‘Happy Father’s Day’ doesn’t work for every young person

Dads are great right? Mine taught me to use tools and gifted me with a love of puns. It’s amazing to celebrate Dads and all that they’ve done for us.

It’s not always that simple though is it? Below is an article I wrote as a guest column in ‘Premier Youth and Children’s Work’ magazine a few years back.

The good father myth

I recently told a classroom of teenagers a story about a good father, and used it as a springboard to talk about the perfect love of God. There was a girl on the front row, however, who jerked suddenly and glared at me fiercely through tears for the rest of the session.

For years I’ve told these stories about God as a loving father, and I’ve assumed they’ll just get what I mean. There’s a big problem with this though. Parents are not always there and when they are, they are not always good.

Over 42 per cent of marriages in the UK end in divorce, almost half of those affect children under the age of 16, and the vast majority of child abuse happens within the family unit. Not everyone knows what a ‘good father’ looks like. Some dads are jerks, some are absent, and some really don’t deserve the title. We cannot indiscriminately trust that young people have any real concept of what a loving father actually is.

This myth – that everyone has some concept of what a ‘good father’ is – has followed our evangelism for quite a long time now. It has permeated every part of our worship, and it still forms the cornerstone of a lot of our teaching.

God is father and he has a truly good father’s heart towards us. We cannot expect, however, that everyone will understand exactly what that means. The father metaphor, in lots of cases, conjures images of imperfection, brokenness, or even neglect and abuse. In some cases it quietly leaves confusion, or just a lonely feeling of absence. In other scenarios, like what happened in my classroom, it can invoke real deep pain and simply propagate entrenched ill will towards God. Incredibly, fatherhood actually becomes an obstacle; a stumbling block to a young person falling in love with God.

Maybe, rather than talking simply about ‘fatherhood’, we should make sure we share the specific traits we’re referring to. So let’s talk about warmth, protection, compassion, strength, solidity, and leadership. Let’s describe fatherhood, not just state it. We can talk faithfully about the fatherhood of God by sharing what it means specifically, without just using the word ‘father’ in isolation.

Perhaps we should develop a philosophy that makes God the original form or ideal version of what father truly means. God is the highest reality of father, which means that He gets to set the tone for what a father really should be. Instead of saying “God loves you like a father,” maybe we could say “God is the father, and He loves you”. This subtle change of orientation stops us making God in the image of our own broken fathers, and creates a new category that He fully inhabits.

My good friend Mark and his wife recently had a baby and she is a little knock out. Cute, excitable and, at times, wonderfully loud. For the longest time she wouldn’t fall asleep without being in physical contact with one of her parents. Mark spent hours sat with this little life sleeping soundly on his belly. Her parents were her safe place. Mark as a dad was a secure and protected zone of absolute love and compassion – and I know he always will be. That’s what good fatherhood does!

Where can our young people find that safe space? How can we draw reluctant young people into the arms of The Father when their own fatherhood relationships are damaged? I know we can’t replace parents, and we really shouldn’t try to, but could our churches and youth groups provide a place of safety and compassion which reflects the safety and compassion of their father in heaven? I hope so! I’d encourage us to think intentionally about how we can introduce The Father to those who have little or broken reference for what fatherhood should be.

Fatherhood can be a beautiful thing – and with God it certainly always is. However, if we trip up on the first hurdle and can’t get past the word itself, then we’ll never get to the heart. We need to speak to our young people about the truth of God as father – a truth that breaks chains and dismantles spirals of self-destruction. Our language needs to be both basic and specific. It should show a real awareness of the problems many young people have with fatherhood as a concept. It is, after all, more important to communicate the real truth than just to use the ‘correct’ words. In the way we talk to young people we need to reach beyond just the word ‘father’ and capture the reality behind it.

We have an amazing opportunity to restore, redeem and even reintroduce what a father could and should be to a world in desperate need of him. Let’s get on it!

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash