Without Father, Who Knows Best?
The Relationship Between the Breakdown of the Family
and Violence and Instability in the World
Sometimes the names folks around the world give to various groups of people aren't just derogatory--they're revealing. Take for example the names given to Tunisian and Egyptian rioters who overthrew their respective governments. In Tunisia, the rebels are called hittistes, which means "those who lean against the wall." In Egypt they're called shabab atileen, "unemployed youths."
These terms have led many journalists to assume that the problem is a lack of jobs. In the Feb 7-13 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Art Coy says, "[A]n economy that can't generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed."
But is that the whole explanation? How would we look at the issue from the perspective of a Christian worldview?
How To See The World That Actually Exists
A person's worldview is his default answers to life's most pressing questions: Where did I come from? How should I live? What happens when I die?, and How do I know my answers to these questions are true?
Those with a Christian worldview start with the assumption that the Bible is an accurate revelation of what God wants people to do, and that its descriptions of fallenness and the possibility of redemption describe the contours of the world as it actually is.
Adherents to a Christian worldview don't just believe that it gives them a free ride to heaven. They believe that the set of assumptions given in Scripture offer the most reasonable explanation of "why things are the way they are" when it comes to understanding God's character, sin, human nature, and what it means to be a person.
In other words, what you believe about God will determine what you believe about everything else. AW Tozer said it well in the first sentence of his book, The Knowledge of the Holy: "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us."
The Christian Worldview of Fatherhood
Take for example, the role of fathers. Throughout Scripture God is referred to as a loving father. At Jesus' baptism, a voice from heaven publicly proclaimed, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased" (see Matthew 3:17).
But the importance of fatherhood based on God's nature and character didn't start in the New Testament. It goes all the way back to creation, and can be traced through the Mosaic law, into the New Testament church, and up to our present time. A biblical view of the family has been the most stabilizing force for societal progress in all of history.
It would be no surprise, then, that societies with an inadequate view of fatherhood will be worse off than other societies. Right now America is engaged in a grand experiment to see if is possible to maintain a stable society without stable families.
The experiment is failing. In his December 2010 report called "The US Index of Belonging and Rejection," Patrick Fagan reveals that more than half of American children are growing up in fatherless homes. And why exactly does this matter? As John Sowers reveals in his insightful book, Fatherless Generation, fatherless homes in America account for:
- 63 percent of youth suicides
- 71 percent of pregnant teenagers
- 90 percent of al homeless and runaway children
- 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions
- 85 percent of all youth who exhibit behavior disorders
- 71 percent of all high school dropouts
- 85 percent of all youths sitting in prison
Quoting Frank Pittman, Sowers says, "Men without models don't know what is behind their shame, loneliness, and despair, their desperate search for love, for affirmation, and for structure, their frantic tendency to compete over just about anything with just about anybody."
Chillingly, those who grow up without fathers are more susceptible to recruitment into violent causes. According to Sowers, it was a hunger for a father that drove the impressionable John Lee Malvo into the arms of Washington DC sniper John Muhammad who carried out the tragic 2002 beltway sniper attacks. He states that Mohammad's ultimate plan was to "drive across Canada and visit foster homes and YMCAs to recruit, mentor, and train for violence dozens of other fatherless boys just like Malvo."
This is not to say that moms raising sons without a father are doomed to despair, or that fatherless children have no hope. The Christian worldview also calls the church to take on the role of husbanding the husbandless and fathering the fatherless (see James 1:27). In fact, unique to the Christian worldview is that God has adopted us as sons, and that as a loving Father He has replaced alienation with belonging.
The Islamic Worldview of Fatherhood
The Christian principles of fatherhood, and thus family, result from its understanding of God's revelation of Himself as Father. Obviously Muslims, like Christians, disagree about how to interpret many things in their holy writings, but it is safe to say that Islam does not have a similar understanding of God as father. In fact, Muslims view the very idea as blasphemous because it takes away from God's greatness.
As a result, Islam promotes a view of fatherhood that is remote, stern, distant, and unrelated to the raising of children. Muslims' allegiance is to the mother, not the father, as illustrated by a conversation with Mohammed recorded in the Hadith:
A man came to the Prophet and said, "O Allah's Apostle! Who is more entitled to be treated with the best companionship by me?"
The Prophet said, "Your mother."
The man said. "Who is next?"
The Prophet said, "Your mother."
The man further said, "Who is next?"
The Prophet said, "Your mother."
The man asked for the fourth time, "Who is next?"
The Prophet said, "Your father."
And though the Qur'an teaches that women are inferior and less intelligent than men, it also quotes Mohammed as saying that "paradise lies at the feet of the mother."
Instability is inherent in the Muslim view of family. Muslim men may marry four wives and have an unlimited number of concubines. Temporary marriage, which allows men to take on consorts at will, is also permitted in Muslim teachings. There is no similar provision for polygamy in Christianity, and the moral lesson of the Old Testament is that no instance of polygamous marriage turned out well.
In addition to encouraging men to take multiple wives and concubines, Muslim law makes it easy for husbands to divorce those wives and cast them out, along with their children, creating generation after generation of fatherless youth. Even when fathers don't divorce their wife (wives) having so many children by so many different women can make the father a distant figure for the children.
As we saw earlier, fatherlessness, instability and violence go hand in hand. Anyone who is surprised to see what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa just hasn't been paying attention. The history of Islam is a history of seething resentment and anger occasionally held in check by brutal dictatorships which are periodically cast down through violent overthrow, and often exploding in conquest and bloodshed.
How An Unstable View of Fatherhood
is Related to an Unstable Society
What happens in a culture where such unstable notions of family are the basis for society? What kind of social structure is generated when there is no concept of a loving heavenly father who adopts wayward children and gives them full rights as heirs of the kingdom? On what model will fathers without such a tradition base their fatherhood? We're starting to find out.
The history of political revolutions demonstrates that good intentions alone do not produce good outcomes. As we look at Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and other countries, we see a burgeoning population of displaced, unemployed, undereducated, fatherless youth yearning to be free.
Are these youth prepared, though, to establish the democracies and free economies they proclaim? Are they even capable of doing so without the wise and loving input of caring adults (or fathers)? Or will seven demons take the place of the one that is cast out?
Meanwhile, the demographic time bomb is ticking. Ironically, a faulty view of fatherhood doesn't seem to correlate with actual biological reproduction. Christians have stopped having babies. Muslims have not. Christianity is aging. Islam is youthful.
Whereas youth make up about 20% of the American population, more than 2/3 of the population of Iran is under 30, 25% under 15. Across the Middle East and North Africa, the average age is 20-25. In a matter of just a few years, the majority of Americans will be retired, and these other nations will be in their prime.
Demographics aren't necessarily destiny, but if they were, the future of the world will look a lot less like everyday life in America and a lot more like what is happening in the Middle East.
America's Dangerous Experiment
Still, while this article is clearly intended as a criticism of the Islamic worldview, it is also a call for reflection for Christians in the western context.
Islam offers a strong sense of identity (the nature of the world, purpose of life, and the meaning of history). Westerners may view the dominant narrative of Islam as barbarian and inherently violent, but no one questions that Muslims understand it and, when threatened, willing to act aggressively on it.
On the other hand, as my colleague John Stonestreet recently pointed out to me, America is engaged in its dangerous experiment to see if it can survive without any such dominant narrative of existence beyond the "self."
Middle Eastern Islam also offers a clear, if fractured, understanding of gender. American youth, on the other hand, are almost universally confused about masculinity and femininity.
If our leaders are wise, they'll openly reject those agendas that destabilize the family. They'll use their persuasive power to tell the truth about God's plan for the family and seek its restoration.
Social theorist Theodore Roosevelt Malloch has demonstrated that it is spiritual capital, not economic capital, that actually builds stable societies. And when people embrace virtues of compassion, forgiveness, perseverance, patience, courage, humility and self-control, and these values are then expressed in their actions and relationships, families become more stable and healthy, and markets and societies do too.
It's time to stop the experiment. Ideas have consequences right now, here on earth, and not just in the life hereafter.
