A Powerful Faith Moment
Have you ever witnessed a moment and been overcome with emotion? It happened to me this weekend. It was a simple gesture. A dad hugged his son. Yet, it was in an unusual and once-in-a-lifetime setting for both of them. It took place right after the dad baptized his son. And for some unexplained reason my heart was filled with joy and my eyes began to water. It was powerful in both its simplicity and its meaning. It was a moment of faith.
As I pondered why it was so powerful, I came to the conclusion it was because that father was taking part in one of those moments that was never to be duplicated or repeated. He was given the privilege of taking part in a massively symbolic gesture with spiritual implications. For some cultures, such moments are part of their heritage that are regularly celebrated. Unfortunately, in our suburban culture it seems we have moved away from ritual and abandoned some critical aspects of our respective faiths.
You see, in my faith group we practice baptism by immersion. Some call us “dunkers” – as opposed to the “sprinklers” of other denominations. The significance is not in the form of expression, but rather the meaning behind the ceremony. This post is not about advocating one type of ritual above another or even one religion over another. It’s about a father anchoring his kids to something bigger and higher.
A Supernatural Experience
When that dad hugged his son, you could SEE and FEEL the gratitude and love for him. You could almost sense the father’s absolute joy that his son was growing to become a man of faith – a young man who would live beyond himself and for something more significant. I have had the privilege of baptizing two of my daughters. It’s almost a supernatural experience. When we raise our children in our faith, we give them an anchor that is immovable and immutable.
We all know a ship without an anchor and without power will drift. It will drift until disaster strikes. So goes the child that is raised apart from faith. I have friends and acquaintances from across the religious spectrum and I respect our differences while admiring their values. I also have many friends and colleagues who are choosing to raise their children with no faith and arguably, with no anchor. I do not discredit the dads and moms who work hard to instill values and morals in their children apart from any specific system of faith or religion. I just think they are setting their children up for catastrophe because there is no anchor and no bedrock upon which their parenting values rest.
When a child is raised in a home anchored to faith, they learn there is a purpose bigger than themselves. They discover they are part of a long line of followers who owe both their past and their future to the other members of the faith. The young children grow into adolescents who see purpose in the world around them and who aspire to integrate their faith and the increasingly secular culture around them. They then become adults who model the behaviors and lessons of the faith they observed as children. They become mentors and teachers of their faith.
A Bedrock of Faith Makes a Difference
Make no mistake, there is no guarantee that children raised in homes of a specific faith or religion will adhere to that faith when they become young adults. We know this from first-hand experience. Our oldest is now in college and free to do as he pleases when it comes to fellowship and worship. He may very well leave the faith of his childhood behind. Yet, somewhere beneath the layers of character and personality lies a bedrock of faith. What happens when there is nothing at the bottom of the footings?
I make no qualms that I am a Christian, albeit an extraordinarily imperfect and rough-around-the-edges one. Through time and trials, I have learned I am not here to judge or argue. I am simply called to love those around me like the Jesus of the Bible. I have also learned to respect significantly those men and women of other faiths that pursue them peacefully and diligently. In particular, I admire any father that stands firm in his faith and raises his daughters and sons to practice the same. Dads who model their faith and then seek to impart that faith to their children deserve our respect and our support so long as it is without malice. Anything else is not true faith or religion.
The power of that moment when the father raised his son from the water remains hard to describe. I suppose it simply comes down to love because at the end of the day, at the end of a life, “the greatest of these is love.” I challenge us all to evaluate where we stand in our faith and more importantly, how we model it for our children and our loved ones.
Stay the course dads! You’re making a difference.
Cheers,
Jeff