I was reading the culled news on Google News this morning and bumped into an editorial from The Christian Post that’s left me aghast. Written by Kenny Luck, the line that got me was this:
Today, virtually every societal problem, social injustice and behavioral abnormality can be traced back to absent, delinquent, misbehaving, drunk, or sexually immoral dads…
When I first read this piece, I figured that it was some male-bashing woman who has had a rough go of it in her life. But rather to my surprise, it turns out Luck is the men’s pastor at Saddleback Church and author of a bunch of books on men and manhood. Is he blameless, then, casting that proverbial — and Biblical — first stone?
What’s more surprising is that in an editorial where he quotes all sorts of distressing statistics from the Girl Scouts Research Institute [without attribution, but I’ll link back: Physical and Mental Health] he then lays the blame purely and 100% on fathers.
His comment: “The fact is men are appointed by God to make our children secure.”
Which leads to the question: what’s the purpose of women and mothers?
And, for that matter, is it also the man’s fault — the father’s fault? — when a woman initiates divorce, as more and more do nowadays? Well over 50% of divorces are initiated by the woman nowadays. Explained how?
I don’t deny that there are a lot of guys who really need help figuring out how to be men, how to be good husbands and how to be good fathers, but to say that all the ills of our modern day world are our fault as fathers is asinine, if not downright idiotic. For the record there are also plenty of bad moms, clueless moms, frustrated, exhausted and angry moms and neglectful moms. Oh, and misbehaving, drunk and sexually immoral moms too.
It really does take a village, Mr. Luck, and that village has both men and women, mothers and fathers, good and bad. If you’re going to entreat people to become better parents, why not ensure that you’re offering your advice to both genders? Otherwise you’re just an apologist for your gender, and I’m pretty sure we men don’t need someone like you placing all the blame for our modern world — for better and worse — on our doorsteps.
I mean, surely he’s not representative of all modern Christians, is he?
The truth is most Christian churches preach some version of this. They preach that if a man is a biblical leader, father, husband, etc, then God will ensure that all the other pieces fall into place. So after boiling it down, yes the churches teach that men are the root of all the worlds problems, because if men were doing what God commanded then everything would just be rosy.