Bandits No More

Fathers’ Day is this weekend. If you’re an attentive Christian dad you’ve seen that the world, the flesh, and the devil are coming after your kids. As Christian dads, one of our essential jobs is standing against these powers for our kids. Or, maybe better, one of our essential jobs is standing against these powers with our kids. Our kids are not passive objects: from the time they’re born they are growing and maturing. Part of the maturing process is developing their abilities and taking on responsibilities. When they’re first born, parents do practically everything for them. We feed them, we wash them, we move them from place to place, since they can do none of those things for themselves. With time, they learn to feed themselves, clean themselves, and move their bodies from place to place. As parents, we help them achieve these skills. We also help them learn to identify temptations, learn of God, and to walk in faith & love. We help them take their first steps in resisting the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil for themselves.

It would be nice if these forces of destruction, the world, the flesh, and the devil, reliably looked dangerous. If they looked dangerous we might have an immediate inclination to resist them. Most often, however, the world, the flesh, and the devil come to us in the guise of beauty, goodness, wisdom, and fun.

When the devil came at Jesus in the wilderness his opening words weren’t, “I’m the devil, and I’m here to destroy your life.” No, the devil’s strategy was to come with a good idea: “Jesus, you’re hungry, aren’t you. I sympathize with you. I bet that as the Son of God you have the power to turn a stone into bread. And what do you know – this stone right here even looks like a loaf of bread!” Jesus had to be able to identify this apparent good idea as a temptation before he could resist it.

We come alongside our kids and help them learn to recognize temptation as temptation and to resist it. A starting point is letting them see areas in our own lives where we recognize and resist temptation. They’ll learn that they aren’t the only ones who stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil. We do too – and we’re walking with them, holding them up.

It’s not just our kids that need mature Christians to come alongside them. Years ago I read Robert Putnam’s book, Our Kids.

Putnam uses the image of “airbags.” That’s stuck with me. The idea is that kids from the middle class and above tend to have “airbags:” if they make a mistake or something bad happens, there are “airbags” that protect them, resources, people, and institutions that keep these problems from destroying their lives. But poor kids too often lack these “airbags.” One mistake, and they’re sunk for life. One major illness or accident affecting a parent or a sibling and the kid is knocked off track.

What would happen Christian dads – well, Christians in general – would see these kids who aren’t technically “their own” in terms of blood, as kids for whom Christ died and come alongside them and provide them with “airbags?” What would happen if we learned to wrestle in prayer for kids in need – and not just our own?