When I was single, I had a ho-hum attitude toward friends and family members who watched their children grow up. But when I became a father, my attitude was flipped on its head.

After I got married, I remember when our only boy reached the age of about six, and stepped up to the plate at his t-ball game. He had never hit the ball before, but this time he swung his little bat, smacking the white sphere perched atop a rubber post. He sped to first base as the ball bounced into the infield. I found myself overcome with emotion, jumping up and down, and wanting to tell the whole world, “that’s my boy, that’s my boy!”

As our children grow up, we want to pass along all the values that we hold dear to our children: the value of learning, of getting along well with others, the truths of our religious faith and even our political views.

But it doesn’t happen so smoothly.

Fathers and sons

In Fathers and Sons, a nineteenth-century novel of Ivan Turgenev, Arkady Kirsanov, a university graduate, returns to his father’s home and begins to talk proudly about a newfound philosophy called nihilism. His father suddenly feels that his own values and traditions seem outdated and old-fashioned.

Nihilism comes from the Latin word meaning “nothing,” and in Russia it was a growing philosophical movement that attacked morality, religion, and traditional society. It is an ideology that began in the academic circles of the Western world years ago and has unfortunately seeped into the halls of our legislatures, courts, and even our church communities.

There is often a tension between an old-world view and something new that excites the younger generation.

No wonder there is strife in the home today.

Burnt offerings

Job of the Bible faced a similar fate. He is known as a man of patience, but a little-known fact about him concerned the behavior of his children. The problem of his home was not a false ideology, but that of his pleasure-seeking sons and daughters. Job would rise early in the morning after their days of partying and offer burnt sacrifice in reparation for any sins that his children may have committed.

We all want our children to take on the values and habits that we as parents hold dear. To see a son or daughter fall into a false ideology, as alluring as it may seem, or an addictive habit breaks our hearts.

Society suffers from a lack of fathers. Laura Schlessinger, who once hosted the radio program “Dr. Laura,” summed up the problem of violence in our big cities in two words: “no dads.”

Almost a hundred years ago a presidential slogan was “a chicken for every pot.” Today the slogan might be “a father for every family.”

We wish all of the dads out there a happy Fathers Day. Hang in there, fathers, and hold firm to the truths that make our lives and our society strong.