Time Machine

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     The rich man in Luke 16 wanted someone to go back into the land of the living and warn his five brothers. The someone he picked was a certain Lazarus. Both men were dead, as we understand dead: departed from this life. When you read the story as Jesus tells it, you’ll note that the rich man had it made, in this life, while Lazarus had suffered in the shadow of the rich man’s wealth and heartlessness. In the next life, the rich man was realizing the horrible and eternal consequences of his heartlessness, desperately looking for a way to spare his brothers the same outcome.

     Recent events have got me hankering for a time machine. Not that I’m eager to identify with the rich man in Luke 16, but if a time machine could help to produce different outcomes, I would like very much to give it a try. One after another, I would load into this contraption the victims of men’s ugly actions, sending them to some critical moment in that man’s life, or his dad’s life, or his dad’s-dad’s-dad’s life, with a message: “Hey, mister, I’ve come from a future you haven’t seen to show you what’s going to happen if you don’t grow a heart and straighten up.”

     Rather than catalog the ugly actions, let’s understand that it’s not just the big-headline items. Every man has the potential for ugliness. It begins with the original sin of Adam, which has infected everyone since, both male and female. With a boy, there are a million mission-critical moments in which his mind and body must be turned away from harshness and disregard. “Sin is crouching at the door,” the Lord God said to Cain, the very first procreated son (Genesis 4:6). Starting early, with steady hand and watchful eye, a boy needs to be taught ways to “overcome it.”

     You thought the Father’s Day series of “Hey, Cobblestone” letters was over last week. So did I. But a late call the other night got me thinking otherwise. The Lord helping me (a lot), I’ve got to take another swing at bringing those closing words of the Old Testament before our eyes – the Lord’s intent “to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a curse of utter destruction” – and let them do their work. I’ll make no apologies for whatever may look paternalistic, patriarchal, or andro-centric in Scripture – haven’t yet and don’t intend to – only let the record show, both biblical and cultural, that dads have a role no one else can fulfill. And since the overwhelming majority of boys become dads themselves, we’ll be talking father/son relations today.

     Every man who has fathered a son is failing that boy/teen/man to some degree. The first dad failed his first son, and no dad since has logged a perfect record. Every son-raising mission has a certain scope. My dad had certain challenges in raising my brother and me; I’ve had certain challenges with my son, and he with his. But please hear this: our Father in heaven is thoroughly acquainted with the scope and context of each mission. Nothing is outside of his reach. Don’t give up; get over it, and cooperate with the Lord. Dads, if you were to drop what you’re doing right now, precisely what would you ask the Lord’s help with in raising your son?

     The Bible is packed with God-breathed instructions for dads. Here’s a small sampling:

When I was a son with my father,
    tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,
he taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
    keep my commandments, and live.
Get wisdom; get insight;
    do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth (Proverbs 4:3-5).

Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them (Colossians 3:19).

Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4)

Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged (Colossians 3:21).

    From Solomon writing to his sons to the apostles and elders writing as dads to the church, there’s no shortage of “tech tips,” straight from the heart of the Everlasting Father.

     When I was in vocational school, our junior-year instructor led the class through an odd exercise. Hypothesis: “There is no such thing as an accident.” As evidence, he collected stories from the class, stories of traffic crashes and mishaps in diverse places. Every time, he traced the tragedy back to a cause. Machines have certain design parameters; exceed them and bad stuff will happen. Ladders are to be set a certain way. Drugs and alcohol make the brain malfunction. But none of it is an accident. Nobody in the class stumped him.

     I’m ready (Jesus, help me!) to lead our church through a somewhat similar exercise. Hypothesis: “Men don’t do ugliness for no reason.” As evidence, I’m willing to collect man-ugliness stories of any magnitude. At some point, I’m confident we’ll find a dad who failed his son to some degree. I’ve told a few of those stories on myself, and my son could tell a few more on me. And the idea isn’t to remove responsibility from the man who committed the ugliness; the idea is to open a door for the Lord to train it out of him, to reject whatever didn’t need to come into another generation. Our junior-year instructor’s name, by the way, was John Shock. We could call this The John Shock Challenge. Maybe this John can shock us all into finally understanding: having the hearts of fathers turned to their children is the difference between generational success and utter destruction.

     Even before finishing this letter, I’ve realized that my time machine idea is a flop. Speaking for father Abraham in Luke 16, Jesus said, “‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead’” (verse 31). What chance does a time machine stand? All we can deal with is the here-and-now.

     There’s an old saying about planting trees: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second-best time is today. Dads, most of the time we will operate in the second-best, whether battling some burden from a past generation or something we’ve heaped on ourselves. Never give up. Never stop piloting the ship. Circumstances in our church and elsewhere will dictate that some of us will even have to step in as surrogate dads and do the best we can. Second-best is far better than nothing.

     What is the Holy Spirit saying to you – yes, you? 

 Grace and Peace (to beat back the ugliness),

 

John