Fathers today are only beginning to learn to emotionally connect and to spend quality time with their children. We are learning that we can be nurturing, tender, and share our feelings with our daughters, and our sons. We have emerging models of fatherhood, men who are the primary caregivers of their children and love it! We consider this kind of fatherhood exemplary and extraordinary. Pray for the day when this kind of option for fathers is normal.
In the light of this new male awareness, many men are now mourning the loss of emotional intimacy and closeness they did not receive from their own fathers. Today, many men's memories of their relationship with their fathers echo the words of Homer in the Odyssey: "I am the father whom your boyhood lacked and suffered pain for lack of. I am he."
Both the sad and the hopeful truth is that sons do become like their fathers. I am not discounting the important role that the mother plays in the family to sons and daughters, but I am intentionally focusing upon the male, and particularly the father and son relationship.
Mark Twain once observed that by the age of twelve a boy starts imitating a man and goes on doing that for the rest of his life. Really it begins around age three. Harry Chapin, in his song "Cat's in the Cradle," reminded us of this in his vivid lyrics about the absent father who is so caught up with job success that he passes on to his son a legacy of busyness and preoccupation. Like father, like son. In Chapin's song, the son's aspirations are to be like his dad, but this means he will only repeat the model of his own absentee father, who is too busy to spend time with him. In haunting lyrics the son says to himself. "I'm gonna be like him, yeah. You know I'm gonna be like him."
The same truth is narrated in the story of David and his children. We can see how David's distorted masculinity and distant fatherhood affected his sons. His sexual promiscuity, emotional distance, aggression, and violence were his son's inheritance. Absalom, the once-sensitive protector of Tamar, ended up having sex in public with ten of King David's concubines in defiance of his father. Then he declared war upon his father. Fleeing from his father's army, Absalom got his long hair caught in some tree limbs. Joab, who earlier had tried to reconcile David with his son, ended up killing Absalom. The part of the text which we read this morning shows David openly weeping over his dead son. If only David could have expressed those his compassion toward Absalom when he had the chance. But it was too late.
I can just see the silhouette of King David with his crown perched crooked on his head. He sits alone in his darkened office behind a big wooden desk piled high in papers. His degrees and community awards hang proudly on the wall; his desk calendar is filled with appointments. He looks over at a grade school crayon picture stuck on the wall with a pin. It is a crude drawing of the palace. In the scrawled blue sky is a yellow sun with a smile on it. Beside the cold, gray palace is a stick figure with a crown. Crooked lines spell out the words, 'To Dad, from Absalom." A tear slowly trails down a would-be-father's cheek. And through the palace halls the sad wind moans; "O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom."
There is hope for a new masculinity and fathering role. But, we will need to find new male role models for our emerging understanding of masculinity.
Christian men can find in Jesus a positive male role model. We can see in Him a masculinity that is compassionate, empathetic, nurturing, and at the same time strong, robust, and determined. He tenderly took children, who were considered of little intrinsic value, into His arms and treated them as persons of worth. And with strength of moral character He confronted the injustices of His day. His masculinity was not displayed in aggression towards, nor domination of, women. Jesus treated women with dignity. He was able to share His deepest hopes and dreams, fears and feelings, with His closest male friends. And Jesus' relationship with God would seem to indicate a positive and intimate relationship with His own earthly father, that became a springboard for His ability to speak of His heavenly Father in the most intimate of terms, "Abba." Jesus, the Son of God, was in all ways like His tender and tough Father. Like Father, like Son.
There is still time for males to begin to model a redeemed masculinity. This new manhood does not need to deny the equality of women, the dignity of a mother's role, nor minimize a father's relationship with his daughters. This new manhood is able to critique and transform the ideas and institutions which support the dominance of men over women. With Christ as our model of masculinity and with God as our Father there is hope for men in that old adage "like father, like son."
