The family is God’s designed and designated apparatus for transforming helpless human infants into productive and responsible adults through a process that takes approximately 20 years. Because every human being is of inestimable value to God, every member of the family is of inestimable importance. However, there is one member of the family who is assigned with the responsibility for its overall well-being and the well-being of every individual in it – the father. The family begins with him and therefore he should be faithful to it until the end – like a captain and his ship.
God’s Vision for the Family
From Jesus’ point of view, the family begins when Adam comes together with Eve (Matthew 19:3-6). This is the pattern God established in the beginning and had Moses record in Genesis. And what God establishes as a pattern, let not man think he can improve on it. By God’s design, the man is the initiator; the woman is the responder. This is built into nature. No man-made law can change it. It is not without reason that the woman takes the man’s name.
None of this is to validate stereotypes of domineering husbands and obsequious wives. Godly marriages are genuine partnerships based on mutual respect and a negotiated division of labor. It is the man who God expects to lay down his life for the woman – not the other way around. It is not without reason that real men live by “Women and children first.”
Speaking of children, marriage is a fruit tree. Not every fruit tree bears fruit, but that’s what it’s designed for. Therefore, the family doesn’t begin when the first child is born; the family begins when the marriage is consummated. Therefore, even in the beginning, the man is the shepherd and the woman is his flock. It is not without reason that Jesus said, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
For a man to lay down his life for his wife and children does not mean to do everything they want; rather, it means to do what’s in their best interests even when it’s very costly for you to do so. Often that means doing what they want – but not always. And when it’s the case that it’s something they don’t want, that’s when laying down your life can cost you the most. But that’s what love does. It pays the price without question.
Because of the uniqueness of His messianic mission, Jesus could not take an earthly wife. For this reason, God made Abraham – whose name means “father” – prominent in the Bible as a model for fatherhood. Abraham sought to be a father not out of human vanity, but so that awareness of the one true God would not perish from the earth when he did. In other words, Abraham wanted to train up a child to take his place as a believer in the midst of idolaters – a light in the darkness.
To sum up God’s vision for the family, it is that the man should consider everyone in the family, especially his wife, as more important than himself. It is not without reason that throughout the Bible we hear calls of compassion for widows and children. Do widowers and children not need compassion? Of course, they do…just not as much. “Women and children first.”
The Current State of the Family in America
God’s vision for the family is not being achieved in America these days. On the contrary, we seem to be departing farther and farther from it. I’ll give some statistics to illustrate just how far.
In a Father’s Day speech Barack Obama gave when running for president in 2008, he famously said:
We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are
Father’s Day speech, June 15, 2008 by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to Apostolic Church of God in Chicago.
– 5 times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime,
– 9 times more likely to drop out of schools, and
– 20 times more likely to end up in prison.
They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.
In 2019, the Minnesota Psychological Association published a survey of existing studies of fatherless homes that highlighted ten adverse outcomes (“Father-Absent Homes: Implications for Criminal Justice and Mental Health Professionals,” by Jerrod Brown, MA, MS, MS, MS, Minnesota Psychological Association, August 4, 2019).
- perceived abandonment
- attachment issues
- child abuse
- childhood obesity
- criminal justice involvement
- gang involvement
- mental health issues
- poor school performance
- poverty and homelessness
- substance use
These pathologies of fatherlessness are not stagnant numbers in our country. They are steadily increasing. The U.S.Census Bureau reports the following percentages of households with children under 18 and only the mother present. In 1960, one in ten homes with children were missing a father. By 2010, it was almost one in four!
| Homes without fathers | 8.0% | 10.8% | 18.0% | 21.6% | 22.4% | 23.1% |
| Year | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 |
Of course, all these statistics are dreadful. But we should not need statistics to tell us that God’s design for family is good and we only hurt ourselves when we ignore it. How then do we get back to God’s way?
Men at Their Posts
The only solution to this ongoing deterioration in family dynamics is for men to return to their proper place of family leadership and responsibility. What I am suggesting will be criticized as a retreat from feminism and a return to patriarchy, but the biblical name for it is repentance.
For the world to be right, the nations need to be right.
For a nation to be right, its families need to be right.
For a family to be right, the man needs to be right.
For a man to be right, he must look to Jesus.
In the age in which we live, the man must step up to God’s expectation and be a priest and pastor to his family. As priest, he prays for them; as pastor, he teaches them from the Bible. Every man who has abandoned his family needs to return to it. Every man who doesn’t have a family should start one. Every boy should grow up aspiring to be a father. Men lead families. They will not succeed any other way.
The Duty of a Man 