Summer Series – Dads Behaving Badly

When I was teaching in East London, we noticed that there was a big problem with many of the boys from single-parent families who didn’t respect the female members of staff. Not always and not all of them, but it was a noticeable trend.

I thought it seemed counter-intuitive. I thought that if you were raised by a strong and capable woman then that would lead you to respect women more. Now that I’ve lived on a council estate for 14 years and work in a boys’ school, I have a clearer sense of the cycle of problems often caused by absent fathers. (Council estates don’t have the monopoly on single mums, but single mums are often prioritised for social housing and so we do see a large number of people with absent fathers in our area.)

We all learn by example, so if fathers and father-figures are missing then it’s harder for boys to learn to respect women because they haven’t seen it modelled to them. Absent fathers can leave daughters vulnerable and sons not knowing how to be men. This does not have to be true, but it’s my view that boys with a present, protective father are much more likely to know how to treat women well.

(This is one irony of feminism and “women’s lib” by the way, but that’s a topic for a different blog post.)

What can be done? We can’t make men be good dads. What hope is there in the gospel for the fatherless?

As always, the gospel provides surprising and miraculous hope.

With this in mind, I’ve been thinking about dads in the Bible and what they teach us about God. There are some great fathers, and great moments of fatherhood in the Bible. There are also some really bad examples of how to be a dad, and these also teach us (by way of contrast) about God’s character.

These men show us how gracious God is. They show us that God can take any family, no matter how messy, sinful, dysfunctional, idolatrous, murderous, lazy, dishonest or proud and can save them and bring them into his people.

And so let me introduce you to a Summer Series: Dads Behaving Badly. I hope it will encourage you that God is the perfect Father, that nobody is beyond his reach, and that he can turn any lost boy into a good father. I hope we can see together that even when a good father or husband is nowhere to be seen, we can look to God, our perfect Heavenly Father, and know that he is more than all-sufficient.

I should start with Father Abraham.

I don’t mean any disrespect to Abraham, the great patriarch, but he did have his moments. Today I’m thinking of the way he treated his firstborn, Ishmael. That was a disaster from pre-conception, but since Ishmael was his son, he should have been a good father to him.

Before Ishmael was born, Abraham neglected Hagar and let Sarah turf her out:

⁶ “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. (Genesis 16)

Here Abraham shirks his responsibility completely. Hagar must have felt utterly rejected and desperate, but God sent an angel of the Lord to her to reassure her:

¹³ She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16)

When nobody else saw Hagar, the Lord saw her.

The Lord’s eyes are on the vulnerable. If you’ve ever learnt anything about vulnerable children, it’s those who are neglected and left to their own devices who are most likely to be preyed upon by gangs or dealers or terrorists. Nobody else sees them. But the Lord sees them.

We have a similar episode later on, in Chapter 21. The illegitimate son has been sent into the desert again. His mother puts him under a bush to die. They’re completely destitute and unwanted.

¹⁷ God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. ¹⁸ Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”

When Abraham didn’t, or couldn’t, be a father to Ishmael, God was there. He provided for Ishmael’s needs. He heard Hagar and her son, when nobody else did.

This is such good news for people who have neither been seen nor heard. In the gospel we meet the God who sees, the God who hears and the God who provides.

This world is broken, full of sinners. But we can all be made whole by the God who was with Hagar in the desert.

Tune in next time for another Dad Behaving Badly! You can subscribe to my blog by clicking on something… I think it might be a button that says ‘Follow.’