Being a father when you never had one

There is a baby asleep on your chest, or a teenager slamming a door, and you have no idea what a father is supposed to do now. Either you never had one to watch, or the one you had is exactly the man you are afraid of becoming. You are trying to draw a map of a country you have never seen.

Here is the comfort, and it is solid ground. You do not learn fatherhood from your father. You learn it from the Father. The pattern for what you are trying to be is not lost with the man who left or damaged by the man who stayed. It is in Scripture, it is in the way God has treated you, and it is available to you tonight. He is patient with beginners, because every father who ever loved his children well began as one.

Two fears, one root

Men in your position usually carry one of two fears, and sometimes both.

The first is the fear of repeating him. You hear his tone come out of your own mouth and go cold. You are terrified that what was done to you is somehow in your hands now, waiting to be done again.

The second is the fear of having no map at all. You never saw a man read a bedtime story, apologize to a child, or sit through a boring school concert. You are improvising everything, and improvising is exhausting.

Both fears come from the same place: the belief that fatherhood is passed down like eye color, and that you inherited a bad copy or none at all. Scripture says otherwise. Fatherhood comes down from above.

You learn fatherhood by watching the Father

The psalmist reaches for the best thing he knows about human fathers and then says God is like that, only more so.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.

Psalm 103:13

Compassion is the first thing named. Not authority, not discipline, not provision, though all of those matter. Compassion: a father who looks at his child’s weakness and is moved toward him, not away. If you never saw that in a man, you can still see it in God, because that is how He has treated you. Think of the times you have failed Him and He has not left. That is the pattern.

Jesus made the same argument from the other direction. He assumed even flawed fathers have some instinct for good.

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Luke 11:11–13

Read that carefully. Jesus says that fathers who are evil, His word, not a gentle one, still know how to give good gifts. He is not flattering you. He is telling you that the instinct to give your child bread instead of a stone is already in you, put there by God, and that your heavenly Father does the same for you, without limit. You are not starting from nothing. You are starting from the way He has fathered you. There is more on that in What it means that God is Father.

What He actually asks of fathers

If you are looking for the job description, it is shorter than you fear. Moses gave it to Israel before they entered the land.

These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts. And you shall teach them diligently to your children and speak of them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Deuteronomy 6:6–7

Notice where it happens. When you sit at home. When you walk along the road. When you lie down and when you get up. Not in speeches, not in programs, but in the ordinary moments of a day: the drive to school, the kitchen table, the last minute before the light goes off. Fatherhood is mostly showing up for those, with God’s words in your own heart first, and letting them leak out in ordinary sentences.

Paul adds one warning and one direction.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath; instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4

Do not provoke your children to wrath. If your father did that, you know exactly what it means: the constant criticism, the shifting rules, the anger that came out of nowhere. Paul says do not do that. Then he says bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, which is a way of saying: raise them the way the Lord is raising you, with correction that is never rejection and teaching that is always toward love. If you want to know how the Lord disciplines, there is an article on that, and it will steady you.

Small habits that make a father

Since fatherhood is built in ordinary moments, it helps to have a few ordinary habits. Here are three you can start this week.

Presence. Be in the room with your phone in another one. Ten minutes on the floor with a toddler, or ten minutes in the car with a teenager who does not want to talk, does more than you can measure. Your father may have been absent while present. You can be the opposite.

Blessing with words. Say to your child, out loud and regularly, things like: I love you, I am proud of you, I am glad you are mine. Many men never heard those words and find them almost impossible to say. Say them anyway, badly, until they come easily. Isaac blessed his sons; Jacob blessed his; the Father spoke over Jesus at the Jordan and called Him beloved (Matthew 3:17). A child needs to hear it from the man’s own mouth.

Saying sorry. You will get it wrong. You will raise your voice, miss the game, break the promise. The question is what you do next. A father who goes to his child and says, I was wrong, I am sorry, please forgive me, is teaching that child more about God than a hundred lectures. Your own father may never have apologized to you. You can end that line tonight.

Borrow some older fathers

You do not have to do this by instinct alone. The church is meant to be a family where older men teach younger men how to live (Titus 2:2, 6). Find a church where the Bible is opened and Jesus is honored as Lord, and then find one or two fathers twenty years ahead of you whose children still speak to them. Ask them to breakfast. Ask them what they wish they had known. Watch how they talk to their kids. Most of what you need to learn cannot be read; it has to be seen, and the Father has put men in His house so you can see it.

And pray, every day, something like this:

The map was never lost

You are not drawing a map of a country you have never seen. You are walking beside Someone who has been there all along, and He is showing you the ground one step at a time. He is your Father. He knows what a father is. And He is glad to teach a beginner.

Keep watching Him. Keep the words of Deuteronomy 6 in your heart so they can come out at the kitchen table. And let His family fill in what your own could not. Your child is not getting a copy of your father. Your child is getting you, and you have the Father to learn from.