There seems to be an idea floating around that once we become Christians, established ruts of perspective and character become instantly resolved.
But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of sanctification. When we become Christians, it’s true that we’re immediately freed from the enslaving power of sin — For we know that our old self was crucified with him [Jesus] so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — because anyone who has died has been set free from sin (Romans 6:6). It’s also true that our past is instantly erased.
As much as we might wish otherwise, we go on remaining ourselves after conversion; the same product of past decisions, experiences, and habits that we were before. The difference is that instead of being under the power of the prince of darkness, we are now borne up by the the King of Light.
In other words, while the work of justification is instantaneous, the ongoing transformation of a justified soul remains the work of a lifetime.
I’ve recently been thinking about santification in the context of fatherlessness.
Though fatherlessness obviously isn’t a sin in itself, we have to recognize that the crucible in which sanctification often takes places is in how we respond to other people’s sin again us. It isn’t a sin to be insulted; it is to respond by breaking your accuser’s nose. It isn’t a sin for your house to be broken into; it is to vow eternal retribution on the burglar’s extended family.
As this relates to our topic, while it may be true that your father sinned against you in the past, God isn’t going to take your father to task for how you loved your own family in the present. We can’t blame current our negligence on another’s past failures.
The good news is that God’s grace is most clearly seen when a Saint defies all expectations and responds to suffering in a way that is uncharacteristic and honoring. This is why it’s so important to insist that no one is merely the passive victim of their circumstances. The hope for every Christian — fathered and fatherless — is that Jesus has begun a work in us he doesn’t plan on abandoning until it’s finished.
Because there seems to be such consistent patterns in our interactions with fatherless men, we thought it might be helpful to consider this subject in light of a crucial verse in the Bible relating to the nature of sanctification: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2).
We’re told here that the battle for Christlikeness happens primarily in the mind. The pattern of the world is to make sure no mistake can be traced back to our failure. It is to be firmly convinced that everyone else is the problem and that therefore we have no problems. We are all just helpless victims floating in a sea of ruthless manipulators.
The pattern of Scripture, however, and the pattern we must conform ourselves to, is that transformation starts with repentance. This means owning our sin and turning from it. The promise is that as we identify and seek God’s help in putting dishonoring habits of mind to death, we are free to replace those vacancies with habits that lead to life.
Insecure and Isolated
When you grow up a fatherless son, in many ways you have to raise yourself. No one tells you what looks good on you, how to carry yourself, or provides the approval. Without a father, you grow up never knowing what you didn't have. There is no intimate model of who you want to become, so it's as if you're always guessing.
- John Heckenlooper
It would be hard to overemphasize the devastation of the fatherless epidemic. You've all heard the stats so I won't repeat them here. In short, the absence of fathers impacts developing adults in the same way a lack steering wheel impacts a moving vehicle. There may be momentum, but it isn’t directed. This is so devasating because the one of the main ways we learn maturity is through imitation. It isn't just a matter of transferring a set of instructions from older to younger (though this is part of it) but about embodying principles through the medium of a whole life.
Because one of the effects of fatherlessness is a general suspicion of authority, this means the damage of fatherlessness often ends up self-perpetuating. These men often don’t know what it is to be a man, but are prevented from learning manliness by their general avoidance of authority and healthy Christian brotherhood. So many fatherless men doom themselves to a life of “figuring it out from scratch” not because others aren’t willing to help them, but because the only thing worse than 1st degree burns are another round of 1st degree burns. Fatherless men aren’t eager to invest that kind of trust — or endure that kind of pain — ever again.
But though this may be an understandable response to authority and community, it isn’t a healthy response. Even though we live in a victim culture which encourages victims (real or imagined) to pursue whatever methods of “self-healing” they choose, this strategy is the opposite of biblical wisdom, “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Proverbs 18:1). Those who seek to isolate themselves ultimately do so as a means of self-preservation — a path the Scriptures remind us only leads to more suffering.
The eventual product of this self-imposed exile isn’t a flesh-and-blood man that can be engaged and reasoned with, but the image of a man. A man not as he as actually is, but as he would like to be. A man pieced together from a combination of articles, intuition, spousal nagging, and disembodied masculine figures who seem to be successful (at least from their Twitter profile picture).
Because this structure of “masculinity” is so artificial — so impossibly balanced — fatherless men know any exposure to real life will send it crashing to the ground. Thus, he knows he must become an island. If he does ask for help, it will be on his terms, with strict boundaries on conversation so as to avoid any honest scrutiny of the real issues. If things become too personal, he quickly becomes defensive and reactive; not necessarily because of anything you said, but because his identity possesses the structural integrity of a played-out Jenga tower.
Identity-crisis
Another imposter has risen up in response to our culture’s increasingly obsessive attempts to neuter masculinity — a strategy which has been ruinously effective. It turns out there’s no faster way to decimate a generation of men than to tell them that they’re irrelevant. To tell them that their God-given strengths are the only thing preventing a more compassionate human race from resolving world-hunger, hurricanes, and chronic separation-anxiety in small dogs.
In response to this attempted feminization, I’ve observed an equal and opposite reaction towards what I’ll call “masculinism.”
The problem with masculinism isn’t that men start believing that some conflicts can only be resolved by a double leg takedown (I happen to believe this to be true). Rather, untethered from a biblical worldview, it’s that men start to reduce masculine identity to a narrow set of demeanors and occupations. These tropes are timeworn as they are shallow: The sarcastic dismissivist, the open-carry-for-lifer, the pathologically insensitive, the “Don’t come at me with yer book-learnin,” the strong and silent, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to advocate for some kind of dualism in which the essence of masculinity is detached from the expression of masculinity (men do tend to be more mechanical and less emotional). I am only saying that when masculinity is reduced to a caricature, we are no closer to a healthy expression of it than before.
From these reductionisms, we will not inherit men with the precarious complexity of the man Christ Jesus, who might just as easily flip a table as wash someone’s feet.
Snatching them from fire
Part of the problem is that those of us wanting to assist those suffering from fatherlessness are ourselves damaged by various degrees of fatherlessness. Even the very best of our fathers failed to a greater or lesser degree. This means that part of the way we recover masculinity in our churches is to start by acknowledging our falibility.
Many men have this idea that the primary barrier to discipleship is our lack of perfection. Perfection, we think, is the best witness. But this is as idiotic as it is unbiblical — we all, James says, “struggle in many ways.” To attempt to convey that we are “perfect” men is not only dishonest, but also the most destructive thing we could do for other men. It would be, like the pharisees, to tie up heavy burdens that neither we, nor they, can bear.
We may manage to deceive ourselves in this; but no one else is deceived. Not only do other people quickly see through our hollow idealisms, but most damningly, God sees through them, and states plainly that anyone who pretends they have no sin has neither seen Jesus, nor knows him. The amazing thing is that, through grace, this flaw actually becomes a feature. It is in our frailty — in our best but imperfect efforts — that the faithfulness of the true Father becomes all the clearer.
Jesus came not for whole men, but broken men — men who similarly struggle with the temptations common to all men (1 Corinthians 10:13). Men who have been broken, and who have broken others, and yet men for whom the atoning blood of Jesus prevails.
If you are in a more desperate place than the career criminal dying next to Jesus, I’ll grant you may have a case.
But you aren’t, and you don’t.
A better way
As Christian men, we must not give up on ourselves, or on others. By not giving up on ourselves, I don’t mean that we keep pursuing our dream of opening a seaside-boulangerie in Naples. I mean that we must start actually believing the Bible when it says that Jesus came to restore sick, fragmented men.
Men like us.
I want you to listen to me when I say this next thing: don’t tune out like I know you’ll want to. Fatherless men, you are loved. Though you may have been mistreated by your biological Father, through Christ you have been adopted by a heavenly Father who will never abandon you. In fact, the God of heaven and earth, who lives in eternity, who made you and knows you better than you know yourself, has QUALIFIED you. In Christ, you are accepted — nothing can ever be added, and nothing taken away.
Read Romans if you’re doubting me on any of this.
This isn’t a side point either. If you don’t get this, you will grow up a half-starved refugee, desperately trying to recover in some shallower identity what your earthly father never gave you.
It’s a fool’s errand, and it will fail.
As we ourselves begin to rest in our unshakable assurance as God’s sons, we must turn to help our fatherless brothers. Paul reminded the Corinthians that though they may have had “ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15).
The Corinthian’s had been led on by many who claimed to be mentors, who then promptly abandoned them when it was no longer convenient. Paul’s ministry among them would be different. He would sacrifice where others fleeced; he would work hard while others sat around; he would tell the truth where others lied, and he would show them Christ while others only cared about their own reputations.
We live in a world crawling with desperately insecure men. Men who may act confident and whole on the outside but are inwardly afraid of shame and failure. We need to remind them that the only secure identity for men with failed fathers is the Father who never failed.
He is our only (and best!) hope.