The Two Fathers

 

 

 

"My Dad, now there is a man!"

We had yet another close call this week. A real tragedy averted by mostly luck. And this one would have happened right in our back yard, in Waseca. Some refer to these Columbine type massacres as "copycat" - I think there is something more.

When I was going through school, things like Columbine were unthinkable - they never happened. There was evil in those days - however, there was also an abundance of good to counter balance it. Today, we have numerous broken homes made up of broken families. How broken? Almost 50% of all families have gone through a separation or divorce. In addition, the out-of-wedlock percentage of births as of 2012 is a staggering 40%! In the African-American community it is ever higher - 72%!

Unlike 40 or 50 years ago, our country is awash in single parent homes. Statistics have shown over and over again, the propensity for a family to experience poverty goes up dramatically if only one parent is involved in child rearing. Some single parent families do escape poverty, and they should be commended. It is not an easy journey. However, many more fall into the trap of poverty and the problems that are associated with it.

However, putting poverty aside, there is something to be said about the structure of the two parent family. Both parents have certain roles in teaching and mentoring. Not one is more important than the other. When the father is taken out of the home, the role of both mother and father falls on the mother. It makes the job of the mother more than twice as difficult as one role is natural for her and the other is not.

As important as having the father in the home is, my belief is our real problems started when we took our Heavenly Father out of our schools. We are traveling down the road of secularizing everything, starting with our school system. We are changing our Constitution to read "freedom from religion" instead of "freedom of religion". There is so much more to be said on this issue, but that is a topic for another day.

The two fathers. Both important, and by design, a big part of how we turn out. We need to welcome God back into our schools. We need to get back to how the family was supposed to be structured. Mom, Dad and the kids. We need to go to church on Sundays and remember that it is our Heavenly Father who put this all in motion in the first place. God knew what He was doing when He set up the structure of the family. It is clearly defined in the Bible. Maybe if we listened to, and followed His Word more closely, evil would not have the stronghold it does today.