Fathering a Son

As I reflect on my experiences counseling with dads who desire to raise their sons to be men, I have encountered the attitude that fathers must convey responsibility and toughness to their sons. They feel that it is important for them (Dads) to pass on their personal wisdom or experience growing up.

I liken appropriate family dynamics to God’s direction to Adam in the Garden of Eden. God told Adam to “keep” the garden. To keep means “to maintain a right relationship with.” It is the same word that is used in the marriage vows typically used in the Christian church when both the man and the woman are affirming their vows to each other.

The analogy of the garden is of a man gardening in a field he did not create. So his gardening responsibilities are responsive to the standard of nature and not to his own standard. A gardener will break ground, till ground, create a row to receive a seed, plant a seed, water the seed, weed the ground, “wait” …for the seed to break ground, nurture the shoot, weed the ground of external influences that will damage the shoot, and prune the plant of dead growth, which by the way when you remove a dead thing it does not damage the life that remains. The most invasive act that the gardener involves himself in is after the plant is mature he will dig, pluck, cut or somehow remove it from the source of life that that plant has relied upon and grown so attached to over its life. That is important because to stay too long spoils the fruit.

The gardener has to realize that the plant does not belong to him nor is he the standard for the plant’s growth. No gardener has ever stood before a planted seed and shouted that it is taking too long to come up. Nor has any gardener ever told a plant that when he, the gardener, was growing up he did things another way. The plant belongs to nature. The child belongs to God. The gardener’s responsibility is to protect the plant from any and all external influences including the gardener’s own abuse or neglect that will adversely affect the natural progression of the growth of that plant. If that is done the plant will mature well and in its own time.

If fathers will protect their sons from any and all external influences including their own abuse or neglect that will adversely affect the Godly intention of the growth and development of their sons, nature will grow them into the kind of men that God intended. Manhood is in the seed. Then the father will have to dig, pluck, cut or somehow remove him from the ground that this son has relied upon and grown so attached to over its life because nurturing builds attachment. That is important because to stay too long spoils the child.

Ronald Pollard, M. Div.