December 4,1996
Dear Br. Black:
I trust that the Lord is blessing you and your family with prosperity and health as he promised!
As I meditate on Christ and this sinful world, I am struck with
the problems fathers and sons have relating to each other. The
Bible portrays God as one God with three personalities expressed
in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Within the Godhead,
there is perfect harmony and unity in purpose and mission; the
father loves the son and the son adores the father. As immature
children, we cannot fully understand the relationships between
the Father and Son nor the purposes of God, just as sons cannot
fully enter into the counsels or judgments of their wise and mature
fathers. Just as our understanding is infinitely higher then the
understanding of a two year old boy, so is God’s judgment
and understanding higher then the greatest earthly intellect.
As God is our pattern and example in all things, we should imitate
His association with His Son in our connection with our own sons,
yet many sons and fathers are strangers from each other. There
should exist a special bond between sons and fathers that is different,
yet, as strong as that between husband and wife. While marriage
is a living symbol of the unity that exists between God and the
Believer, (the husband representing God and the wife representing
the believer, not the other way around,) so the union of son and
father ought to be a living symbolism of the unity within the
Godhead.
However, fathers often have a better relationship with their daughters
then with their sons. Child abuse aside, there enters into our
association with our daughters some of the same appeal as between
husband and wife. Men find it easier to relate to women just as
women find it easier to relate to men. For some reason, which
I have not yet discovered, men prefer the company and society
of their daughters to that of their sons. Yet, it is our sons
who need our society more then our daughters. The maturation process,
in children, proceeds from mother to daughter and from father
to son, not from mother to son and father to daughter.
When sons are cast into the society of the mother, the mature
development of the masculine traits is hindered and boys seldom
reach their full manly mental and emotional development, unless
the Lord intervenes and redirects the learning process. However,
divine intervention is often hindered by the neglect of the father.
Aside form poor social development in the young man, boys are
deprived of learning about the male side of God, OUR FATHER. Just
as children imitate the parent of the same sex, as they mature,
so we must imitate Christ in order to grow up into Christian men.
When a boy is deprived of robust role model, and, instead, imitates
his mother, he is deprived of understanding God’s masculine
side and fails of that full maturity required of Christian men,
to know Christ fully as the Savior of men as well as women. The
world and jails are filled with adult boys who never knew their
fathers and, therefore, cannot rightly interpret God’s nature
and character. How tragic for boys to mature into men without
realizing that it is perfectly masculine to love and to be loved
by God and our families, and, indeed, by other men. It is perfectly
natural for men to experience brotherly love, yet few men truly
understand what is comprehended in this type of intimate sharing,
for their fathers never taught them of God and of his love.
But there is hope! God will yet have his men in this world who
will take other men, as sons, and teach them to love as they are
loved. In social circles, this is referred to as monitoring, but
in Christian circles, this ought to be know as brotherly love.
May the Lord bless you, my dear brother with a knowledge of his
love for you and your brothers in Christ.
Allen A. Benson