Once upon a time, most Americans understood that fathers are essential in the nurturance of children, which, in turn, is essential for flourishing families and safe and healthy communities. Once upon a time, society understood that fathers—like mothers—are indispensable. Hear the words of a past president, urging Americans to better understand the singular blessings and obligations of fatherhood:

The journey of fatherhood provides unique and lasting joys. Cradling a baby in his arms, a father experiences the miracle of life and an unbreakable bond. Fathers imagine a world of possibilities awaiting their children and contemplate the privilege of helping them reach that expanse of opportunity. As kids grow and mature, they look to their dad for a special kind of love and support. Providing these necessities can bring great happiness.

Fatherhood also brings great responsibilities. Fathers have an obligation to help rear the children they bring into the world. Children deserve this care, and families need each father’s active participation.

Fathers must help teach right from wrong and instill in their kids the values that sustain them for a lifetime. As they encounter new and challenging experiences, children need guidance and counsel. Fathers need to talk with their kids to help them through difficult times. Parents must also help their children make the right choices by serving as strong role models. Honest and hard-working fathers are an irreplaceable influence upon their children.

Communities must do more to counsel fathers. Family and friends, and faith-based and community organizations, can speak directly with men about the sacrifices and rewards of having a child. These groups can support men as they take on the great challenges of child-rearing. Through honest and open dialogue, more men can choose to become model parents and know the wonders of fatherhood.

On Father’s Day, we pay tribute to the loving and caring fathers who are strengthening their families and country. We also honor those surrogate fathers who raise, mentor, or care for someone else’s child. Thousands of young children benefit from the influence of great men, and we salute their willingness to give and continue giving.

Those are the words of former President Barack Obama in 2009, just three years before he incoherently endorsed same-sex pseudo-marriage—a form of marriage that necessarily embodies the false belief that fathers (or mothers) are expendable.

But then came the sex-stupid era in which we remain mired.

The sexual revolution continues to mutate and spread like a virus unleashed from a Chinese lab. But the lab that experiments with this virus to increase its pernicious ability to harm children, poison communities, and destroy a once-great country is not a lab in communist China. It is the academy right here in America, aided and abetted by a tangled web of insulated government bureaucrats, an insidious entertainment industry, social media behemoths that conceal their puppetry behind algorithms and dopamine hits, and the medical and mental health communities run by the father of lies.

But there is light in the darkness, and that light knows truth. That light is truth—and the way and life. That light is called Abba! Father!

Those who are blessed with God-fearing fathers who discipline while never removing their gracious love, should offer thanks to God and their earthly fathers for this blessing.

Those who every day feel longing, sorrow, confusion, or anger because of the absence of their fathers can turn to God and His bride, the church, where God will be their father.

G.K. Chesterton understood what Barack Obama does not:

The triangle of truisms, of father, mother, and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.

There has never been and will never be a time in history when fathers are expendable.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Fathers-Day-in-a-Sex-Stupid-Era.mp3

Written by Dr. Jerry Newcombe

Much of the mayhem we see today is linked to fatherlessness.

Around this time we celebrate Father’s Day. But fathers in our culture have not recently appeared very important—at least according to Hollywood and other culture-shapers.

We used to have programs like “Father Knows Best” or “Leave It to Beaver” with a respectable father figure. Then we devolved to Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.” He was the stereotypical bigoted, benighted patriarch who was not worthy of emulation.

Then we devolved to Homer Simpson, the buffoonish dad, who was anything but a role model.

Of course, in many households today, there is no dad. And that’s a serious problem. So many of the children in fatherless homes begin life at a serious disadvantage. The breakdown of the family at large has caused a huge crisis in our society. For instance, statistics show that the majority of prison inmates come from broken families.

Fatherlessness is a serious blight on American life. As the family goes, so goes society. And, contrary to what the left says (who spend much of their energy diminishing traditional gender roles and arguing that whatever “family you choose” is just as good as the real thing), fathers are integral to the life of a child.

Take an example. What is it that is devastating the black community today? Many in our current climate would say the main issue is racism. But sociologically, cultural pathologies are linked closely to poverty. And poverty is linked closely to the structure of the family. Government subsidies (by which the left buys votes) has created a permanent underclass of people by subsidizing fatherlessness and unemployment.

Prior to the Great Society, the rate of illegitimacy in the black community was relatively low and families were intact. And as economist Thomas Sowell points out, the poverty rate for African-Americans fell by 40 percent from 1940 to 1960—just before the “Great Society” welfare programs. Today, the illegitimacy rate is over 75 percent, which is devastating—by virtually all accounts.

I remember many years ago when I attended an “evangelical church” in Chicago that was a little on the liberal side. One of the lay leaders, a man, got up and prayed, and he said, “Our Father, Our Mother….”

I was thinking, “What?!?” So I asked him after the service about the unorthodox prayer.

His response was that that church was in the shadow of the most notorious housing project in the city, Cabrini-Green. Fatherlessness was a huge problem there. Most people growing up there had a negative feeling about their earthly father because he was absent or drunk or abusive. Cabrini-Green was such a disaster that it has since been torn down.

In his book, Hearts of the Fathers, Charles Crismier notes that many American children today lack the “God-ordered earthly anchor for soul security” because dad is not in the home. He notes,

“It is well known but seldom discussed, whether in the church house or the White House, that fatherlessness lies at the root of nearly all of the most glaring problems that plague our modern, now post-Christian life.”

For example, take the issue of poverty. Says Crismier, “Children living in female-headed homes have a poverty rate of 48 percent, more than four times the rate for children living in homes with their fathers and mothers.”

He points out that fathers are so important in the Bible, beginning with God the Father, that the words “father,” “fathers,” and “forefathers” appear 1,573 times.

Obviously, children in fatherless homes can survive and even thrive despite that handicap. But what a better thing it is to follow God’s design for the family.

There’s also a link between fatherlessness and unbelief. About 20 years ago, when he was a professor at New York University, Dr. Paul Vitz wrote a book, The Faith of the Fatherless. In that book he showed how famous atheists and skeptics in history had virtually no father figure in their life or a very negative father.

As examples, he cites Voltaire, Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, Thomas Hobbs, and Sigmund Freud, among others.

Conversely, Vitz found that strong believers often had positive fathers or father figures. In an interview for Christian television, he told me, “I would say the biggest problem in the country is the breakdown of the family, and the biggest problem in the breakdown in the family is the absence of the father. Our answer is to recover the faith, particularly for men, and we’ll recover fatherhood. And if we recover fatherhood, we’ll recover the family. If we recover the family, we’ll recover our society.”

If you’re a father and you stay with your children and you love your wife, you’re a real hero and role model. Keep it up—our nation is counting on you.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

“So, what is your relationship with your father like?”

As a volunteer chaplain for our county’s juvenile detention center, I asked this question about three hundred times over the course of about six years. I only recall two occasions where a young inmate told me that he had a good relationship with his father.

What was interesting to me was that in our county there really was no demographic consistency that you could point to that would explain youth crime. We had Caucasians, African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. Economically, we had upper class, middle class and lower class (the rich youth would often steal, which was ironic). There were Christians (mainly), Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Atheist. They came from urban, suburban and rural settings. The only absolute consistency was that there was no healthy relationships with their fathers.

On Mother’s Day, nearly all of the inmates would send cards to (and receive cards or letters from) their mothers and/or grandmothers. But Father’s Day was simply a non-event.

Many never met their biological fathers. Many had abusive step-fathers, or lived with a revolving door of men coming in and out of their lives. Some lived with their fathers, but their dads were too preoccupied with work or other responsibilities to take time for them. The conclusion I reached, from my own observation, was that the lack of a father’s guidance was the single-most dominant factor in juvenile crime.

The Influence of a Father

Some time back, I read a study in a news magazine, where school students were asked which academic subject was the most important. It turns out, surprisingly, that all of the students gave the exact same response! No, they didn’t all choose the same subject in their answers, but the underlying reason for that choice was exactly the same. The most important academic subject that you could learn, according to school students, was whatever subject their father helped them with for homework. So if their father tutored them in Math, then Math was the most important subject. If Science, then the students said Science, and so on.

The reason for this is that children intuitively understand that their father has limited time, and if he is going to take his precious time and help a child learn something, it must be very important (at least in the mind of his child). This speaks to me of how important it is for us as fathers to be intentional about how we spend our time investing in our children.

Shortly after reading that report, I had a conversation with a man after church one Sunday who had three adult children. He proudly informed me, “Israel, over the years there was one thing that I made sure to impress upon my children. If there was one thing I really wanted them to embrace, and learn to love, it was sports! And they have! All of them are huge sports fans, just like me. They played all kinds of sports, we watched lots of sports on television, and even had season tickets to the local stadium games. Yep, they are now teaching their children to love sports as well.”

While I recognize some of the benefits of organized sports, I had to wonder about the wisdom of promoting sports as such a high value in life. If a father has one chance to pass on values and beliefs to his children, he had better be mindful and selective with what he chooses to emphasize.

God Give Us Men!

As a young man, I grew up with a very limited fatherly influence. My parents divorced when I was six, and I saw my father only one weekend a month until I was fifteen, and then not at all. From six to fifteen, I lived with a physically abusive step-father. Today, I am a blessed father of nine children! By the grace of God, I have been able to break the cycle of abuse and dysfunction and my children are able to live in a peaceful home with two parents who love them.

I believe that when men turn their hearts to their wives and children, and commit to be godly servant-leaders in their own homes, we will see the beginning of the stabilization of society. Consider the many areas of society impacted by fatherless homes:

Read more HERE.

I strongly encourage churches and civic institutions to do everything they can to train, equip and encourage men to take seriously their roles as husbands and fathers. The future of our nation, in many ways, depends upon it (see Malachi 4:6 & Luke 1:17).

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