The value of the father as a spiritual guide (Part I. Education)

This world has run out of paradigms. There are not many people who are role models. Considering Christ as a model of fatherhood, we are the parents who should fulfill that role. Today there is a profound identity crisis throughout society (and people do not know what it is, or the role it plays in the social sphere), and the individual is fluctuating when it comes to showing convictions. For this reason, the family becomes the stronghold, the fortress and tower where the most elementary values can best be taught to the children. Of course we are talking about the values of the Kingdom of God, of the Christian life.

People talk about values rather hastily without realizing that values are based on convictions. When in a society there are no deep convictions about the priority issues that belong to life, there is a danger that the values that it upholds will be diluted between riots of slogans and empty promises. Listen well dad, you are the father to whom God has assigned the sacred privilege of being the spiritual guide of your children! After God, as a father figure, the paradigm of your children must be you!

We have given our children to society and their education to the schools where they study and the teachers who teach them. Some other educator who interacts with your children on a day-to-day basis will sooner or later - if you don't instruct him - become an obligatory reference for them; If you do not guide them, if you do not become their paradigm and example in the fear of God, they will imitate them - including their vices and God knows what convictions - and headaches will come for those fathers (and mothers) who trusted the education of children only to the institutions and their philosophies. This is the danger of having taken God out of the schools. Better look at it as the immense opportunity the Lord gives us to fulfill the true role of father in the family: that of loving, educating and disciplining them without exasperating them. As the Word warns us: “Parents, do not exasperate your children, lest they become discouraged (Col 3.21).

I wish to emphasize the concept of educating. Secular education aims to grow in knowledge and skills so that one day society will recognize you for what you do. In Christ, the education that parents must impart to their children has the objective that they grow in obedience. We grow to better obey the Lord with conviction of faith. Our Lord is much more interested in what you are than in what you do. Show and teach (repeat) to your children what the love of God has done in you and in the family and they, sooner or later, will understand it. The most terrible rebellion of a prodigal son, declines when they see and experience firsthand that their father is a man of God.

Dad, more than being a provider and protector of your children, which is great, the Lord wants you to be the first light that reflects him in the home. Your children will imitate you, if not today, it will be tomorrow, but they definitely will. Just as Christ obeyed the Father, he imitated him at the same time in everything: his Word was the Father's word, His work was the work commissioned by the Father, His love for humanity, it was the Father's dream of redemption in his son Jesus Christ, for a world that collapses without God.

When referring to Abraham, the Lord said: “I have chosen him to instruct his children and his family, so that they stay in the way of the Lord and practice what is just and right. In this way the Lord will fulfill what he has promised ”(Gen 18:19).

God bless you!

To be continued ... Part II (Discipline)