FATHER FICTION
Chapters for a fatherless generation
By Donald Miller. Hodder & Stoughton. 198 pages. £11.95
ISBN 978-1-444-7-01302
This is the story of an American who grew up in a single parent family and whose father left when he was very young. It is the story of how various men provided good role models for him in his teens and 20s, and what he learned by watching and copying.
It’s a moving story which highlights key areas where a father’s presence and example is vital to his son’s proper development. Things such as learning how authority works, being a man, making decisions, friendship, relating to women, integrity, work, how to avoid self-pity and forgiving others.
It is faith-based and undoubtedly Christian, but the biblical moorings are usually either indistinct or implicit. He’s appealing to a wide audience and wants to avoid being ‘preachy’. On his blog he says: ‘The best leaders aren’t the guys who go around telling people what to do. The best leaders are the guys who cast a vision and invite others into their story’ (http://www.donmilleris.com).
If you are looking for a clearly Bible-based book on Christian fatherhood, you’ll be disappointed. The impression the book gives is that the Christian faith is an excellent option but not perhaps a final necessity. The tone is overwhelmingly this world and man-centred. Though God is presented well as a loving Father, the doctrine is overplayed to the detriment of our understanding of him as just and our sin as disaster without the intervention of the Cross of Christ.
Nonetheless there are some useful insights, notably those in the chapters on dating and sex, and that on self-pity.
But let me not deride the role and appeal of such a timely book. He reminds us of the crucial role a father plays, not only in the family but in wider society, and how, to our shame, this role has been neglected in recent decades to the pain and detriment of millions. I’m grateful for the book, for it opens up discussion on a key area of suffering and on the present crisis of masculinity and fatherhood in our societies.
Stephen Trump,
for many years pastor/church planter in French-speaking Belgium with the Belgian Evangelical Mission
