“The harvest we wake up to tomorrow is entirely dependent on the seeds that we sow today.”
These were the first words from Freddie Scott II at the panel in Brentwood,TN last week when I asked him if the current trend of this “new normal” could be reversed (for “new normal,” read Part One). Scott, author of The Dad I Wish I Had, went on to echo the conventional wisdom of many who have waded through, not only the research, but the lives of those trapped in the generational cycles we label “at-risk.” It is here that the consensus usually surfaces around the importance of fathers and the benefits of two-parent families.
However, Scott rightly pointed to the creative anthropology behind the consensus that is often missing in the conventional wisdom of our day: “My lens has been focused on the family because that is what God focuses on. When you talk about all of these issues [crime, teen pregnancy, fatherlessness], if we can get the model of family to reflect what God created, it fixes all this other stuff.”
Show Them How to Win
Scripture lays out God’s design for a family where the role of a father and a mother are complimentary as they share, within the covenant of marriage, the joys, struggles and responsibilities of caring for one another as well as their children. There is strength and fortitude in this design. It is not good for man to be alone. Two are better than one.
Today, too many young men are backing away from marriage and fatherhood. According to Scott, it is because many are growing up without a father and consequently, they are ill prepared and they know it. Woven into the former NFL player’s words were football illustrations of how an athlete is groomed, taught, and prepared to meet the challenge on the field:
As men, we are naturally driven to focus on areas where we know we can be successful but that success happens as a result of being taught and mentored. Someone showed us how to win. I was groomed. I was prepared. I knew what was expected of me. It may not be easy and I may have to punt sometimes, but I’m playing the game.
If we are going to be the village – one that works to restore and strengthen the family as God designed – then we need to show young men how to win in the home.
We cannot expect to harvest different fruit without sowing different seeds. Let’s start by doing the work required to cultivate our own strong families and live that out before others. In doing so, we are sowing seeds of hope for a whole generation.