Post theme: A Father’s Day Call to Valor
The story is told of a little baby who was born and abandoned. She was left in a field, unwashed and uncared for. No one wrapped her in a blanket or held her close in those first precarious moments of life. People passed by. They saw her, but they had no pity on her. Perhaps they thought there was no hope for a child that had been left lying in its own blood, the afterbirth, and the filth from the ground. Or, perhaps their hearts were simply hard. Whatever the reason, she was left there to die.
It seemed no one would come to her rescue—until the king came by. As he passed the field, he spotted the child. He left the comfort and ease of his carriage and stooped down beside her. Studying the pitiful sight, he whispered, “Live. I want you to live.” Then he scooped her up, took her home, and raised her as his own.
None of us would deny that this is a story of chivalry—of valor. We often think chivalry and valor are reserved for the battlefield, but they aren’t. We think they are for the soldier, the warrior, or the knight of old. But they aren’t. They are for us today.
Valor is rooted in moral worth, courage, and strength. Chivalry, often relegated to a knight’s code of conduct, is thought to be dead. But I don’t believe that. I believe it still exists. It simply needs to be revived.
This week, I read an article discussing “today’s problem with masculinity.”I stumbled across the article by accident. But before I could click away, the subtitle caught my attention: “A former soldier explains the emotional vacancy of the ‘fatherless generation’.” That stopped me in my tracks.
I’ve chosen not to post the article to our Facebook group because some of the content is not appropriate for my audience. However, this man’s story and the way he expressed the issues at the heart of many of our nation’s tragedies was so thought-provoking that I have gone back to it three times.
The article quotes the following excerpt from the book Safe House by Dr. Joshua Straub:
A team of researchers at the John Hopkins School of Medicine set out on a 30-year study to find if a single related cause existed for five major issues: mental illness, hypertension, malignant tumors, coronary heart disease, and suicide. After studying 1,377 students over thirty years, the most prevalent single cause wasn’t what everyone thought. They found that the most significant predictor of these tragedies was a lack of closeness to the parents, especially the father.
They found that the most significant predictor of these tragedies was a lack of closeness to the parents, especially the father.
Benjamin Sledge, the author of the article, goes on to discuss the internal conflict that develops in a boy without a strong, caring father figure in today’s culture. In the end, he says,
“Today, many good men sit on the sidelines while evil continues to infect the masculine soul like a cancer. We’re not teaching young men virtue or character, but vice. We’re telling them, tamp down your feelings, but also don’t be too masculine because that’s bad. The internal warrior gets crushed, and the poet is labeled a sissy.
“I’m not sure what the answer is to all this, but I know it begins with strong male figures ‘fathering’ other men. It will take men of integrity who want to change our culture from within, not those who scream from their social media soapbox. Any change that happens will be built on the backs of one-on-one mentoring between men of character and their pupils lost and adrift in today’s culture.
It will take men of honor.
It will take courage in a world that promotes vice.”
That Which God Requires
Deuteronomy 10 tells us what God requires of us:
- to fear Him,
- to walk in His ways,
- to love Him,
- to serve Him with all of our heart and all of our soul,
- to keep His commandments and His statutes.
It also tells us who God is:
“For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.”
There’s more to this passage, but we’ll come back to that in a minute.
Job and Chivalry
Job 31 describes how Job conducted himself toward the poor, the fatherless, the widow, and the needy. He made sure they received warmth from the wool of his own sheep and ate at his table. He said that if he hadn’t done these things, his arm should “be broken from the bone.” That’s how seriously he took it. Why? Because of who God is. He said,
“For destruction from God was a terror to me, and by reason of his highness I could not endure.” (Job 31:23)
Even though Job lived before the law had been given in Deuteronomy, he understood it was God’s character to care for and defend the fatherless and widow. Job also understood his duty to emulate that character. In fact, in his discussions with his friends, we see they thought Job’s sufferings might be God’s punishment for Job’s (supposed) ill-treatment of the fatherless and widows. In reality, we’re told that the widows were glad to see Job coming because of all that he had done for those in need. This, whether Job knew it or not, was chivalry.
According to the website “Medieval Life and Times,” the following is a list of the attributes of the Code of Chivalry as depicted in the poem “The Song of Roland” (Scripture citations mine):
*(sic)
The God of Chivalry
In the space between God’s requirements for Israel in Deuteronomy 10 and His description of who He is, verse fifteen says, “Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.”
This brings us back to the story at the beginning of this post. You see, that baby was Israel. That King was God. That story was told in Ezekiel 16. It is the nature, the character, the unwavering attribute of God the Father to rescue, redeem, and adopt the fatherless. We are to follow His example.
We serve a just God, a God upon whose character the code of chivalry is based, whether intentional or not. A God who said to Joshua “Be strong and of a good courage.” (Joshua 1:6) A God who used the words valiant and valiantly a combined 38 times in Scripture. Just as David had his mighty men, God longs for His men to be warriors—knights—of the best, strongest, most noble sort.
A Call To Valor
This Father’s Day, as we consider the children in our nation, communities, and churches who are without their fathers, without their mothers, perhaps without any relative, I beg of you to rise to the occasion. Step out in valor. God has given you the armor that you need (Ephesians 6). He will supply the food from your table and the wool from your sheep (Philippians 4:19). He’ll even supply the steed to go into the battle…but YOU must step out. There must be a circumcising of the foreskin of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16). There must be a setting aside of the scruples that hold you in your seat.
Fathers, Uncles, Brothers, Pastors, Men—we need you! Our nation needs you, our children need you, FTN needs you! We, the fatherless sons and daughters, need you to rise up. We need you to be that man of valor who will rescue the child from the field. We need you to set the example of worship in a manner that reflects who God is and what He has done for us through His adoption and redemption. We need you to be valiant, to be brave, to be who God has called you to be in regard to “the least of these.”
We need you, courageous man of God, to step out onto the battlefield in defense of the fatherless, to rescue them, to “bring them out of Egypt” and into the family of the King.
Will you accept the challenge?
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