Throughout the Old
Testament it is clear that God's agenda is to uphold the cause of the poor and
oppressed. In the New Testament, Jesus told us that we would be judged by our
treatment of the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the stranger, the naked, and
the prisoner (Matt. 25:34-46).
This demonstrates
God's love and care for the unloved and uncared for. In this article, I want to
focus on an overlooked group of fatherless children in America. Tonight,
approximately 25 million children will go to bed in a home where their
biological father does not live. That represents a staggering 30 percent of all
the children in the United States.
How did our children
get in this situation? A close look reveals a breakdown in families through
divorce and out-of-wedlock births leading the way to fatherlessness. More than
a million children are affected by divorce each year and 1.35 million
out-of-wedlock births occur every year.
The United States is
a world leader in fatherlessness. But why hasn't fatherlessness reached a level
of national emergency in the eyes of the general public, particularly when you
consider how fatherlessness can negatively affect children?
"... for in you the fatherless find compassion." (Hos.
14:3b)
God is concerned
about what is happening to the fatherless, and we should share that concern.
Simply put, fatherlessness puts children at risk. Children from fatherless
homes are more likely to be poor, suffer from child abuse, become involved in
drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, suffer from emotional and
behavioral problems, and commit suicide. Boys are more likely to become
involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.
And most likely these
children will carry on the cycle of father absence with their own children.
Regardless whether that father isn't there physically, spiritually,
emotionally, or all of the above, the effects are very real.
Once we recognize
these problems as not just statistical probabilities that accompany
fatherlessness, we can see willful father absence for what it really is – child
abuse and neglect.
Thankfully, not all
fatherless children go down this path of destruction. Many single mothers are
able to successfully raise their children without the father. And this is made
possible by those soldiers in God's army of compassion who reach out beyond
their own families to these fatherless children.
"Religion
that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after the
fatherless and widows in their distress ..." (James 1:27a)
Episkeptomai is the Greek word used in this passage which means, "to look upon something with mercy and favor, to take care
of, to go and visit." The Greek word translated as "fatherless"
is orphanos which can mean
"comfortless" as well. So, to quote Brian Molitor
from his paradigm-changing book, Boy's
Passage, Man's Journey, piecing these understandings together
could read like this, "Religious practices that God our Father accepts as
pure and faultless are these: To look with mercy and favor upon the fatherless
children who are currently without comfort. Also, to not only look upon them,
but to go and visit them and to take care of them as a loving father would.