"As I explained in Wild at Heart, a boy derives his identity, his masculinity, and the answers to his deepest questions about himself from his father. It is a double-edged sword. What was created by God to be a good, powerful, and beautiful thing has become for many men a sort of deathblow. A verdict pronounced over their life. For the deepest wound a man carries is his father wound. Whether through violence, or rejection, or passivity, or abandonment, most men did not receive the love and validation they needed as boys from their fathers. They received something else - a wound. For if your father had the power to validate, then he also had the power to invalidate."
These words are so true. Just yesterday in church my pastor spoke on James 3 and the power of the tongue. It carries the power to do tremendous good, and at the same time, tremendous harm. Sons are given to fathers so that they may be built up into the men they were born to be. They are to learn right and wrong, the fear of God, and how to stand for justice from their fathers. They are to be told they are powerful, and have what it takes. Fathers have the power to affirm this, but the flip side of that is the power to crush hope. The tongue that can answer with a confidence building "Yes" can destroy with negativity, or silence. And sadly, too many sons have fathers that do the later. But there is more than just the wound.
"in addition to the wound, there is a sort of legacy we feel we have inherited from our fathers, a sort of primal bond, an inseverable tie to our fathers and what they were as men....The enemy is there in a moment, saying, You see, you are no different than him. You are your father's son"
A few weeks ago my dad and I were talking, and not one of those conversations you look forward to. Somehow we got onto the subject of family, and he said something I will never forget. "All Gunsalus' do is get divorced and have kids with women they aren't married to." Looking back at the past three generations of my family that's pretty much what has happened. My dad said that was a big part of the reason he was committed to staying with my mom. He was determined not get divorced. But that is the legacy he feels our family name carries with it. And it is a legacy I am determined to change. That will not be what is said at the end of my life.
My dad doesn't seem happy. In this conversation I told him, "I don't want to just get through life. I want to enjoy it, and I don't feel like you have." He works a job he hates, has no real hobbies, and in some ways I feel like him. Stuck doing something that doesn't challenge me, with no time or money to do the things I enjoy, and for a while I saw myself becoming just like him. And it scared me.
"Because in some deep, primal way, when we look at our fathers we fear that they are what we are and what we will become. Our destiny. We might never have put words to this primal fear, but look at it this way: how many men have spent years of their lives trying not to be like their fathers? Or trying to cover up fort them, defend them? And why is that? How many embittered mothers - knowing by intuition exactly where to aim the blow - have told their sons, 'You're just like your father.' And why is that such a piercing stab? A few fortunate men have fathers they want to be like... Sometimes men oversimplify the truth about their fathers in order to preserve an image of them unsupported by reality."
Many can relate to this, many of us have felt this. "Do you like who your father is, or was, as a man? Do you want to be just like him? More to our immediate need, can he lead you now on your journey, provide masculine initiation? Place yourself on the spectrum from 'I want to be just like him, he is showing me how' to 'Good guy, but not what I want to be as a man,' to 'Checked out for the most part. I don't want much to do with him,' to 'An evil man. May God deliver me from his legacy.'" Where do you fall? I've known guys who fall into every category. I know which one I want my sons to say of me. I want to leave them with a legacy they are proud to carry on. I want them to know who they are as men. And I want to leave them with validation, not a wound. But not all of us have been so lucky.
"Most men feel sentenced by their fathers in three ways. We feel sentenced by the wound, by what we got from them in answer to our deepest Question (Do i have what it takes?). We feel sentenced by the fact that there is now no one to lead us on in our need for masculine initiation. And we feel sentenced somehow to a bound we feel with our fathers - their sins, their failures, what they were as men. It feels like the hand you have been dealt. As if you might, with effort, make it a little farther than he, but you will always be his son. After all, there are those sayings, such as 'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree." If the family tree is a source of pride to us, then we can move on with confidence. But if it is not, we must realize that we can come out from under its shadow."
No matter who your father was, or what he did or failed to do, God has something to say. He has the final word in all of this. And as we move forward we'll see what He has to say.
"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
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