The Encourager
“I Am Going to Stay a Father”
I Am Going to Stay a Father
by Frank Butler
At a time when being a buddy to one’s son is popular, I am going to stay a father. I believe it may yet prove to have been a bit sad psychology when dads are called, “Jim, Pete, Art, Tom or Jack” by their children. When Spock, Freud, Dewey and William James have conspired to make dad a minor stockholder on the home’s board of directors, when women’s rights, civil rights, people’s rights, children’s rights and property rights have made it wrong for fathers to speak with authority, I am going to stay a father.
If a gap exists between my sons and daughters, and myself, I am going to work hard to understand. But I am also going to work hard to be understood. I shall try to understand why long hair, when kept clean is reactionary, any more than short identifies one as a clean, moral, upright citizen. But I shall ape my sons. I will abide by an older distinction, when long hair was a fitting symbol of womanliness. The young may refer to Samson, to medieval pictures of Jesus, or to the powdered wigs, or braided locks of fathers of country – but I shall refer them to Paul, who said, “Does not nature teach that it is a shame for a man to have long hair?”
When they tell it like it is, I’ll listen, even if I like it better like it was. If old-fashioned things as prayer, Bible study, worship, and faith in God ever seem to my children to be out of it, square, or whatever – I trust God’s help to have faith enough to pray for them, and pledge with Job, to offer up additional sacrifices for them.
With love in our home, I will answer their questions about the facts of life, but at nudeness or lewdness I refuse to wink. Drinking and smoking are as out of place and unwanted as profanity or the plague. And if experimentation with drugs or marijuana is ever a problem, it will be in violation of my every prayer and request. No laissez faire attitude will be accepted here – even if the weed is legalized and social “tripping” becomes as acceptable as social drinking.
I want my children to know that I made mistakes, that I am foolish, proud and often inconsistent. But I will not tolerate that as an excuse for my hypocrisy. I ask them the help me change as children should, and to expect me to help them change in the methods expected as a parent. Others may look to the under-30 crowd for the wisdom to throw away the past and to say what will remain for future generations; others may let the offspring in the house determine the foods, music and the spending of the household, but I am going to stay a father. – by Paul Harvey
(Note: This article was published in the Eastside bulletin in 1992, the article was by Paul Harvey from 1972. Bro. Frank Butler said it was worth another read then, and I believe it’s worthy of another reading, here in 2021, 49 years later.)
Meeting at Hickory Heights.
I was invited to speak at the Hickory Heights congregation in Lewisburg, TN last week.
I appreciate the elders there inviting me to speak, as well as our elders allowing to go there and preach.
I also would thank those who spoke in my absence.
The church there had an attendance of about 83 for Bible study and 111 in attendance for worship.
They struggled during Covid, with several members suffering from this virus, but have rebounded quiet nicely.
