Christmas Is About Reconciliation—and Fathers

The Christmas story doesn’t begin in Bethlehem with a manger, the Holy Family, docile animals and adoring shepherds. It begins in Jerusalem’s temple, with an elderly priest named Zechariah.

Zechariah was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told him that he would have a son named John (the Baptist). This would be John’s mission:

“He will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 1:17 New International Version).

So the Christmas message begins with one of the most politically incorrect things we can say: Fathers are important—not perfect fathers, but “good enough dads” who are there to nurture their kids and be in a positive relationship with them.

The failure of responsible fatherhood is our society’s most fundamental evil. As a result, we have teenage girls with babies and teenage boys with guns and all the attendant consequences.

One recent Christmas season our church took a ministry team to the California Youth Authority facility in Norwalk to bring these boys the Christmas message in word and song. Take it from one who shook the hand of almost every young man in that facility (for nearly all took the option to come to our service) and who talked to the chaplains who provide spiritual support to these boys: hardly any have a responsible father role model. Many of them don’t even know who their real fathers are.

Our society should be encouraging fathers and reconciliation between fathers and children. Instead, fathers are sometimes treated as superfluous and optional. The Christmas message must stand against this way of thinking.

Mark it down—it is great sin and a great social evil to deliberately create new life with the intention of bringing that child into a fatherless home (or a motherless home for that matter, although this is seldom the case). Instead of discouraging this practice, social forces refrain from judging the merits of people’s choices. The only judgment permitted is to condemn and punish the health care providers whose consciences require that they “opt out” of providing the medical service that would guarantee a child would be fatherless.

Illegitimacy is almost 40% now in America and rising. No society, not even ours, can afford the social price of this problem. The Bible warned of the consequences! The word of the angel Gabriel is drawn from the Prophet Malachi: “He will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers…or else I will come and strike the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5).

Those are our alternatives—reconciliation between fathers and children, or a curse on our culture. The choice is ours, and our society must make that choice. That’s how the Christmas message starts!