Wellborn Methodist Church–Wellborn, Florida

Pastor Larry’s message for June 21, 2026

Our appointed readings this morning warn us of the potential suffering that can come from following God, that can come from following Jesus. But we are told that God will be with us in the midst of our suffering. And especially the reading from the Psalm and from Jeremiah promise that ultimately God will set everything right.

And since it is Father’s Day today, I wanted to use that as a springboard to thinking about parenting and fatherhood. Being a parent, being a father is also full of great joy and deep pain. 

My son and his wife are expecting their third child now. But at one time they were questioning having a family. I told my son that it was their decision, but as a hospice chaplain, the people that seemed the saddest were those who had no children, and those who were completely estranged from their children.

But as I said, today is Father’s Day when we recognize fathers. We all just prayed the Lord’s Prayer, where we recognized God as Father. Because of a tradition that goes back before our Bibles had chapters and verses, monks would identify a Psalm, or in this case a prayer, by the first few words of the passage. 

In Latin, the Lord’s prayer was called the “Pater noster.” If you grew up Roman Catholic, you may remember that. The English translation of that is, the “Our Father.”

Calling God, “Father,” matters. Jesus again and again referred to God as “Father,” and he also directed his followers to refer to God as Father as well. When we have had a difficult human father, it is hard to see God as our Father in a positive light. Yet, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Moses, while certainly existing beyond any physical gender – as though He had a body, predominantly self-identified as masculine. And he did this at a time when female deities, mother goddesses, were accepted and worshipped by the nations all around God’s people.

Even through the New Testament times, goddesses were worshipped – recall that Paul’s preaching was opposed in the city of Ephesus by the worshippers of the goddess Artemis. So it is not unimaginable that, had the God of the Old Testament chosen to, He could have revealed Himself as female.

And thinking of human fathers, in the book of Genesis, the blessing of the Patriarch, the blessing of the father was cherished and eagerly sought after by the sons, and by mothers for their sons. Since Rachel was blessed by her family in Genesis 24:60, and Ruth by her community in Ruth 4:11 (and neither of these women had living fathers), I am confident that fathers in Biblical times also blessed their daughters.

Now there is a popular movement to remove any trace of gender from God, and so Our Father in heaven, becomes, “Our Parent” in heaven. And there is another movement to cast out the patriarchs, and mail deities, and to instead cast the God of the Scriptures only as female. And so, you will find the Lord’s prayer recast as “Our Mother in heaven.”  But of course, neither of these find support in Scripture or either Jewish or Christian tradition.

On the other hand, it’s true that at one time in Western society men and masculinity were enshrined as the ideal, and women were delegated unfairly and literally to merely a supporting role… …Except in child-rearing that is. For generations, reflecting our society, courts almost automatically granted custody of children to their mothers, and not to their faithers in a divorce.

I have read that some of this came from psychological studies in the mid 20th century, when most mothers stayed home with their children while the father’s worked outside the home, routinely reported that fathers had no significant role or impact on the development of children. 

In those fifty plus years, our society has changed considerably. Now women run corporations. In sheer numbers, women dominate the classrooms in law school, and for about a decade there are more women in American colleges than there are men.

And in the past decades it has been publicly proclaimed by many in the feminist movement that no woman needs a man, and that children don’t need fathers either. The conclusion was that men were not part of the solution, but rather were the problem. Accordingly, the image of father in American TV has made the path from idealized father in “Father Knows Best” of the early 1960’s to the useless father in “Married with Children,” on the 2010’s, and so many other situational comedies.

Think about how it’s expressed in commercials. Unless it is a car commercial, or a beer commercial, what is the image of men and fathers portrayed in most TV commercials? If the commercial is targeted to women, usually the man is portrayed as an idiot, a bumbler, or as cutely incompetent.

It is also expressed in our holidays. Mother’s day was established in 1914.  Father’s day was established 52 years later, in 1966.  Many times more Mother’s day cards are sold each year than Father’s day cards. The story is told of a prison ministry that provided a large number of mother’s day cards for prisoners to send to their mothers. It was a huge success. But when they provided cards for father’s day, only a handful were taken.

And the sheer number of gifts and the amount of money spent on mother’s day gifts significantly exceed that spent on Father’s day gifts. In 2023 it was $35.7 billion on mother’s day verses $22.9 billion on father’s day.

So, could it be that there really is no valid role for men or for fathers in our modern society? Do fathers have no value.

Then, what does all this mean for the Biblical notion of men, of fathers as being responsible for their families, and of masculinity in general? Is the Biblical model outdated?

Dads, do you have any role to play in the lives of your children? Do you have any positive impact on them at all?

Several years ago, there was an article in the New York Times. The author, psychologist, Jane Mattes concluded that fathers could be useful, but since more and more women had college degrees and could therefore support a child on their own, women don’t need a husband to manage a household. She continued that children were more resourceful that we give them credit for and they can find ways of meeting their needs through many influential people in their lives, and no, they don’t need to have a father in their lives.

And admittedly some, perhaps many, men have been brutal jerks, abusing their wives and their children. And statistically men are responsible for most of the violence in society, but recently women are making gains there too.

I would maintain that anything in life that has the capacity for tremendous good, has an equal capacity for tremendous harm.

As I ponder that I think of things as complicated as medications, and as simple as water that gives life and floods that destroy life, and fire that cooks food and destroys houses and forests. I think of relationships, like marriage. And dare I say it, I think of masculinity and fatherhood. 

There is a capacity for tremendous good, and therefore there is an equal capacity for tremendous harm.

There are two ways to tackle this issue of whether fathers are important. We can take a philosophical approach as Dr. Mattes did, and reason our way to a conclusion, or we can take an empirical approach and look at the data for children raised with fathers and children raised without fathers.

Or, as believers we can take a third way, and accept what the Bible says – that fathers are important, and should take the lead in their families. And the statistical evidence, the empirical evidence bears that out.

Even a simple collection of statistics contrasting the achievement of children from homes having the presence of a father, and homes with no father is startling. These statistics have been around for decades, but frankly, until very recently, our society has chosen to ignore them because they didn’t fit the story line they wanted to hear.

Are you ready for this?

• 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes – 5 times the average.
• 85% of children with behavior disorders are from fatherless homes – 20 times the average (data from Center for Disease Control)
• 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average. (Data from the National Principals Association Report).
• 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father (Data from US department of Health and Human Services 1999)

85% of all youths in prison in Texas come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average (data from Texas department of corrections)

Stunning, isn’t it?  Now much of this is older data, and admittedly, that data was mostly published by conservative sources. 

But there is newer data from more liberal sources.

On June 18, 2017 National Public Radio (hardly a conservative organization) broadcast an interview with Claudio Sanchez, an NPR commentator. He also provided some interesting statistics. 

He said “children are four times more likely to be poor if the father is not around.” He also maintained that fatherless youths are twice as likely to drop out of school as are children from homes with a father. He noted that “Girls are twice as likely to suffer from obesity without the father present.” And he added, “They’re four times more likely to get pregnant as teenagers.”

The Huffington Post featured an article by Dr. Gail Gross back in 2014.  It’s title: “The Important Role of Dad”      

Dr. Gross wrote “Your child’s primary relationship with his/her father can affect all of your child’s relationships from birth to death, including those with friends, lovers, and spouses.  Those early patterns of interaction with father are the very patterns that will be projected forward into all relationships…forever more: not only your child’s intrinsic idea of who he/she is as he/she relates to others, but also, the range of what your child considers acceptable and loving.”  

More recent research has been based on asking teenagers to report if there was a father figure in their life and if they rate the relationship as good, average, or poor. They then correlated that reporting with the teenagers’ academic, and social performance.

I found the same research data appearing in articles in Psychology Today, Parenting Magazine, and the Atlantic. Teens who rated their relationship with their father as poor had similar performance with teens from homes without a father. But if the teens reported the relationship as “good,” or even as “average,” whether girls or boys, their performance was much higher. Their grades were much better, they had more self–confidence, and they were less likely to get into trouble with school authorities or the law.

But the researchers then went on to ask “why?”

In a nut shell, they observed that fathers simply related differently to their children than mothers did.

Fathers played rougher with their children than mothers did. The researchers said that children learned the limits of what is acceptable and self-control of their emotions and actions.

Fathers encouraged their children to take risks in play and socially (mothers were more likely to stress safety and protection). 

Physically the father’s tended to stand behind their children in a challenging situation, urging them forward, mothers, the researchers said, tended to stand in front of their children, between the children and the challenging situation, protecting them.

The researchers also found that children with fathers in the home were significantly less likely to be subjected to sexual assault or abuse. 

It is speculated that fathers were more physically intimidating to potential abusers than mothers were – and also that two parents were together simply more aware of potential threats than a single parent of either gender. It also known that often pedophiles will take up with single moms to gain access to their children. 

The researchers also noticed that fathers were more consistent with their discipline than mothers were, and that because of that, children saw involved fathers as having more authority than their mothers.  Mothers, they said, were more likely to negotiate and bargain over issues of discipline.

True to the Spirit of our Age many writers were speculating that the parenting differences are due solely to socialization. 

Having watched children, even very small children at play, I truly think that parenting differences are rather a component of our gender differences. Even the brains of men and women are physically “wired,” differently! Men are generally larger than women, and so men’s brains are larger than women’s brains, but the cells of women’s brains are more connected than the cells of men’s brains. 

The Child and Family Research Partnership is an arm of the University of Texas. They summarized this new research like this:

“Involved fatherhood is linked to better outcomes on nearly every measure of child wellbeing, from cognitive development and educational achievement to self-esteem and pro-social behavior.”  

Children who grow up with involved fathers are: 

• 39% more likely to earn mostly A’s in school, 
• 45% less likely to repeat a grade, 
• 60% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school, 
• twice as likely to go to college and find stable employment after high school, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, 
• and 80% less likely to spend time in jail.”

You see, Dads, you really do matter to the wellbeing of your children!

Now the point of all of this is not to figure out whether moms are better parents than dads, or dads are better parents than moms. That is not even a helpful question.

The point is that children do better in life when both mom and dad are part of their lives – it’s the way that God designed families to function.

Moms, you are important, you always will be – and our culture has never challenged that, but Dads, you are vitally important too!

And in the present climate of our society, this is an oddly radical, even disrupting concept – even though thousands of years of culture and civilization are based upon it!

I would also remind us that there is an enemy of our souls – and that enemy desires to corrupt and destroy every relationship that God created for good, and marriage, family, and therefore the role of father is likely at the top of list, just behind our relationship with God.

Dads, don’t let the world tell you that your influence is inconsequential in your family. Your positive presence, or your absence, is consequential for your children. So…

• Love your wife. (even if you are divorced – show respect toward the mother or the father of your children while in the presence of your children)
• Be involved with your children. 
• Be involved with them, still, even if they are grown. 
• Be involved even if they have children of their own. 
• Be involved with your sons and encourage them to be involved with their children.

It is never too late to bless your children!

I encourage you to speak literal blessings over your children, even your adult children and grandchildren – especially you dads, but also you moms

A great way to start that is “May God bless you with….” And then say whatever you want God to bless them with. But please always include – if you kids will stand for it – something like, “May God bless you with a heart that seeks after His heart.”

As a hospice chaplain I was once called out to a home where a man in his 90’s had died just a half an hour earlier. He was a WWII vet – deck crew on an Aircraft Carrier in the Pacific Theatre. His two sons were in their 70’s and seated across from me at the kitchen table. They both admired their father greatly and told me about his military service. I asked them about their relationship with their father, and if he were proud of them and what they had accomplished. 

Both of them burst into tears and said that just two weeks ago, for the first time in their lives, their dad had told them that he loved them and was proud of them. I was happy for them that they finally heard their father say he was proud of them. But I was sad that they had to wait until they were seventy years old, and their father near to death, to hear that.

The enemy of our souls, and therefore our world, seem to be bent upon destroying the very values that formed and shaped our civilization. Among these values are chastity, marriage, masculinity, fatherhood, God, and also the Fatherhood of God. And our civilization is slowly reaping a grim harvest of damaged and ruined lives. And I fear most have closed their eyes to it. But as Christians we are not of this world. And our eyes are open.

Do you remember what I said earlier, that anything in life that has the capacity for tremendous good, has an equal capacity for tremendous harm? Dads, when we fail to parent our children well, fail to parent them with a masculine strength, and with a masculine love, it’s as though we break their legs and make them drag themselves through life. And they may struggle to have a positive sense of God as Father. But, when we do our roles well, when we father them with strength and love, we give our children wings, we give them the chance, the opportunity, to rise up and soar!       

©️2026 Rev. Lawrence O’Connell