Who needs a father figure these days? Nobody. Right? We’ve got social media. And celebrities who know what’s best for you and your kids. Yeah, right. As if.
About 10 years ago I wrote about a father figure TV show.
Way back in 1954, there was a family focused sitcom called “Father Knows Best.” It starred Robert Young as the father, and his wife was played by Jane Wyatt. This fictional couple had 3 kids, two daughters and one son. The situations (the “sit” part of sitcom) most times were problems one of the family member would have. And almost all of the time father really did know best. So, audiences got to see a very positive father figure.
Of course, that’s all just too cornball nowadays. No longer does it appear that father knows best in sitcoms or any other place in mainstream entertainment. And, way too often, the father in a modern day sitcom is the bumbling buffoon whose kids or wife or best friend have to come to his rescue.
Hardly the kind of father figure you could trust to give you good advice.
Well, I’d like you to consider how we humans are more like the kids from “Father Knows Best” than some contemporary sitcom. And, for the sake of argument, I’ll present my Heavenly Father, God, as the father of us all. (By the way, He truly is, but I’ll save that for another time)
Anyway…
We “kids” seem to always think we have all the answers. We know best. And we argue with one another. We steal from each other. We cheat on tests. Plus, we make terrible messes.
Then, we think only WE can clean up our messes. And our Father doesn’t have a clue what we’re going through or have gone through. How could He? He hasn’t walked a mile in our moccasins. Right?
But we forget something pretty important.
He was here long before we were. Hmm…do you suppose He could possibly have any experience we could learn from? Or knowledge we don’t yet possess? Or mechanisms in place that can provide solutions to our predicaments?
Well, check out this example of what I mean.
In 2010, “kids” made a huge mess in the Gulf of Mexico. You might recall the BP oil spill that leaked almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. And it was sort of like kids playing in dad’s pool and spilling a bunch of gunk into it. The kids sprang into frantic action to find something to clean it up. Then, they remembered, hey, mom has some dish detergent that the commercial said cleans up oil. Quick, grab the bottle and pour the whole thing in the pool.
What the kids didn’t realize was that their father had thought ahead. When he bought the pool, he made sure the installers included state-of-the-art self-cleaning microbes that could degrade and even eradicate the gunk. So, the kids, in their frantic efforts to leave dad out of the equation (and to keep him from even knowing about it) actually made the problem worse. Or, at the very least, made it take longer for the microbes to do their best.
(see an example of what I’m talking about here)
This simplistic scenario is to illustrate a point.
This world, with its “ecosystem,” and even every creature in it, is here by design.
Our Father designed it. He did a brilliant job of creating a smorgasbord of things to eat. And a huge variety of creatures who can make sure it’s eaten. His architectural, mathematical, and scientific brilliance can be seen in everything from the giant whale down to the single cell.
If only we could all learn to trust His brilliance. And if only we could all see how His failsafe systems, with their awe-inspiring redundancies, prove how much He loves us.
Yeah, if only we could all love the ultimate Father Figure in return. Because He truly does know best.
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