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A Father’s Job
By C.E White 12-12-01

What is a father’s job? Bread winner? Provide home and shelter? Protector? A father is many things with many responsibilities BUT a father has a primary job … a job that is his single most important duty, responsibility, obligation, requirement …. REQUIREMENT?! Yes Requirement. Well, what is it you say?? A father is to properly and effectively teach a child "how" to be a child.

Being a well adjusted, well behaved child is not something that you are … it is something that you learn. AND absolutely no one can teach you how to be a child as well as your biological father …. NO ONE! Of course your father has to be a real father. One that accepts this responsibility with a passion for perfection … not necessarily perfection in you as the child but within himself as the father. A man who loves you more, 24/7, than he loves himself or life itself. (This passion for perfection must also compel this father to accept the fact that he will never, Never, NEVER be perfect. Only then can he learn to be the best father he can be.)

Without knowing how to be a child you cannot know how to be GOD’s child. If your father didn’t teach you how to be a child you will have a hard time being GOD’s child. You see it’s the same principal being GOD’s child as it is being your earthly father’s child. Let’s compare the two.

GOD requires obedience, submission to his will, you loving your brothers and sisters, honoring your mother and father, to manage yourself and your affairs ethically and properly, to abstain from sin, to abstain from self indulgence which includes being drunk, drugged, over eating, greedy etc…. How many "good" earthly fathers do you know that requires the same exact things of their children? ALL of them that I know require these same exact things!!

If your father teaches you these things you can be GOD’s child much, much easier when you are grown.

Your earthly father will also teach you what it is like to feel his wrath and the discomfort that goes with that. He will show you what it is to please your father and the rewards that go with that. He will show you what it is to push your father’s patience to the limit and then your father stretches it a little further …. and a little further …. and a little further…. He will show you what it means to be loved unceasingly. He will show you what it means when you choose to walk without him and his rules AND that you are readily forgiven when you realize the folly of your ways. He will demonstrate what appears to be uncontrolled ruthlessness as well as unbelievable kindness. He will teach you how to cherish, love and respect your spouse. He will teach you how put your spouse first in your life … how to be submissive to your spouse AND if you are male the proper way to help your wife be submissive to you. Which proper submission is a woman willingly accepting the man as head of the household and that the man does have the final say in all matters … and, as a result, the ultimate and final responsibility!

HE WILL SHOW YOU what life is as a good child and what it is as a bad child.

While he is doing all of this teaching he must be mixing in GOD’s word in an equal portion. In doing this he is to emphasize the comparison between a proper earthly life and how it leads to life after death. How compliance with your father’s (earthly and heavenly) rules and regulations is completely for your benefit … not for your father’s (earthly or heavenly) benefit.

There are many by products of this proper teaching as well. Which the number one by product is how to be a father and husband or, if you are a female, how to choose a man to be your husband and father of your children.

A woman needs to know what a good father and husband is to be able to select one. The girl’s father must show her by his life … his 24/7 life … his consistent and relentless pursuit of being the best father and husband … not for his reward or benefit … but because he loves his wife and kids first … PERIOD!

This is one of the main reasons why GOD hates divorce. No matter how strong a woman is she cannot teach these things as well as a man can. She cannot teach her son how to be a man. AND No matter how many days a month or a year a father gets his children for visitation he cannot teach them these things with the force and control that he has if he is with them 24/7! Divorced parents have a tendency to not want to spend what time they have with their children being a disciplinarian or teacher.

Here’s an example of the need for 24/7: Is the father there when the teenage boy discovers he is bigger and stronger than his mother and starts abusing her? But he has a stepfather?! Bah Humbug! The best of stepfathers can only accomplish the best of intentions … In other words he can never understand the child of another man the way that child’s real father can … never. As a result he can never communicate to him like his real father can. He can never have the respect that his real father can have. In the end he actually can just cause more trouble because of the resentment that will build up inside of the boy. Resentment that is a result of his blaming his mother for divorcing his real father …. Resentment that is a result of the step-dad taking the mother’s side when he shouldn’t …. Resentment from the step-dad punishing him too quickly, too severely, and with a whole lot less patience. As a result the step dad and mother teach the child that their needs are first and his and or hers is insignificant.

A girl can end up having all of these same resentments. A step-dad worries about rules believing that rules and quick disciplinary action makes him a good dad. OR he thinks being the child’s friend makes him a good dad. In other words the step dad leaves out the compassion that is born into a father the instant that his first child is born. To rear a child effectively you must have this compassion. This compassion will dictate to you what the rules should be, what punishment should be and when to punish. It will also tell you when to be friendly with your child BUT it will also tell you that being your child’s "friend" is not the number one priority … it doesn’t even make the top five. You are to be the father first and foremost perpetually … without exception … the child will have many friends BUT he or she can only have 1 dad or step dad!

Sometimes the resentment comes from the step dad not disciplining the child … because he doesn’t care enough to deal with it … you know … no compassion … so a step parent always puts the perpetual question into the child’s mind " If you really loved me would you do this? In other words would my real parent treat me this way?" AND as a result, he / she ends up questioning GOD’s adoption as well. Is my life like this because I’m not good enough for GOD? Is GOD telling me the same thing that my father, mother , step parent told me: "I am insignificant … I am completely unworthy … I can’t have the best because I am the worst."

Don’t get me wrong, I am directing this message at both parents, the father and the mother. A father that leaves his wife and kids to another man to care for them is the lowest life form on the face of the earth. A mother who leaves her husband and subjects her kids to this described perpetual self-doubting and lack of value life is worse than a street walking prostitute.

There are some reasons for divorce that one of the spouses has too leave … but I tell you that "irreconcilable differences" is not one of them. Irreconcilable differences proclaims quite loudly, "I am too selfish too compromise or to even pursue it!"

Abuse is the only reason for divorce. Physical abuse and abuse of sexual trust. Mental abuse can fall in their but it is usually not as obvious so should not be trusted as readily as the first two. These are the things that Jesus meant when he said that a divorce can occur for marital unfaithfulness.

Some people believe that alcoholism is a reason for divorce .. be careful … what caused this alcoholism? How hard does this person fight it? Did GOD bring this person, the spouse they have, too take care of them and this disease that they have? Does the spouse love them into trying to stop or are they just selfish and cruel about it? Do they ridicule the spouse with the disease for being weak … making their self-esteem even worse? The truth is that only an extremely selfish and weak person would ridicule a person with any kind of debilitating problem, weakness, or disease.

Be very, very careful of any other marital problems and saying that they are a spiritual reason for divorce, i.e drug abuse, lack of working, mis-management of their affairs, etc… All of these things can be included in "for better or worse". I mean there has to be some things included in the worse category that actually fits the definition of worse!

Make no mistakes – these comments here are not belittling the step parent! A person who finds themselves the step parent of a child MUST be aware of these pit falls. They must seek council with parents who know these things as well. A step parent must realize they have taken on a GOD sanctioned role and they MUST perform the parental duties as GOD would have them performed. They cannot do as they "believe is right"! They MUST do as any biological parent must do and that, again, is be the Parent of their step children as GOD describes all parents are to be!

This is a warning to married people and people who are engaged everywhere! Children are a gift AND a responsibility from GOD! JESUS was and is a gift from GOD … what happened to the Jewish nation when they did not properly receive this gift in JESUS? They have been in a perpetual state of torture, ridicule and surrounded by hatred. They were the single most persecuted people in World War II. WHY? Because they have rejected GOD’s child. They rejected the king that GOD chose for them. AND they killed him! They killed him in a most humiliating and painful fashion!

I know this to be true, the Jewish people’s sad and painful plight, because of the Old Testament. When the Jews were doing as GOD wanted absolutely NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE could hurt them. In World War II Millions of Jews were captured, put in concentration camps, starved, sexually abused, beaten, killed and buried in mass graves. How could this happen to GOD’s chosen people? When they killed Jesus they fell from grace and as long as they have not and do not accept JESUS in baptism they are not GOD’s children. JESUS very clearly clarifies this in Matthew " No man comes to the Father except through me!" Thus the Jewish torture continues!

What does the Jewish plight have to do with parenting? Jesus states in Matthew " Anyone who causes anyone of these children to stumble would be better off to have a millstone tired around their neck and thrown into the river." When a parent refuses to be the parent that GOD requires them to be they have caused the child to stumble … almost without fail the stumbling is a perpetual never ceasing stumble. AND JESUS just told you what happens when you cause any one of these children to stumble. The divorce and separation form the ex-spouse does not stop the millstone … it just starts it and it is perpetual!

You are refusing to be the parent that GOD requires when you refuse to learn that there are causes and effect, actions = reactions, reactions = results … results that are what they are because you passed the buck or just let it fall.

As a parent, You are responsible for this formula of success or failure. When you get married and have a child your responsibility begins and it NEVER ends! Incompatibility is not an excuse to set into motion the perpetual stumbling that divorce causes. NO MATTER who you are a divorce creates, for the children of the divorced parents, self-doubt, low self-esteem, serious lack of attention and involvement as well as an environment of improper love and discipline. It begins the teaching of selfishness…

SOOOO ????!!!! So, You better know what the words "for better or worse and until death do us part means"!

I tell you this, because of GOD’s rules and requirements of marriage and child rearing, when you get a divorce you are just multiplying the problems in your life. The baggage from one marriage travels to the next. Instead of two parents trying to agree on how to rear a child you can have as many as four. The worst part of that is the step parents will invariably interfere with the love and discipline that a child needs. Many won’t do this intentionally, some will, but not all. If they are not the child’s parent the compassion to do absolutely the right thing will not be there! They will believe that they can make any situation work … and that comes from a selfish desire to not have to change their life for a child! GOD’s child!!!

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