The Importance of Being Dad

A complete stranger sent me an email yesterday. In it she told me the story of how she was disowned by her father. She shared her grief and her pain, as well as her fears of how her father’s rejection might impact her daughter. She wrote to me because she had just read the blog post I wrote in 2014 about being disowned by my dad and felt I was someone who would understand her story.

I get similar emails several times a year from people who in desperation decide to search the internet for answers on dealing with the pain and sorrow of parental rejection. My post “The Day my Dad Disowned Me” is somehow at the top of the page when people enter “disowned by my father” on Google, and as a result over 13000 people have read the post. It still gets 300 hits a month 4 years after it was published.

Last month I received an email from a nurse in Los Angeles, asking me if I could call her about her struggles with her father’s rejection. She said she was looking for guidance and advice, but when I called her it was clear that she was looking more for validation and support. She needed someone to tell her she was okay.

With each message received I ask myself, “Why are people writing me, someone they have never met?” Is it that the post resonates with their own experience or does the fact that I am a doctor causes them to trust my expertise?Whatever the reason, the messages continue to come. Each one reminds me of the importance of fatherhood. Dads have the power to encourage and heal, as well as the power to tear down and destroy. This power does not seem to fade over time, as the messages I receive are from people in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Many are dealing with the pain of being disowned years earlier.

This is a sobering reality, one every father needs to take seriously throughout their life. My children are now adults but my call to fatherhood has not gone away. It is evolving and changing, and I often struggle to understand what it means to be a dad of grown ups, but there is one thing of which I a certain. Being a dad will always be important. I need to love my kids, be there for them, and encourage them.

As I get older I am adding another task. It is my goal to encourage other men to step up to the plate and to excel at fatherhood. It is one of the main reasons I lead two men’s groups. If we are to solve the fatherhood crisis in our nation it must begin with dads encouraging dads. As so many emails have taught me, the cost of failure is simply too high.

• Bart

Jesus wasn't Doing it Wrong

“You’re doing it wrong!”

I always hate criticism, but I really hate being told I am doing things wrong when I know I am doing them right. When patients come in and try to “educate” me on why I should give them antibiotics for a cold or why vaccines are harmful the conversations seldom end well.  I am an imperfect person who occasionally makes mistakes and some questions are appropriate, but I have a hard time when people do not appreciate who I am and what I know.

It is one thing to challenge an experienced physician about how he practices medicine. It is a different thing altogether to challenge God about how He does religion. As foolish as this may seem, it is something Jesus experienced all of the time.

This week in our men’s study of Matthew 9 we reviewed the passage where the disciples of John the Baptist approached Jesus with the question, “How come your disciples don’t fast like we and the Pharisees do?” Implicit in their question was that they thought Jesus’ disciples should have been fasting and were less spiritual because they didn’t, and that as their teacher, Jesus should address the problem.

Jesus answer was interesting. Using the analogy of a wedding celebration, he said, “Can wedding guests mourn while the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” Matthew 9:15 ESV

In our study we paraphrased his response by saying, “If the purpose of fasting is to spiritually focus and draw near to God, why would you fast when God Incarnate was with you?”

In Jesus’ response, and in the verses that followed, Jesus made it clear that the old ways of religious thinking and acting were inadequate, and that things were different in the kingdom He was bringing. Jesus told a culture that celebrated external religiosity that their old ways and habits needed to be reexamined.

Lest there be any doubt, Jesus followed his words by acting in a way that was new and strange to them. He was approached by a religious leader whose daughter had just died. The grief-stricken man pleaded with the Savior, “Come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.”

The presumptuous request of the man would not have been lost on the audience. He was asking Jesus to touch his dead daughter. Touching a dead body would render a person spiritually unclean and barred from temple worship for 7 days. Religious teachers of that day would never do this. Being clean was too important.

Jesus was not like the other religious teachers. His actions revealed a different set of priorities, Matthew wrote that “Jesus rose and followed him, with His disciples.” Spiritual cleanness, shallow skin deep righteous, mattered little compared to the life of the girl and the love of her father. Jesus immediately went to see the child. (And ultimately healed her and brought her back to life.)

Jesus willingness to be considered “unclean” in service to others was further demonstrated as he traveled to see the dead child. As he walked along a woman with a “discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the hem of his garment” believing that even this small touch of Jesus would be sufficient to heal.

As dramatic as it was for Jesus to be willing to go to the dead child, the woman’s actions similarly defied cultural explanation. Jesus’ decision to touch the child would be His, the resultant uncleanness His to bear, a consequence of his personal choice. The woman, ceremonially unclean and separated from others, had no right to render another unclean by her touch. The duration of uncleanness was shorter than that for touching a dead body (one day instead of seven) but her imposition of uncleanness onto a Rabbi, a religious teacher, was extremely inappropriate. No one would have faulted Jesus if he had taken offense at the woman’s actions. Jesus instead reacted with His characteristic grace. The woman was healed, and Jesus validated her by saying, “Your faith has made you well.”

In his words and responses Jesus demonstrated that serving God is about loving people, not about religious rituals. This lesson is still relevant today. We have a tendency to think we know “how it is done”, to rely on traditions and to judge others based on those traditions. When we do, we are no different than the Pharisees Jesus so often corrected.

Bart

Being Right, Doing Wrong

Doing the right thing has always been important to me. As my children grew up two of my most oft repeated sayings were, “Never count the cost of doing the right thing” and “The right thing and the easy thing are almost never the same thing.”

For most of my life doing right has been ego protective for me. I think it has a lot to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a highly critical home with mockery and put downs an essential part of my upbringing. Parental abuse can destroy self esteem and I defended myself against it by working hard to be and do the best I could. In my head I countered negativism by telling myself, “You did the right thing.”

This thought process has persisted throughout my adult life. At times it has led to me to stand alone, even against superiors who had the ability to harm me professionally. I could handle the thought of harmful repercussions, what I could not handle was facing myself in the mirror if I compromised my values. This commitment served me well in the vast majority of circumstances.

This commitment to doing right may sound noble but it isn’t. In many ways it was self-serving. There is more to doing right than being right.  Doing right isn’t just about what we do, it is about how we do it.

I was reminded of this last week when I made the mistake of reviewing old patient reviews online. While my reviews are for the most part very positive some of my older reviews are quite harsh. More than one patient described me as “arrogant” or “condescending.” As I read the reviews I came to a difficult realization. Some of these patients were probably right. I have no doubt that there were times that I was so focused on being right that I forgot to be kind, to listen carefully, to understand or to empathize. While my diagnosis and treatment plans may have been “right”, my incomplete communication and sense of compassion wasn’t. The reviews left me with a sense of sadness. I wish I had done better, had been better.

Reading these reviews left with a renewed commitment to not only do right, but to do rightly. At times this may involve treating patient fears and not just their symptoms. Other times it may require listening to unjustified criticism, responding to unreasonable demands or allowing unjustified anger to go unanswered. Being right does not give me the right to point out every wrong I see in others.

I am learning that I am called to not only be right, but to be righteous. As the prophet Micah so beautifully said, “He has shown you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you- to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Mercy refers to treating people with kindness even when they are in the wrong. Humility leaves no room for arrogance when I am in the right and demands that I put the needs of others before my own.

By the grace of God I can say that I am a better man than I was many years ago. May he give me the grace to become a better man with each passing day.

Bart

Do You See Who Jesus Sees?

Matthew was a tax collector. He made his living by taking money from his fellow Jews and giving it to the Romans. To be more specific, if he was like other tax collectors he made a living by taking more than required from his fellow Jews, giving the required amount to Rome and then keeping the extra for himself. It is not a stretch to assume that he was not a well-liked man.

Tax collectors were despised by the religious leaders, considered unworthy. Which makes Jesus’ choice of Matthew to be one of his 12 closest disciples remarkable. Why would Jesus pick him? Didn’t Jesus know Matthew’s history?

There can be no doubting that Jesus knew. Matthew was sitting in his tax collection booth at the moment Jesus called to him and told Matthew to become one of his followers! Why would Jesus do this?

The Bible does no specifically answer this question but in Matthew’s account of this interaction, found in Matthew 9:9, there may be a clue. Look at how Jesus’ actions are described-

“As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.” Matthew 9:9 ESV

Take note of what Jesus is described as seeing. “A man called Matthew.”

Jesus saw Matthew as first and foremost a man, not as a tax collector. It appears that to Jesus, Matthew was a man who happened to be a tax collector, not a tax collector who happened to be man. I think this is how Jesus sees everyone. He sees us as people, created in the image of God, deserving of love, and he desires to enter into relationship with us. What we have done is insignificant when compare to who we are.

Jesus’ attitude was the polar opposite of the attitude of the religious leaders of that time. We see in the passage (and a parallel passage in Mark 2) that after calling to Matthew Jesus went to a dinner at Matthew’s home. They were joined there by several of Matthew’s friends. See how the pharisees described the members of Jesus’ dinner party-

“And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Matthew 9:11 ESV

It seems that the pharisees saw the men and evaluated their worth first and foremost on their past actions, not on their humanity. Their judgmental attitude led to their judgmental response.

Makes me stop and think about how I look at people. When I look at others, what is the first thing I see? What do I see as their identifying characteristic?

If I want to be a follower of Jesus, I need to first see their inherent value as people, created in the image of God and worthy of love.

-          Bart

This post is one in a series of midweek posts based on lessons learned from my weekly men’s bible study. Other posts on non-religious topics are usually shared on weekends.

Life isn’t Boring

What makes living worthwhile? What gives value to a life?

This week came the story of a man with a pistol taking the lives of 11 people in a bar. In an Instagram post written during the killing spree the murderer gave his reason for taking the lives of others. “Life is boring, so why not?”

A few days later my wife and I participated in the “Walk to end ALS.” (ALS is an always fatal progressive neurologic disease, also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease) We walked in support of a friend from church who has battled the disease for the last four years. Over 30 of our church friends walked together, each with their words, steps and donations saying to our friend, “Your life matters, you matter.”

It is a confusing world. One young man in perfect health decides that his life, and the lives of strangers, are worthless. In a matter of minutes he sacrifices multiple lives on the altar of his boredom. To him, human life was insignificant and disposable.

At the same time another man, cursed with an incurable disease, fights for every precious moment. His love of life and love of others is contagious and encouraging. To him, life is a gift from God, full of meaning and meant to be treasured. 

There can be no denying that it is my friend who has the right perspective. Life is not boring. It is precious. 

Bart