Fatherhood in the modern church

I once heard a very pompous preacher scream from the pulpit: "if the sons in my house (note - "my") where to be squeezed, nothing would make me prouder than to know that what came out of them, would be me (the preacher...).

I thought it was blasphemous... He used the Paul-Timothy analogy to staff his point.

Surely if we are supposed to be Christ-like, we would hope for "Christ" to come out of our so-called sons when they are "squeezed"? In my opinion, there is a sickness among overly exalted pampered preachers, glistening with the dripping fat of their over-indulgent self-absorbed lives. They treat those who serve under them (as they themselves should be serving- ironically) like ants in their personal pantry called "life". To me, this seems to be nothing other than abuse of their power.

The Timothy excuse

I have reservations about the idea of Paul being a "type and shadow" of the modern day church leader. Paul was a living breathing walking talking epistle (2 Corinthians 3) - to the point of writing two thirds of the divinely inspired New Testament. The point is, that Paul knew exactly how to walk in Christ-likeness, because he had firsthand revelation on scripture. He didn't attend any Bible school or university. God revealed all that he knew to him. For him to claim that others should imitate him as he imitates Jesus was not a long shot by far.

How many Church leaders today are as pure in their doctrine as Paul? How many Church "fathers" love God more than they love their own lives? How can one love an earthly son more than or at least equal to oneself if one cannot even love God onto death? (Death could imply death to selfishness and even physical death).

In my opinion Paul serves as a shadow to the printed Word of the New Testament, more than he is a shadow of a modern human leader of a church...

Thus I believe that we should teach father's to ensure that their sons do not follow in their (sometimes) broken footsteps steps. In other words: "Don't do as I do, do as I say!" I would much rather see fathers train their sons to be "thinkers" rather than "whipped followers". This way one would have thinking followers of Christ rather than man-following, followers trying to follow a God that is by no means a man - if that makes any sense.

If fathers taught sons to respect authority, but to follow Christ instead of themselves personally, then I believe it will have the following effect:

1. Sons will love the fathers without the threat of judgment and abandonment when mistakes are made.

2. Sons will not be prisoners or slaves to any power hungry maniac.

3. The demand for "perfection" in the relationship between the disciple and the disciplee will be removed and replaced by a demand for "excellence" which is far more attainable for us normal, fallible humans...

4. Churches will regain a warm family atmosphere and loose the callus organizational atmosphere resembling that of Donald Trump’s "The Apprentice" show.

Organisations or Churches?

The Pharisees loved their organisation more than their people, their authority and law more than the Messiah they had been dedicating to and awaiting on, their entire careers . They where petrified of loosing power over their subordinates, while Jesus was having meals with the unloved ones and letting His "sons" sleep in His bosom in the open air.

  

We fail - Jesus doesn't

If we inherit Jesus as our role model to imitate, we will eliminate inherited, accumulated heresies. The reason for this is that each generation will not only inherit truth but also have the ability to find more Truth. In the same breath, they will also discard old lies, instead of dragging generational curses from one congregation to the next under the banner of "submitting to the authority of man" versus "wholly submitting themselves to the Word of God and the unfailing support of our Helper the Holy Spirit".

One of my favourite teachers Dr. Chuck Missler likes to challenge his students when he makes any conjecture based on his studies - He tells his students that if they take any of his conjectures as fact without going and finding out for themselves whether in fact they agree, they automatically fail the course.

I believe that teaching our sons to think, will give God the space to give them fresh manna/wisdom and eventually allow them to get even closer to the Glory and truth of God, which should be the desire of all fathers.

Proverbs 17:6

"Children’s children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children is their fathers."