Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Angry Dad, Wise Dad

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Just how many fathers can you have? How can you have a Rich Dad and a Poor Dad? How could Jesus say to the Jews, “Abraham is your father but Abraham is not your father”?

Robert Kiyosaki added fresh recognition to the truth of multiple fathering in the title of his best selling book on his wealth journey. In Kiyosaki’s case, so he explains, his biological dad was an academic and not a wealthy man. The father of his friend, however, was an entrepreneur, and quite wealthy. Young Robert decided to learn from the man he called his Rich Dad, things which his Poor Dad was unable to teach him.

So, in that case, we see how there are different levels of fathering. We each have a biological dad, whether we ever met the man or not. We also have people who ‘father’ us, but mentoring our lives. I call that kind of fathering as Devotional. We devote ourselves to their values, skills and qualities. We effectively become the student of our Devotional Father, as Kiyosaki did to his friend’s biological dad. That boy’s biological dad became Kiyosaki’s Devotional Dad.

Devotional sonship identifies us as taking on the values, character or spirit of another person, in order to gain from that connection. The ‘sons of the prophets’, in 2Kings 6:1, were disciples of the prophets in order to become like them. Some men are called the ‘father’ of all who follow a certain course. Genesis 4:21 identifies Jubal as the ‘father of all who play the harp and organ’.

If you are a woodworker then you could be called the ‘son’ of those who invented and developed that craft. If you are a philosopher you may be a son of Aristotle or a son of Plato – since you will have a different philosophical perspective, dependent on who your ‘father’ is.

Last Saturday I taught this topic to a group of Young Adults and I will build this concept into the Youth Horizons book which I am gradually developing. For now, though, let me sow some of this into your thinking.

I am currently reading through Proverbs as I read my way through the Bible this year. What is leaping off the page to me in the early chapters is the abundance of references to ‘son’. King Solomon, the writer of Proverbs, quotes from his dad, King David, advising him to seek wisdom. There we have the use of the word ‘son’ in a biological sense.

Solomon then uses the word ‘son’ freely in his own dialogue. The commentators readily assume that Solomon wrote this book for the benefit of his own sons. I suggest otherwise. If Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs for his son, Rehoboam, then the book proves to be quite useless. Rehoboam did not follow the wisdom imparted in the book of Proverbs. Rather than respect the advice of his father and those who are wise, he listened to the foolish advice of his peers.

I suggest that Proverbs was written, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to impart wisdom to all the children of God. The use of the word ‘son’ does not indicate biological sonship, but devotional sonship. Each of us who are devoted to God become God’s sons (even if we are female we enter the same place in God’s presence as any male can lay claim to – so I am not saying ‘sons and daughters’, but ‘sons’).

When the book of Proverbs says, “My son”, it is God calling out to any and all who will submit themselves in devotion to Him and make Him their Father.

You may have a Rich Dad in your biological father and a Poor Dad in your spiritual leader. You may have an Angry Dad in the man who is mentoring you in your career and a Wise Dad in the man who comes alongside to counsel you.

Be careful who your devotional and spiritual dads are. The Jews in Jesus’ day were biological descendents of Abraham but Jesus rightly pointed out that they were children of the devil (John 8:36-44).

I suggest you dive into the book of Proverbs again and read it as if it is written personally to you, from your loving Heavenly Father.

St Dunstan – England

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This is the day that … St Dunstan is remembered by some churches.  He is one of the 68 saints mentioned in the Anglican Prayer Book.

He is “the most famous of all Anglo-Saxon saints”, according to Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1756-1759).

Dunstan was born in Somerset, England, in the early part of the 10th century.  During his education at Glastonbury he alarmed the monks by sleep-walking on the roof of the church!  (Stars Appearing, by S. Harton, page 208).

He eventually became an abbot at Glastonbury and set about reforming the morals of a scandalous clergy.  This zeal for purity continued when he later became Archbishop of Canterbury (Butler, page 149).

But as was to be expected, there was plenty of opposition.  Especially when he rebuked King Edwy for his unseemly behaviour.  As a result Dunstan’s property was confiscated and he was sent into exile.  After Edwy’s death, King Edgar assumed the throne and Dunstan was re-instated.

And it was Dunstan who instituted bellringing on festival days, and who re-introduced organ playing into the church – “even taking a personal hand in their actual construction” (Harton, page 207).

The story is told (believe it or not!!) that on one occasion, whilst working at his forge, he saw the Devil peering through the window.  “So he pulled the red-hot tongs from the coals and pulled the Devil’s nose with them” (Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, page 147;  Days and Customs of All Faiths, page 127).  Satan ran and dipped his nose in Tunbridge Wells to cool off – and “that is why the water in Tunbridge Wells, to this day, is sulphur water!”  (page 127).

In the Convent of the Holy Child Jesus at Mayfield they even have St Dunstan’s tongs!  (Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem, page 147).

And the dear old Archbishop is still regarded as the Patron Saint of blacksmiths.

Sovereignty Attacked

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Each of us has a remarkable privilege of presenting ourselves before God, independent of the demands and tyranny of our peers or oppressors. Yet this wonderful privilege is attacked and attempts are made to deny us our sovereignty, at many stages in our life. This first commentary on how our sovereignty is under attack may well be expanded on in future posts, but at this point I want to simply draw your attention to the fact that there are various forces which oppose your divinely bequeathed right to personal sovereignty.

Since we are created by God and the rights we have come from God it is logical that the first enemy to any such privilege given us by God would be from the principal evil spirit, who we know as the devil. The devil is a created angel who rebelled against God and came under God’s judgement. His activities since then have been to attack those things which God has created, especially humankind.

The devil attacks our sovereignty in a number of ways. We know from the records of his influence over mankind that he seeks to prompt people to use their sovereignty in acts of rebellion against God. This results in them coming under God’s judgement instead of God’s blessing. Temptation and deception are two key strategies used by the devil.

Another strategy is to get people to hand over their personal sovereignty to the devil. Strictly speaking it is not possible to do so, but the devil has a couple of devices which work in this direction. When a person submits to some kind of inappropriate attitude or behaviour that person becomes a slave to that thing. For example, when a person gives in to anger, they become an angry person, enslaved to angry responses. When a person gives in to lust they become a lustful person, enslaved by lustful thoughts. This does not strictly take their sovereignty from them, but it imprisons their soul and seems to them as if they have lost sovereignty. If the person was to repent and cry out to God for deliverance they still have the right to do so. They may still call upon God, as a sovereign creation, and find God’s help.

The other way of getting people to hand over their personal sovereignty comes in the form of a contract with the devil. The ancient German folktale character, Faust, is a classic case of someone who made a deal with the devil. In recent times youth attending rock concerts have been encouraged to sign themselves to the devil, in their own blood. The act of making such a commitment is a major compromise of a person’s will and results in a tremendous inner sense of slavery. While the person’s personal sovereignty is, in reality, intact, the insistent claim upon them by the devil can seem irrevocable. I have heard testimony of people who have sought Christian help to break such contracts and who have become free from the tyranny of the devil’s claim.

So, temptation, deception and intimidation are typical methods of compromising personal sovereignty. While these methods are used by the devil, they are also employed by other people who wish to assert their will over others and to deny people their rightful freedom. The carrot and the stick, used by governments and other social structures to direct people’s wills, are expressions of temptation and intimidation. Propaganda, indoctrination and deception are also widely used by regimes intent on controlling the masses. Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Dr Goebbels implemented the Big Lie theory, that the bigger the lie the more likely people are to believe it.

Fear is another tool for making people give up personal sovereignty. Fear could relate to simple avoidance of rejection by others, such as social pressure to conform in order to be accepted. Or it could relate to the immediate threat of reprisal, death or torture if compliance is not given. Totalitarian regimes often resort to abductions, murders, genocide and other atrocities to instil fear and compliance in the community.

At a more personal level, there are those who seek to enslave others, including their family, employees or people in their care. Manipulation and control may involve just one subject, such as a parent manipulating their child, or a wife manipulating her husband. In such cases the manipulator seeks to turn another person into their slave, at least within certain behaviour patterns, and so resorts to various means of control to get the other to give up their sovereignty. A similar condition is that of domination, where an assertive person will project their personality over others, simply to indulge their own pride and self-centredness. The right to personal sovereignty of those around them is impacted by their domination.

In each of the cases I have outlined, our personal right to come into God’s presence and make appeal directly to Him, remains intact. We may be in physical danger if we do so, but we have not lost the divine right to do so. This is the Divine Right of Everyone! No religious or political domination, nor sin or deal with the devil, can take from us our right to cry out to God and present ourselves before Him.

The New Dreaming

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While Dreamtime and Dreaming are part of Australia’s ancient indigenous mythology the New Dreaming represents today’s departure into fanciful thought and abandonment of facts and reason.

Australian Aboriginals refer to “Dreamtime” as the earliest times, when spirit beings formed the world. They also refer to the “Dreaming” to identify their localized myths, legends, fairytales and folklore, accounting for formation of animals, geographical features and the like.

What makes these forms of ‘dreaming’ significant is how they give a notion of ‘reality’ to a people group. Dreamtime is a mythological and magical time in which amazing supernatural processes took place to form natural phenomena. Dreaming, then, continues the process of applying imagined forces to validate current tangible reality and to assert personal value in the broader context.

It could be said that ‘dreaming’ represents the chosen beliefs of a group of people from which they gain their identify and validate their place in the world. It does not matter if the ‘dream’ is ridiculous or practical, because its role is not scientific, but personal. It often defies logic, but it speaks to the heart of a people, conferring on them a sense of identity and shared values.

So now, enter the New Dreaming. Today otherwise perfectly rational and logical people abandon their common sense to embrace a whole new set of ideas and values, without regard for reality. We live in a generation where people embrace personal and group beliefs with the fervour of a tribal community. People now find identity in their chosen mythology, even to the point of alienation from those who do not share their folklore.

Populist causes abound and are asserted and defended with zeal. Ideas have become tenets of faith. Things that defy definition and proof are taken as gospel – from big bangs, to black holes and impossible evolutionary miracles. If a mind such as that of Hawkins conceives a thing, then many take the resultant idea to be as good as proven. Meanwhile world leaders and popular figures have become high priests of ideas that informed scientists decry as folly.

Of the many reasons for such a state, one is that people have chosen to ‘dream’ rather than to live reality. “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”, has become the option of choice for the children of yesterday’s thinking populace. It is as if logic and empirical realities are deliberately abandoned in an intellectual protest movement. Intellectual suicide is the sport of the nations and a fad of compelling proportions. So allow me to make a few observations about this state of affairs.

Dreaming has never created reality. Sweet as the dream may be, we wake to the cold light of day. Those who seek the dream must lose their life to do so, for they cannot live in today’s reality and also live their dream. Reality does not bow to silly notions. Even if the entire world were to believe nonsense, that cannot make the idiot idea real. Gravity will still be gravity, human life will still be mortal and God is still God.

What makes Dreaming a matter of concern, is that the world has taken to it with enthusiasm. Those who see clearly find many around them walking in a dream. Vain people are building their lives on holographic images projected before them by people intent on beguiling the gullible. The populace has become fodder for the peddlers of peculiar ideas.

We came to this place by abandoning foundations. People have long followed the piper’s tune, lured from logic and even common sense. Now, lost in the woods of competing and un-provable notions, they have forgotten that there ever were foundations on which to stand. They apply the dream to their strained situation, as salve and solace to insecure souls.

Three millennia ago the Psalmist asked, “If the foundations be destroyed, what will the righteous do?” Today we might well ask, if the foundations are abandoned, just how far from reality can we go?

Two thousand years ago the Christian zealot, Paul the Apostle, spoke of a spiritual reality causing this very problem. He said that the God of this world, a fallen angel we call the devil, has blinded people’s minds. Paul was commissioned through a divine visitation from the resurrected Jesus Christ, to turn people from demonic blindness to the truth. The need to continue that endeavour is as real today as it has ever been.

Dreaming is a demonic seduction. It is not the next step in our evolutionary journey, but a step back to the dark ages, fostered by a spirit being that is keen to steal man’s freedom and kill our potential. Thank God Jesus has defeated the devil and Christians have authority to resist him.

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of the Living God, I take authority over the lying and seducing spirits which pull today’s world into the stupor of dreaming sleep. I bind the power of the lie and it’s anaesthesia and I break its right to exalt itself in the nations. I declare that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and I exalt Him over the nations. I release the glorious light of the gospel over the nations of the earth and I banish all that beguiles and deceives. I break the power of the lie and I exalt the one who is the Truth, in and of His own being.

I invite you to join me in rescuing the nations of the earth from sleep walking toward the abyss. The truth sets people free, so let us proclaim it and turn people back from the brink.