The Spirit of Adoption

Holy Trinity Sunday

There are three kinds of father: the poor father, the absentee father, and the good father. DavidSimmons , a former cornerback for the Dallas Cowboys, tells about his father. It's a common story. I'm sure many children have had a father like this. His father was a military man and was extremely demanding. Rarely did he have a kind word for him. He was always pushing him with harsh criticism to do better. His father wouldn't allow him to feel any satisfaction from his accomplishments, reminding him that there were always new goals ahead.

When he was a little boy, his dad gave him a bicycle, unassembled, with the command to put it together. After he struggled to the point of tears with the difficult instructions and many parts, his father said, "I knew you couldn't do it." Then, he assembled it for him.

When he played football in high school, his father was unrelenting in his criticisms . In the backyard of his home, after every game, his dad would go over every play and point out his errors. He says, "Most boys got butterflies in the stomach before the game; I got them afterwards. Facing my father was more stressful than facing any opposing team."

By the time he entered college he hated his dad and his sharp discipline. He chose to play at the University of Georgia because it was the school farthest away from his father. After college he was drafted in the second round by the St. Louis Cardinals. Excited, he called his dad to share the good news. His father replied, "How does it feel to be second?"

Lots of people have had that kind of father. In fact, many have had fathers far more abusive than this. It is a hard thing to live with. It often creates terrible problems for them. The worst problem is sometimes they turn out exactly like their fathers and repeat the same abusive patterns with their kids.

A second kind of fathers are the absentee fathers. These fall into two classes: fathers who have actually abandoned their children and fathers who are present in body but choose not to be part of their children's lives.

In an article in Tuesday's Plain Dealer Janetta Rose Barras talks about how fathers who abandon their children mark their children's lives. In her recently published book, Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl, she details how such abandonment affects the lives of black women. She says that in 1998 56% of black children lived in homes without their fathers. The figures are 28% for Hispanics, and 19% for whites. I would guess the outcomes she describes are pretty much true for any child in this situation.

What tends to happen to such children? She describes five symptoms of growing up without a male role model. They feel unworthy because they feel they have done something to cause their father's absence. They fear rejection in other relationships. They have trouble with intimacy. They have a great deal of rage built up inside. The father who abandons his child causes tremendous problems.

The second kind of absentee father is the kind who is present but not active in the lives of his children.

One day his little daughter came to him and asked him to look at a picture she had drawn. He told her to come back later. He was busy trying to cram a week's worth of work into a weekend. We've all been there. Ten minutes later she was back. Again he brushed her off. Three minutes later she made a third try. She put her face about three inches from his nose and barked with all the power a five-year-old could muster, "Do you want to see it or don't you!" "No", he told her, "I don't."

She zoomed out of the room, and immediately he began to feel guilty. He called her back, and she jumped into his lap without recrimination. She explained the picture, showing mommy with a smiling face, her little sister in the yard, and her dog. It was a good insight into how she saw her family. He told her that he loved her picture, and he would put it in the living room so that he could see it every night when he came home.

He returned to his work but kept reading the same paragraph over and over again. Something made him uneasy. Something was missing from his daughter's picture. He went and called her back into the room. She crawled back into his lap, and he asked the question to which he wasn't sure he wanted the answer. He said, "Sarah, I see mommy, your little sister and the dog. Where is your daddy?" She replied, "You're at the library." From that day on things began to change. He didn't want to be an absentee father.

Of course, the third category is the good father, and there are many of these around. These are the men who know that God calls them to be the spiritual leaders of their families. They know that if they take their faith seriously and are in church, their families will be there with them and it is highly likely their children will grow up with a strong faith and solid values. They spend time listening to their children. They create and participate in family rituals: Saturday morning pancakes and Sunday night pizza. They hold monthly family meetings to talk about family goals, rules and rewards. They make dinner time a sacred time, and let the answering machine take the calls. Finally, they know that love isn't something that you buy. They know that kids spell love T-I-M-E and not M-O-N-E-Y.

If you have a dad like this, you are among the most blessed people in the world. Cherish him and tell him that you love him. If you haven't had this kind of father or you haven't been this kind of father, the situation can change. How can we turn things around? The answer is a spiritual one. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans says that there is a relationship more fundamental than our relationship to our fathers and that is our relationship to our heavenly father. Paul says that the Spirit of God is searching for every person who has been abandoned or alienated from an earthly father. The Spirit is doing this in order to compensate for and overcome the hurt that they have experienced. Paul calls this Spirit of God, the Spirit of adoption. That Spirit comes to tell us that we are not orphans, that we are loved with a depth of love that we can't possibly imagine, that he wants to incorporate us into a new family where we can begin to receive the love that we need.

Just as important, once we come into relationship with this heavenly father, it is possible for all our relationships to change and for painful memories to be healed. Witness the ending of the story of David Simmons, the professional football player whose story we shared. Here's the rest of the story. His relationship with his father began to change when Christ came into his life during his college years. It was God the Father's love for him that encouraged him to work on his relationship with his father. He began to stimulate conversation with his father and listened intently to what his father had to say. He learned for the very first time about what his grandfather was like. He was a man with a quick temper who often beat his son. This new awareness affected him deeply, and he began to understand why his dad turned out the way he did. Years later, by the time his dad died, he and his dad were friends.

And so today we pray for fathers who have been harmful to their children, and the children who have been harmed. And we pray for fathers who have not been all that they are supposed to be and want to change. The Spirit of Adoption is seeking them out, longing to impart to them the love of their heavenly Father and their brother Jesus and desiring to make them part of the family called they church where they can be healed. And we lift up with special thanks and praise all fathers who have been what they are meant to be. And we pray that the Spirit of Adoption would work in every child and father to draw them even closer.

Copyright 2000 by Rev. Dr. John K. Luoma

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