Christian Child and Family Services Association » Articles by Harold Shank

Hosea – A Book About Hurting Children Part 5

Sally Shank — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 01:05:11 +0000

Part V: Abandoned Children and Attachment Disorders

It was an international adoption. The abandoned boy came to the attention of a single parent in a neighboring nation. The paperwork was the easy part. The problems started when the youngster seemed unable to respond to the tenderness of his adopted father.

He taught him to walk, caught him when he fell, spoke to him with tenderness, wrapped him in bonds of love, but the boy did not respond. The child never acknowledged the affection of his adopted father and seemed intent on taking up the values and concerns that his father most abhorred. The harder the father tried to express his love, the more the boy rebelled.

Those who work with abandoned children commonly encounter attachment disorders, the difficulties that uncared for children have in responding to compassion. What may be uncommon about this particular story is its source.

The child’s name was Israel. Abandoned in Egypt, they cried out. God, the Father, responded to their cries and made Israel his son. The new father showed the child how to walk in the living room of Sinai, but young Israel seemed unable to fully comprehend the love that was offered and the beneficial instruction he had received. So he rebelled against his adopted father.

Hosea may tell the story out of his own anguish of being stepfather to teenage children of his promiscuous wife, Gomer. Jesus may have Hosea’s words in mind when he told about the Prodigal Son. Hosea’s touching words are in chapter 11 of his book where he finally cries out “How can I give you up….How can I hand you over?”

Hosea has two points in mind: First, we never give up on children because God never gives up on us. That takes attachment disorders out of the social work manual and frames them with the love of God. We have yet to meet a child who has more resistance to the adoptive parent than Israel had to the love of God.

Second, we never give up because we celebrate the smallest victories that love has over injustice. Hosea’s last chapter dreams of restless Israel taking root in the deep soil of God’s love just as we dream of the unsettled child at last finding home in the love we offer. At times, God seems to have planted and replanted the seedling Israel so many times that the soil would be worn out with the shoveling, but God takes each brief glimpse of growth as reason to go on.

The whole premise of Hosea’s book may be illogical: to go on loving those who seldom respond to that love. In that premise, a whole host of child care workers and foster or adoptive parents find hope, and like God, reason to go on.

Hosea – A Book About Hurting Children Part 4

Sally Shank — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:53:57 +0000

Part IV: A Forgotten God Remembers

God said it. He was talking about the Israel of the eighth century B.C. They lived in Samaria and Bethel and Gilgal. It’s a line so brief, most people likely miss it. Three words that give a glimpse into God’s heart. What did God say?

“They forgot me” (Hosea 13:6).

The Power who freed them from slavery, delivered them from oppressive domination, provided them a fruitful land, presented them with instruction for living, chose them out of all the nations on the earth, loved them, blessed them, and cared for them.

“They forgot me.”

There’s a related line in Hosea that might equally be missed. We remember the awful names Hosea gives to his children. We quote the line about there being no knowledge of God in the land. We love God’s clearly stated hope: I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings. But there’s one line we might miss.

“In you the orphan finds mercy” (Hosea 14:3). Our first thought might be that Hosea never says anything about orphans and that it seems out of place in the last chapter. We might read over it because the line seems to contribute little to the central themes of the book. But think again.

The one who was forgotten remembered the ones who were forgotten.

Hosea 13 describes the three year siege of Samaria. We imagine the shortages, the daily casualty reports, the death wagons in the streets, the disease. Most of us dare not read what really happened at such times anticipated in Deuteronomy 28:52-57 (don’t read it if you are at all squeamish).

Hosea 13 has orphans written all over it. Fathers dead from battle. Mothers taken by disease. Uncles among the captured. Older sister raped and mutilated. Somehow the enemy army entering the city for the final sweep cared little for the little ones.

The one who was forgotten remembered the ones who were forgotten. “In you the orphan finds mercy.”

The line is consistent with the heart of God who made care of orphans the core of real religion. The line fits with the notice in the Old Testament that God serves as the father of the fatherless. The words we read over are the reason Proverbs has to remind us to speak for those who have no voice (Prov 31:8).

Despite his own agony at being forgotten by his people, God did not forget the vulnerable children.

Have we forgotten the hurting children of our world?

Hosea – A Book About Hurting Children Part 3

Sally Shank — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:48:52 +0000

Part III: A Terrible Prayer

Hosea started to pray, and then stopped. “Give them, O LORD—.” What he wanted to ask was so horrible. His prayer (Hosea 9:14) seemed so unacceptable. How could he ask God to do what he was about to ask?

“Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts.”

There he prayed it. I want you to send miscarriages to Israel. Make it so Israel’s mothers can’t nurse. Increase the premature births. Raise the infant mortality rate. “Give them, O LORD—.”

Hosea spoke out of deep compassion. He wished for less pain. He spoke on behalf of children. He knew that the consequences of North Israel’s wicked society would fall most heavily on the children. Dedicated to sounding the alarm, the people regarded him as a fool. He preached and nobody came forward. Seldom has there been a preacher so unsuccessful as Hosea.

So his prayer. “Give them, O LORD—.”

It was the only way out of inflicting pain on the little ones. Ask God to spare them the pain of living through what was about to come. Let them die before they are born. Let them die in their mother’s arms while they still have a mother. Dark days prompted Hosea’s dark prayer.

Knowing Hosea, he likely prayed this prayer in a public forum. He didn’t like spreading doom. He was not a bitter old man. He was a prophet, one who warned, who spoke out on behalf of those who could not speak out for themselves.

His prayer was a sermon. Listen to my prayer, people. Do you really want me to pray this prayer? I don’t think so. Yet this prayer is more godly than the lives you live.

Maybe Hosea’s prayer is for our time, too. Maybe this prayer sermon needs preached in some of our churches. Perhaps this prayer should be on more Sunday night power point presentations to jar some of us out of our denial. But it’s so ugly. It’s so negative.

So is ignoring the children.

Hosea – A Book About Hurting Children Part 2

Sally Shank — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:46:41 +0000

Part II: It’s Got You Written All Over It

She hated her name. When she was little, she didn’t understand. But when she learned the whole story, her name became a burden. Some think it has a pretty sound: Lo-Ruhamah, accent on the last syllable. Children often dislike the names their parents give them, but Lo-Ruhamah had more reason than most.

Her name preached a sermon about her parents. Lo-Ruhamah’s mother had multiple sexual partners, seldom remained faithful to any one, and often disappeared from her life for long periods of time. Lo-Ruhamah lived with her step father, Hosea, who also had a name that preached a sermon.

But her name also described the shortcomings of her nation. Her name was meant to announce again and again the most negative aspect of the world where she grew up.

Not Loved. That’s what Lo-Ruhamah meant. Not that she grew up entirely unlovable or without love, although her mother’s promiscuity hung like a cloud over her life, but rather this little girl’s name pointed to a family and national disgrace.

Her story unfolds in the first chapters of Hosea. Gomer lived an adulterous life. Hosea tried to hold the family together even raising two of the children Gomer had to other men including Lo-Ruhamah.

In fact, all three of Hosea’s children had ugly names. Every trip to the market, each time he summoned them to supper, whenever they were called on in class, their names conjured up negative images, announced bad news, and reminded people of pain they tried to forget.

Most parents use more positive names, but parents still pass on to their children pain that they created. Lo-Ruhamah’s name had the sins of her parents and her nation written all over it. Children still grow up with the sins of their parents written on their lives. She’s a child of divorce. His father is an alcoholic. Son of an ex-con, child of the ghetto, foster child, infected with HIV at birth, illegitimate—the list goes on of how children live in the shadow of the sins of their parents and their nation.

We have many unanswered questions about this little girl who briefly walks across a couple of Old Testament chapters, but her name tells us that God knows all about how children grow up down stream from the pollution their parents and culture dump into the rivers of life. Incredibly this little girl’s name reveals how much God himself struggles with that polluted flow, how much he seeks to purify and clean even when we keep soiling it with our lives.

All who work on behalf of our world’s hurting children can find hope in little Lo-Ruhamah, hope in the fact that God knows and that God works to stop the hurt. He even asks Hosea to give this child a negative name to make it clear to all adults the pain and anguish they bring on children’s lives. Through this child’s name he hoped to convince people to live a different way so that their children would have a brighter future. They did not listen.

Despite their refusal, God did not give up. In fact, his dedication to rescue humanity from its continual decisions that put the next generation at risk is reflected in the name he gave his prophet, Hosea. Every time people called out the prophet’s name, they announced God’s great dream and intention for all people including the sadly named little girl.

Hosea means salvation.

Hosea – A Book About Hurting Children – Part 1

Sally Shank — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:44:14 +0000

Bible Study About Children

Hosea—A Book About Hurting Children

Part I: Hosea–A Biblical Book for Child Care Workers!

Hosea is a seldom-read, fourteen-chapter Minor Prophet that remains a remarkably relevant book. Those who work with hurting children will find the painful images and harsh descriptions all too familiar. Contemporary foster parents, today’s case workers, and those who serve the church’s most vulnerable children walk in Hosea’s footsteps. They hear what he heard. They wince at what he saw. They cry at what made him sad.

Context Parallels Our Own

Written to people who benefited from a half-century of economic expansion, government stability, and world peace, the people of Hosea’s day lived in a time remarkably similar to the life Americans have enjoyed for the last half-century. Unfortunately, their culture drifted into the same injustices faced in our time: Israel developed into a two-class society of the rich and poor, the nice side of town and the ghetto. Much of the population seemed obsessed with a popular, sexually-charged, imported religion. Attendance at religious events hit record levels, but worshipers paid scant attention to the God of Scripture. The social, religious and cultural observations one might draw from the Hosea’s eighth century B.C. world echo the way in which many Christians see their contemporary society.

Why Hosea Used Children

In order to get the people’s attention, to crack open their lives of denial, and to convey to them the intent of the Biblical God, Hosea used children. Jesus brought a child into the midst of the disciples to illustrate innocence and blessing. Hosea used children to tell the people of how their lives offended God and to provide insight into an increasingly dark future.

Understanding How Hosea, the Book, Unfolds

Hosea’s work revolves around two personal stories. From a close reading, we might recreate the stories in this way: In chapters 1-3, Hosea marries an adulterous woman named Gomer. After their son is born, she has two more children apparently by other men. Gomer returns to a life of promiscuity leaving Hosea to raise the kids. Finally, Hosea brings Gomer home. In chapter 11, Hosea finds himself a single parent with rebellious teenagers. After recalling tender moments from their childhood, Hosea anguishes over how to discipline them.

The prophet’s personal stories reflect God’s experience with Israel. As chapters 1-3 unfold, Hosea the husband becomes God the spouse seeking the return of his adulterous wife, Israel. In chapter 11, the story quickly turns to God as a father agonizing over the discipline he must impose on his wayward child, Israel.

The Old Testament prophet, Hosea, knew all about pain. We imagine that he could remember the moment when he found out the second and third children were not his. He recalled the day he found his wife with a neighbor man. Despite all his efforts and his love, she still moved out of his house, but never out of his heart.

Hosea uses the pain of life’s most intimate relationships to reveal God’s agony when humans reject his offer of relationship. By using the pain of children, Hosea hopes to blast through their massive denial and lead Israel back into a relationship with God. Despite his gallant effort of using some of life’s most painful images, few responded to Hosea’s invitation. In his own time, many would consider Hosea a failure since few changed after his preaching and he was unable to call the people to repentance.

What Hosea Says About Children

Although Hosea is not primarily about young people, there is considerable material in the book about them. Consider these insights into hurting children:

Adult Decisions Hurt Children. Key text: Hosea 1. Hosea’s three children bore revolting names given to them by God’s command in order to spread the message of the consequences of adult decisions. The effect of their names would be like naming a child “Ugly” or “Stupid.” Even without such revolting names, these children faced a stormy future. God hoped that such drastic names might prompt real change in Israelite society, a transformation that might give Hosea’s three children the hope of living in peace.

Children Live in a Painful World That They Did Not Create. Key text: Hosea 9. Throughout Hosea, the prophet announces that God will discipline the nation for its sins. The consequences of their wicked ways would fall most heavily on their children. The punishment comes because of the sins of the parents, but the children bear the pain of the consequences. In that context, God reveals “I also will forget your children” (Hosea 4:6). Just as Israel had intentionally rejected God despite the consequences for their own offspring, God must block the children out of his mind as he acts in tough love.

Chapter 9 deals with the “days of punishment” (9:7). Birth rates will drop, infant mortality will rise, and civilian deaths will involve large numbers of children (9:11-13). Obituaries will include an uncommon number of young people (9:14). Hosea’s words are not easy to hear, even more difficult to imagine, but reflect the ever-present consequences of a world gone mad with sin. Children did not create this world, but they endure the pain.

Rebellious Children Means Tough Love. Key text: Hosea 11. Just as parents agonize over invoking a policy of tough love on a wayward child, so Hosea describes how God ponders when and how to punish his disobedient people: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! …My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim” (Hosea 11:8-9). Hosea’s description of God reveals how the divine mind wavers between sending the discipline and giving them more time. Finally, God acts out of a deep love for his people. Just as a parent reluctantly invokes a policy of tough love, so God seeks their ultimate good through discipline.

God is the Only Hope for the World’s Hurting Children. Key text: Hosea 14. Hosea imagines a day when adult hearts respond to the invitation of God. So inept in matters of faith, Hosea gives them the words to say and the actions to do as they return to God. They are to ask for forgiveness, confess their sins, admit that they cannot live life on their own, reject all human alternatives and refuse all false gods. Then Hosea tells them one more thing to say, one final admission: They are to admit that God is the only hope for the world’s hurting children: “In you the orphan finds mercy” (Hos 14:3).

In a world before video, Hosea uses words that describe misery, pain, slaughter, and destruction. No contemporary film maker can out do the revolting images of Hosea. The close reader of Hosea sees war orphans, children who witness what no youngster should ever see, nine and ten year olds heading households, and young hands scavenging for food. Then in his final words, he describes new life that begins with the mercy of the Almighty falling on those left parentless in the painful consequences of their wicked lifestyles.

Articles to Use in Raising Biblical Awareness About Vulnerable Children.

The following short essays further develop the reflections on children in Hosea. Each piece is intended to stand on its own and can be used in printed material advocating for today’s hurting children.

Reasons to Be Involved in Child Care Part IV: by Harold Shank

Sally Shank — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:56:11 +0000

Sons and Daughters of God

Central to our identity as Christians is our claiim to be children of God. He is our Father. We become his daughters. We are reborn as his sons. Yet none of us have a direct bilological link to God. The New Testament makes it clear that our claim to be children of God comes by adoption. “God sent forth his son,. . . that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5). Romans 8 uses the “children of God” language frequently, anticipating a future aspect of our relationship with God as we “wait for adoption of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).
We are not natural children of God, but adopted ones. God became our father because he wanted to be our parent. We are children of God, not because of what we did, but because of what he did. We share in the family inheritance, not as natural sons like Jesus, who is God’s only begotten son, but we are in God’s will because of adoption. We enjoy the privileges of being part of God’s family. We wear his name. God cares for and protects us. Legally, theologically, biblically, we are God’s children.
Jesus is our brother, not by birth, but as a result of our adoption. We are kin with Christ through God’s choice to make us part of his family. The Holy Spirit lives in us, not by physical birth, but by spiritual birth. Our adoption was granted, not by the civil courts, but by God;s grace. Our adoption is not governed by state law, but sealed by the blood of Christ.
We can scarcely talk of being God’s adopted children without being aware of the broader concept of adoption on which it is built. Our adoption as children of God spiritually is modeled on the way in which parentless children are adopted legally. The adoption of orphan children by non-biological parents is modeled on the way in which God adopted me as his son and you as his daughter.
The situation os vulnerable children arises every time we speak of being children of God. What God does for us spiritually is the basis for what God wants for orphans physically. Each time we thank God for that mansion reserved for us in heaven, we speak as adopted children. We must remember that God’s plan for parentless children in our society is that they be taken into adoptive homes where they share the family inheritance just as we share in God’s heavenly inheritance. Every prayer that begins with God as father comes from the lips of a spiritually adopted child and recalls God’s desire that every parentless child be taken into a home where they have a father.
The biblical roots of Christians taking care of fatherless childen go deep into the core of our faith. The language we use to describe our relationship with God is built on what a couple does in taking an orphan as their own child. The actions a childcare agency follows in placing a child in an adoptive home reflect what happens each time a person is baptized into Christ and becomes a child of God.

Healing the Wounded Father – The Contemporary Fathering Crisis by Harold Shank

Sally Shank — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:02:21 +0000

Healing the Wounded Father – The Contemporary Fathering Crisis
The Wounded Father
In his book Finding Our Fathers, psychologist Samuel Osherson tells about a forty-two-year-old doctor who came to him with a problem. His younger brother’s wedding had brought the entire family, including their divorced parents, together in St. Louis. The physician spent most of the time with his mother to the neglect of his father who seemed isolated and distant. As the weekend ended, his father gave him a ride back to the airport. Osherson reports that his client sobbed as he reported how they traveled in silence; a father and son with nothing to say to each other. The doctor said, “I was scared of what he thought about me. But what difference does it make? It does no good to try to talk to my father.” (Osherson, 1)
The doctor is not alone in his feelings. Hosts of men have awkward and damaged relationships with their own fathers which not only cloud their past, but also shadow the present. Osherson points out that the doctor’s distance from his own father damaged his internal image of what it means to be a father. He calls that damaged image “the wounded father” (Osherson, 9).
Yet the wounded father develops not simply because a father and son don’t get along, but rather today’s wounded father is a product of a society that has degraded fatherhood and put men at odds with their children.
The Disposable Parent
Many of today’s men, like Osherson’s doctor, have grown up in a culture that has shown little support for the role of their father. Fathers have become, in the words of William Haddad and Mel Roman, “the disposable parent” (Haddad and Roman, 16-21). The industrial revolution yanked the men out of their homes and defined a father solely as a wage earner. The sexual upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s which questioned whether one man needed to stay with one woman provided many men with an exit from the parenting process (Miller. 112-13)
Modern psychology inherited a legacy from Sigmund Freud saying that many emotional problems originate under paternal authoritarianism (Terrien, 63). University of Illinois psychology professor Ross D. Parke added, “Psychology has a long history of ignoring fathers. . . . We didn’t just forget fathers by accident; we ignored them on purpose because of our assumptions that they were less important than mothers in influencing the developing child” (Parke, 4).
Notions like anthropologist Margaret Mead’s widely quoted statement, “Fathers are a biological necessity but a social accident” push men further away from their offspring. Feminist Rosemary Ruether argued against male dominance (Ruether, 74-75). In attacking men as a source of oppression, feminists further contributed to the confusion over the nature of a father.
Even popular culture with television’s prejudice-filled, anger-driven Archie Bunker, Dean Young’s inept and party crazy Dagwood Bumstead, and Sylvester Stallone’s mumbling, half-crazed Rambo character suggest that little good can come from men.
A Generation of Wounded Images
So a generation has grown up in a culture that did not support our fathers. My father was not permitted in the delivery room when I was born. My father was not allowed to hold his firstborn son, but was forced to look at me through a window. When my father picked up a parenting magazine he found it addressed to mothers.
Current fathers draw on a troubled legacy. Our fathers lived in a time when fathers were thought to be unimportant. Our fathers were taught by a female-dominated educational system where children had room mothers, but never room fathers. Our fathers had fathers who were discouraged from talking on a deep level. We had fathers who were profoundly affected by a culture deeply cynical about their position as parents.
As a result, I am part of a generation that feels considerable anxiety about being a father. The voices that urge me to be a faithful parent to my sons clamor to be heard over the internal messages that it doesn’t matter.
Search for a New Image
But being a father is important. Despite all the past baggage that lingers into the present through the wounded images we carry inside that say that dads don’t matter, being the right kind of father may be the most important thing a man ever does.
The notion that fathers are unimportant finds flat contradiction in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus didn’t lecture a great deal on the family, but he applied the father-son imagery to the most intimate relationship he had.
Jesus could have drawn on a large number of names and descriptions of God. Yet the one that he uses almost exclusively is Father. No one in Scripture surpasses Jesus in calling God Father. By calling God Father, Jesus raised fathering to fundamental significance.
He used the notion of father with the highest regard. The father-son link was important to him. He relied on it. He often spoke of the unity and love relationship that they enjoyed. The Gospels record that he often talked with God his Father.
When life became most unbearable, it was to this father that he called, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me” (Lk 22:42). On the cross Jesus invoked his father twice: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34), and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46).
Even casual readers of Jesus’ story notice how important the Father was to Jesus. Jesus, unlike us, was not troubled by a tainted image of fatherhood. By exposure to Jesus, our own wounded images of fathers can be healed by watching a perfect father minister to his children.
The Nurturing Father
The most crucial statement by Jesus on fathering is Luke 6:23, where Jesus underlined not only the importance of his heavenly parent, but also his most fundamental quality. Jesus said, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” Throughout the Old Testament the people were told to “Be holy just as God is holy.” Jesus personalized God by calling him Father, and then pointed to his fundamental quality: mercy.
Jesus called him Father, not because he was a tyrant, not because he was master, not because he threw his weight around, but he used the name Father because of his mercy. He used father to convey the tenderness, the caring, the compassion, and the nurture of God.
Jesus drew on the Old Testament for this image of God. Perhaps he recalled God’s desperate plea, “When Israel was a child, I love him, and out of Egypt I called my son. . . I led them with compassion, with the bonds of love” (Hos. 11:1, 4). Surely Jesus remembered God’s words, “Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember his still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him” (Jer. 31:20).
In a society where “daddy” has become mother’s live-in boyfriend, where “father” has been a source of irritation and anger, and where men are “wounded fathers,” these texts give new importance to the male parent and offer deeper meaning to fathering.
Steps Toward Healing the Wounds
In light of these texts, what can heirs of the wounded father image do to overcome that legacy? Begin with these three suggestions:
1—Be a present father. Some fathers desert their families. God didn’t. As Father, he never deserted his people. Some fathers become preoccupied with careers or other issues. God didn’t. As Father, he never placed anything above his people.
Memphis physician Kenyon Rainer published his autobiographical story of the demanding life of a surgeon entitled First Do No Harm. He tells that after his wife and kids left him, he arrived home one night to read the mail. He opened a letter from his daughter Laura. It said, “Dear Daddy, I miss you. I went swimming today. I can jump off the high board now. Please come soon. I love you. Laura.”
Rainer knew he couldn’t make the trip, but he decided to write to his little girl. He found a pen and some paper and had written “My dearest Laura” when the phone rang. It was the emergency room nurse calling. Rainer makes it clear the unfinished letter was not the exception, but the rule.
He had children, but he never was a father.
A few years ago before I had children, I was with a friend at a major league baseball game. It was Children’s Day. The stadium was packed. We had free tickets just beyond the third base dugout. The right-hander at bat hit a foul drive toward our section. We all stood, hoping to catch the ball, but it landed several rows behind us. As the ball shot by, I could see it hit an eight-year-old boy in the face. His mouth started to bleed. Before anybody moved to help, his father picked him up and left immediately for the First Aid booth.
I felt sorry for the little guy. But I was sure glad he had a daddy.
Be a present father.
2—Be an active father. God was. He actively worked in the nation of Israel. Jesus appealed to his Father and received immediate response.
James Muilenburg, the well-known Old Testament scholar, wrote about the wonders of divine fatherhood and found a contrast in Israel’s king David. David had children: Tamar, Amnon, Absalom, Adonijah and Solomon. As king, David had many responsibilities to fulfill but one he neglected was his role as father to his own children.
At the death of his mid-directed son Absalom, David cried out in agony, “Absalom, my son, my son.” David’s concern was heartfelt, but too late (Muilenburg, 3).
He had sons, but he never was a father.
A good friend of mine is a modern day David who has a significant job with a prestigious organization in town. He could make more money by working longer hours. But there are three people that make him do otherwise: his wife and daughter and son. This David has caught a vision of parenting that the ancient David never saw. He has a notion of the merciful father that makes him play an important role in the life of his family.
Growing numbers of cultural voices call for an active father in every family. Edward Stein in Fathering: Fact or Fable? asserts. “Psychological fathering . . . is what the world is in need of more than ever in its history. There is a considerable body of scholarly evidence that civilization will stand or fall with whether such fathering is available in sufficient quantity” (Stein, 11).
Be an active father.
3—Be a nurturing father. God was. Even when God’s people alienated themselves from him, he sought to treat them with compassion and mercy. Jesus appealed to his Father in those times when he needed care and concern.
Children need fathers so badly that Harvard psychiatrist James Herzog calls it “father hunger” (Herzog, 163-74). Psychologists have recently decided that a nurturing father helps in three crucial ways: enabling the baby to become independent of the mother, helping the child to learn control, and aiding in positive gender development (Miller, 112-13).
Even feminists have called for the nurturing father. Dorothy Dinnerstein’s, The Mermaid and the Minotaur laments the way in which mothers have been left to nurture the family and calls for an active male role in parenting ( Dinnerstein, 4-5, 208).
One father told about a time when his son didn’t want him to kiss him goodnight. The father wasn’t sure what to do, so he didn’t press the issue. Later he told his boy, “I’ve been thinking about you not wanting me to kiss you goodnight. I’m willing to go along with that, but I need a substitute action. Is there some way I can tell you that I love you? Would it be acceptable if I squeeze your shoulder?” The boy said okay.
From then on the father didn’t kiss him goodnight, but he always squeezed his shoulder. That went on for years. Then one night the father left the boy’s room without the usual gesture of affection. The boy asked, “What’s wrong, Dad?” The father responded, “What do you mean?” His son said, “You know, you didn’t grab my shoulder the way you always do.”
The father had learned to nurture his son and it made a difference to the boy.
Be a nurturing father.
Rebuilding a Culture
The voice of Scripture must be allowed to rebuild the image of father. Those of us with wounded images of fathering must recast the notion of father into a form that says love and compassion. We must be fathers who are there, who are active and who nurture our youth.
However imperfect our image of a father might have been, the Father offers a perfect image of what a father should be. In that formula is the way to healing.
Newsweek recently ran a story on fathering. One father told the reporter that when he takes care of his kids on weekends, his friend sometimes say, “Oh you’re babysitting.”
“No, I’m not,” he replies. “I’m being their father” (Jones, 6).
The wound has been healed!

References

Dinnerstein, Dorothy. The Mermaid and the Minataur (New York: Harper Colophon, 1977).
Haddad, Williams and Mel Roman, The Disposable Parent (New York: Penguin Books, 1979).
Herzog, James. “On Father Hunger,” in Father and Child: Developmental and Clinical Perspectives, ed. by Stanley Cath, et al, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982) 163-74.
Jones, Timothy. “The Daddy Track, “ Christianity Today 33 (June 16, 1989) 6.
Mead, Margaret. “A Cultural Anthropologist’s Approach to Maternal Deprivation,” in Deprivation of Maternal Care: A Reassessment of Its Effects (Geneva: WHO, 1962).
Miller, John W. Biblical Faith and Fathering—Why We Call God “Father” (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist, 1989).
Muilenburg, James. “A Meditation on Divine Fatherhood,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 6 no 1 (1950) 3-5.
Osherson, Samuel. Finding Our Fathers—The Unfinished Business of Manhood (New York: Free Press, 1986).
Parke, Ross D. Fathers (Cambridge: Harvard, 1981).
Rainer, Kenyon. First Do No Harm (New York: Random House, 1987).
Ruether, Rosemary. New Woman-New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (New York: Crossraoad, 1975).
Stein, Edward V. Fathering: Fact or Fable? (Nashville; Abingdon, 1977).
Terrien, Samuel. Till the Heart Sings—Biblical Theology of Manhood and Womanhood (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).

Reasons To Be Involved In Child Care: Part 1 by Harold Shank

Sally Shank — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:53:23 +0000

Part 1: Fathers in the Bible

The word “father” appears in the Bible over 1,500 times. Most Christians could name dozens of biblical fathers and sons, from Adam and his sons, Cain and Abel, to Zebedee and his sons, James and John. We could cite several father and daughter relationships, including the elusive “daughters of men” in Genesis 6:2, Terah with his daughter, Sarah (Gen 20:12), and Philip with his four unmarried daughters (Acts 21:9).

Many biblical sons and daughters did not have good fathers. We can only guess at what kind of father Cain (Gen 4:17) or Eli (1 Sam 2:12; 4:17) might have been. Even the most famous father-son relationships have huge questions around them. How did Isaac raise a deceitful Jacob and vengeful Esau? The haunting failure of David with his sons, Amnon and Absalom (2 Sam 13-18), alarms every generation who hears that story.

The failure of fathers continues unabated into the current era. Many of us have experienced an unresponsive or absent father or know of such cases among friends and relatives. We don’t have to look far to find examples of what it means to be a bad father.

Yet, despite the failure of many biblical and contemporary fathers, good examples also abound. Abraham emerges as the first individual closely examined on the pages of Scripture who seeks to be a good father. When Ishmael and Isaac are born, he exhibits behavior that we both shun and follow. We wince at his sending Ishmael away (Gen 21:8f) and agonize with his desperate decision to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22:1). His obvious concern for both sons and his efforts to “charge his children . . . to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice” (Gen 18:19) attracts our admiration and attention.

The entire book of Job revolves around his care for his sons and daughters, his grief over their loss, and the birth of a second family. His interest in their spiritual lives stands as a high point in biblical fatherhood (Job 1:5). His self-described lifestyle makes him a desirable man to call “dad” (Job 31).

Joseph’s loving response to Mary’s pregnancy seems consistent with the kind of father he becomes for Jesus in the all too brief glimpses provided in the gospels. The image of distraught Mary and Joseph searching Jerusalem for their twelve year-old speaks volumes about his concern.

Jesus paints a portrait of a wonderful father in the Luke 15 parable of the prodigal son. The father’s faithful waiting for the younger boy’s return, his warm welcome to the prodigal and his kind conversation with his now- alienated older son offers another high water mark for what a good father should do.

Our own experience mirrors the biblical treatment. Examples of bad fathers in our memory sit alongside fathers that seem exemplary. Whether in biblical times or in our own day, we don’t have to look far to find bad and good images of what it means to be a father.

The presentation of bad and good fathers in the Bible clearly anticipates our own situation. Not all families provide a loving and caring environment in which to raise children. We find our own troubled world reflected in the Bible. Scripture, however, resounds not just with model fathers, but with a dream for what fathers might be like. Rooted in the reality of how we do live, God in the Bible reminds us of how we might live.

The high standard set for families in Scripture prompts ministry to those from homes that fall far short of that goal. Out of that, we desire to provide a more holistic family setting for children without parents and young ones unwanted and uncared for by a mother or father. From the fifth commandment about honoring parents to the household codes in Paul’s epistles explaining marital and parenting relationships, Scripture calls us to a higher standard for all families. In that call to include honor, love and proper nurture in each family, Christians and churches associated with Christian Child and Family Services Association find their marching orders.

Reasons To Be Involved In Child Care: Part 2 by Harold Shank

Sally Shank — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:48:54 +0000

Part 2: God as Father

God as Father is well known to most Christians. In the New Testament, God is called father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 15:6 and several other texts), father of mercies and all comfort (2 Cor 1:3) and father of glory (Eph 1:17). God is also father of spirits (Heb 12:9), of lights (James 1:17) and father of us all (Eph 4:6). In the Old Testament, God is father of Israel (Isa 64:8), of Abraham (Isa 63:16) and of the king (Psalm 2:6-7).

Indeed, some of our favorite lines of scripture call God our Father. The line “Our Father, who is in Heaven” begins the Lord’s Prayer. We have been baptized in the “name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit” according to Jesus’ great commission. In his sermon on the mount, Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

The disparate legacy of human fathers mentioned in Part 1 initially seems at odds with God’s desire to be called Father. We understand him as lord, creator, the holy one of Israel, and redeemer, but in light of the experiences that so many inside and outside the Bible have with their parents, why would God seek to be our father?

Here is a crucial point: The Bible never uses a human example to explain God as father. God does not say “I want to be your father like Abraham was Isaac’s father” or “Let me be to you as David was to Solomon” or “You can see me as James and John looked at Zebedee.” God as father is not based on a specific human father and his children.

God as our father is based on the relationship Jesus had with God. At age 12, when Joseph and Mary found him in the temple, Jesus asked “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). In John 10:15, Jesus said, “just as the Father knows me . . . I know the Father.” Later, he claims to be one with the Father (John 10:30), and no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). In John 15:1, he says his Father is the gardener, and in his prayers near the end of his earthly life, he addresses God as Father (John 17:1; Matt 26:39). On the cross, Jesus cries, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46).

The perfect, healthy, mutually-beneficial father-son relationship which existed between God and Jesus becomes the model for our relationship with God and for our roles as earthly fathers. Whatever our relationship with our own biological father, we rest our lives in the way God the father cared for Jesus the son. Although we may experience anguish or regret in our own relationships with our earthly fathers, we can find satisfaction and joy in developing the kind of loving relationship that God modeled with Jesus.

The lasting legacy of the perfect father-child relationship between God and Jesus belongs to every child. Not only can fathers from intact families use that model, but that ideal relationship motivates all in Christian childcare to help children whose parent-child relationship is broken or non-existent.

Not only do we have biblical teaching about family as a motivation for our work with vulnerable families and children, we also have God, father of Jesus, as a model for the way in which we achieve those standards. This ideal father-son relationship provides a deep resource from which we draw as we seek to help those in difficult situations.

Reasons To Be Involved In Child Care: Part 3 by Harold Shank

Sally Shank — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:42:57 +0000

Part 3: God as Father of the Fatherless

The Bible calls God the father of the fatherless (Psalm 68:5). About forty times, the Old Testament describes orphaned children as fatherless. Perhaps they were called fatherless because the high casualty rates in the numerous Old Testament wars left them with mothers, but no fathers. Orphans became known as the fatherless. Yet the Bible hastens to make clear that, despite the loss of their biological fathers, these children are not completely fatherless. They join the ranks of Abraham (Isa. 63:16) and the king (Psalm 2:6-7) in having God as their father. Children without fathers join the family of those who have God as their father.

As we explore core concepts in which our faith is centered, we must not forget one group that remains on the margin of the picture: those who have no biological fathers. Perhaps no group is more open to finding a father, no segment of society more in need of such a father than those parentless children among us.

We should not be a church family with God as our Father and ignore those who have no father. Every time we pray, “Dear Father” we do so in a world where thousands of children have no father at all, biological or spiritual. Every time we lay claim to this deeply desired relationship, we must be aware of those who cry out for the same comfort out of exceedingly deep hurt.

If God chose to make himself father of the fatherless, those who follow him should continue that legacy. We, as Christian communities, embrace what our God embraces. Since God owned the children without earthly parents, we find justification for owning the same children today.

Every Christian couple who adopts a child imitates God in a unique way. Each time a Christian childcare agency places a child in an adoptive family, it participates in a practice initiated by God himself. We walk on holy ground in giving vulnerable children a parent, following the footsteps of God himself who claimed to be the father of children in similar circumstances.

Churches and Christians may find many reasons to care for unwanted children. One of our most fundamental biblical motivations is found in God himself, the first father of the fatherless.