in seconds using a device that you could fit in your pocket? You would pull out your cell phone, wave it around in front of my face and say, “You’re a little late, Bub! You’ve got to do better than that.” We have grown accustomed to the internet, the devices that access it, and the software that sifts through the mountains of data to give immediate results. Imagine I went back in time and told my great-grandparents about my device. They would doubt my sanity. Technology has moved forward so fast during my lifetime. It feels like there is a technological revolution every fifteen minutes.
The internet is a great achievement. The layers of services built on it are both improving and morphing everything about our lives. How we live, where we live, how we communicate, and how we view the world. It’s pretty amazing if you think about it. Many of these changes are positive. Still, it’s not all roses. Having access to all of human knowledge is a mixed bag that reminds me of those packages of jelly beans where some taste sweet and others taste like armpit.
Humans are capable of creating great works of all kinds. Art and science. Masterworks of literature, music, mathematics. Great machines and innovative medicines. BUT…and that a big but. Alongside the positive and uplifting is the foulest, most profane, absolutely disturbing, despicably violent, and completely raunchy products of the human mind. All are equally accessible through this wonder device. Humans are capable of great depravity. Their broken sinful nature gravitates toward evil. So, access to the internet is inherently dangerous.
I doubt I need to convince you of the need to protect your kids from the internet’s cesspool. Free access to some depravities can greatly harm your kids’ development. Pornography comes to mind here. A single exposure can alter the brains of boys going forward and lead to dangerous addictions. Cyberbullying can create distress because kids who live too much of their hours online can easily believe that it is more real and more significant than the real world. The illusions created on social media will shape how they think and live their lives. A virtual calamity becomes a real disaster. Free access to the internet opens your kids to an uncountable mob of bad actors trying to steal, corrupt, and influence. Kids are not ready to combat this alone.
Many parents do not install strict filtering on their home internet. It is an extra step. It is inconvenient. It sometimes blocks legitimate sites along with the dangerous. Perhaps they’re not drawn to “that garbage.” They assume their kids won’t be. Perhaps they ARE drawn to it and don’t wish to take a stand in that area, because of their habits online. I think most parents just want to ignore this problem.
They provide cell phones for their kids, because everyone has them, and give them access to everything, anywhere they go. The most popular excuse for this is, “I need to be able to call them. In case of emergencies.” This is a rationalization to make a fun device into a requirement for safety. The cell phone exposes a child to 100 times more dangers than it protects them from. This might shock you, but I don’t think kids should have cell phones. Certainly, not ones with a cellular connection, with which they can access the internet from unfiltered portals. Not until they are equipped to handle the responsibility. This, I understand, is heresy in our modern-day culture.
My “Ten Year Rule” is a good gauge for anything that requires discernment, problem-solving, or tough decision-making. If the culture says a child is ready for something, they probably need another ten years to handle it responsibly. The culture says, “Go ahead and give your eight-year-old a cell phone,” so I say “They’ll probably be ready for it by the time they turn eighteen.”
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Nothing encapsulates the threat of the government wolf better than Dennis Prager’s line. “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” Every time our leaders create another law, program, or agency, the government tentacles grip another part of our lives. Most of those little additions don’t reach our home, so we tend to disassociate laws from their consequences. However, every law does affect somebody and laws build up like clutter in a house.
At first, you can stuff the knick-knacks in a closet. Then you have to install shelving in the garage for all the boxes. Soon you have to park the car outside, because it won’t fit in the garage anymore. The stuff keeps coming in. A little every day. Sales. Hand-me-downs. Stock-ups. Black Friday shopping sprees. Old stuff breaks, but somehow isn’t thrown out, so the clutter builds. Year by year. You struggle to keep the hallway clear and walking paths to the rooms. Finally, you become like the hoarder down the street whose stuff spills out onto his driveway and yard. THE STUFF OWNS YOU!
We are coming to a point where there is little that governments are not controlling. Leaders are reaching quickly to snatch the last vestiges of our freedoms. We have collected boxes of laws, stacks of policies, closets full of ordinances, piles of governing bodies, and more agencies than we can count. Around nine million people are working for the federal government. Five and a half million people work for state governments and a whopping fourteen million work for local governments, according to 2019 census data.
Citizens are forced to navigate around all the rules. The hallway is lined with towers of boxes full of excessive taxation and red tape. It’s difficult to get into the bathroom because there are more stuffed behind the door. If you want to look out your window, you’ll have to get creative. There are only a few beams of lights shining between towers of zoning restrictions and homeowners’ associations. At what point do we see the clutter for what it is? A dictator.
The United States Bill of Rights is a list of things the government does not have the authority to do. Alexander Hamilton argued against this in Federalist No. 84. Why would this be necessary? Surely, a politician would never institute a law or policy which exceeds their given powers. Has such a thing ever happened? I’m being sarcastic only because it should be obvious to anyone watching the news or studying history that government officials do little else.
Collectively, they are the greatest threat to our safety, welfare, and freedom that exists. Perhaps super volcanos, large astroid impacts, and similar global calamities could theoretically do more damage, but the odds of Yellowstone erupting are one in a million. There is a 99.2% chance of the government taking freedom from its citizens. (Okay, I made up that percentage. Does it seem a little low to you?)
We need to teach our kids that trading hard-won freedom for a promise of safety and security is a devil’s bargain. The government talks loudly about improving your life while filling every square inch of your house. You will be left kneeling in a corner wondering when you lost control over your life. Every individual law seemed so innocent and well-intentioned, but collectively they were always designed TO OWN YOU!
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“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
John 15:18-19 NIV
One of the most pernicious tools of cultural influencers is “tolerance.” The meaning of the word is straightforward. Tolerance, according to Merriam-Webster, is “sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own.” In a diverse world where people have many religious beliefs, it is necessary to honor the freedom of others to choose what they believe and to exercise their religion. How else could we live side by side in peace? This idea works well with Christianity, because becoming a follower of Christ is a personal choice and can’t be legitimately forced upon others.
There exists a great difference between the apparent idea of tolerance and “Tolerance” as practiced by our secular overlords and cultural influencers. They don’t mean tolerance of ALL religions. They mean tolerance of the ones they approve of, which in practice means any religion, except Christianity and Judaism. There is a strange animosity against Christianity, a double standard. For me, the fact that they are offended by Biblical principles is an indication that we are on the right track. John 15:18-19 supports this.
It is the height of hypocrisy to elevate tolerance as a value, but only for non-Christian beliefs and practices. Capital T “Tolerance” becomes a club, a weapon. It is about asserting power, not sympathy for others’ freedom to exercise their religion. It is about shutting down freedom of speech and religion unless you embrace the state-approved religion. (We will discuss the worship of “The State” in the next section)
“YOU MUST accept the beliefs of others as equally valid to your own.” This means you are not free to discuss the merits of Christianity over other belief systems. “YOU MUST not offend people with your religious beliefs.” This means Christianity must be practiced in private and never brought into the public square. “YOU MUST not say anything that we find controversial, outdated, or politically incorrect.” This means they have complete control over your speech, and they’ve won.
The secular overlords and cultural influencers are currently making a full-court press to take all our freedoms from us. It is dangerous to let them use capital T “Tolerance” to convince your kids that they must surrender their God-given rights willingly. As fathers, we must help our kids see the manipulative messaging embedded in education, entertainment, advertisement, and politics. Once kids learn to see the lies, they won’t be able to unsee them. They will find them hidden in movies, books, the news, political rhetoric, everywhere. Let’s inoculate our kids against this ploy to force us to surrender our most valuable freedoms, in the name of tolerance.
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It is strange and sad to have to include the public school system in this chapter about dangerous influencers. It feels as if a school should be a haven of safety. This trust bias, on the part of parents, toward the education system has allowed the public schools to wield undue influence in our kids’ lives for generations. With so many thousands of hours to indoctrinate our kids, it’s no surprise that whatever the public school system teaches soon becomes the cultural norm. The public school system leads culture by the hand, like a mother with her child.
Let’s start with the teachers. Parents trust them as professionals who have their kid’s best interests in mind. In my experience, teachers are well-intentioned. Who would put up with your kids otherwise? But don’t be fooled. No matter their intentions, they implement what they are told to teach by the government and school officials. They use the educational principles and strategies they were taught in university. Teachers are put through many years of intense messaging and indoctrination formulated by the same influencers that decide what kids learn in K-12. Believe me, I went through five years of “teacher training.”
The entire system is contained within the controlling hands of the state. Like refrigerant inside a heat pump that circulates endlessly and cannot escape, any student in the public system will circulate through a pre-determined path designed to create ideological clones of the state. The public school system is no longer trying to help your child thrive in a literate world. They are churning out brainwashed cogs for the state-run machines.
If the public school system is a tool in the hands of the government and the cultural influencers that run it, why do we deliver our kids each morning into their classrooms?
I believe the public school system, in its current form, is the most effective method of depositing bad ideas into young brains that has ever been invented. It is worse than advertisements, entertainment, and friends, because most parents still trust schools. They tell their kids to listen to the teacher, obey the teacher, and do their homework. Homework pushes the educational duties off on the parents so there is more time during the school day for non-academic lessons. Parents are recruited to reinforce the indoctrination and take up the slack where the system fails to teach. Parents are rarely on guard against the many dangerous and immoral ideas that are embedded throughout the curricula.
Parents, it is time to wake up! It is time we stop placing our precious kids into the hands of a system that will bend their minds as surely as the hammer drives the nail. The institution MAY have been conceived as a public good. It MAY have been intended to serve up quality education and equip all Americans for professions that required literate citizens. It may teach some kids to read, write, and do arithmetic at a passable level, but the moral instruction meant to instill civic virtues has been corrupted. Centralized systems are always corrupted over time. It’s inevitable. The public school system has suffered the worst mission creep imaginable. Parents must reject it and do better for their kids.
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I hate being sold to, but I can’t seem to get away from advertisements. It wasn’t always like this. When I was young, my family didn’t have a TV. It was a geographical issue. Our house in the mountains couldn’t get the free TV signals, and we were too poor to afford cable. As a result, I got the ad-free version of childhood.
The only time I saw TV ads was when I visited Grandma and watched Saturday morning cartoons. They fascinated me at first. I wanted everything. After each commercial, I got a thrill of excitement about getting the toy followed by a death drop of disappointment when I remembered we had no money to buy it. I would never be able to get any of it. I resented the ads for tantalizing me with the impossible. Soon, Grandma turned off the TV and told us to go play. And that was the totality of my childhood ad experience.
Today, with the internet people see many thousands of ads per day. Every ad is trying to tickle your fancy, inject dissatisfaction with your life, raise a desire for something new, and get you to act now! Even if you don’t buy anything, you still pay a price. Each ad takes a little of your attention and time, like a time tax. If you are watching TV, you are losing twenty minutes per hour to ads. If you are online, you are losing a few seconds here, there, everywhere. Over the day, all those moments add up to more lost time than you think.
If the loss of time doesn’t bother you, consider that each ad interrupts your productive thoughts, like stop signs popping up randomly in the middle of the highway. Your brain pauses, shifts, and processes the message, deciding whether to move on or not. At the very least, we lose the time it takes to reengage with our work. That is an energy cost that we don’t realize we are paying.
As much as I hate being solicited, I have to admit that they are very effective! Companies buy and sell my metadata, so they can target me with the things I’m interested in. Advertisements influence me. Oh. Look at that! I didn’t know they made those. I wonder how that works? Look how beautiful that is. Look how cool that person is. Nudge. Nudge. Buy. Buy. Of course, ads are effective. Companies wouldn’t keep spending money on them if they didn’t bring in the sales. I like to think I am a sales-resistant person. I have a rule that I will never buy something from a salesman. From Girl Scout cookies to cars to vacuum cleaners. I refuse to be pressured into anything. But that doesn’t matter, because ads don’t pressure you. They manipulate. They remind you gently. The technique of influencing your thoughts is not difficult. Just plant the seed with an ad and it will stimulate future choices. It’s subtle and dangerous. They have it down to a science. They all want your money, your time, your attention, but you might not realize how much you are being manipulated. It’s time to reduce your ad exposure and take back your mind space.
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“But, but, but!” I hear you saying, “The world is high-tech. If you don’t let your kids do any of the normal things, they will end up illiterate.” Well, it is good that you are concerned about your kids’ tech literacy, but don’t be confused. All that glitters is not gold. Most new technology is not beneficial. On the contrary, it is often predatory. The creators of the games, social platforms, or free services design their products like a dairy farm. Guess who the cows are? That’s right, your kids are the cows. Moo!
They want your kids hooked up and distracted by the bright colors, beeping and buzzing sounds, and artificial point systems, so they can steal their milk. They are in the data-mining business. They sell advertisements. They sell upgrades and entertainment. They want lifetime customers, addicted to dopamine hits every few seconds. They need addicts.
Your kids do not need to be immersed in this to operate in the world. There are other paths they can take. Fulfilling adventures. Interesting avenues. The cost of information is fast approaching zero! Are you taking advantage of educational tech? Are your kids? That’s why I emphasize tech that provides learning or allows kids to produce things. Design. Create. Express. Help others. Teach. Care. These are goals that technology serves as a force multiplier for. It’s amazing what can be done now with a little tech and practice. I am an advocate of these products. Let kids spend their free time building, inventing, producing things that bring value to the world.
Don’t worry that your kids won’t be fluent enough. You aren’t depriving them of anything, but an addiction. Let them be makers and doers in this high-tech world by protecting them from becoming one of its dairy cows.
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Video games are highly addictive, a low-return way to spend the only real commodity in life. Time. You can’t regain hours once they’re spent, so a wise parent will help their kids spend their hours well. Consider the hidden cost of missed opportunities. Every hour spent on video games is not spent on more valuable things. The brain gains mastery of level four in a virtual world, but misses out on real life and the diverse skills needed to thrive there.
I don’t believe that every hour of a kid’s formative years must be well spent, but many of them should be if you want a well-rounded human being. Every hour spent in video game worlds is an opportunity lost. The brain is entertained. The brain is numbed. The time is gone. The opportunity is missed. Wouldn’t it be better to let them get bored? Force their brains to find something to do. Encourage them to produce something. Help them gain new skills. Tell them you expect them to find something they enjoy and build mastery of it. Can you imagine if every kid had already gained thousands of hours of experience in productive skills by the time they graduated? What an advantage they would have over their peers, who spent their youths hooked up to video games. It is much better to have your kids following their curiosities, gaining productive skills, and developing creative outlets. Let their minds be engaged, challenged, and grown. Video games are a narrow pursuit. They give little benefit in return for the time they consume. Why not let kids learn a dozen different things with the same hours?
You’ll find that instead of a digital zombie, you have a well-rounded child. Instead of a one-dimensional consumer, you’ll have a master creator. This is the true cost of video games. They cover over the boredom so thoroughly that kids never learn how to entertain themselves. They never discover what they are passionate about. They never experience real life, real failure, and real accomplishment.
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Everything that exists was made by someone. Obvious, I know. This pen has a maker. Every book has a writer, an illustrator, and a printer. My lunch has a farmer, a rancher, a processor, and a distributor. Each person that works on my sandwich shapes it according to their desires and purposes. If I study the packaging, I can see what they put into the bread or the sliced ham and cheese. When I look at and taste my sandwich I experience what they believed a sandwich should be. I am tasting the product of their morality.
Entertainment is no different than physical objects. The creators of movies, TV, video games, social media, and other experiences work for years to bring about each project. All of them leave their unique fingerprints on what they have created. They have certain reasons for making it. When I watch their final product I can see what they believed a show should be. I am watching their morality. We call it bias, agenda, or maybe propaganda depending on how forcefully the messages are placed.
Of greatest concern, in our search for wolves, is the creator’s desire to insert his/her value system in the work they create. I do it. They do it. Everyone shapes their creation in their image. For me, that means I might slip in a Bible verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV Oops! I did it again. It just leaks out of me because, above all else, I see life through a Christ-centered perspective. It colors all of my views just like a set of colored glasses.
It is the same with every person. What do they believe and value? What is their great crusade? You will find it embedded in the work they create. For example, if a person believes a mother should have the right to murder her unborn child, you will find messages in their show that positively spin abortion. Usually, that doesn’t involve the word murder or baby or any morally sticky imagery. They put a nice slogan on it, like “ a mother’s right to choose,” or something like that. This feels to me like relabeling the USSR’s Gulags or Nazi concentration camps as “Stalin and Hitler’s right to choose.” My red flags go up when I see messaging that goes contrary to the Bible!
We must learn to identify the bias and agenda behind the entertainment we are consuming. Anyone who can’t see the bias tends to just absorb the messages passively. After a person has heard a hundred messages repeating that a mother’s right to choose is sacred, they will assume it as their own. That is how propaganda works. Subtly molding the mind with a barrage of impressions called nudges.
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Friends are extremely influential! It’s hard to overstate how much. A buddy of mine told me a story that I believe illustrates this perfectly. “My wife and I drive older model cars right now. They have a lot of miles left in them, but they don’t look pretty anymore. They have a few dents. Latches, buttons, and seals are starting to fail. My wife felt embarrassed driving her jalopy to work. She explained that it didn’t feel professional. I expressed my opinion that they had a good amount of life left in them and that buying a new car just so other people didn’t think you were poor was a good way to become poor.”
“I am pretty sure that she physically heard me, but the idea dripped off her like water off a duck’s back. If anything, it made her more sure that she needed a new car. Since we had enough cash in our car savings, we began shopping. We found a used car that checked all the boxes for us, four-wheel drive for winter driving, good condition, the right age to avoid overpaying on a new car, AND it looked super fancy. A real eye-catcher.”
“We discussed the decision many times, during which I told her that I still felt the same. Buying cars is like burning money. They lose value by the mile and only provide transportation. We should get the full value out of the old one before jumping into the expense of the next one. She frowned and changed the subject. It seemed clear that she wouldn’t be dissuaded. We made an appointment to relook and buy the car on Friday. On Thursday, my wife was chatting with a lady she had just met.
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The word Hedonism is not in wide use in our culture. I had to look up the definition just to verify I was thinking of the right term. According to Merriam-Webster.com hedonism is “the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life.” Though the word is rarely used, this dangerous philosophy is more prevalent in our nation than all the pizza places, coffee shops, and burger restaurants combined. In other words, it is everywhere. On every block and in every house. It springs from the miscalculations of every human heart. Every broken person wants to live well and be happy, but doesn’t know how. When we look within for answers, all we find is hedonism.
How should we live? It is a valid question, but when I detach my morality from a higher authority, I am adrift in a sea of choices. I look to my hedonistic desires for guidance and ask, “What will give me pleasure today? What do I want most?” Desires and appetites are always in flux, not reliable. I will be tossed and turned in the currents of life and ultimately fail to satisfy myself or live well. Where are the charts to guide my ship? I need stars to navigate by. Pleasure-seeking provides no constants to base my choices on.
This is a huge problem, but for some reason, I prefer to chuck the GPS unit out the window and steer my life by feel. Pleasure and suffering become my only guides. Sailing like this will inevitably lead to disaster. Let’s imagine how it will go when I let the prevailing winds of pleasure and pain take me wherever they wish.
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“Life is meaningless. Knowledge is impossible. There is no objective truth. Human life is without any intrinsic value,” says the culture. You don’t need to know the name of the philosophy to receive the messages. They are baked into the cultural cake. Any time you are consuming content or education from this anti-truth culture you will find whispers of Nihilism. It is a philosophy that seeks to undermine the idea of absolutes, truth, meaning, and value. “It is impossible to know anything for certain,” they decree, ignoring the obvious conflict that that belief statement is itself declaring something as certain, thereby canceling its validity.
Let’s consider the ramifications of such a philosophy. If life is meaningless, then it doesn’t matter which choices I make because I, like life itself, am nothing of consequence. I have no purpose for being alive. Nothing I do is valuable. It doesn’t even matter that I’m alive. Nihilism believes life is a lot like living in a video game. It has the illusion of significance, but achievement within the game is ultimately futile. Failure is meaningless. Just restart the game.
I hope you can see the danger of treating the significant as meaningless. Think of it this way. I have a pile of leaves that have recently fallen from the oak tree in my backyard. If I compare a stack of dollar bills to my pile of leaves, they are not that different. Not in substance. One is cotton cloth. The other is a thin oak fiber. What if I believed them to be the same. I might treat the dollars with the same disregard as the leaves. If they have no value, just let the worms eat them both. I might toss the dollars away to be destroyed by weather and rot. Nihilism tries to convince us that our lives are no more valuable than dry leaves. It ignores reality.
Every store reinforces the value of money by exchanging dollars for goods and services. Nihilism wants you to ignore the observable facts. Life is a store of value, just like money. It is imbued with value by its creator, which is reinforced by its usefulness, by its productivity, by its influence, by its emotion and experience, by its intelligence, by the miracle of its existence. If I wanted people to waste their lives, I would convince them that life is no more valuable than that pile of dead leaves. Once people believe that “it doesn’t matter anyway,” they’ll discard themselves with the leaf litter, to be consumed by weather and rot. It becomes logical for a nihilist to embrace self-destructive choices as the remedy for emotional pain and depression.
Nihilism doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t match our experiences of living. It doesn’t mesh with our feelings and emotions. It contradicts the evidence of the physical world. We have an innate desire for meaning, purpose, and understanding. Every human values themselves highly as evidenced by the way we protect our bodies and are outraged when others threaten them. The Bible teaches that our lives are overflowing with purpose, significance, and value. These attributes originate from God and cannot be deleted or altered by the belief in hopeless philosophies. They are truth.
“We’re all just apes,” they might say. Nothing is right. Nothing is wrong. We’re just animals following our instincts. This is an incredibly hopeless way to live but, aside from that, it is also dangerous. It encourages humans to lower themselves, embrace their carnal, broken nature and do anything they can get away with. After all, if nothing matters in the long run, then everything is permissible. Right?
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Why does our modern culture cling to an evolutionary explanation of the world with the fervor of religious zealots? It serves their purposes better than any philosophy or religion ever invented. It removes God from man’s understanding of life. If God doesn’t exist, man has no responsibility to live as his creator wishes. Mankind has always wished to rule himself. So man embraces a Godless philosophy to promote himself to the position of chief decision-maker and highest authority. As one who bristles under authority, I can see the attraction of being the king of my life. Can’t you?
I see two major problems with this. First, if I believe, really hard, that I am Superman, it doesn’t make it true. My words lack the power to shape the fabric of reality. Similarly, someone might wish that God did not exist, but saying that it is so doesn’t have the slightest effect on reality. If God exists, it seems ridiculous that He could be so vulnerable to His creation’s whims. According to the Bible, speaking something into existence is one of God’s abilities. He spoke the world into existence. “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Genesis 1:3 NIV. We should be concerned with what is true, not what we find to be most convenient. If the hard evidence indicates a Maker, we edit him out of our lives at our peril.
Secondly, the results of the evolutionary religion are easy to study. Since the publishing of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has been embraced by many nations. Recent history seems to indicate that when mankind removes God from their worldview, they justify many atrocities including genocide and infanticide at a deplorable rate.
Atheism is the belief that there is no God, which is to say, that man is god. This religion has been adopted by many people for many reasons. Many people are offended by the Judeo-Christian God because He isn’t doing things the way they would if they were God, and so they reject His existence altogether. “If God is good, how can He allow suffering?” is followed by a full-scale rejection of God as a concept. Other people observe hypocrisy in Christians and reject God on that basis. “If God were real, that person would not be such a fraud.”
Still, others cannot accept the possibilities of miracles. The Bible is the story of how God created the universe, an astounding miracle. Something from nothing. Amazing. Throughout history, God has stepped into the lives of men and women to reveal His nature and redemptive plan. First God made Himself known to Adam and Eve who walked with God in the cool of the evening, but then they disobeyed God and created a rift of sin between God and mankind. All of human history is the story of God stepping into the lives of His creation. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He brought the descendants of Israel out of Egyptian slavery with a series of miracles that are still celebrated or doubted today. The prophets received the words of God and predicted the coming Messiah in great detail. An amazing miracle that changed the world occurred with the birth and life of Jesus Christ who fulfilled these prophecies. The virgin birth. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The feeding of the five thousand. The transfiguration. The miracles abound. The blind see. The deaf hear. The dead rise from the grave. One of God’s greatest tools to demonstrate His character is the miracle. For God, who created the universe with his words, miracles are not strenuous.
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It is hard to ignore how well the universe works. Gravitational Force. Electromagnetic force. Nuclear force. Speed of Light. How well the earth supports life. Our location within the Milky Way galaxy. Our position within the solar system. The availability and polarity of water. The presence of Jupiter and Saturn diverts dangerous large comets and asteroids from hitting the earth. The placement of the earth’s moon, with its specific size and rotational properties. Stable plate tectonics on Earth. The list goes on and on. Our universe is stable, our solar system and the planet Earth are finely tuned to support life.
Let’s not pretend that our existence is anything but a miracle. If any one of these variables were even minutely different, life-sustaining earth could not exist. The sun could not hold itself together. Planets could not remain in orbit. Our molecules would be unstable. Any individual variation of the parameters needed for life would mean that we are impossible. Wow! It’s amazing how perfect everything is. All this perfection seems like strong evidence for a Creator. In my mind, the very presence of order is the strongest proof for an organizer. You can trust me on this point. My wife has a tenth-degree black belt in organizing. I have a lot of experience with this phenomenon.
Think of our DNA. Its complexity is so great that a Creator’s fingerprints are literally in every cell of our bodies. Okay, fine. Except for red blood cells, which eject their nuclei at maturity to make room for more hemoglobin and to allow them to be small enough to flow through the smallest capillaries. Anyone who preaches that this complexity could have occurred on its own has to ignore a lot of inconvenient math.
And yet…our culture has elevated the theory of evolution to the level of inerrant scientific dogma. When people use the words “The Science” as definitive proof of something, it is safe to insert the phrase “religious dogma” for science. They are talking about something far different than the scientific process. Their calculations of probabilities take for granted that the evolution from chaos into order is possible and known. The truth is that anything that happened in the past is not observable. It’s not testable. Once you get far enough back in time, let’s say six thousand years, the surviving archeological evidence and artifacts drop off so precipitously that scientists are soon dealing with total extrapolation. Let’s not allow scientists to convince us that their models and theories about the distant past are anything more concrete than conjecture.
Evolution is a pillar of the modern secular faith system. Its advocates say it is built on sound scientific principles, but where the evidence is lacking storytelling and fairy tales have filled in the gaps. This religious dogma is preached by intelligent scientists and school teachers, instead of pastors and priests, but don’t let that fool you. Evolution is a belief system about the unobservable past and cannot be proven. It must be accepted by faith.
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Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? The answers to these questions are key to how your kids will live their lives. The Bible has a lot to say about these big questions. For example, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 NIV. According to the Bible, which Christians believe is the Word of God, everything that exists was created by God for specific reasons. Humanity has a purpose (to worship and glorify God), a place (adoption into the family of God), value (so loved by God that He gave his only Son to save us from our sin), design (made in God’s image), and future (whoever believes in Jesus Christ will be forgiven their sins and inherit eternal life with God.)
Today’s culture also has a worldview. It is generally opposite to what the Bible lays out. Many Biblical principles were evident in the foundations of our culture. They were, in fact, the reason for our great national success. These Biblical fundamental truths are being eroded way. Modern culture is anti-Christian and anti-Bible in every way. Whatever the Bible calls good, is being repainted and recast as the new evil. What the Bible identifies as evil is being repainted as good. We are raising kids in very convoluted times.
Fathers have a great challenge before them. How can we raise healthy, strong kids who are willing to be the only one in the room that stands for the truth? It’s hard to stand alone in a culture that ridicules and persecutes your beliefs, but that is what our kids must have the strength and courage to do. Otherwise, they will not maintain their Biblical foundations. The culture swallows the minds and hearts of “Christian” kids every day. It targets all truth for destruction and embraces any perversion of morality as good and noble.
I believe we must parent in such a way as to raise brave leaders. To be a follower of Christ is to swim against the current. That takes strength of mind and convictions. Our kids can’t be people-pleasers or they will waffle under the pressure of other people’s opinions. Our culture will accept any belief, so long as it is not Judeo-Christian. We fathers must aim high and work tirelessly to build strength into our kids’ hearts and minds.
In the rest of this section, I will discuss a few of the dangerous worldviews our culture is serving up like a buffet at the lunch counter. We must teach our kids about the so-called “wisdom” of the world so they can see the difference between the truth and its many distortions.
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There is a long history of using wolves to signify the threats we face. In this book, I have chosen to continue the practice. The sin-broken world, our secular nation, and even the neighborhoods where we live contain many entities with harmful designs and plans for our kids. Most of these wolves consider themselves good-intentioned, but by focusing on outcomes we can untangle intentions from results. They don’t appear to be dangerous to your children, but they are. We must learn to recognize negative influencers and messages, so we can protect our young ones and, as they grow in age and understanding, inoculate them. Throughout this chapter, I will describe some of the cultural wolves I believe you should be on guard against.
If we do nothing, the world will exert its seductive and destructive influence throughout our kids’ foundational years. Then, by the time our kids have grown, the indoctrination will have permeated their souls affecting their thoughts, words, actions, values, priorities, habits, and goals. Like wolves, our adversaries are persistent. They are coordinated and ferocious. They are tireless and resilient. They are dangerous. They are sniffing around our houses for their next kill. Our kids require protection while we prepare them to be IN the world, but not OF the world.
I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. John 17:14-16 NIV
The wolf pack is always hungry. This verse makes it clear who we are opposing when we protect our kids from the world’s influence, the evil one. Elsewhere the devil is described similarly. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8 NIV
Imagine an ancient family living in a cave. The wolves are howling outside, desperate for an easy meal. Every night, the father builds a fire in the mouth of the cave to keep the destructive canines at bay. When they grow desperate and try to sneak past the flames, he must step into the gap with a sharp stick and drive them away. The babies in the back of the cave are counting on him. He must not fail. They are the future. They are precious. So he stands guard while the babies sleep, making plans for their protection and training. Someday, they will be strong enough to hold back the wolves. He will teach them what they need to know. But tonight, amid the howls, he stokes the fire and stands in the gap. No matter the cost.
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- Be long-suffering. Any book that includes suffering on its list is guaranteed to get readers excited. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but parenting, like life itself, includes suffering. A father needs to be willing to suffer for the benefit of his kids. What does this look like? Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24 NIV
Don’t be alarmed. Parenting is not agony on the level that Christ, our Savior, suffered on the cross, but that is the model. Jesus used His sacrificial example on the cross as a demonstration of what it means to deny yourself. “Take up your cross and follow me.” Crucifixion was a horrible method of torture and death. Parenting involves denying yourself, dying to yourself, and following Christ. I find that every time I have to give up my agenda for the benefit of my family’s needs, it hurts. My selfish nature cries out in rebellion. I don’t WANT to! Why can’t I have a little time for MYSELF? Is that too much to ask?
A father must stoop down, pick up his metaphorical, rough, wooden cross and follow Christ’s example. Christ laid His life down willingly to save the entire world from sin. Fathers must sacrifice their time, energy, money, and desires to build up their families. We shouldn’t discount this kind of suffering. Jesus didn’t. He told us that this is what would be involved in following Him. It is certainly a prerequisite to success in the fatherhood game. A daily dying-to-my-own-desires is the kind of long-suffering that Christ calls us to.
Since the fatherhood quest travels along a long-suffering path, a father should be as patient as he can. Embrace this daily dying-to-self. It is making you more like Christ each day and a better father. Both of these outcomes put points on the eternal scoreboard.Remember this crucial foundation of fatherhood: Patterning myself after Jesus Christ is the path to every victory worth winning.
- Be better. Valuing fatherhood and committing to it doesn’t make you a good father automatically. It’s not some magical formula. You have to practice what you’ve learned, consider your effectiveness, redesign, and try again. It’s like an engineer designing a new machine. The machine should be able to make perfect widgets, but it’s not any good, yet. The designer rebuilds the prototype, each time fixing flaws. He continues until the machine does what it is made to do, produce perfect widgets. As fathers, it is much the same, except we are remaking our priorities, our attitudes, our values, our habits, our agendas, and our goals.
If you fail to have an iterative mindset about fatherhood, you will only discover your shortcomings once your kids are grown and it's too late to adjust your technique. Identify your shortcomings and flaws so you can redesign, rebuild, and improve. You will be amazed how small adjustments make huge differences in your kids’ lives and your family's life.
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- Be intentional. Fatherhood can become a reactionary game like Tetris. Life drops a situation down and you have to figure out what to do with it before the next problem appears. You are just trying to keep up with the ever-increasing pace. If you have ever played the game then you know that music. Sometimes life moves so fast that all you can do is react and try to keep up while hearing Korobeiniki in your head. (Tetris song. Originated from Russia. The word means peddler. Originally a poem by Nicolay Nedrasov in 1861.)
Life with kids feels random and unpredictable at the moment, but it isn’t. Be intentional. With planning and forethought, the game slows down because you have decided what to do with many situations before they happen. In the game, you have to put the shapes together to make complete rows, which clear out of your way as soon as you do. Fatherhood isn’t that much different, if you know what you are trying to build, it all slows down. Spend time crafting goals and growth targets for each child, the family, and yourself. Fatherhood should be done by design. Get on the same page with your wife on as many decisions as possible. Pre-deciding all the basic stuff leaves mental space to wrestle with the unexpected and reserves fuel to avoid exhaustion.
- Be wise. Wisdom is no easy goal to set for yourself. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.James 3:17 NIV.It is something you should spend your life reaching for. It involves knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. A wise person acts based on their diverse understanding to solve non-intuitive problems. A wise father will forecast the long-term effects of today’s choices and act in a way that will bring positive outcomes in their child’s life. Study the art and craft of parenting. Apply what the Bible says about it. Observe how others raise their kids. What parenting habits create the kind of outcomes you want for your kids?
You aren’t doing this work in a vacuum. You don’t have to have all the answers, but you do need to find them. Search them out. They are the map for your quest. In our times, there are an infinite number of resources that can help you, but they all require one thing to make any difference. You must value knowledge and understanding, use what you learn to gain insight, and ACT on it. Everything you do today ripples into the future. If you are cold and demanding, your kids will have low-esteem, poor social skills, and be prone to mental illness. If you are too permissive, your kids will be impulsive and egocentric. If you are neglectful, your kids will become impulsive and delinquent. (More later about how parenting style affects kids.)
Pursue wisdom. Let it guide all of your parenting choices. If you don’t, you will fall back on whatever your parents did. Sometimes those instincts will be great and beneficial, but other times they may be abusive! A wise parent will work hard to break generational cycles of abuse. Your kids’ future depends on you. And your grandkids' and great-grandkids'. Take a hard look at yourself every day and gain wisdom. There is nothing more valuable. “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!”Proverbs 16:16 NIV.
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When I was growing up, I noticed that fathers were always the brunt of the joke in sitcoms. Our culture discounted the value and degraded the dignity of the father’s role in raising kids. It enjoyed depicting fathers as buffoons or lazy, abusive, or demanding, and above all unimportant. The government still encourages single parenting with its welfare policies, venturing to assume the role of the father itself. Provision. Education. Discipline. It does this as one greedy for power, not as one investing in the lives of the kids he loves. There is no substitute for the real thing. Only you can be the father your kids need.
It’s time we take back the mantel of Fatherhood and embrace the challenge it presents. Without a doubt, it will cost us greatly. “The quest will take his life,” said Gandalf of Frodo Baggins. So it is with us, the quest will take much of our energy and time, but it is worth the sacrifice. It is a great and noble thing we are doing. It’s time we elevated our perception and esteem of the job of fatherhood. Our responsibilities are a high calling, just like motherhood, we must start seeing the big picture. Take up the mantel with fear and trembling, determination or insecurity, any emotion you like, but take it up nonetheless. This is your quest!
If we are to view the fatherhood journey in this way, we need a roadmap to follow. The father’s list of Bs is a good starting place for becoming the father your kids need you to be.
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Be willing.Without choosing to take on the quest, no hero ever got out of their backyard. It sounds simple, but it’s the crucial first step. Too many fathers tolerate their kids like so many cats that need to be fed and cleaned up after. “Why did we have to have kids? They get in the way of everything I want to do.” Be willing to see your kids differently. See their potential. See their hearts. See how they need you. You must be willing to engage with your kids. You must be willing to put time, thought, and energy into meeting your kids’ individual needs. Be willing to comfort them in their pain and frustrations. Be willing to laugh at their jokes. Be willing to take a deep dive into their interests. Be willing to be interested in them. Be willing to listen. Be willing to give them the best of your time. When you get home from work, be willing to spend your last vapors of energy making them feel seen and heard. It is no easy task. If they are the greatest investment of your life, you must be willing to put your money where your mouth is. You must choose to be willing again and again. Each day requires a new choice.
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Be present.The trajectory of a child is altered so drastically by this one factor. Kids in single-mother households are at a disadvantage on almost every metric. They must struggle and scrape to figure out life in a way that kids of two-parent households don’t. Be present in your home. Be consistently present, so they can count on you being there when they need you. Demonstrate how they should handle trouble, stress, and uncertainty by learning to handle it well in front of them. Show them how a woman should be loved and cherished by loving and cherishing their mom. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.Ephesians 5:25-26 NIV.
Teach them to forgive and ask for forgiveness by apologizing when you are wrong and resolving conflict as soon as possible.“In your anger do not sin” Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Ephesians 4:26 NIV. Give them a place of safety and rest by making your home a calm harbor in storms. Stay present in the good times and the bad.
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Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4 NIV Now that I had set the first of my fatherhood principles as my North Star, I tried to structure my life and prioritize my time to match. My results were inconsistent at best. It’s almost as if my mind had a mind of its own. I understood that a man’s family is the greatest investment project of his life, but I wanted to do my own thing, too. Did I have to invest in eternal things all the time? I had other ambitions for my life, big dreams, and things I wanted to build and experience.
One great dividend a man earns from having kids, like being married, is being forced to mature. A painful process with good results. Your selfish desires are confronted with daily competition for your time and energy. You see, every human is born selfish. Selfishness is a cancer that we have all been infected with since sin first entered the world in the Garden of Eden. This strong competition works like a surgeon’s scalpel cutting cancer from the body.
Having a family sets up a daily conflict between what I want to accomplish and what they need. I like to think of it like bowling. Each morning, I wake up and a new frame of 10 bowling pins is set up before me. Some days my ball rolls into the gutter of laziness on the left or the gutter of selfish ambition on the right. Perhaps the gutters have different names for you. Big Boy Toys. TV. Vices.
When I ignore the opportunities for investment in my family, which have eternal consequence, for temporary pleasures or mindless to-dos, my ball diverts into the gutter. I fail to capture the points the day had to offer. I have thrown a lot of gutter balls so far, but the good news is that every day is a new frame. A new opportunity to invest in my kids.
Some days, I throw the morning into the gutter, but manage to knock down a few pins in the afternoon. That’s a little victory, worth celebrating. As I calibrate toward eternal values, I aim at accomplishing as many eternal goals as possible. Loving my kids. Protecting my kids. Preparing my kids. These are things a family needs. These are the goals I set for myself. Today, I want to reject passivity and selfishness and embrace my quest to raise a healthy family. “But I’m tired and not in the mood!” Even then, I try to put some points on the eternal scoreboard. If I knock even a single pin down, I have succeeded in part. I celebrate the little victory and set a higher goal for the next frame. Every day is a fresh opportunity. Over time, I want to knock down more of the pins. I am setting my sights on higher and higher scores.
Stop here and make a list of what your family needs from you. Start with the obvious. See a need, meet a need kind of stuff. Provision. Being available. Spending time. These things are important and they should be on the list, but the needs of the moment are not all that a family requires. Spend some time on this list. Perhaps it would help to put your items into three categories. Loving your kids. Protecting your kids. Preparing your kids. Perhaps you will have a different list for each of your children. It helps to know what kind of activities are knocking down pins and which go straight toward the gutter.
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This principle challenges me daily. You see, I have a bit of a people problem.
“Dad, when I grow up I want to build a cabin in the wood and be a hermit,” I still remember saying to my dad as a boy. I think I had just learned what a hermit was and it seemed like a good fit for my introverted personality. My dad replied, “You can’t do that!” He said it with so much feeling that I was taken back. I remember feeling hurt. Living alone sounded about perfect for me.“Why not? I love the woods and people exhaust me.” He explained that God’s plan is all about people and if I lived in the woods by myself I would miss out on His work.” I groaned out loud and my dad laughed. “I wanted to be a hermit, too, when I was a boy, but I grew out of it.”
Well, I’m sorry to say that I haven’t grown out of it. Groups of people still exhaust me. I prefer a day of solitude to going to the state fair, but I took my father’s lesson to heart. God values people and being a part of His ongoing work often means spending time with and investing in people. So I try my best.
For those of you who are like me, I have found that having a few, deeper relationships is better than many shallow relationships. Natural-born hermits live on a social budget. We must spend our reserves wisely. Usually, on the people God has given us direct responsibility for, family and a few friends.
In addition, I have found that there are ways of investing in eternal things that are less people immersive. What I’m doing now, in writing this book, is one of those things. Hopefully, these chapters will help more people than I could ever talk to in the flesh. Every family needs to set their parenting priorities. Every parent needs to wrestle with the influences and threats around them and make a plan to protect and prepare their kids to thrive despite them. Despite my “people problem,” I can help encourage people to step into the gap between their kids and the wolves.
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The first of my Fatherhood Principles comes from Matthew 6:19-21 NIV. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
According to this scripture, I am supposed to store up for myself treasures in heaven. As a rule, nothing I possess will come with me when I die. Many ancient people disagreed. They buried their dead with their treasures, but those things could not cross the gap of death into the afterlife. What happened to all the gold, jewels, and fine clothing buried with them? It rotted or it was dug up by thieves. Failing that, archeologists unearthed the remains thousands of years later and sold them to museums.
“Things” are useful for provision in this present period of our lives, but physical riches have no usefulness once our heart stops beating. So, how do I get my treasures to cross the gap of death into heaven? This verse seems to indicate that we can enter eternity with a treasure in the bank. I am familiar with retirement accounts, bank accounts, and other investments, but this eternal safety deposit box sounds strange. Send my treasures ahead. How?
Think of treasure in terms of time and energy. Money and stuff are derived from these two things. When I spend my earthly wealth on eternally-valued things, I store up treasure in heaven. When I serve my family with my time and energy, it doesn’t disappear. It is not spent. It is invested. This even includes the tedious aspects of parenting. Like doing laundry. I think of the time and effort spent on this and other monotonous tasks as an eternal investment on behalf of my children. Heaven values people highly, which means that my kids are a high priority for God. People are the only thing that can cross the gap into eternity. When I scramble an egg or cook pancakes for my kids, I’m investing for eternity. My time is not wasted. It is invested.
An essential foundation of fatherhood to remember is this: Investing in the family brings the greatest returns.
When my emotions get out of hand, my frustrations run hot, my boredom meter is in the red, when I feel like I am spinning my wheels, or when I believe I’m missing out on more important things, this principle helps me put things back in perspective. The more my life is in balance with heaven’s priorities, the greater my investment accounts in heaven grow. That sounds like good business.
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The transition from married to married with kids is dramatic for dads. Suddenly, these babies are depending on them, like no one ever has in their life. New dads find themselves being more watchful than before, thinking about the future more. Like the man building a fire at the mouth of his cave, they listen for the howling wolves and prepare to beat them back.
The fledgling guardian inside of me rose to keep watch. It seemed natural and instinctual, but it was a dramatic change. Even as my wife’s God-given nurturing gifts budded during her pregnancy and blossomed at each of our kid’s births, my heart aspired to the guardian’s challenge. I wanted to be a good father. But what did a good father look like? What did he do? How did he do it? Who could I look to for guidance? My mind cast around for answers.
I realized my good fortune. I had two father figures to pattern myself after. Both my biological father and my Heavenly Father provided me with a template for fatherhood. My dad had shown me the balance between firm and caring. (More about Authoritative Parenting later.) He provided for us financially through hard work. He built our family on the strong foundation of Jesus Christ. He broke the patterns of his father’s generation by being emotionally accessible and expressing his love for us often. He had high expectations for our behavior and achievement. He would get down on the floor to play with us. He urged us on to greater levels of maturity, and much more. These models and behaviors were ingrained in me. (Do you remember the moment that you first realized you are becoming like one of your parents? You use the same phrases. Or you use the same hand gestures. Weird, right. This is the same thing.)
Beyond what we learn from our fathers, God the Father is the perfect model for all earthly fathers to mimic. As the parrot imitates human speech, an earthly father can pattern himself after the Heavenly Father as revealed in the Bible. Though any man’s best efforts are indeed poor imitations of the original, he will be nearer for having tried. So, I thought back to Sunday School. I thought back to Bible study. I thought back to a thousand conversations and lessons about God. How had He dealt with mankind? I began to synthesize all the stories I had learned through a new filter, the father filter. God the Father had modeled fatherhood, a perfect balance of justice, love, and mercy. I had the model. Could I live out those same principles? Did I have it in me?
For those of you who did not have a father who ingrained these Biblical principles in your heart, don’t worry. And don’t stop reading. In this chapter, I will tell you how to begin. As you work through the concepts in this book, you will find that the characteristics and priorities of a father are simple to understand. Once you learn them, you can put them into practice and step up in your kids’ lives.
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I consider myself lucky when it comes to my parents. They are by no means perfect, they are human after all, but they did a great job in the ways that count. They stayed together. They loved each other well. They loved Christ and prioritized His plan in their decision-making. They taught me the foundational things about life. They mentored me through the many crises caused by my chronic back problems, and they released me like a well-aimed arrow.
Today, I consider them friends and mentors. I call them every few weeks to catch up and on holidays when my wife reminds me. I trust that when I ask them for counsel, they will shoot straight with me. They don’t tell me what they think I want to hear for the sake of ease. They don’t manipulate my decisions to serve their agenda. They mentor me as they parented, with the wisdom of the Bible as the compass to guide the ship. That’s a pretty lucky combination of numbers on my lotto ticket.
Much of our instincts about parenting are forged in us by the examples we grew up around. How did they handle a given situation? Reflexively, I will probably do the same. For good or ill, much of our behaviors are ingrained in us. Sometimes that works for us. Other times, not so much. It’s the work of a lifetime to change our habits if they need to be rewired. It requires daily effort, hard self-examination, difficult choices, intentional adjustment of our priorities, and some minor miracles. Be thankful for every good habit and value that your parents instilled within your heart. They are assets that pay daily dividends for a lifetime.
Because of my parents, I had a good track laid out for me, not that I was aware of it at the time. I felt like I was strapped into an untested rollercoaster. Michelle and I were at the summit anticipating the rollercoaster’s plunge into motion. Excited. Scared. Uncertain. What will it be like? What do I do? How did this happen? Well, I know how it happened. But, am I qualified for this? What if I ruin this kid’s life? What if I do everything wrong?
I remember a thousand conversations with my wife. We were pregnant with excitement and more nervous energy than we could contain. We stared down at this rollercoaster’s tangle of loopty-looping tracks and corkscrews and couldn’t make sense of all the conflicting advice. Time kept ticking. Time to pack a bag for the hospital. Then…“It’s time to have a baby!” our OB/GYN announced. Gut wrench. Hold on. Before the first drop, no one knows what to expect. No one is qualified. And yet, the coaster doesn’t stop. “Congratulations! You have a beautiful, baby girl!” Whoooooooa! Down the track, Michelle and I plunged, and at that moment, everything changed. I became a father.
What does it mean to be a father? “I’m a dad now,” I said the words and they sounded strange in my ears, but the proof lay in her arms. Michelle beamed. She took to motherhood like a duck to water, but I wasn’t so confident about myself. I wondered what I had gotten us into. What should I do now?
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Imagine Luke Skywalker before he met Obi-wan Kenobi, Frodo Baggins before Bilbo gave him the one ring, Eragon before he found the dragon egg, or choose one of your favorite characters. At the beginning of their stories, how would you describe them? Naive. Immature. Green. Preoccupied. Unprepared. Unaware. This is the image of every man just before he hears the words, “Honey, I’m pregnant.” He is about to become a father. The trumpet call of adventure sounds different than he thought it would. The scene doesn’t feel right. There is no dramatic music. No epic backdrop. No old, wise wizard. The unprepared protagonist is probably standing beside his wife, in the bathroom, peering down at a positive pregnancy test. Checking. Double-checking. Looking at the box and checking again.
The call to adventure has been given, but it doesn’t match his expectations. So much so, that he might miss it altogether. Many men do. If he is anything like Luke, Frodo, or Eragon, then he is clueless. He is about to embark on a quest filled with danger and many opportunities for valor. The moment his wife says, “Honey, I’m pregnant,” is a man’s first step into the unknown. The greatest challenge of his life.
Whether or not he answers the call to fatherhood with honor and wisdom doesn’t change the facts. His life just changed forever, and he is completely unprepared.
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Father and the Wolves: A guide to elevate fatherhood, fix families, and save the world. Written and read by B.T. Higgins.
Introduction:
I have been told that men don’t read books anymore. Certainly, dads won’t read a book about fatherhood. If this is true, then all the pressure is off of me. No one will read this book, so I don’t have to worry about hooking the reader’s interest with this introduction. Maybe this book is just for me. You see, I’ve come to believe that being a father is the most important work of my life. Perhaps I just needed to collect my thoughts on the subject into one place, to get them down on paper. Why are my kids important? Why am I a necessary part of their lives? Why should I prioritize my kids over my hobbies and work? Do I have some goal I am working toward with them or is parenting all just haphazard and random? Wouldn’t my kids be better off without me? Everyone knows that kids need their mom, but no one ever says that about dads.
Most of the time, I just hear complaints about dads. Spend ten minutes around a group of wives and you are likely to hear a handful of comments about what he didn’t do right this week. A lot of their criticisms will be about his poor fathering skills. Being a good father is not easy. It doesn’t come naturally. So, why should dads keep trying? I believe our legacy as a father is one of the few things that will outlast us. It reaches far into the future and across the globe.
This book is for fathers. Most of us aren’t doing a great job and the world has noticed. We’ve garnered a bad reputation. What do you think our wives would say if we started taking more of an interest in our kids? How might that change our family dynamics? Did you know that as a dad, you have the power to build up your kids or crush them with a few words? That’s sobering!
Fathers have a unique influence and sizable power to make the world a better place by investing time and energy into building stronger families. What would the world look like if dads stepped up to the challenge of fatherhood? What if they protected their kids from negative influencers instead of inviting them into the cave? In this book, I refer to these negative influencers as wolves. It is a good metaphor for the job of a father. Protect your kids from the wolves and prepare them to thrive in a dangerous world. Take up your spear. Step between your kids and the wolf pack.
On the outside chance that you are reading this, know that there is at least one other guy that reads books and wants to be a good father. I encourage you to continue reading. Discover how to elevate fatherhood, fix families and save the world!
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