Trinitas Blog

Last week I introduced the term father famine to this blog. The term I have only recently heard from my pastor; the idea the term denotes I have observed for years. The term fitly describes the absence of fathers and fathering in our culture. We have developed cultural amnesia, and one of the things we’ve forgotten, which is key to any culture, is fathering. By “we” I mean western culture generally, but to be more specific, I mean Christians seem to have forgotten the importance of fathering and, therefore, how to father. There is a dark irony in this Christian forgetfulness. The obvious irony is that fathering ought to be on our minds all the time because we speak of and look to God as our Heavenly Father; the subtler irony is that remembering is a predominant theme throughout Scripture.

On Father’s Day my pastor used the term “father famine” to describe the lack of fathers and fathering in our culture right now. Even though the truths bound up in this term are familiar to me as a watcher of culture, the term slapped me in the face—it was that shocking. Our culture is truly in the midst of a father famine. And it is not simply that we lack headship in families. No, the problem is much deeper: we don’t even understand what good headship is. We—all of us, the whole culture—have little vision for fathers or fathering.

A couple of weeks back I wrote about the need for parents to help their children mature spiritually so that their faith is not something they cast off as soon as they leave the home. Of course, there are lots of scriptural principles for our teaching our children to love God in word and deed. Two of my favorites are from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 6. The first is a promise of generational blessing to those who love God and keep His commandments; the second is a command to parents to teach our children God’s words and ways every minute of every day. Perhaps the most often quoted of these kinds of passages is Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” It is abundantly clear to me that even though we are supported in our work by the church and (if we are so blessed) the Christian school, the responsibility for training our children in the faith still rests with us as parents.

When Janice and I visited Trinitas Christian School at the invitation of Justice Ken Bell (father of three Trinitas alums) fourteen years ago, it wasn’t because we were looking for classical education. We were looking for Christian education to be sure, but we didn’t even know enough about classical education to ask a good question about it. Seeing was believing for us that day though, and one tour of the school during a normal day of classes convinced us that this classical education was worth a try.

So let’s imagine we’ve been recruited to play a game. We didn’t volunteer, we were recruited. Saying no wasn’t an option. In this game we get dropped off in a strange alternate reality where we understand nothing. The people are speaking our language, but they’re using a lot of words and phrases and references we don’t understand. They only laugh at us when we ask questions, but mostly they ignore us. There are a dozen of us so we have some comfort in our numbers, but none of us understands how to get along in this strange place. Before we were dropped off in this alternate reality, we were told that to win the game, to get back home, we must make it to the Good City, and to be careful along the way. We were given no map and no further instruction.

Excerpt 3 of 3 of Headmaster Gilley's address at Parent Orientation

Click for Excerpt 1 of 3.
Click for Excerpt 2 of 3.

We start by giving children a safe place to grow and mature and flourish in the warm glow of the Gospel so that they might prosper in a virtuous childhood, growing confident and bold in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, learning to laugh loud, boisterous belly laughs, and to revel in the joy of being sons and daughters of the King.

Excerpt 2 of 3 from Headmaster Gilley's address at Parent Orientation

Click for Excerpt 1 of 3.

In his book Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, a culture critique written for adults, Wilson says:

Part 1 of 3 of Headmaster Gilley at a Parent Orientation.

If I were to ask tonight, “Why are you here? Why have you brought your children to this school? Most of us would answer that we are here because Trinitas has a reputation for offering an excellent education, the kind of education that will get your child into a good college and then a good job someday. Also, many of us would say we are here because Trinitas is safe. We’ve all heard the stories from so many schools about sex and drugs and alcohol and violence, so we’ve beat a hasty retreat to a private Christian school where we hope to protect our children from that environment.