I guess that I have been sensitive to “Father deficit” stories all my life.
This sensitivity has been heightened since writing my book on fatherlessness Good Bad No Dad?
Yesterday’s Desert Island Discs featured Dwanye Fields, the Jamaican explorer, who since 2024 is the UK’s Chief Scout. His mother was unable to cope with looking after him so he was brought up by his great grandmother. His father, who was not involved in his early life, lived very near Dwayne’s great grandmother and would ride past her house each day on his motorbike on the way to work.
The young Dwayne knew that this man was his dad, so he went outside each day to wave when he went past. Yet for all his enthusiastic waving there was no wave, wink or smile from his father in return. Finally, his great grandmother took Dwanye aside and explained that he meant nothing to his father. Dwayne said that something in him died that day.
Speaking about becoming a father himself to five children, Dwanye reflected on the fact that he did not have a role model for being a good father, but he did have one for being a bad father! He decided to take the bad role model and flip it around so that he would act in the opposite way.
One of the nightmares of all fatherless men is that that they will repeat the cycle of their own dysfunctional experience.
Life is about choices. We see this in the tragic story of Cain and Abel. Before the act of fratricide, Cain is graciously confronted by the Lord,
“Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis 4:5–7)
I was reminded of this verse when watching the recent BBC adaptation of William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. The main characters of the story all have a father deficit in one way or another. Piggy is an orphan, who has been brought up by his aunt. Jack, like many public-school boys at the time, seems to have parents who are both emotionally and geographically distant.
Piggy, who appears to be the conscience of the group, is a clear but unwelcome voice of order and morality in the face of chaos. Jack, by contrast, displays a cold, cruel streak that appears to be deaf to the voice of conscience and unable to show compassion.
Preachers need to recognise that people can be shaped by their backgrounds, but also provide the hope that a person does not need to be inevitably imprisoned by that background. The words of the Lord to Cain are amplified in the gospel words of Isaian 55:6–7:
“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.”
Photo: Creative Commons