If you are looking for tips about fathering then I wouldn’t suggest the Bible. Frankly the examples aren’t good. And the main exemplars for Christians – namely Jesus and Paul and the rest of the disciple gang either didn’t have kids or didn’t talk about them.

That said, here’s a few biblical tips:

Picking a favourite child from amongst your children is a very bad idea (ask Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Joseph). It’s not only bad during your lifetime, but in theirs (and maybe their children’s) too.

The corollary to that is: try to be fair at all times. And – and this isn’t in the Bible – your wife or partner is a good person to consult with about fairness.

This leads me into a brief comment on the whole dysfunctional system of patriarchy, with its privilege and favourites. This system led wives to vie for position, and position for their children, and then siblings to vie with each other for position and privilege. The whole notion of equality of status – with dignity, affection, and respect in the mix - between a man and a woman, between two partners, between two parents, didn’t exist.

The closest the Bible gets to that is ‘love one another’ (John 13). And that is one of the best parenting tips there is: love your partner/wife/husband, and show it, and live it; and then your kids might see the quality of love that makes for happiness, and replicate some of it in their lives. You hope.

Hope is a big thing in the Bible. Probably because life was tough – short lifespans, poverty, war, fire and brimstone, you name it. So hope for a better tomorrow was something to hold on to. Remember though in most of the Bible there is no belief in an afterlife; so hope was seen as trying to make things better for your children (through whom you would live on). Not too dissimilar from today. And like today, the biblical characters seemed to put more importance on an inheritance of positions, possessions, and their power, than on kindness, compassion, and nurture. And the consequences were a mess.

Children seem to replicate their dad’s actions more than his words. Not that words are unimportant.  But I suspect it was the hug and the hospitality which spoke the forgiveness that the prodigal remembered long after his dad was dead.

The story with the prodigal in it is a rare New Testament example of fathering, and many a sermon has been preached on it. The fathering bits that stand out for me is the dad’s seeming ability not to take offence (or to hide it well), his commitment to the relationship between his sons, and the difficulty of trying to be both loving and fair to all.

For those who extoll God as “father,” you have some problems. God is quite erratic throughout the Bible: seemingly ordering murder & genocide, picking favourites, disregarding abuse, etcetera. There is not much, if anything, recorded of God saying, “I love you just as you are,” or “You are a wonderful human being, and I love your creativity and independent thinking.”

The affirming of children is rare in the Bible - which probably accounts for a lot of the dysfunctional relationships and ongoing violence. Children were largely nobodies until adulthood. If you’re treated like a nobody, like a dog to be trained, then it is much harder when you’re an adult to treat everybody like somebodies, including that silenced child who is still inside you.

That reminds me, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ is not a proverb about hitting kids. The ‘rod’ [a ‘ruler’] is the rule of Law, namely the Torah. The proverb means: if you don’t teach your child the Torah, your child will suffer. In our secular context maybe we could translate this as: ‘If you want to influence your child’s future, show them and teach them about love: its breadth, its beauty, and its cost.’

There is only one Bible story I can think of about an adult standing on the side of children and bearing the cost of it. And that’s the gospel reading today from Mark with the well-known phrase “Let the little children come unto me.”  The question to ask is, ‘What was stopping them coming to Jesus?’, and the answer is not just the disciples but that whole mind-set about children being nuisances and nobodies, and best seen and not heard (and when adults are together probably best not seen either).  

Another important thing in this story is Jesus touching and blessing them – which was a form of owning, identifying with, and acknowledging and authorising these children for life and its abundance.  

And lastly Jesus, as Jesus would do, tipped the disciples upside down by saying that children are the exemplars of those who are part of the empire of God. ‘You want to know how to be a disciple of mine, look at the children’. ‘You want to be great, act and think like a child’. ‘You want to know about the love I’m speaking about, follow the example of children’. And scholars, and church-goers, have ever since tried to work out what this means.

I think it ties in with the part of our tradition that says God comes among us as a child. I think that takes a lifetime to understand.

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The Bob Fulghum tale we’ve just heard about the dad and daughter and chocolate sales is a fun story about fathering – albeit from a different cultural context– and has a happy ending. But it also of course points to the deeper question of our father’s influence on us, for good or ill. Fathers, like mothers, not only share their genes with us – affecting what we look like, sound like, and are susceptible to – but also shape things like our confidence (or lack of it),our approach to challenges, and our view of people foreign to us.

Confidence can be hard to measure. In this story the daughter was probably assessed by her father as lacking the confidence to sell her chocolate bars. Yet the ending(‘MY FATHER MADE ME DO THIS’ sign) suggests the daughter had the confidence andcourage to differentiate from her father. Similarly some people present to the world a very confident demeanour which can be an outward disguise of significant hidden anxieties. We are complex people.

One thing we learn early is how to hide our fears. But like hide-and-seek the point of the game is actually to be found, not stay hidden forever. Some of us hide too well, and our hidden fears eat away at our bodies and minds. We need to learn to trust. And that can be hard if our early developed internal belief systems tell us trusting is not a good idea.

What a child needs is the security of at least one parent or caregiver who is always there for them, always believes in them, and helps pick them up when they stumble. It’s about being wanted and loved by those who parent us. It is from security that confidence, and also generosity and hope, can arise.  

The theory underlying this is surprisingly theological. We do not exist and then belong; rather belonging is integral to existence. Our sense of self emerges in a context of belonging. John Zizioulas, a Greek Orthodox theologian, reflecting the tradition of Eastern Christianity, once wrote a book called Being As Communion which said a similar thing.  Zizioulas though then extrapolates into god thoughts – the idea that the ‘being’ of God is ‘communion’ – or in other language: god is not an autonomous individualised being but being itself, like a connective integrating belonging energy pulsating through life. This is the God that is relationship.

The ethic arising from such theology, which is now part of many therapeutic and social work practices, is that individuals are part of systems like families,and to treat/help/relate to the individual it is best to work with the system in which they belong.

Confidence in belonging forms the basis of how we face challenges. Will fear be ourprimary response, or are we willing to try to put aside our fear?

The father in the Fulghum story tries multiple sales strategies in order to achieve his dual goals of selling the chocolate and inspiring his daughter in the ways of income generation. He doesn’t though realise that his daughter will develop her own strategy: namely by humour appeal to people’s own experience of being parented.

Confidence in belonging also helps us to be hospitable and generous, in both our thoughts and practice, to new people and new ideas. This too is often about managing ourfears.

Just as showing and giving children the experience of love is vitally important, so is showing children and giving them the resources to manage their fears

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