Harold Shank

Bible Study About 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

In Isaiah 28-33 the prophet address people who face a problem.   He assures them of the reliability of God in the midst of their crisis.  To do so, the prophet describes God’s reliability with two unusual metaphors.   First, God is a bird that hovers over Jerusalem (Isa 31:5).   He flies over the city protecting it with his wings.    Second, God is a lion who has captured a lamb and retreated to a solitary spot to enjoy his supper (Isa 31:4).   Despite the attempts of the shepherds to distract him, the young lion concentrates on his meal.   God likewise focuses on Jerusalem.

God as a young lion “growls” (RSV) over his prey.  The Hebrew word for growl is hagah (accent on the second syllable: ha-GAH) which means to chew on, groan over, concentrate on, mutter over or meditate on.

Strikingly the Bible uses the same word to describe human activity for God.  Moses tells Joshua that his key duties before God include taking the word of God to hagah over it (Josh 1:8), that he should chew on it like the lion growls over dinner.  The Psalms begin with the grand description of righteous living:  “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffer.”   After describing what not to do, the Psalm gives clear instruction:  Delight in the words God gives and hagah over them day and night.   The image conjures up mealtime.  Savor the Word of God.  Linger over a dinner of Gospels.  Take seconds on the Psalms.  Indulge in the Pauline epistles.

To extend the figure, training in Biblical studies amounts to kitchen work.  Survey classes compare to cooking.  Taking Greek and Hebrew means learning the recipes.  Text classes set the table.    But once in ministry, preachers spend a life time growling over the Word of God.   We hagah over what he sets before us.

Claus Westermann championed Old Testament studies a generation ago, but began life as a preacher.  Drafted into World War II, Westermann entered military service with his New Testament and Psalms in his pocket.  He reports that it sustained him in combat like nothing else.  Westermann ended up in a Russian P.O.W camp.  Westermann would sit on a block of wood, a board on his lap, writing his thoughts from reading his Bible.   Despite the deprivations of the camp, Westermann would sometimes trade a piece of bread for a piece of paper so he could continue his study.  He learned to growl over the Word of God.

E. H. Ijams mentored me as a young preacher.  President of Lipscomb, author of nine books, Ijams lived to be 96 years old of which he spent 75 years in ministry.  He could never get over the reality that thoughts that once flowed through the mind of God, through Scripture, could flow through his mind.  He learned to growl over the Word of God.

Let me share two thoughts about the menu of those who minister.   First, Churches must eat the full Word of God.  It must get on the inside.   Too many congregations exist on fast food: they eat Gospel Lite, partake of diet discipleship, consume junk spirituality, and devour pizza every Sunday.   God calls for consumption of the seven food groups:  Law, prophets, writings, Gospels, history, epistles, and Revelation.  Churches will not growl over the word unless the preacher has growled over the word.  Eat a balanced diet and serve complete meals.

Second, growling over God’s word should be more like a banquet than grabbing a sandwich on the run.   Hagah over it:  Meditate, chew, groan, growl over it.  The Word of God is not a hamburger and a Coke one gulps down, but a multiple course feast that is savored, chewed, and pondered.

The menus are prepared.  The ovens are hot.  The table is set.  You are invited to a banquet.  The main course is the Word of God.   Enjoy your dinner.

(Presented by Harold Shank at the OC Preacher’s Luncheon on April 19, 2011)

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 6:36, 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.

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When the Book of Jonah comes up, most people think of the fish.  The fish plays a dominant role in the Veggies Tale version of the Old Testament minor prophet.  Church art tends to focus on the whale.  Apologists seek to find a fish big enough to hold Jonah.

But the four chapter prophet is not about the fish.  The book’s 48 verses refer to the fish four times in three different verses.  God is mentioned 38 times in 28 verses.  

Everything in the book does what God wants.  God speaks and the storm starts, intensifies and stops.  The fish swallows and vomits on God’s command.  When the Ninevites hear God’s word, they repent and fast.   The plant grows and shades exactly as God asks.  The worm eats and kills per the LORD’s instructions.   God tells the wind to blow and blister and it does just that.  Even Jonah who drags his feet ends up being the means by which a ship full of sailors worship the Lord and a city of wicked people believe in God.   God tells Jonah to go preach and he does.

While Jonah may lack in practice, he perfects in his theology.  He tells his struggling shipmates, ”I am a Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land”  (Jon 1:9). 

Jonah tells us about God who rules over heaven and earth.

The world’s Jonahs distract us.   They push their own agenda (see Jonah 4:1f).  They seek their own comfort (see Jonah 1:2f).  They respond negatively when they don’t get their own way (See Jonah 4 again).  

 But God has his way, even with Jonah. 

The Book of Jonah is not about the great wicked city of Nineveh.  It is not about the plant that grows up over night as if it were nurtured in pure Miracle Grow.   It’s not about the worm that “smites” the plant like a Superworm.  It’s not about a fish that can swallow but not digest the praying prophet. 

It’s not about what we can’t do.  It’s not about the mission being too big, wickedness too entrenched, the dream too risky, the project too expensive.  The Jonahs around us remind us of all those things.

It’s not about the fish.

It’s about God.

PML

In the offices of the ministers at a church that I served, we all had a silver frame with the letters “PML.”   The “P” was tiny, the “M” was bigger and the “L” dominated the threesome by its size.

 The letters stand for “Production,” “Management,” and “Leadership.”  We found PML in Stephen Covey’s book First Things First (p 249).  The frame with the three letters was a reminder about our ministry. 

 P.  All people need to be involved in “production.”  We reasoned that teaching Sunday school, preparing a dish for a shut in, setting up chairs in the fellowship hall, and writing sermons were all good ways to be productive in God’s work.

 M.   We had another saying among our staff that we should “administer so others could minister.”  By doing the planning work on a mission trip, or organizing a work day or getting folks to set up the fellowship hall chairs others came and plugged into substantive labor for God.  As staff we did that work so that many could serve.  Ministers also manage.

 L.   Teaching and dreaming play a significant role in church life.  God calls us to be more than we are, to do more than we thought we could do, and to be available as his tools in our world.  Another one of our sayings was “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”   That’s the role of leaders.   They keep God’s will and God’s dreams alive.  Ministers lead.

 Yet while ministers play all three of these roles, they are not all equal.  All must be producers.   Many have the quality to manage.  Others are gifted as leaders.   

Yet our tendency is to spend all our time on producing, less time on management and little time on leadership.  By the size of the letters we reminded ourselves that the reverse needed attention.  If there are no managers appropriately organizing a ministry, then the production work becomes more difficult.  As it becomes more difficult, fewer people want to do it, and those who remain are overwhelmed with production.  Better management means more production.

 Yet managers can lose focus, get weary, or miss the big picture.   When they do production suffers.  Leaders help them stay on track.  Leaders motivate all to be involved.   If the mangers lose sight of the vision, then organization turns to chaos.  When that happens people drop out of doing productive work.  In the end, the one who might have cast the vision ends up doing most of the management and the bulk of the production.

 The three letters reminded us to feel good up setting up chairs or preparing a lesson.  Production pleases God.  We also had to allow time to be managers so that others could come alongside us as producers.   God calls us to involve folks in ministry.  But the real point kept us focused on being leaders so that the managers managed and the producers produced.

 Make yourself a frame with the three letters.  Or better yet make a call to organize the project so others can help out.  Best of all pass on the word to keep the vision alive.