Wednesday.....Culture.....Father and Son

I think that most people could recall the beginning of the the Andy Griffith Show where Opie and his dad are walking along a country path together, fishing poles in tow, and Opie picks up a stone to skim across the pond water. Maybe, if you are a little bit older, you might remember the television relationship of Mark McCain (Johnny Crawford) to his father Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors- the Rifleman.) And then there's the TV commercial where the father is shaving and his young son pretends to be shaving along side of him. Admittedly, a lot of sons do not emulate their father and his philosophies of life. Some scurrilous men wake up to find their sons have turned out to be God-fearing young men with no similitude to their atheistic ways. Other fathers do everything they can to raise Christian sons only to see them rebel where the hope then is that they someday may become returning prodigals. Some fathers take the track that their sons need to build toughness in this world and therefore give little personal advice for they will have to learn the hard way, by their own mistakes. Many...many men, take the moderate road. They probably go to church and require that the son tag along, at a younger age anyway, but that's the extent of the religious guidance for they tell themselves that that's the job for Sunday school. Some men feel that there is no hope for them, that they have rejected Christ for too long but they do everything they can to make it possible for their son to have what they missed. They are wrong here for God's mercy extends to all who come to Him but the picture of a drowning man lifting his son above water is respected as it is sad. Is there a greater responsibility that a father can have than teaching his son, throughout his young life, about Jesus Christ?  Does a quality education with a prosperous future equal this? Would their future success in any endeavors justify the failure to present our Creator and Saviour to them? By large majorities, men do not do this. If you have a very young son, or children, you have adequate time, Lord willing, to learn the Christian faith and teach them. If the children are in, or close to, their teens, you may have to be very straightforward with them and tell them that you made a mistake and are going to have to rectify it. A humbling experience...yes, but one of love! If they are already grown adults you might try this; ask them for a personal favor in return for all you have provided them while they were growing up. Present to them that if they would, on their own, search the Christian faith with all seriousness, and if they would eventually come to a faith in Christ, you would feel God's great mercy in your life and His forgiveness for your abandoning your responsibilities. It would be a father's personal request of a son. Only God's Spirit working on man could bring this about. Only knowing the love of Christ yourself, or having experienced a taste of it, could even have brought you this far in reading this. Is there even a place for these comments in this blog? They are a bit pushy, maybe they seem arrogant, maybe they are even an affront? Is it cowardice to plaster this in such a way. If so, it a glorious cowardice to encourage a man to present Christ to his son! The advantage of the general anonymity of a blog like this is that there is no third person involved, only you and God. If one man would look at his son and then look to Christ and put everything aside to seek God's saving mercy upon this child he loves, the pitiful efforts of this blog would be worth it.