I was so appalled by a blog posted and celebrated on FB that I felt compelled to answer the horrifyingly inaccurate and inconsistent statements and conclusions it offers on spiritual fathering.
If you apply these ideas, you will not be a father at all.
The young man writing about fathering desperately needs a spiritual father to help him rewrite his blog. It is devastatingly unbiblical.
Point one: The writer says, “going too far in fathering” begins with “Presuming to know God’s will for someone else.”
I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. Wrong on point one. I’m trying to think about how a person could be more wrong about fathering.
It was evident as any Bible principle in plain sight that leaders recognize God’s will before their children do. You cannot give d anything to the contrary in the Bible. Paul gets a word from a leader about God’s will for his life. I could name the entire Bible in order and never find anything to back up number one.
“Presuming to know God’s will fit someone else is the entire basis for all discipling, fathering, eldering leadership in the kingdom of God.
Number one is dead wrong. In fact, the first principle of fathering is partnering with and representing the Father who reveals to fathers what He is doing so they can partner with and represent Him in producing His will in spiritual children.
Point two: He makes an outlandish accusation about fathering that is not fathering at all, doesn’t come close to fathering, and represents the reason we are moving into fathering to avoid the King Saul spirit in leadership. He says going too far in fathering includes “stripping people of their independence and autonomy.”
He is exaggerating to make an odd point about children imitating. This immature upon the spiritual disciple. Growing out of it cures the problem. Fathers do not cause this problem most of the time. In other words, this is a warning for what is not driving the need for fathering. So, it is a warning that moves people away from fathering because it assumes that fathering can lead to this condition. Fathering cannot lead to this condition.
The exaggeration or “going too far in fathering” never results in Pharaoh. To get to that place, we have to go down another road. So, the writer understands so little about fathering that he assumes the abuses of Pharaoh leaders come about because of excesses in fathering at the very time in kingdom history that Father is restoring fathering to avoid Pharaohism.
He gives an immature explanation based upon existential evidence misinterpreted. We always face this before spiritual adolescence, we have people doing this all day long who imitate leaders who are not their fathers.
The writer gets even more strange in distancing himself from the Bible concerning kingdom leadership. He simply throws the Bible into the sea on this one.
Point three: “When a large portion of your teaching is about submitting to authority,” you go too far in fathering.
Ignore the Bible some more when the most critical limitation we face in modern dysfunctional is submission to God and His order. This is a strawman exaggeration that assumes imbalance for being balanced.
“Trained in submission” is what Father does all day long! Hebrews 5 and 12. The most important of all fathering lessons are about enduring discipline through submission to earthly, Heavenly, and spiritual fathering.
Bonus: This is something he throws in for nothing, I guess. “Don’t ever identify yourself as someone’s spiritual father, or tell them that ‘God told you’ they are supposed to submit to you.”
Problem with making this statement is that includes in the initial misrepresentation of the Bible model, a follow-up clause independent and unrelated to the premise. It is illogical on its face. It exaggerates the first thought into a second thought that can never match the Bible premise of the first thought.
How in the wide world of Creation does anyone come to the conclusion that we do not know the fathers Father assigns to our lives, submit to them, know who they are, enter into fathering relationship with them, honor their role, and subject to their leadership in alignment with the Father? Completely illogical.
Do not say what Jesus, Paul, John, James, Hebrews, Jude, and Peter tell you to say. Act like being ignorant of reality, and the most basic foundation of kingdom culture is a mystery.
Then, if you do every actually acknowledge you know the name of your spiritual father, you instantly know that you “also think God told you that.” He assumes that knowing who your spiritual father is, and “God telling who your spiritual father is” are terrible errors.
Do we have a Bible, my friends? Do we not recognize anything Biblical about the kingdom and its culture? Do we even wish to entertain the maturity of the apostolic restoration or languish in charismatic Woodstock for another decade?
Get this right or fail to move into Reformation.
