Helping Them: Fathers

Let me be very clear, and very offensive. I believe that 99.82% of the blame for the lack of marriages in the church and the world lays in the lap of the fathers. There is plenty of blame left to go around, especially as some of it is overlapping, but for this my first post to married people about the crisis of unmarried people, I am going to lay my big guns on the fathers.

Introduction

This is my second post in my ‘What we married people need to do to get the unmarried people married” series. Which was a bit long so I snipped it to ‘Help Them’. In my first post I dealt with the unmarried people themselves: pointing out that they had a huge obstacle to overcome: the obstacle that their entire culture, from top to bottom, root and branch, insisted loudly that they needed to do it by themselves… if at all! That marriage isn’t that important, and that it needs to happen naturally, and that the last thing in the world you should do is to invite meddlesome matchmakers into the process.

It will be necessary for the unmarried young (and not so young) people to not only accept the meddling, but not see it as meddling. And not just to ‘accept’ it, but to actively seek it. To publicly announce that they want to get married and need help. And then to graciously accept help. More than graciously!

Them again

So, fathers, that attitude I talked about in my ‘Them’ post, that problem with rejecting help and rejecting helping… that’s your fault. There are two choices: either you actively taught them that they were supposed to get married without allies… or you didn’t teach anything and they picked up the attitude of the world. Either way, it is your fault. All of this is your fault.

Because, you see, you were supposed to be leading! And leading in the truth. Which meant keeping your eyes out on the culture and seeing the disaster that was modern marriage… and leading on it! Seeing what you and your family needed to do about it.

Attitude

I was instructed that I needed to deal with ‘attitudes’. That the young people nowadays are coming on to the marriage mart with a whole host of attitudes that make them utterly unsuitable for marriage. They believe things that are destructive to marriage, and that are contradictory to getting married.

First of all, feminism. First wave, twenty-seventh wave, they are all contradictory to marriage. They are contradictory to all well-functioning society, but they are fatal to marriage.

Secondly, as part of the first, ‘equality’. I could write an entire screed on how man and woman are equal in the eyes of God, equal in salvation, equal in worth… and it would all be useless if we do not, at the one and same time, realise that men and women are profoundly unequal. And that getting married and staying married requires a serious recognition of those differences.

Sex. Let me just ask it as a question: if your daughter agrees to marry a man, is she saying he can have sex with her? Is there anything at all in the promise she make to him that is a promise to sex? Or is she going to treat him like she treats her boyfriends… he gets sex if he is good and she is in the mood? What have you taught her? What are you teaching her?

Speaking of boyfriends!! I once got in a whole bunch of trouble for answering a woman’s question. I told her she would be offended by the answer, and she was. I warned her, and she insisted on asking anyway. She asked, and repeated, and insisted I answer why, in this poor old boomer’s opinion, sleeping with her boyfriend made him less willing to marry her. So I gave her the boomer answer… the answer that has been given since the dawn of time, suitable altered for language and culture. “You don’t buy the cow, if you are getting the milk for free!”

Children. Fathers, are you teaching your children the infinite importance of children? Or are you mocking those parents who keep asking their children for grandchildren?

Divorce. If your daughter decides that her husband isn’t good enough for her, isn’t meeting her needs, what will you do? Will you call her to her oath? Or will you ‘just want her to be happy’ and ‘support her’?

Leadership, Leadership, Leadership

If there is a stupider phrase in the English language than, “I just want them to be happy…” well, Ok, there are lots of stupid phrases in English, but for sheer destructive stupidity that phrase is definitely in the top ten.

First of all, if there is one thing that is guaranteed to make someone unhappy it is for the important people in their lives to ‘just want them to be happy’. That chocolate might make you happy… now. But the extra fat and cavities won’t make you happy later.

And secondly, if you have a shred of moral foundation, you know that happiness is not the highest value. It is not close to the highest value. It is not in the top 100.

And the obvious antidote to ‘just be happy’ from the father perspective is called ‘leadership’. Gird up your loins like a man and lead. Make them unhappy… set boundaries and teach the truth. Train in difficult things. Let the buck stop with you.

Lead your entire family, and take responsibility for your leadership. ‘Cause not only is that the only way to ensure they learn the things they need to, it will be the diving board you will need to launch yourself into the ‘get the married’ phase of life.

Kiss Her

Your wife, that is. Often. Publicly. And not just kiss, but in every way model an active ‘couple’ life. Kiss, lead, teach, kiss… did I mention kiss. (You do understand what a euphemism is?)

How does this come into it? Do you really imagine that your son or daughter will have a good idea of what marriage is, a good idea of the good of marriage, unless you model it? Part of leadership is modelling. You do have to talk the talk. It is a fool that thinks otherwise.¹ But you also have to walk the walk.

Marriage, not… whatever you all are doing nowadays

What is the definition of marriage? What definition do you teach in your house? Does it even have a definition? Or is it some vague and indefinable thing that no sane person would ever want to try to hitch themselves to? Do you really believe that two men can marry? That a girl who thinks she’s a penguin can marry a boy who thinks he’s an aardvark?

Do you believe in marriage until you get mad at each other and then divorce? Or for life? Sex on alternate Thursdays?²

Conclusion

The above list is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg, but I hope it was poky enough. I hope it challenges the overwhelming majority of supine fathers. Because without fathers there will be no marriages. Without fathers, there can be no marriages.

In an amusing irony even of the most pagan, blasphemous, vacuous ceremonies nowadays ask, “Who gives this woman to this man?” None of them mean it. None of them would come to a halt if the father said, “I don’t!” But at least the shadow is still there.

Fathers, give your daughters in marriage. Which starts before they are born. Train them, lead them, find them a nice (imperfect, sinful, young) boy… and give them in marriage.

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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

1. The Scriptures say, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” and we all recognise this in life. The guy who is all into stamp collecting… can’t stop talking about it. Two guys who are into chess? Their wives frequently sigh as the conversation turns to openings and stalemate traps. Your children will not believe you have a great marriage if you never talk about it.

2. See I Corinthians 7:3-5, Proverbs 5:15-19, and the entire book of the Song for the question of sexual frequency in a Godly marriage.