Why has fatherhood fallen into such low esteem? It's almost fashionable to
see fathers as buffoons. Take The Simpsons or Malcolm in the Middle or any
other sitcom. Is this a passing fad, or something deeper? Did our rejection
of God the Father in the twentieth century change people's impressions of
fathers? And when we belittle our human fathers, do we end up belittling
God?
One person who believes this is David Lyle Jeffrey of Baylor University .
Dr. Jeffrey gave a thought-provoking lecture at a conference where I spoke,
hosted in Oxford, England, by the C. S. Lewis Foundation. Jeffrey argues
that the downgrading of fatherhood is not just a product of a handful of
mediocre sitcoms; it is a significant cultural pattern that can be traced
back many years to serious literature.
Samuel Butler's famous novel The Way of All Flesh, published in 1903, is a
good example. In the novel, Butler savagely satirized his own father,
portraying him as a pompous fool; a portrayal that made a deep impression on
Butler 's audience.
It was another well-known novelist, James Joyce, who later took the same
kind of father hatred and extended it toward the Catholic faith in which he
had been raised. These cultural signposts pointed to something deeper going
on. It was made explicit in the writings of Freud, with his theories on the
rejection of the father, and Nietzsche, who famously wrote about the death
of God. It was no accident that a widespread rebellion against faith was
going on at the same time as this rejection of fatherhood. Somewhere in all
of this, the idea of the beauty of a father's strong, self-sacrificial
love - an idea expressed by religious poets and thinkers, like Gerard Manley
Hopkins and St. Augustine - was lost.
As Jeffrey explained, we see fathers as symbols of responsibility and
authority; much the same way that we see God. The rebellion against
fatherhood is part of a general rebellion against authority and God, and a
step toward narcissism: the desire to stay permanently young, self-absorbed,
and carefree. Look at our contemporary society, and you'll see the mess that
kind of narcissism has made.
Well, the good news is that there's a counterculture struggling to find a
voice today; a longing for fathers. We saw it in the response of young
people around the world toward the fatherly figure of Pope John Paul II, a
man who effectively combined compassion with authority. We see it in the
success of recent novels like Gilead and Peace Like a River, novels with
loving fathers at their core. And through that longing, we're rediscovering
our desire for God, the great Father of all of us.
Jeffrey argues that to rebuild our culture in the twenty-first century, we
must recognize and respect the role of fathers. He reminds us of the truth
of Augustine's words about fatherhood and the beauty of God: "All things are
beautiful because you made them, but you who made all things are
inexpressibly more beautiful."
The more we respect our earthly father, the more we recognize the majesty of
our heavenly Father. And as we submit to the authority of one, we learn to
believe in the authority of the other. The decline of faith and fatherhood
went hand-in-hand. To restore one will help restore the other.
Useful link: www.the-alternative.info/
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