As I was reading this month’s Golf Digest (September issue), I came across the article 10 Rules On Being An Athlete. The author makes a comment about obesity that stood out:
“Every week, I make a point of finding an overweight youngster in the gallery
and taking his father aside. I tell these fellows, privately and very politely, ‘My
son is a diabetic, and my father was a diabetic. When you get diabetes, you take
insulin twice a day, and that doesn’t stop it from affecting your eyes, your liver,
your limbs and everything else. Please get your son on a good diet now.’”
Now it is not the concern for obesity that stood out to me as much as this author’s approach: the father has a God-given responsibility over his son that he needs to exercise. In a time when fathers evade their responsibility and often children are raised without a masculine influence, this is a much needed challenge. Our culture also promotes such an idea of femininity that men are often totally emasculated in their role as leader. I’m not sure if the author is a Christian or has a biblical worldview behind his approach but it was quite refreshing to read.
I think of Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians: “And fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4). If a man writing for Golf Digest has the courage to confront other men when they are slacking in fatherly responsibility, how much more should we men in the church do the same and take biblical masculinity seriously? How much more should we take our privilege as a Christian father seriously? If we neglect this, we are encouraging our son’s spiritual obesity.
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