Our Fathers Who Art In Heaven…

A friend told me that his choice station in Christian ministry was that of “returned missionary”. Someone with stories and pictures, object d’art…souvenirs from lonely and dangerous places. But all in the past tense. Healed over scars and memories insulated by perfect outcomes.
I haven’t the stomach to talk about my own parenting experience. I’m still waiting for an honest person to tell me he has come through the fires of parenting unscathed with burns of failures and regrets. I fear that the main body of my parental decisions were not born of considered wisdom but rather by the steam powered force of frustration, anger and anguish. I came late to the realization that a ready apology was a handy tool for the maintenance of parent/child relationships and marriage relationships…relationships in general . So…here I am poorly equipped for a “how to” text on how to be a successful father.
You might describe me a “returned traveler” from the voyages of parenting. What follows is written more energized by the grace of my children overlaying a lack of exemplary success on my part.
As I began to hold up Bible characters as examples in parenting I noted that the scriptures provided a soft focus to view them. I think that most of Bible history is not written to expose the hard edges of human failure. The biographies of the saints are not exposes. Most of the practical information is not found in the measurements of faults and flaws but in between the lines of the stories. We are left with the work of connecting the dots and thinking about how these great men and their children got from A to B. And how we might live in imitation of them…or not.
I have spent the main part of my exegetical life holding Scripture at angles trying to see behind them. Not as interested in seeing the “what” of the characters as the “why” of the characters.
I have a friend who sometimes quotes Ben Franklin and the Farmer’s Almanac as scripture. I will try and stop him. I’ll say, “You know the Bible doesn’t say that.” His response is always…”Well, it should have!”
I don’t pretend always to have an enlightened view of things. Just a view of things. So…walk with me for a ways. Allow me the liberty of holding some scripture fathers up to the light and turning them to get a different view. We’ll start, of course, with Adam and finish with…well, where ever we finish.