A Father’s Influence

How important is a father, really, or is it possible to raise a godly child without a father’s influence? And what if the father is not a Christian, or not a particularly positive role model? Is he still as important in the life of a child?

I can’t pretend to answer these questions with any authority. In my own life, my father was in an occupation that kept him away from home for days at a time, and when he was home, the environment was unpredictable. My parents didn’t get along very well, and by the time I was about eight years old, they divorced. A year or so later I had a new step-father who remains married to my mother today, some 45 years later.

Both of these men contributed significantly to the development of my personality, work ethic, attitudes toward other people, and a host of other important things. Some of these contributions have been beneficial to me in my relationships with friends, family, and coworkers. There are a few, unfortunately, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to break, too. A blog post is certainly not the document required to record all these significant contributions. I would need to write a book of some length.

There is one episode in my young childhood that has stood out in my life for very nearly 50 years. As I mentioned previously, my father was away a lot. Often he brought trinkets home to us when he returned. One of those trinkets he gave me was a satin bookmark with the first stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, printed on it. It is lavender, and because of the color my baby sister wanted it, but Daddy was unusually firm. He picked out that text for his little boy and he wanted me to have it.

I could barely read, and the print on it was very small, but even at the age of five or six I cherished that bookmark. For decades it has marked the beginning of the book of Psalms in my Thompson Chain Reference Bible. The only other souvenir of my early childhood that has survived the years is my ancient Teddy bear, Willy, worn smooth from loving. I managed to keep both all these years. I have no idea why I still have that old Teddy bear, but I think I’ve read that poem two or three thousand times. Today, more than any other counsel or text, it is Mr. Kipling’s words, I think, that taught me to be self confident, patient, and to fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds full of distance run.

Dad didn’t walk in Christ. He wasn’t a very good role model in some ways. He was absent often and eventually delegated much of his fathering responsibilities to my step-father. But the point I really want to make, Dads, is that you never know what impact a small act today might mean to your child a half century from now.