Why I will no longer tell my kids to "be good"

"Be good."

I heard that line spoken tonight as my wife and I watched the end of Deep Impact, a film about survival and death in the face of an Extinction Level Event -- a cataclysmic impact with Earth by a comet.  I enjoy it for how it causes one to introspect.  I enjoy the acting overall -- I love Robert Duvall, and I think Téa Leoni is a very underrated actress.

I'd issue a spoiler alert here, but the movie was from before Y2K was a major concern.

I love the fact that Morgan Freeman, as President of the United States, at one point tells the nation that "I believe in God" (and I love the irony of the fact that he actually played God in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty) and that "I believe that God hears all prayers, even though sometimes the answer is no" (the second one is a slight paraphrase).  It is refreshing to hear such a line from Hollywood, despite the fact that we need to look back to the late '90s for God to be mentioned in some sort of a reverent manner in a film.

But this post is not about the two hours of post-editing, post-production film.  It's about one second -- roughly the time it takes to say the words, "be good."  They were uttered by a space-mission captain via video feed to his roughly eight-month-old son, moments before finalizing a mission from which he would never return.

It made me think of how weak that statement is.

Five Fatherhood Fundamentals, Part Two: Know Yourself

This five-part series examines five fundamental, yet absolutely critical, fatherhood concepts.  This is not an all-inclusive list, but it represents counterpoints to five of the most severely damaging mistakes made by fathers today.

In Part One, we explored Knowing God.

Social media has done something spectacular to the world today: it has essentially stripped everyone of their identities.  It is not that it has made everyone bland.  It is that it has forced everyone to want to be just like everyone else.  It has taken "keeping up with the Joneses" to extreme levels.

What used to be, as a result of cable television and MTV, a desire by many to be like the latest celebrity, has evolved into everyone trying to top everyone else.  The best clothes.  The best shoes.  The latest cell phone.  You have the newest iPad?  I guess I need to go get one too!

It is no wonder that retail sales of non-essential goods has skyrocketed over the course of the last ten years.  Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, hi5, etc.  They have created an instantaneous need for the next big thing by each and every person that it has resulted in two things: a global lack of identity, and levels of personal debt that are shameful and devastating.

Five Fatherhood Fundamentals, Part One: Know God

This five-part series examines five fundamental, yet absolutely critical, fatherhood concepts.  This is not an all-inclusive list, but it represents counterpoints to five of the most severely damaging mistakes made by fathers today.

If you want to emulate someone, you learn about them.  You learn their behaviors, their attitudes, their way of talking to people.  You learn about who they are.

So it stands to reason that, in order to be a good father, we would emulate the father.

Through the Bible, God gives us a blueprint for being a solid father.  He starts early, and demonstrates often.

The Influence Vacuum

It's ten o'clock: do you know where your children are?

It's possible the first time that or a similar statement was spoken was in the classic Scottish tale of Wee Willie Winkie.  It's possible it was Irv Weinstein, once the news director of WKBW in Buffalo, New York.  But it's not who said it that matters; it is what is being said.  And it may be the most important question you ever have to answer for your kids, regardless of the time.

Ask yourself this: when is the last time you can truly say you influenced your children?  Was it this morning at the breakfast table?  Last night, shooting hoops in the driveway?  A week ago before Sunday school?

The sad reality is that many parents can't answer that question, and many don't care.  Many parents today are content to allow the school system, friends, friends' parents, even television to have more influence over their kids than they do themselves.  More often than not, it is the father who lacks the ambition to sway his kids' hearts.  That is because men today have been stripped of a few critical things that grant that ambition in the first place.  And it is resulting in what I call the Influence Vacuum.

The meaning of Father Above

"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." -Proverbs 22:6

"The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him." -Proverbs 23:24

"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4

Fatherhood is not easy.  If it seems that way, wait five minutes.  It's a simple fact that being a father carries with it a great degree of difficulty, no matter how you slice it.

Think about it: if a man chooses to walk out on his kids -- as has happened with astonishing and appalling regularity in our modern world -- he carries with him a lifetime of guilt, whether he knows it or not.  He shoulders the responsibility for how his kids turn out, and statistics show that it is not likely to end well for those children as they reach adulthood.  Assuming they get there at all.

If a man accepts his responsibility as a father but chooses to raise his kids in a home without God, he is not likely to receive much in the way of Holy help.  God is funny like that: tell him you want to do it on your own, either by explicitly turning your back on Him or ignoring the signs that show beyond doubt that He is real, He is powerful and He loves you, and He will let you give it your best shot.  And the man that chooses this path is going toil endlessly, working his fingers to the bone, generally being the greatest Hell-bound man anyone could ever meet.  And all that to end up turning out some well-meaning young adults who know little or nothing about the salvation of Christ.  You know that whole thing about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions?

And if a man chooses to raise his kids in a Godly home, accepting and embracing his role as the head of his household, and has the support of a Christian wife who also embraces her role in the home, he -- and she, and they -- will face attacks from Satan at every turn, trying to find some way to throw that wonderful home into godless disarray.  He will be attacked himself, and will have "only" prayer in his arsenal while he watches his children face their own endless flood of attacks.

And, when it is all said and done,  he is quite likely to turn out a new generation of Godly men and women.

Three distinct choices.  Three distinct outcomes.  But there's one little catch: only one of them has an eternal reward.