Calvin & Hobbes

Preparing to die

The fears of a Christian Father

Jonathan Last wrote an amazing piece on fatherhood a few weeks ago explaining the intimate connection between chivalry, masculinity and virtue in our society. His central argument focuses on the lack of fathers in our country and how much feminization and fatherlessness has led to suffering. If you haven’t read it, I would highly insist you do.

It struck a special chord with me because, as I’ve watched my pregnant wife struggle to walk, sleep, and eat over the past few months, I’ve been quietly preparing for what will next be my turn in suffering. I knew I’d be scared but I wasn’t at all prepared for what I’d be scared about.

Some of you are probably thinking: “wow, yes… preparing to have a baby is scary,” as would anyone reacting to something completely alien to them. But see, even as an only child, I was always in love with the idea of becoming a father. Sleepless nights and tantrums don’t scare me. My fear is the one rooted in something much greater.

“Wow, you guys didn’t wait long, did you?”

Last week I attended a lecture by Alice von Hildebrand, her late husband the famous philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, where she spoke on the meaning of marriage. She held no punches, moving through history and flawlessly tying together the major vices of our time — divorce, abortion, same-sex marriage — with one central theme: Satan’s relentless attack on women.

The spry, 92-year old von Hildebrand thoroughly documented the emergence of feminism, from the temptation of Eve to the legalization of abortion, the ultimate death of motherhood and, with it, fatherhood.

Why do I tell you this?

Today, 40 percent of children in America are born out of wedlock — that is to say, without a father standing there, committed to help raise them. That number is worse than you think. In America, only about 69 percent of kids live in a home with two parents.

The destruction of the family is ongoing and on the rise. You can see it plainly anywhere.

However, my wife and I have sadly seen it even more keenly here in Washington. Motherhood is this accessory to life. This “thing” you only do once you’ve done everything else. “Wow, you guys didn’t wait long, did you?” translates into ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this with your life.’

Our small family will occupy emptier churches and be the exception, not the rule.

Living in a city whose primary focus is career-driven, we are faced daily with aggressions (you could call them micro-agressions!) against our family, garnering condescending comments from our acquaintances for choosing to have children at 27 (my wife is 25), which is remarkably old to me.

But my fear is not yet realized.

Fine that people will disagree with our choices; there is still no shortage of folks having kids. My true fear lies with the marginalization of what my wife and I believe, and how it threatens those around us every day. Each day, there’s another referendum in Ireland or victory for democracy that makes my family’s way of life more “hateful.” I live in perpetual fear that in 10 years I’ll have to protect my son or daughter from transgender bathrooms or oral-sex classes at age 13.

Even this fear is minuscule compared to the gut-wrenching worry I have that my children will have to fend off the world that has already been raised this way. My son’s teachers will be the millennials growing up now who are more conscious than ever of the “truth” of gay marriage and, ironically, the uselessness of marriage itself. Their friends will be second generation to the brokenness exhibited today, succumbing more fervently to moral relativism. Our small family will occupy emptier churches and be the exception, and not the rule.

In concluding her talk on marriage, von Hildebrand provides one of the most painful and Christian of solutions: the only way to fight evil is to live your life the way God asks. As humans, we absolutely hate that. I hate that. We like to think we can control everything, most especially our own lives.

But ultimately, doing what you should and leaving that model for others, regardless of persecution, is our only remedy in this confused world.

My sincere hope is that I won’t have to die to protect my children from evil, thus leaving them alone in this world. But every day I will prepare to.