The man as created by God was
to be concerned with two functions—to provide and to protect. When God
placed the man in the garden, even in an unfallen state, the man was to work, to
till it, “to dress and to keep it.” After the Fall, man would still work,
but now there would be a built-in resistance to his efforts to wrestle a living
from it and the resistance would be so formidable that it would cause his face
to drip with sweat.
Concerned with the male role of providing,
the New Testament unleashes harsh words for the slacker: “If a man won’t
work, he will not eat.” (II Thess. 3:10) (Notice that Paul said,
“won’t,” not “can’t.”)
God built men with bigger bodies, bigger
bones, and bigger muscles to be the provider. Such bodies, bones, and
muscles were needed for dragging a living out of a cursed earth before the
advent of the machine age. Technology has changed the means of the
wrestling, but not God’s intent.
It’s noteworthy that, as far as the written
record goes, God put man in the garden to work before He created a wife for him.
The order was the man, the work, then the woman. If a man is not prepared
for the responsibility of work, he’s not prepared for a woman. (If a
wife complains, “He goes to work sick or well,” she shouldn’t. She
should be grateful he’s responsible.)
Paul tells the father that he should work,
work to provide and work to have enough to share with others (Eph. 4:28 ).
He hits hard when he writes, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives,
and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse
than an unbeliever.”
The fallen world is a dangerous place and getting more so. God designed
the father to be the protector. He’s the shield of the family, the
strongest, and the biggest. Although he may not have to protect the family
from animal predators, the world still provides a never-ending supply of those
looking for easy prey. Men have a built-in skepticism, a God-given radar
to protect their families from the can’t miss financial deals that would rob
them of their money; his antenna goes up against the salesman who can’t
deliver on promises too good to be true, and his built-in sensor alerts him
against the evangelists who promise
health and wealth to the adoring gullible. The list could go on and on.
Man as shield. Sounds like a concept
from the days of the chivalry of the Knights of the Round Table. The Round
Table cracked. Galahad and Lancelot are dusty names in a book. But
the concept of the man as shield remains.
We’ve put down our books of etiquette;
they’re as antiquated as McGuffey’s Readers. In those books of manners
there were manners which reflected the man as shield.
As the old books said, “When the man and
woman walk together, he takes the traffic side so as to protect her should a car
jump the curb, he would absorb the blow.”* “When in the theater, the
man takes the aisle seat.” “The man escorts the woman to her side of
the car.”* Symbolic gestures, all right, but symbolic of something
important—protection.
The story says that Sir Walter Raleigh once
laid his costly cloak over a puddle so that the Queen’s feet would not be
dirtied, a legend which may actually be true.
Sacrificial protection.
The doorbell rings unexpectedly at 10 PM. It’s pitch dark outside.
Who answers it? Not the woman; the Shield.
There’s a movement out and about, a
movement to indoctrinate a new and ignorant generation that fathers are
unnecessary. The movement turns the moral compass upside down to say that
to open the car door, to open any door, to walk on the traffic side, to take the
aisle seat are all acts of disrespect. No.
Such actions show respect, a humble and deep respect for a person loved
and appreciated.*
It’s a movement which says, “We can be a
family without a man.” Yet, a
study in 2006 showed that “boys reared in a single parent home are 50% more
likely to die from suicide, accidents, or addiction than boys raised in
two-parent homes. That’s the true
picture of being dadless.*
Our media cooperate—the strong father is no
longer grist for the television or movie mills.
“Father Knows Best” is out,” Mr. Inept Idiot is in.
The fathers in today’s television and movies are clueless, bumbling, or
bad. To paraphrase the Statler
Brothers, “Whatever happened to Jim Anderson?”
In the final analysis, “studies” aren’t
the final authority. The Bible is,
and in the Bible we have God as the picture of THE Father.
He’s the Father who has given many things to protect us and provide for
us.
His creation provides for us—water, food,
heat, light, the very air we breathe. And
His provisions are not on the bare subsistence level; He “has given us all
things richly to enjoy.”
He is our Shield who protects.
He protects the believer from losing his salvation (Rom. 8).
He protects all of us by warning that sin produces the wages of misery,
destruction, and death (Proverbs).
Is there something else, something more
sinister behind this movement to abolish the father?
Perhaps behind the ridicule of the strong father is the fear of the
strong father. Could it be rooted in
rebellion against The Ultimately Strong Father?
There’s a scene in “The Magnificent
Seven:” Charles Bronson is one of
the seven hired to protect a Mexican village from a gang of violent men.
Before the climactic showdown, several boys of the village are talking to
Bronson and they express the opinion that their fathers are cowards.
Bronson says, “Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they
are not cowards! You think I'm brave because I carry a gun? Well, your fathers
are much braver, because they carry responsibility — for you, your brothers,
your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that
weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the
ground.”
“I have never had this kind of courage.
Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee what will ever
come of it... this is bravery. That's why I never started anything like that.
That's why I never will.”
The Provider. The Protector.
The Shield. The Father.
*Kevin McCullough
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