Sharing Parental Experiences

For me to convey the meaning of a good father, I feel it’s necessary to first bring up some alarmingly ugly facts that should not only get your attention, but also give you a sense of what we’re up against. Otherwise stated, to define a good father, I feel it’s necessary to follow the path of the parental figure has traveled in our society over the years.

Parenting Style
One could argue that the alarmists have focused blame on what’s wrong with our youth and pointed to the parental figures in the home as the culprits, in many cases. Yes, this has been done many times in various parts of the world and during a great many different time periods.

Today we could ask almost anyone on the street what a good father is really like, and unless we were speaking to the very few individuals who seem to think that we need a strong family leader, the answers would probably be somewhat shocking. They might tell us that the father is the one who usually tried to get the sympathy of the other family members and especially the attention of his wife. He may do this with some type of childish action or even some form of hypochondriac procedure. This I imagine has been drilled into our population by the one-eyed monster, we call television, that graces most all our homes.

Of course, we can’t blame everything on TV. The liberalization of our society has perverted the idea of leadership and strength, lampooning it to the point that we’ve been softened as a society, as most people avoid the lead role. Rarely is a genuine person of character with positive leadership skills elected to be our public officials. This goes for the father image as well. If we see a strong-charactered, God-fearing head of a household reflected in real life or in fiction, we will immediately come to the conclusion: he is going to scar his children by his domineering personality and make the some type of servile individuals for the rest of their lives.

I could not disagree with this more! The only way one learns true leadership and strength early in life is by example. Unfortunately, we have lost almost all of our examples as far as fatherly leadership is concerned, so there is no one to perpetuate this image. The young man grows up with a weak father and does not have anyone with whom to identify, so he does not know what a real man is. He may see dad refusing many responsibilities and neglect his family in many other ways, only for the good mother to be left to do it all.

Christian Family Ministry
So you’re probably wondering when I’m going to get around to tell you what I thing a good father is. By describing a bad father, I am surely telling you what a good father should be. The good father is the antithesis of the weak and poor father. I would much rather see a strong-character, righteous man walk by his children, and in doing so, observe them somewhat flinching as they became fearful that he might just swat them, then see the reaction of most children to their father today. Call me old fashioned, but that fearful respect for the father is representative of being accountable for the child’s actions, recognizing that the good father represents values.

Protecting your child in a seductive world
A good father does the things we traditionally picture a father doing with their child. This includes teaching his kids to ride a bike, playing ball or taking them fishing; cultivating the bond between himself and his daughters, and being a strong, yet also a sympathetic figure. He can be all of these things and at the same time, be a true example and the leader of his family. To take the helm of the family as the leader, guiding the household through the storm times it faces through the years.