Big Daddy Government or our Heavenly Father?

John C. Rankin (March 18, 2009)

The source for a “big daddy government” is the absence in the human heart created by the “chosen absence of the biological father,”

Consider these realities:

  1. When Ishmael was born to the concubine Hagar (Genesis 16), he was forced to become “a wild donkey of a man.” A broken marriage is what brought Ishmael’s pain to pass, through no fault of his own. Then his father Abraham, in order to keep his marriage to Sarah intact, could not be a present father to him. Shame and not honor thus invaded Ishmael’s young soul. And thus, the call for a big daddy government to provide what Abraham did not provide for Ishmael, traces through his descendants to this day.
  2. When divorce visits young children, indeed, children of any age, they so easily blame themselves for daddy’s departure. Even in spite of yeoman effort on the part of their mothers, these children grow up with varying degrees of daddy’s absence, and they and their mothers easily turn to a big daddy government instead.
  3. When women feel no choice but abortion, it is overwhelmingly because the father does not want the child – either due to unmarried relationships, or when the husband is in the process of leaving the marriage already. Thus the child is denied life, and the woman is easily drawn into a big daddy government that promises to protect her from the absent father through taxpayer funded birth control and abortion.
  4. For those who suffer abuse in childhood – physically, sexually or emotionally – traceable to the chosen absence of the biological father, the fear and rejection is like gangrene to the soul. And thus, these hurting children grow up and easily turn to a big daddy government that promises protection from future violation.
  5. In 1940, Black Americans had a lower illegitimacy rate than did White Americans. But with the coming and follow through of the Great Society, human government replaced the father. Now seventy percent of black children grow up with the chosen absence of their biological fathers. Whole inner cities have thus been raped, hope is hugely abandoned, and big daddy government reigns supreme.
  6. In polygamous cultures, the fathers have split loyalties, rival wives compete, many sons are abandoned, only the strong survive, and the others are abandoned to the cruel mercies of big daddy government.
  7. And for the children of donor sperm who dare to ask who their daddy is, where is he, and what doesn’t he give a damn about them – this pain will only increase. And big daddy government will have the only “male” embrace for them, an embrace that is cold and perfunctory.

Our Heavenly Father = only answer.

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