The Key to a Father’s Happiness according to the Book of Proverbs

Every Father’s Day children wish their father “Happy Father’s Day.” But what really makes a father happy? The book of Proverbs has a fair bit to say about the role of fathers, and what makes for a happy father.

The book of Proverbs presupposes that fathers should love and take delight in their children (Prov 3:12). Parents obviously have a responsibility to provide for their children’s physical and emotional needs, but the primary role of fathers according to the book of Proverbs lies in education. Proverbs presupposes that fathers will be instructing (Prov 1:8; 4:1), commanding (Prov 6:20), and disciplining their children (Prov 3:12). Discipline actually stems from a father’s delight in his child (Prov 3:12). Just as God seeks to instruct his people by speaking his word to them, human fathers are to pass God’s instruction (i.e., torah) and wisdom on to their children, and particularly to their sons.

Proverbs 1:8–9:18 functions as a model for how fathers should instruct their children. Fathers can instruct their children about many things, but moral instruction is most important. Fathers should encourage their children to pursue wisdom, motivating them to do so by helping them to consider the supreme value of wisdom, and the desirability of the benefits that flow from it.

“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction; and forsake not your mother’s teaching; for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck” (Prov 1:8–9).

“Hear, O sons, a father's instruction; and be attentive, that you may gain insight; for I give you good precepts. Do not forsake my teaching. When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he ktaught me, and said to me, ‘Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments, and live. Get wisdom; get insight. Do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you. The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom; and whatever you get, get insight. Prize her highly, and she will exalt you; she will honor you if you embrace her. She will place on your head a graceful garland; she will bestow on you a beautiful crown’” (Prov 4:1–9).

If the father’s primary role is educating his children, then it makes sense that a father will experience happiness to the extent that his children receive and follow his instruction. It is significant that the main section of the proverbs of Solomon in the book commences with the following proverb: “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother” (Prov 10:1). The idea that a wise son makes a glad father is repeated in Prov 15:20. Wisdom in the Old Testament is defined as hearing and doing torah. Children who follow God’s instruction bring joy to godly fathers. As Prov 23:24–25 states: “The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice; he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him. Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.”

The opposite of wisdom is foolishness. Accordingly, the foolish child brings the opposite of joy to his or her parents: “He who sires a fool gets himself sorrow, and the father of a fool has no joy” (Prov 17:21); “A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her who bore him” (Prov 17:25). Foolish children cause trouble and shame for their fathers: “A foolish son is ruin to his father,” on par with a quarrelsome wife (Prov 19:13); a child who is “a companion of gluttons shames his father” (Prov 28:7); “He who loves wisdom makes his father glad, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth” (Prov 29:3).

Children should listen to their father’s instruction (Prov 1:8), and keep their father’s commandments (Prov 6:20). Listening to a father’s instruction allows a child to “gain insight” (Prov 4:1). “A wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke” (Prov 13:1). “The one who keeps the law [i.e., instruction, torah] is a son with understanding, but a companion of gluttons shames his father” (Prov 28:7). “A fool despises his father's instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent” (Prov 15:5). As a means of learning wisdom, the book of Proverbs calls upon us to listen to our parents: “Listen to your father who gave you life,and do not despise your mother when she is old” (Prov 23:22). An unwillingness to listen to our parents goes together with an unwillingness to listen to God. Therefore, respect for one’s parents is important. Whoever thinks that stealing from one’s parents is okay “is a companion of a destructive man” (Prov 28:24). Cursing one’s parents leads to eternal death (Prov 20:20). “The eye that mocks a father, and scorns to obey a mother, will be picked out by the ravens of the valley, and eaten by the vultures” (Prov 30:17). Using violence against one’s parents “brings shame and reproach” (Prov 19:26).

Wise and godly children are the key to a father’s happiness. This means that fathers can promote their own happiness by teaching their children well.

The Worth of a Child according to Scientific Atheism Compared to Christianity

How valuable is the life of a child? What value would you place of the life of a child?

What value would you place on the life of this child?

Is she precious? I may be biased, but I reckon she looks rather cute.

Well, how about this one? What value do you place on the life of this little boy?

As you look at the two of these children, can you honestly say that one is more precious than the other? Yet according to the majority opinion in many societies in the world, one of these children—the little boy—should have been destroyed in the womb. One of these children, to quote the obstetrician, “has so many problems it won’t last long.” This particular doctor said three times that the normal thing to do in this situation is to terminate the pregnancy. Because the child was not “normal” or “perfect,” it no longer had the right to live.

Suffering from the effects of spina bifida (such as being unable to walk), this child may have more difficulties to face than others, and even though I cannot say that he is more precious than the little girl, perhaps the child that your heart goes out to more is the child who through no fault on his own will have more challenges to face in life than many of us able-bodied types.

But why should you pity him? In fact, why should we pity any child? Do you pity the child destroyed in the womb? Do you pity the newborn child abandoned by its mother, left to die in a shoe box, or left to drown in a toilet? If the existence of this universe and life on our planet is merely the product of chance, if we human beings are merely the result of a random process of evolution, then why pity anyone? If there is no God, if we exist here as a result of some random fluke, then life is merely the survival of the fittest.

Western civilisation is currently in the middle of a battle between two philosophical systems: a battle between Christianity and so-called scientific atheism. Some of us might think that we do not need to make a choice between these two systems, but to sit on the fence is not an option. Either God exists, or he doesn’t.

According to the latest theories of scientific atheism, our universe somehow—without any cause but simply by chance—began with the big bang some 13.75 billion years ago. They say that life on this planet is simply the result of 3.5 billion year process of random mutation and natural selection.

But what do you think? The universe is actually so big that the scientists say that it is effectively infinite. The observable universe has a diameter of 93 billion light years. In terms of kilometers, that’s virtually a 9 followed by 26 zeros. And they reckon that this observable universe is filled 100 billion galaxies, and contains at least sextillion stars (that’s 10 to the power of 21 stars), although a recent study has suggested that this figure is out by a factor of 300 (that makes it 3 times 10 to the power of 23). The maximum possible number of stars the average person can see on a dark night in the countryside is about 45,000, but typically it’s only about 5,000 or so. The figures are simply mind-blowing. If this is just random, we have to conclude that it is amazingly productive randomness.

And I am yet to mention the abundance of life on the planet that we call Earth. Have a guess how many species of life exist on this planet! I can’t give you a definite number, because the scientists themselves can’t. Their best guess is that the total number of species on earth is anything from 7–100 million. This includes anything from 5–100 million species of bacteria (possibly many more); around 100,000 kinds of fungi (which includes around 14,000 different kinds of mushroom); and around 300,000 plant species. When it comes to animals, there are over a million different species, most of them insects. Altogether there are around 950,000 different species of insect (including 4,500 different species of cockroach); over 30,000 species of fish; over 6,000 different kinds of amphibian (mainly frogs); over 8,000 species of reptile (mainly lizards and snakes); around 10,000 species of bird; and around 5,400 kinds of mammal. Millions of different species, and this all the result of of 3.5 billion years of random mutation?

Honestly, what is easier to believe? That all of this variety—the billion upon billions of stars, and the millions of different species that inhabit our planet—is just a fluke; or that there is some amazingly powerful, creative designer behind the universe? Which view requires the biggest leap of faith? What odds do you give everything coming from absolutely nothing? What odds of a new species randomly developing on earth on average every 35 years (assuming there are 100 million different species)? Yet scientific atheism laughs at Christianity for believing in miracles!

But putting aside the incredulous nature of the kind of faith demanded by scientific atheism, the biggest problem with scientific atheism is the consequences of this worldview for morality. If this is all some big fluke, if the existence of the universe and life on earth is simply the result of chance and the survival of the fittest, then whoever has the biggest gun wins, and you have no right to complain about it when you lose. Scientific atheists have no real right to speak of love, of justice, and what’s fair and what’s not. Why are you fighting for the rights of workers when they are just random blobs of genetic material? Why cry for the poor children of Africa? Why care for the sick, or the aged, or the young? If it’s all just chance, then why not be honest with yourself, and admit that you have no sound philosophical basis for any non-arbitrary moral code in life? Scientific atheism is logically amoral.

Scientific atheism is about the survival of the fittest, the converse of which is the elimination of the weak; and that is why in many societies today it is considered the norm for children diagnosed with spina bifida to be destroyed within the womb. I have been told by a doctor specializing in spina bifida that the rate of termination in Australia is heading toward 75%. This is particularly tragic when you consider that most kids with spina bifida are children of average intelligence with nice personalities and the ability to speak. The one pictured above has a wonderful sense of humor, an infectious laugh, and is a budding cricketer. So what if they can’t walk, or if they need a shunt in their head to deal with hydrocephalus? They don’t deserve to live or to be protected and nurtured like any other child? Eliminating such children before they travel through the birth canal is consistent with the scientific atheistic worldview, which promotes the idea that the history of the world is structured on the principle of natural selection, where the stronger random blobs of genetic material subjugate or terminate the weaker random blobs of genetic material.

But this is not the Christian understanding of reality. Christianity says that this universe was made by a powerful Creator. It also says, as the story of the incarnation of Christ clearly reveals, that the Creator of this universe values his creation so much that he was willing to enter into his creation, to take his place within it. Many religions believe in God, but Christianity is the only religion radical enough to say that the Creator values his creation, and human beings in particular, so much that the powerful Creator himself was willing to become one of us, to come down to our level in order to take us up to his. The story of the incarnation of God is not a story about the survival of the fittest. It is a story about the strongest becoming weak in order that the weak might become strong. The incarnation of God is God affirming the value of human life. The incarnation of God honors the human race, and places great value on every individual human being. And to think that Christianity says that the Creator of this universe became incarnate with a view to dying on the cross for humanity! Surely this is one of the most radical ideas that has ever been proposed in the history of religion and philosophy. The incarnation is the Creator saying that you are so valuable as to be worth the Creator of the universe dying for. In this way Christianity gives a sound moral basis for the ideals of love, justice, and human rights. God the Creator becoming a child means that every child is more than just a random blob of genetic material, and that every child (no matter their ability or disability, whether born or unborn) deserves to live and to grow to his or her full potential.

So which philosophical system affirms the value of humanity, and the precious worth of every child? Scientific atheism or Christianity? Philosophically I think the answer is obvious.