Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,
but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
– Ephesians 6:4
God doesn’t desire us to be parents who provoke our children. That’s not God’s way. That’s not what He desires for us.
Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.– Colossians 3:21 (ESV)
God wants us to encourage our children. He wants us doing opposite of discouraging. We discourage our children when we provoke them. They are left discouraged when act in such a manner that is outside of God’s desire for us.
The idea and image of Papa being a rolling stone or an aloof hustler or hood who cared more for the streets than he did for his own family brings to mind much of the ghetto folklore of Donald Goines, Iceberg Slim and Chester Himes. We hear a lot of clinical talk that labels people as part of dysfunctional families or broken homes, but we have to wonder what else contributes to children living broken lives that lead to them becoming broken adults. It has to bug us and at least get under some part of our skin when we hear about mother’s who murder their own toddlers or daddies who molest and destroy the innocence of their own precious gifts from God.
The recent Penn State child sex scandal involved a father figure in Jerry Sandusky. We learn that men like Sandusky have a rapport with the young and impressionable due to their influence and the time that they commit to sharing with countless young men through sports. It resembles the trust of catholic school youth abused by pedophilic priests who abused their trust and disgraced what many throughout the world view as an honored position. We have positions of power, whether we are the parents or parental figures for young people of the generation behind us. Let us never forget that. We make a difference by what we do and how we act. Let us act in a manner that makes a real difference.
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. – Psalm 68:5 (NIV)
Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. – James 1:27 (NASB)
For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight,
but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. – Romans 2:13 (NIV)