In this special Father’s Day episode, Mark Turman, executive director of Denison Forum, sits down with Dr. Jim Denison and Dr. Ryan Denison to explore the meaning and calling of fatherhood through a biblical lens. They discuss why Scripture’s view of fathers matters, the surprising history behind Father’s Day, and what it means that Christians call God “Father.” With personal stories and theological reflection, the conversation also looks at today’s challenges—from single parenting to declining birth rates—and how the church can come alongside men in every stage of fatherhood with truth, grace, and support.
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Topics
- (01:15): The origins and history of Father’s Day
- (03:02): Father’s Day trivia and personal anecdotes
- (11:01): Understanding God as Father in Christianity
- (20:20): Jesus’ unique relationship with God as Father
- (27:44): The Trinity and the Fatherhood of God
- (30:57): Personal reflections on fatherhood
- (34:04): Biblical perspective on parenting
- (39:00): God as the ultimate Father
- (54:43): Challenges of single parenting
- (59:51): Falling birth rates and spiritual implications
- (01:05:28): Final thoughts and resources
Resources
- Ask us anything: [email protected]
- This Father’s Day, “take up the cause of the fatherless”
- Fatherhood 101: A Father’s Day guide from the Beatitudes
- 8 Biblical Challenges for Fathers
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Stand. Engage. Transform. summer campaign.
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
About Dr. Jim Denison
Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. He speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.
About Dr. Ryan Denison
Ryan Denison, PhD, is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum. Ryan writes The Daily Article every Friday and contributes writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from BH Carroll Theological Institute after having earned his MDiv at Truett Seminary. He’s authored The Path to Purpose, What Are My Spiritual Gifts?, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, 7 Deadly Sins, and coauthored Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters and has contributed writing or research to every Denison Forum book.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Denison Forum podcast. I’m Mark Turman, your host for today’s conversation, and also executive director of Denison Forum. We want to help you to walk closely with the Lord and to serve him in full, full joy and to not only help your life flourish, but to help those around you to cultivate lives that flourish as well.
So our motto is equipping the Saints for the work of ministry out of Ephesians four. And as we walk up to the calendar early this summer, we’re moving into the season of Father’s Day and seems like we were just at Mother’s Day, but we are about to celebrate that. And so we’re recording this podcast a couple of days before Father’s Day.
Let this be a calendar reminder if you need to run out and buy a neck tie or buy a card. You need to do that soon so that there’s some selection available. So we’re gonna talk about fatherhood from several different angles [00:01:00] today. What does the Bible say about fathers, particularly calling God our father is a unique thing within the Christian faith.
We’re gonna talk about how fatherhood is a calling and also a strategy in some ways about ministry. Lemme give you a little bit of update in case you haven’t explored this about where Father’s Day came from. We know it’s the third Sunday in June. If you’re a golfer like I am, that means that the US Open is usually gonna fall on that weekend.
And this is my notice to my family that that’s what I wanna be doing this Sunday. But we also learn from history. That Father’s Day was founded and created by a daughter named Sonora Smart Dodd. She was born originally in Arkansas, ended up making her way in the early 19 hundreds to Spokane, Washington.
She was sitting in church one day listening to a Mother’s Day sermon and had the idea if moms are being celebrated, why [00:02:00] don’t we celebrate our dads? And she had a particular reason to do that. Her dad, a man by the name of William Smart, was a Civil War veteran, but he also raised her and her five siblings by himself because their mother had passed away.
And so it was a celebration not only of dads but of a single dad. And we’ll talk about that a little bit. Down the way as well. And so she got inspired to do that. She generated energy around that in Spokane, Washington. The very first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19th in 1910, which also happened to be so Nora’s dad’s birthday.
Later on down the road, Calvin Coolidge gave his support to it when he was president. President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, recognized Father’s Day with a proclamation. And probably guys if you were looking for a trivia question, you wouldn’t know that President Richard Nixon actually made Father’s Day a national [00:03:00] holiday in 1972.
So a lot more to talk about there, but helping me with this conversation are my ministry partners, Dr. Jim Denison, our cultural apologist, and Dr. Ryan Denison, who is our senior editor for Theology. Good morning guys. We’re glad to have you on the podcast. Thank you very much,
Dr. Jim Denison: mark. Glad to do this. I did have a question.
Okay. With the US Open, is your word to your family that you plan to play in it or watch it? I wasn’t sure For those two. You intended?
Dr. Mark Turman: Yes. I, I, I yes. It, it it should be that way. It will be that way in my dream when I, okay.
Dr. Jim Denison: All right.
Dr. Mark Turman: When I’m resting on Father’s Day weekend, I will. Yeah. Be thinking about that.
Dr. Jim Denison: Didn’t know you’d gone through the qualifying process and all that, but you know, congratulations.
Dr. Mark Turman: You know, I haven’t done that, but I expect them to call and tell me that they want me to be there.
Dr. Jim Denison: Understandable.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. Let us know as well. They should, you know, recognize my ability. Did you guys know that there are 100 million cards sent to dads on Father’s Day?[00:04:00]
Dr. Jim Denison: Is it also the case that more collect calls are made on Father’s Day than any other day of the year? Or is that an urban bed? It makes sense, doesn’t it? From back in the day anyway, when collect calls were a thing. I doubt they are anymore, but back in the day, that was one of the words was that more collect calls than any other day of the year.
Dr. Mark Turman: I, I guess I should ask Ryan. Ryan, have you ever had the need to submit a collect call to your dad?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I think maybe one time in high school when I was stuck after basketball practice, but that might be about the only time.
Dr. Jim Denison: Okay. All right. Did we answer Ryan? Did we come get you? Do you remember how that turned out?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I’m here so I guess at some point, I guess so. I dunno.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: Alright. Glad to hear it. My experience with collect calls these days is that they only come from prison. Ah. So I don’t know if we want to explore that with Ryan or with your other son, Craig. There you go. Or maybe even with you, Jim.
That’s right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let, let’s go down that road a minute. Moving right along. Jim. [00:05:00] Collect calls were much more a thing. When you and I were younger. Mm-hmm. Did you ever have to place a collect call to your dad? Don’t remember ever having
Dr. Jim Denison: to do that. Although, had I done that, I think I would’ve remembered it.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. What about you?
Dr. Mark Turman: Yes. Couple of times. In fact, never from prison or where? Never, never from prison. Ah,
Dr. Jim Denison: okay.
Dr. Mark Turman: Good to get clarity there. Yeah. A couple of times at college and fortunately he did accept the charges alright I’m gonna give you a softball question, Ryan.
Which holiday gets the most money spent? And the most card sent? Mother’s Day or Father’s Day?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I would guess Mother’s Day for money spent,
Dr. Mark Turman: but yes, by about somewhere in the neighborhood of about 20 to 25% more than what gets spent on Father’s Day. Jim, take a guess on the total amount of money spent on father’s on an average year in Father’s Day.
Dr. Jim Denison: On father’s on an average year. Oh goodness.
’cause you know, neck ties aren’t a thing [00:06:00] anymore and you know, what would you actually give the guy? I don’t know, $30, $40, something like that.
Dr. Mark Turman: Maybe. Yeah, I don’t know what the average is, but the total oh, according to 2024 statistics is $20 billion seriously given to fathers. $20
Dr. Jim Denison: billion
Dr. Mark Turman: worth of stuff, 20 given to father.
20 billion. Does does any Father’s Day that any of us remember ever feel like $20 billion was spent on us? Ryan, you better get busy here, man,
Dr. Ryan Denison: I gotta tell. My kids apparently need to revise my expectations, so Yeah.
Dr. Jim Denison: Significantly. Seriously. $20 billion. Is that just in America? Is that around the world?
I don’t even know. Is this a worldwide holiday or is this just a national holiday or?
Dr. Mark Turman: So glad you asked. It actually is it was originated by us, by by Americans, but it is a worldwide holiday. Many countries actually celebrate father’s Day in September in Russia. It actually is a military type celebration or is tied to a [00:07:00] military celebration.
But there makes sense. Are about $20 billion spent in the United States annually. Just
Dr. Jim Denison: in Just in the us.
Dr. Mark Turman: Just in the us. Wow. But it doesn’t really feel like that. No, I would not have thought that. Yeah. And while you may not be wearing neck ties very much anymore, Jim, and why would any of us really want to wear that dress?
They’re terrible idea ever again. They are still the predominant gift, which is rather astounding that we would be spending any of that $20 billion on something that no one really likes to wear for very long.
Dr. Jim Denison: Again, probably an urban myth, but back in the day the story was that there were enough neck ties given on Father’s Day to circle the world, something like five times or some crazy number.
And I’m, if that was then this is now, and for that I’m extremely grateful.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Jim Denison: I had to do a thing the other day where I had to wear a tie and as soon as I walked out I was very happy to revert to my tieless. Status.
Dr. Mark Turman: We might, we might all agree that that would be the best use of a neck [00:08:00] tie is to just lay them end to end and see how far they would go around the world.
Exactly.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: All right. So one more generational question here Ryan, when is the last time you wore a neck tie?
Dr. Ryan Denison: It was for a funeral a few weeks back, but prior to that I can’t remember.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and and general estimate of how many neck ties you actually own?
Dr. Ryan Denison: However many I stole from my dad’s closet when I was in high school slash college.
But I don’t think I’ve ever actually purchased one myself. ’cause I wear one maybe once or twice a year if I can be cajoled under doing it that often. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And Jim, so you, you, your collection of neck ties is obviously depleted at least by one son. Clearly. Yes. So how many neck ties are you holding onto?
Dr. Jim Denison: Not many now. We made the move not too long ago from Dallas to Tyler and gave away a lot of stuff, including a whole lot of clothes. And back in the day I had to wear a tie every day. When I was at the last church I pastored, I had to wear a suit and tie. Every day was just, yeah, that was the culture. That was just the expectation.
And [00:09:00] so I had a lot of ties and I’m happy to give them to Ryan would’ve given them to you, anybody that wanted a mark and wound up giving most of them away before we moved. So I probably got 10 left, something like that. But there’s one or two that I, on occasion, have to wear and not happily, but if you’d like some, I’m, I’m able to be helpful here.
I think.
Dr. Mark Turman: All right. Our, our audience now knows where to go get a good tie. That’s right. If they need it. That’s right. All right, so this is your opportunity and also kind of an accountability to find out if our spouses and families are actually listening to our podcast.
Dr. Jim Denison: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Father’s day’s coming up what would you be sharing with your family in the way of your desired gift?
Both you know, hey, I’d like to have this, and I’d also like to have this for a meal. So what would be, what would be your ambition there? I’m go, by the way, I’m going with chicken fried steak and a new golf shirt, chicken fried steak, and a new golf shirt. Would it have to be a Whataburger shirt? [00:10:00] No, I, I, I, I already have a Whataburger shirt.
Okay. Even though my family doesn’t appreciate it that much.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, they should. Yeah. But you’d want orange. You’d want it to be the Whataburger colors if possible, I assume.
Dr. Mark Turman: I, I do favor orange. Yeah, I thought so. Yeah. Particularly Whataburger orange as well as burnt orange, which people outside the state of Texas may have no idea what either of those colors mean.
Probably true.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. Ryan, what do you think? I want Ryan to cook ribs for Father’s Day. That’s what I want. He is very good at that. And so that would be my advice.
Dr. Ryan Denison: Okay. I can do that. My, my hope for gift is something to actually make me exercise. I’m creeping up on 40 and I’ve been told that I need to do more of that by my doctors.
As far as a meal goes, rib sound good, or steak, something like that. Some sort of meat. And I like to be the one that cook it yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jim Denison: Needs to be something that requires a knife.
Dr. Mark Turman: There you go. Yeah, there you go. All right let’s see if we can move into something that might be a little more equipping to our [00:11:00] audience this morning.
Let’s talk about the Bible and fatherhood, particularly God as father, we’re celebrating or at least acknowledging in some ways. 1700 years ago, some Christians got together to try to clarify their understanding of Christianity. They created this thing that we still refer back to today called the Ene Creed created around 3 25.
The first part of that, as it tries to explain the core message of Christianity goes like this, we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Of all things visible and invisible. So Jim, you’ve taught on campuses in colleges in both seminaries. Give us a little bit of the background and understanding.
What do we need to grasp kind of foundationally about this idea of how the Bible and Christianity presents God as our father? The Bible doesn’t just. You’d almost [00:12:00] wonder if that was gonna be the first line or the, at least the 10th line of the Bible doesn’t really show up until it’s implied in Exodus four and then stated for the first time in Deuteronomy 32.
What do we, what do we gain from that and how unique is that to Christianity?
Dr. Jim Denison: That’s a great question. Yeah. I’ve actually been to the spot outside of Ephesus where the council of NA met, where they gathered for all that period of time back in 3 25. And they were solving a lot of issues there that help us understand the creed a little better, and Ryan can speak into that better than I can.
But as I understand the context and that forced century issue there, what they’re alluding to and trying to push toward is certainly not some kind of biological statement. I mean, Jesus says in John four that God is spirit. Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth that we should not take the idea of God as a father to mean obviously that there’s some exclusionary statement here, or that he is in some biological sense, a physical father.
I think what we’re pointing to are the attributes of fatherhood as they are relevant to us. The idea is [00:13:00] it is in Deuteronomy of Israel as his child, he the father and they the child. There’s the context of a father who provides a father who guides a father, who protects a father, who who on on some level stewards and shepherds and leads his family.
All of that is, I think, what we’re to understand in the context of God the father. I will add very quickly that the word for spirit in Hebrew is in the feminine. Holy Spirit in, in terms of just the grammar of that. Jurgen Moltmann does a great deal of work around that, around the idea of the, the feminine side of the motherhood side of God relative to the Spirit.
When in Genesis we read that the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep. It’s this concept of a mother hen hovering over her chicks. It’s, it’s that idea of a nurturing sort of dimension of God, and so you almost get a motherhood dimension of God in the Spirit and a fatherhood dimension of God the Father.
As we say, we typically think of Father just as a way of distinguishing that member of the Trinity because they’re all God. It’s [00:14:00] God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. And it’s sometimes easier for us, I think, to be able to distinguish the three by calling him God, the. Father as opposed to just referring to him as God, as though Jesus is in God or the Spirit is in God.
And then you get into subordinationism and things like that. So bottom line, nurturing, providing, protecting the, the Lord of the universe and of the, of the family, as I think what’s all intended to be understood there and to understand him as a, because he is love for John four, eight, he is a loving father and therefore loves us in every good way that a good father would unconditionally, absolutely sacrificially in all the ways that a father would provide for his children.
All of that’s what to be is what’s to be understood there, I think.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. So let me ask you to clarify one point of that. I think I follow you relative to it not being a biological thing, and I’ve also heard you talk, I know one of your favorite places is Mars Hill referenced in Act 17. You often talk about how Christianity I.[00:15:00]
In contrast to what many of the pagans believed in Greek and Roman mythology and the, that there were many gods and, and even the stratus of gods. But the Bible also says part of that conversation acts 17, that it’s in God that we live and move and have our being. Mm-hmm. So even though it’s not biological in the way that you were talking about it a moment ago, there is this sense in which God is source.
Of all living things, including us, right?
Dr. Jim Denison: I think so. Yeah. I absolutely do believe that. Of course, it again, you don’t wanna go too far with this, you know, there are other traditions that do, other religions that do that actually see God in a physical sense and see there being a physical act of procreation involved in some ways.
But that would not be biblical theology at all. There’s the text that speaks of the spirit coming upon Mary relative to the birth of Jesus. But even all of that is to be understood in a miraculous rather than a biological sense, I think. But yes, in the sense that the father is the origin of life for the family.
One could say it [00:16:00] that way, then we’re to see God as the one in whom we live and move and have our being. And of course, Paul is at that point actually quoting Epi amenities who was a, a poet of the day six century Greek poet who was saying that to Zeus. And he’s using that common kind of cultural statement to build a bridge to save what you think of as Zeus.
I’m here to tell you is the unknown God that you’re worshiping here, but the God of the universe, not just one God in the Pantheon, one father among Mani, one being among Mani, but the Father. And that’s why back to the Nicene Creed, we think of one God who is the, not just a, but the Father Almighty.
There’s a uniqueness in which he’s the source of the whole human race, not just this child or that child. I’m the father of two children. He’s the father of every child.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Yeah, that’s helpful. All right. And that’s, you know, we see that in a, in a pretty amazing way as the whole Old Testament unfolds, and we see this relationship of God as father, [00:17:00] particularly to Israel.
It’s not all described in those terms, but it’s significantly described in those terms. Ryan, let’s jump ahead now, all the way to the beginning of the New Testament. Matthew, chapter one is where my thoughts go here, and it’s it’s one of those chapters that a lot of Christians probably just wanna skip over, at least the first half of Matthew chapter one.
My mother used to say, you know what, just, just give me the New Testament. Just give me the story of Jesus in the gospels. And even then I wanna skip over this thing called the genealogy of Jesus which really traces his his ascendancy through his father. So give us your take on why that’s important and why Matthew started with that.
Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah. I think it’s a, especially when you think about Matthew writing to a predominantly Jewish audience, where so much in Jewish culture was built on this idea of tracing your lineage back through the, through your ancestors and finding a sense of identity [00:18:00] in that that I think Matthew starts with a genealogy and tracing Christ’s lineage back through his ancestry back all the way to Abraham to show that he is the Messiah that comes from the promised line.
And the, what’s interesting is that Matthew doesn’t include every single member of that lineage there. He skips around some to highlight, to give it a certain number and to, in order to emphasize certain people. Within that genealogy. He also includes some of the, I guess you could say, less respected parts of Christ’s lineage where he include, and he doesn’t shy away from the pieces of Christ’s ancestry.
The good that you know, if you normally you might try and forget or try and we’ve all got those, got those ancestors we’re like, I kind of just would prefer to skip that generation here. And Matthew goes out of his way to include those. And I think it’s helpful ’cause it reminds us that when we think back about our lineage, about where we come from, it’s not just the good, we don’t get the cherry pick kind of the influences in our lives.
[00:19:00] It’s the good and the bad that shape who we are. And really I think that’s, we see that in the story of Jesus about how God can use the good and he can redeem the bad. And from the very beginning, I think God is emphasizing that what we see in Jesus is the fulfillment of a very flawed past that finds this perfection in Christ and how Jesus really is the epitome of that.
And so I love that that’s how Matthew starts is with not only the genealogy, but with the people that he includes in it. I think it really makes that story clear.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s just, and you see this, you see the importance of this connection, particularly as it relates to identity in a lot of different ways throughout the Bible and particularly in the New Testament.
You, you hear people constantly being referred to as this is so and the son of mm-hmm. So and so James and John, they are the sons of Zebedee. And there’s continual examples of that. I remember growing up that I grew up in a relatively small town and I was I was commonly referred to or identified [00:20:00] as well, that’s Tommy Truman’s son, or that’s Carolyn and Tommy Truman’s son.
And sometimes I really cringed at that, but came to really appreciate it. Jim, I wanted to see if you could comment on a couple of what I would call warnings, even in Jesus’ conversations about relating to God as father. One of those is in Matthew three, where Jesus basically tells the Jewish religious leaders that they’re trusting in this identification, particularly with Abraham as their father that they’re counting on that too much.
And then take it from there. And why is it that when we run into places like John five, that the religious leaders are so offended that Jesus is talking about God as his father? What are those two passages tr What are they trying to tell us?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, they’re really interesting, I think, ’cause they give us a real window into the culture of the day and the way in which the Jews saw themselves and therefore saw Jesus.
So there’s two ways in [00:21:00] which one could understand the Jews, the chosen people. One is to see them as a conduit. Through which God would intend to bless all the nations of the world, as he said back in Genesis chapter 12. The other would be to see them as a container of God’s blessing in the sense that they’re a special people and therefore superior to everybody else.
We have the law. We keep the law, we have the prophets. We live in ways others don’t. We must be more special to God. We are as his chosen people on some level, qualitatively superior to others. That unfortunately. Is how by the time of Jesus, some in the Jewish community had come to see themselves.
They’d been persecuted, obviously for centuries. Going back to the Egyptians the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans. There’d been antisemitism going on from millennia here. It’s understandable that there would be this kind of a sense that we’re gonna be different from everybody else and we’re really better.
We’re really superior. God sees us in a superior sort of a way, and God is our father in a way. He’s really not the father of anybody else. I mean, we [00:22:00] still believe that God created all that is. A Jewish person would say that of course, and they’re his offspring in that sense, but he’s our father in a special way, and therefore we have a baked in intrinsic by birthright relationship with God.
And Jesus comes along to say, that’s not true if we don’t repent of our sin as Jews. Then we are gonna be punished for our sin, judged for our sin, just as anybody else, that we need salvation by grace through faith, just like everybody else does, that it’s not enough to be a biological Jew. One must be born again as Jesus is wanting to say.
And that’s the thing he’s working against there. Paul does the same thing in the book of Romans where he talks about his Jewish people and to them and says, I could wish myself to curse for their sake, who are the inheritors of the blessing, but but now need to turn to the Messiah personally. So that’s the dynamic that’s going on there.
It applies to us in the sense that if my father or grandfather was a preacher or my family went to church, or I was baptized in the church as an infant, or when I was a [00:23:00] teenager or whatever, then I must therefore have some guaranteed relationship with God. And so we can do the same thing. I can do the same thing.
I remember, I’ll say this kind of personal, but when Ryan was diagnosed with cancer some years ago, I remember being so upset with God. I knew I shouldn’t be. I knew it made no sense theologically, but I found myself going down this road. But Lord, he serves you. He’s so faithful to you. I’ve tried to serve you.
I’ve been a pastor these years. I knew all that was wrong. I absolutely knew that. But there was a part of me that wanted to claim some special status, you know, that had nothing to do with grace and faith. It has had to do with some baked in sort of transactional relationship. That’s human nature on some level, and certainly what the Jews were doing, I think.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah,
Dr. Jim Denison: in terms of, I’m sorry.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, no, and, and I was just thinking as, as that tendency and temptation comes to all of us, I was also wondering if that’s somewhere kind of ground into the misconceptions and misunderstandings that are [00:24:00] driving some of the antisemitism that we’re seeing in our world today.
That there’s no doubt that that people. Wrongly assume that that’s, that’s the way that all Jews position themselves.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. There’s no doubt about that. And that goes both ways. I remember the first time I went to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, where basically, as you know, mark and Ryan having been there, it’s, it’s essentially just the history of antisemitism so that it won’t happen again, is essentially the idea.
So on the one side, you’ve got the Aryan Super race mythology that Hitler’s promoting, and on the other side you’ve got him claiming that the Jews are the reason that the Aryan Super race is not advancing as it should. They’re the enemy, they’re the problem, they’re the prosecutors because they claim. To be superior to the rest of us, to be God’s chosen people in a way that we’re not.
When we know as Christians, they’re claiming to be Christians, I’m not saying they are claiming to be Christians that really, they’re the ones that executed Jesus. They’re the Christ crucifies. They’re the ones who murdered Jesus, and so they’re [00:25:00] deserving of the persecution which we’re bringing forward.
It all goes together and they claim the Jews to have claimed a superior status when they have the superior status. I’m, I’ve not experienced that at all in my own experience in Israel. All the many years I’ve been there, I’ve come across nothing that would indicate that in Israel today or in the Jewish race today, there’s any sense of superiority by virtue of just an inherited racial superiority.
I don’t sense that they have some definite. Attributes as a nation and as a race. I often quote the fact that there’s, Jews have never been more than 3% of the American population, but they have 38% of our Nobel laureates that Jewish as the Jewish race has, has produced remarkable advances in in credit, in terms of literacy, in terms of advances.
Just really remarkable, but I don’t sense at all any of this that we’re talking about now that Jesus is up against this kind of entrenched sort of superiority that I’m thinking probably came out of the Babylonian captivity, came out of all the persecutions under the Greeks and the Romans. [00:26:00] Nonetheless, that’s what he’s working against here.
Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. You,
Dr. Jim Denison: you don’t need me. You’re saying you don’t need to repent. You don’t need John the Baptist message. You don’t need to because you’re just claiming to be Abraham’s children. John the Baptist said God could raise up out of these stones children to Abraham if you wanted to. It’s about a personal relationship with the personal God.
And that’s the transferrable principle to us today. I think right now, when they’re getting mad at Jesus for claiming a personal relationship, it’s a little different. The fatherhood concept as Jews understood it was relative to the nation, wa came, you’re aia. So a New Testament scholar makes the case that Jesus was the first Jew ever to pray to God as his individual father.
Hmm. To say to, to call God my father, not just our Father, but my father, to claim that unique status. And of course, by that, Jesus meant to communicate himself as God’s son and Messiah, divinity. And in a Jewish mind that’s blasphemy. Not only that an individual could claim divine status, [00:27:00] but that this would be an assault on the oneness of God.
The Shamma, you know, the call of to faith and to prayer is hero. Israel, the Lord. How God, the Lord is one God. It’s monotheism that makes Judaism different from every other religion in so many ways. So to come along and claim that I am God seems to be a violation of monotheism, seems to be abject, hypocritical, egotism on my part to claim divinity and to claim that I have a unique relationship to God as my father.
And they are outraged by this claim. In fact, at one point they took up stones to execute Jesus for blasphemy as John’s gospel says. So that’s the cultural background behind that part of their understanding and Jesus’ understanding of God as father.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, a lot, lot to think about in terms of understanding that that basic theology that the Bible’s communicating and even there, right.
Jesus is in many ways, illustrating and emphasizing this thing called the Trinity, that mm-hmm. We, [00:28:00] we still struggle to understand how God is three and yet one, and certainly in that moment and in other teachings of his, that was something that, that he was trying to help communicate. And it is, we still are we’re gonna spend all of eternity wrapping our brains around how God is three and yet one in the way he’s presented to us in the Bible and in the Christian faith.
All right. So we’ve laid a pretty good foundation here for some of what the Bible teaches about the fatherhood of God. And I hope that serves a foundation for the rest of our conversation. But we’re gonna step aside for a short break and then we’ll be right back.
Alright, we’re back. You probably have heard the famous statement by Mark Twain. Who in commenting about his father. He said this when I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around, but by the time I was 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in just seven [00:29:00] years.
So that seems like a really good setup, Brian, to ask you, what is it like to work with your dad in ministry? Blessings in every way.
Dr. Jim Denison: It’s, it’s just a privilege on every hand. I, I’m, I’m certain, isn’t it Ryan? Apparently Ryan is, has one was asked
Dr. Ryan Denison: that to answer that question, but honestly, Ryan has a ventriloquist
Dr. Mark Turman: here.
Dr. Ryan Denison: It has been a blessing and honestly, the reason it’s been a blessing is in large part because my father’s always made a really big point of making sure that he didn’t get in the Holy Spirit’s way in terms of determining what, what that, what my role is supposed to look like, what I’m supposed to do. One of my greatest fears going to the ministry and why I was so reticent to accept that calling for a while, is that.
I really did struggle to understand what it could look like to be in the ministry and not, and like still be me, not just like a mini version of my father. And so it took a long time for me to really come to peace with the idea that God could give me a calling to the ministry that was unique to me. And understanding what [00:30:00] that looks like has been an evolution, which I think has been healthy in a lot of ways.
But yeah, like my mom and my dad’s willingness to support the Holy Spirit rather than try and be the Holy Spirit was a huge piece of why I think that worked.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a good word. Good
Dr. Jim Denison: word.
Dr. Mark Turman: All right, Jen.
Dr. Jim Denison: Jen does have a verse that she’s used, but both the boys that she found in the Bible that says, I know the plans I have for you, says your mother.
And then they say they can’t find that verse in the Bible, so where, wherever she finds it. It is a challenge, but
Dr. Mark Turman: but it, it’s not in there, but it probably should be. Should be right. Should be in there. We can take that up with the Holy Spirit later, but That’s right, Jim. Not only Ryan, but both of your sons, Craig and Ryan have worked closely with you and have at different seasons been a part of what we do at Denon Forum and Denon Ministries.
So here’s your shout out opportunity. What’s it like to have your sons working closely with you and even in a ministry context?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Thank you for that, mark. Yeah. I know you’re gonna expect me to say this, but it’s absolutely the case [00:31:00] that it is, it’s a blessing. I would never have imagined. You know, not in a million years would’ve imagined.
My father had his own business in Houston growing up, sold electronics and capacitors and read relays. Things they don’t make anymore probably. And he really wanted me to go into that business, wanted me to kind of inherit and take over that business, which I just didn’t wanna do. I wasn’t mad at my dad.
I just had no interest in doing that. I would’ve been a really bad electronic salesperson, just wouldn’t have been good. But he really wanted that to be the case and was really kind of disappointed that I didn’t do that. And especially disappointed when my brother and I went into vocational ministry.
And and I had a wonderful father in so many ways. That was just an area of tension. And so one of the things kind of baked into me that I really, when I was blessed to be a father, did not want to do with either Ryan or Craig would be on any level. To bring that forward, to bring forward some level of expectations, some level of disappointment if they didn’t follow in my plans, whatever those plans on some level might be.
Plus they’re such good guys and they [00:32:00] know Jesus so deeply that I knew I could absolutely trust that they would follow the Lord and God was their father before I was their father, and I knew all of that and so could absolutely trust that God is gonna lead them in whatever way he wished to do and whatever way he had done would’ve been terrific.
There was a time in Ryan’s life when he was thinking towards sports management, even was in that program down at Baylor, and that would’ve been terrific. There was a time when Craig was thinking toward vocational music when he’s a great musician. He was on the road as a musician at one point and was doing a music degree in college, and that would’ve been terrific.
And so Janet and I just really didn’t, we didn’t grow up in a family of pastors and ministers. It’s not like there’s some generational sort of a trajectory or anything like that. Would’ve been happy for God to lead them in any way He did. But I will say it is an incredible personal blessing to me that he did lead them in the way that he did, and that now I get to be part of a ministry that Craig, in many ways helped to build when he was leading the organization and a growth strategy some years ago.
And that I get to partner with Ryan pretty much [00:33:00] every day in the content that we produce. He writes the Friday daily article. He writes a lot of website content for us. I don’t ever do anything significant on a theological level that he and I don’t discuss at first. And that’s just an incredible privilege, just an incredible blessing from God that I have the opportunity to do that.
Plus I want Ryan to like me so I can play with his kids. And
Dr. Mark Turman: that’s a
Dr. Jim Denison: big thing. That’s the real
Dr. Mark Turman: motivation here, right? It’s a, that’s the real motivat issue there, you know? Yeah. Yep. And, and, and as a as a member of the team with, without the name Denison I can say that it is a really cool thing to watch and I know that not every dad and mom perhaps, but many.
Parents do have aspirations sometimes that their children will come and share in the family business or follow in a similar career path. My dad was a small business owner as well. He had dreams and aspirations that some of his children might come along and work in that environment. And that didn’t actually happen.
He never was particularly disappointed by it, but [00:34:00] you know, it was always like, Hey, that might be a really cool thing to happen. Mm-hmm. But Ryan, I wanna take this conversation kind of down this road of how family and parenting and particularly fatherhood, is something that the Bible lays out as a pathway of significant spiritual development and discipleship for us as we relate to God.
And even just referencing, we go all the way back to the story of Exodus all the way back to God giving the law through Moses the 10 Commandments. And in, when you really think about it in some ways. God calls this out in the 10 Commandments is really kind of remarkable that there is this command to love your parents and to obey them.
And then Jesus rein reemphasizes that in his teaching in Mark seven. Paul talks about it in both Ephesians and Colossians and in other places. We kind of know that the Bible references this as a responsibility of both [00:35:00] fathers and mothers in Deuteronomy. Even even this astounding passage out.
Just one more reference, which is Tim in second Timothy chapter two, Paul’s encouraging and training and preparing the church and. He describes how bad the world will be in some ways as we move through this period called the the end times, and se second Timothy three, two says this. In these times, people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful and unholy, and it goes on from there.
Anyway, let me just bring this back around. Why do you think the Bible is so focused on this idea of faith involving this fundamental respect and even care for your parents?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I, I think a lot of it goes back to this idea that when God created the family, it was meant to, in a lot of ways, be a model for our relationship with him as sort of like a [00:36:00] chance to, on a daily basis, practice what it’s like to obey God and with physical manifestations of the idea of authority of submitting to authority of what that looks like.
Of course there is no earthly father that will ever replicate God the father and will ever be able to replicate that, should ever replicate that. But my pastor here and Tyler Chris Leg, he’s, the way he’s put it is like, essentially our job as parents and our job as fathers is to get as close to God the father as we can.
So that when people, when our kids make that transition from looking at. Okay. How do I obey my father? How do I obey my heavenly Father? They have to look, they have to turn as little as possible to get there. And that’s always kind of stuck with me and resonated as I’ve raised my kids with. And kind of, it’s, it’s a way to, I think, to sort of fight against that temptation at times to abuse that authority or to see in that authority some sort of rights of our, that we should take for ourselves versus just the responsibility that we’re meant to steward.
’cause if God has given [00:37:00] us the privilege of being parents, whether that’s as a father or a mother, then it is a privilege and a responsibility that we need to, we need to steward well. And so I think while the Bible has a lot to say about respecting your parents and that we absolutely need to that we need to remember is not limited to kids.
That’s meant to be. Children are meant to respect their parents regardless of the age of their parents. When you remember that a lot of the Old Testament, a lot of these even the New Testament writings. The primary audience would’ve been adults thinking about their elderly parents. In a lot of ways, I think that kind of reinforces that this is not just instruction for how to raise your kids, it’s instruction on how to be a good kid for your entire life, how to be a good son or a good daughter to your parents for your entire life, and how to model that to your kids if you’re privileged to be able to have them.
But I think a lot of it does go back to this idea that the basic biblical command about fatherhood, about motherhood goes back to this idea that we are meant to model what it’s like to submit to the [00:38:00] father by how we submit to our, to our to our earthly parents, and model that to our kids and also hold them, hold our kids accountable to model that as well.
Because if it gets so much easier to submit to, to submit to God when you’re in the habit of submitting to godly parents.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a good word of describing. You know, obviously the home is supposed to be the first and primary place of discipleship. But it’s, it’s also a place where we learn the first fundamental lessons of, as you said, what is it like to relate to God in a proper dependence.
We learned that fundamentally if we’re being raised in healthy homes. Jim, I’m and I love the call out by the way, just love the call out. I heard a friend of mine say at one point when we’re young, we’re supposed to obey our parents. When we’re older, we’re supposed to honor our parents. So Ryan, I know you’re gonna really need to focus on that in the next couple of days, next couple of months, next couple of years perhaps with the other guy on this podcast.
I’m sorry. We’ll pray for you in [00:39:00] that. Jim talk a little bit about is should we think of this idea of God as father and us as sons and children? Should we simply see that through the lens of metaphor or are we kind of short changing it if we do that? Then one of the things I ran into when I was pastoring churches was occasionally I would have somebody who would say to me, you know, I didn’t have a good dad, and it’s hard for me to think about God and to.
Build my faith around this idea that God is my father. And you know, even Jesus teaching us that when you pray you should start your prayers with our Father. Mm-hmm. How, how have you experienced that in how do, is, is it simply metaphor or is it more than metaphor?
Dr. Jim Denison: I think it’s more than metaphor. I, it is at least metaphor as we’ve been saying, but I think there’s more than that.
God is our father in the active sense of an agent in our lives, in the sense of a person functioning in our lives as a father, [00:40:00] a good father would function in our lives, not just relative to beginning our lives, kinda like that. D is to clock maker that creates the, the clock and just watches it run down, you know, sort of a thing.
Thomas Jefferson, kind of a ideaism, but this istic miracle working constantly involved in our lives. Sort of father, all of that is how we need to see God the Father. He is just as much father now as he ever was. ’cause he doesn’t change and we don’t change. He says in Malachi three, I, the Lord do not change all of God.
There is is in this moment. He is as much my father now as he was when I was conceived 67 years ago or when he intended me back before the beginning of time. And so there’s this sense of ongoing reality. Of his work in my life that exceeds the metaphorical to be sure the problem comes when seeing God as father is difficult relative to seeing him in a good way.
Freud was right to the degree that he suggested that we often do see God as a projection of a father image in [00:41:00] our lives. Now he thought that’s all God was, was a father projection. Of course, I’m obviously wrong there, but he at least was right to think that it’s human nature to a degree, to see God in the same way we would see our Father.
And that’s understandable. Especially when we’re younger. Our father’s stronger than we are. He certainly sovereign over our lives in many ways. He controls our world in many ways that God the Father does as well. So it’s understandable that people would do that. So like you, over the years as a pastor, I’ve had conversations, very painful conversations with people whose father was absent, whose father was abusive, whose father was sporadic, who had a hard time not seeing God in that same way.
And the way to try to come along, I think, is first of all, acknowledge that. First of all, understand that pain and hear that and see that person and, and, and acknowledge the reality of the experience they’ve been through, regardless of the theology of it. To live in a, a life with an absent father, an abusive father would be horrific just on the merits.
Theology aside would just be horrific, and that needs to be acknowledged [00:42:00] and understood and supported. And there needs to be compassion and ministry at that point and counsel and ways that we could help a person. But then beyond that, on the theological side, what I’ve tried to do is help them understand that God is your father in a way your earthly father never was.
That that The good news here is that you actually do have a father, okay? You had a really bad earthly father. The good news is you have a wonderful heavenly Father. You’re not as fatherless as you think you are. You’re not the orphan you see yourself to be. You’re not the victim. That you’ve experienced yourself to be you are with your earthly father.
Yes, of course, tragically not demeaning or denying that relative to this father that perhaps you’re not acknowledging. He’s the opposite of all that. And the great good news is he, he loves you as unconditionally as you wish your earthly father would. And you have to be prepared, of course, for them to say, okay, if he loves me and all of that, why did he allow this?
Why did he allow my earthly father to be what he was in my life? You have to be ready for that part of the conversation. That’s a [00:43:00] realistic question. That’s a legitimate question. That’s a different question. That’s a the Odyssey conversation, but, and that is part of it. But at the very least, we can, I think, come along and offer that encouragement to God.
The Father loves us, whether we know it or not, he loves us. Whether we’re aware of that or not, that’s one of the ways. He’s not our earthly father. He knows us whether we know him in a way. I couldn’t know Ryan in a way that Ryan couldn’t know me. That would be odd. For me to only know Ryan at a distance whereby he doesn’t know me, but I know him.
I’m tracking him in some way. I’m, I’m stalking him, I’m following him around. I’m seeing him do things without him knowing it. That would be very unhealthy. God, the Heavenly Father, because he’s omniscient and omnipresent, knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us unconditionally. We wanna offer everybody access to that Father, and especially those who did not have an earthly father whose experience was as healthy as we wished it would be.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good word. Ryan, let me, let me close this section by throwing [00:44:00] you a curve ball. Okay. And I’m just, I’m giving you a heads up. That is curve ball. All right. So I was gonna ask this later on of one of you, but let’s, let’s close out this section by, by this question. If it’s a hard
Dr. Jim Denison: question, ask Ryan.
Dr. Mark Turman: That’s why I’m gonna ask him. I didn’t, I knew it would be, it would be beyond you. It’d be above your head. So I didn’t wanna ask you, Jim. Yeah. So like I said, this whole idea, and hopefully many if not all of the fathers that listen to our podcast will be encouraged by this and also challenged by this.
We, we have lived long enough, at least your dad and I have lived long enough to have seen the pendulum around fatherhood and fathers as disciple makers move around. Okay. We had a generation of people particularly coming out of World War ii, who in many ways came back and were many of the, that generation were deeply wounded.
And we, we had books that were written and all kinds of studies that were done about fathers being either physically or emotionally absent. Big [00:45:00] reality coming out of a war situation. Now we, we somewhat have a reality in which many fathers are very present. They are good fathers in the kind of basic understanding of what is good.
They go to most, if not all, of the games and practices and coach and do all of those kinds of things. What is the distinction that you might help us understand between being a good father and being a godly father?
Dr. Ryan Denison: Ooh, that is a good question. I think for starters, you can’t be a, I don’t think you, in a lot of ways, you can be a good father without being a godly father.
I, I do think there are, you know, I say that there are good parents that don’t know the Lord that genuinely care about their kids, do what’s right by their kids, love their kids. But I, I do think there’s something that should be unique to Christians in terms of our capacity to be a good father when we have the example of God in our lives and when we can go back to that and see that.
But I think so much of it goes back to [00:46:00] just, are we trying to be good to our kids because we love them and because we want them to have a good life or is our larger purpose, we want them to know the Lord and we want, we want to have enough influence in their lives, build enough, I guess, enough credibility in their lives through our presence, through our actions, that when they really kind of struggle with their faith and everyone hits a point where they struggle with their faith, I think.
The question is gonna be for the question that I think determines large part whether people continue in their faith is when they hit that point, do they try and build, do they try and struggle through it or do they settle for what they have at that moment and just stop growing? And I think as godly parents, I think one of the things that should be different is we should build up enough credibility and enough visibility for our faith in the lives of our kids that when they hit that point, they can come to us and we can help them through it.
That when we need to kind of pull from that bank of credit that it’s there. And I think if we, if [00:47:00] we make it solely about. You know, raising our kids and making sure they know they’re loved, like all that, that’s great. But if we don’t also at the same time help them understand that they’re loved by God, not just us, but loved by God, then we’re not fully realizing our potential that God has given us as parents.
And I think as fathers, that’s real. I think that’s one of the main distinctions is just, are we, are we being good father between being good fathers and godly fathers? Is, are we pointing our kids to God or does it kind of like, does our purpose as parents stop with them?
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a, that’s really helpful, just this idea that, you know, yeah.
We, we want them to be secure in our love. In, in, in, all the things that just a fundamentally good parent would want, but are we helping them to that transcendent idea, to that bigger idea of what it means to know and walk with God? That, that’s a unique part of our calling. Alright, we’re gonna step aside again for just a few minutes and then come back.
Got a couple more questions As we talk [00:48:00] about fatherhood and parenting we’re seeing some things in our culture where a lot of people are opting out of being parents and being fathers. We’re gonna talk about that and a few other things in just a moment. We’ll be right back.
All right, we’re back to finish up our conversation about fatherhood from a spiritual biblical perspective. And talk a little bit about that as something of a calling as well as a, a sacred ministry. Jim, you’ve often described what your own spiritual journey in growing up with and, and the relationship you had with your dad.
Just remind us again, just a little bit broadly and maybe a few details about the influence of your dad and how that is even seen today in the work of Denison Forum.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, thank you for that. I had a wonderful father in just so many ways. I was really just so blessed. But there’s some issues there as well.
As is the case with all, with all fathers. Dad grew up on a farm in Kansas, very, very involved in his Methodist church. He [00:49:00] taught Sunday school there. And in fact, my brother ran into someone a few years ago that thought, that knew dad growing up, that thought he was so involved. He might go into ministry at some point in time.
World War II broke out. Dad enlisted in the army, stationed on an island in the South Pacific, horrific war experience, a horrific experience, came back and did not go to church again. Could not make his horrible war experience line with his understanding of God. And so I grew up in a wonderful home, but no spiritual life.
And really all my dad’s questions, if there’s a God, why is there war, science and faith, evil and suffering? Dad had his first heart attack when I was two, lived 19 years on borrowed time, is what the doctors said. He knew doctors DeBakey and Cooley down in Houston. Personally, I, I have vivid memories. Of ambulances at the house and paddles and things two or three times.
And I mean, dad’s had very, very serious heart condition for 19 years and then had another heart attack and died my senior year of college. He was 55 years old when he passed away. And I grew up. He loved us [00:50:00] unconditionally. My younger brother and me. I, the more I know him through as an adult, the more I recognize the courage with which he lived those 19 years, he could have died when I was two years old.
I could have never known my father when he had that first heart attack. My mother basically kept him alive until the ambulances got there and so grateful we had the 19 years we had so grateful for the morality with which I was raised, the love with which I was raised, the degree to which he was able to support us even in spite of this debilitating condition that he had.
So grateful for all of that, but also. Growing up with these, what I now would call apologetic questions, faith questions, issues such as that. So when I was 15 years old and these guys knocked on the door inviting my brother and me to ride the bus to church, dad thought we should have some religious exposure.
So he put us on the bus and that’s how we got to church. That’s how we heard the gospel. That’s how we eventually came to faith in Christ. And Dad was instrumental in that and thinking we should have some religious exposure, as I said, became resistant to Marx and my engagement in church when it transcended what he thought [00:51:00] it should be.
When we started wanting to go every Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night, especially resistant when we were called into ministry, that was absolutely not what he intended for us. Actually died before we ever really came to terms. A number of years ago I was teaching philosophy at Southwestern Seminary and we had a chapel speaker one particular day that was talking about the father’s blessing and how if a son, especially an older son especially, doesn’t have his father’s blessing, how that can be challenging.
And I realized then that I really didn’t have that. And in some ways I’ve been compensating for that all my life, trying to earn that from others in some ways that aren’t even entirely healthy. Really trying to impress people, to impress my father, as it were to be liked and wanted and approved in ways that are compensating for not sensing that really from my father.
Not long ago I was talking to a friend who said, if he could know you now, he would be very proud of who you are. And that actually brought tears to my eyes. [00:52:00] I hadn’t thought of it quite in that way, and it made me realize, again, the depth of the emotion I’m speaking of right now of, of wanting a father’s blessing in a way that just didn’t happen in, in my own personal life.
But on the other side, I’ve often said God redeems what he allows that has in so many ways driven what I’ve done all these decades, really as a professor and a pastor. And now in what we do in Dentist and Ministries, dentist and Forum, I’m motivated to really address my father’s questions, the faith questions, the intellectual issues that dad had.
I motivated every day to reach people like my dad. And to encourage, encourage and equip people who know people like my dad, so that even if dad wouldn’t have been reading my daily article, maybe I can equip somebody that knew my dad as it were and could reach people that are where my dad was. I’ve always had such a heart for men.
I taught men’s Bible studies all the years I was a pastor, had a heart for intellectual questions and issues because that’s what I grew up with as well. So in many ways, I’m a very different person than I would’ve been had dad come back from [00:53:00] war and been active in church and raised us in church. If dad had lived past 55, if we had had a spiritual relationship, I would in many ways be different than I am now.
I can’t know what that would be versus this, but I can be grateful for, for the ways that God has redeemed that. I have a, a close with this you’ve heard me say this and Mar Ryan has seen it. I have a painting in my study over in, in our home that we found in the attic a number of years ago.
It’s a painting of an island scene. It says WF Hall in the corner in 48 on the side. I didn’t know what it was in, asked my mom. Turned out that the survivors of this island my father had been on in world War ii, one of them was a painter and he made a rendition of that island they had been on for each of the survivors.
And I’d found my father’s painting that had been in the attic all those years. So it’s on the wall in my study where I can see it every day. It reminds me to be grateful that dad survived the war. Mm-hmm. To be grateful that my father was the person that he was, [00:54:00] and also encourages me to try to reach people like Nat was who need the good news of God’s love in a way that intersects with their issues as well.
Yeah, that’s how my father’s story really is my story even today.
Dr. Mark Turman: Such a, such a profound influence on all of us. I, I remember the Arkansas Pastor Robert Lewis did a lot of work in understanding how our parents, and particularly our fathers, just have a profound influence on us in so many ways.
And and Jim love the story every time I hear it, of just how God continues to redeem all that he allows in that journey. And really speaks to some of the realities that I wanna talk about as we wrap up today about what’s going on in our culture. Lots of attention, rightfully so on the number of single mothers in our culture.
Couple of stats that are going on here. 7.3 million single mothers in the United States compared to about a million and a half, 1.6 million single [00:55:00] fathers together, that accounts for about 21 million children in the United States being raised. Either by a single mother or a single father that accounts for one out of every five moms in America.
And lots of attention there. But Ryan, I just wonder when you hear numbers like that, what do you think is the, the opportunity, if not the responsibility and calling of the church to relate to those who are parenting as singles, either fathers or mothers?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it’s meant, it calls us back to sort of the biblical model of parenting where it really was a communal effort.
It was meant to be an intergenerational effort. It was, but the idea that. A mother and father, even if both are present, are sufficient to raise kids by themselves is a, it’s a modern fallacy in a lot of ways. I mean, it, that hasn’t been that way for a lot of history. For most of history. It’s, there’s been a general recognition that you need more than parents to raise kids.
You need grandparents, you need [00:56:00] friends, you need neighbors. And I think that even gets exacerbated when you talk about single parent households where it really is an opportunity for the church to step in. Really model what our calling is meant to be in terms of coming alongside single parents meant terms of coming along and filling some of those gaps that will be present, whether there were two parents in the house or not, but are just so much more evidently needed when there’s one, when there’s only one parent in the home.
And it really is an opportunity for us to show love, for us to show help, for us, to for us to have patience with a lot of the kind of the other aspects that come with that. I mean, there’s statistics also that show that, you know, being raised by one parent increases the chances for kids to drop out of high school, increases behavioral problems.
Or at least the propensity for those. And I think that’s by no means universally the case, but I think or no, but I think it is present enough that it’s also important to understand that if you’re coming alongside to help single parent homes, there’s gonna be some [00:57:00] unique challenges to that. And those challenges don’t absolve us of our responsibility to be there as a church.
And so really looking for opportunities to help in those regards. I, I think it’s an amazing opportunity for us to help the parents and the kids to experience God’s love in a way that as a church we’re uniquely capable of doing.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And I think it’s a really opportunity and, and a calling in some ways for churches to evaluate the, their, their communities and their demographics.
You know, churches have always tried to create specialized ministries. We do that with children, we do that with preschoolers, we do it with students. We’ve done it over the years with singled adults. But particularly zeroing in on single parents. Trying to find ways to, to build nurturing communities inside the church that welcome them, support them, and help them, and like you said, live toward and serve toward that biblical model of multi-generational and, and a network of [00:58:00] people that can support and encourage and just, you know, really been impressed over the years.
One of my closest working ministry associates was a single mom. She just did incredible work raising three children inside the context of a local church and just did a, a wonderful job with that. And I think the church needs to continue to realize that that’s a part of our culture. Jim, I wanted to turn this for a moment.
Go. If I could add one more thing to that
Dr. Ryan Denison: thought, just Sure. That I should have said before as well, is I think as we come alongside parent single family, parent or single family homes, it’s really important for churches, not to make them feel like a project, but to just welcome them in, to be part of our community and part of our family, to let them know that even if their home situation may not mirror the majority of our churches or the majority of our congregation, that that doesn’t make them somehow lesser, that we can really, so as we come alongside them, really help them know that we love them, not ’cause we see them as an opportunity to earn brownie points for heaven or heavenly [00:59:00] child or anything like that.
But because we love them and because we want them to feel at home in our churches. And I think that is one area where. A lot of these specialized ministries in a church context can kind of fall short, is that we make people feel like projects. And that’s, if you look at the way Jesus ministered to people, he made them feel appreciated and loved and accepted regardless of the life situation they were in.
Called them the, not the sin, called them to to follow God and to follow Christ. But at the same time didn’t make them feel like like they were different Somehow he just made them feel welcomed. And I think as churches, that’s, that’s something we need to keep at the forefront of our attention as we reach out to single, single parent households is that these are, these are families.
They may have looked different, but they’re still families. And families are welcome. And so they’re not special projects.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a good word. Yeah. Jim, I wanted to come back with you to finish up with one more question about what’s going on in our culture. You’ve written, others have written, we’re watching [01:00:00] this thing called Falling Birth rates.
And it, it seems to be speaking to the reality that many both men and women are opting out of parenting, opting out of marriage. We’ve been seeing that for quite a while. But how does the bible, how would you say that the Bible would respond to that? I just am wondering how we should think about both marriage and parenting as a calling from God and how we should reframe that maybe in a healthier way.
And what is this phenomenon that we’re seeing relative to birth rate in our culture? What is it pointing to in terms of a, perhaps a greater spiritual reality?
Dr. Jim Denison: It’s certainly pointing to some financial and demographic realities that are very, very frightening. The replacement rate, as it’s called, is typically around 2.1, meaning that if a a family doesn’t produce 2.1 children over time the population rate falls.
If that happens, especially in an economy like ours in the us, that’s damaging on pretty much every level. First of [01:01:00] all, you have social security and Medicare and Medicaid and safety nets, that sort of thing for older adults that are no longer being supported by younger adults, you have more people dependent than you have people feeding into the system, as it were in the system creators.
That’s a massive issue. People that worried about, as they’re predicting out in the future. In that context, it has to do with the economy itself. It has to do with the vitality of a country, of a nation of its future together as well. A lot of the western European countries are far below replacement rate right now in the United States.
Replacement rate is fa is in many ways buttressed by the number of immigrants Hispanic and other immigrants that are having larger families and are helping with that with that replacement rate number, all of that. So it’s an demographic issue, it’s a cultural issue to be sure, from a spiritual point of view, from a theological or biblical point of view.
The Bible is very clear. That God doesn’t call everybody to be married. Paul, in his first Corinthians of correspondence commends those who are called to singleness, the, who are called as, he himself experienced himself [01:02:00] at that point in his life anyway, to be called, to be single. And there are advantages to that in terms of serving the Lord.
I think a John RW Sto, who I doubt could have served God in the way he did had he been married, just in terms of the ability, and he would say this, the ability to focus on his ministerial work in a way that that was not on any level requiring margin for family. And CS Lewis from much of his life who was a single adult.
And there’s certainly is no sense in which you can’t serve God as a single adult. And there are those who in ministry, those in missional contexts have, have been able to serve God uniquely in some ways because of God’s calling into singleness or into a chastity of, of sorts as it were at that point.
There is a, there’s a sexual chastity that goes with that in scripture. That we need to be very clear about and pretty emphatic about it. I think if in fact, on the other hand, God does call an individual into marriage and into family then there is a privilege, obviously, and I’m, and all of us would agree with this, an incredible privilege and the opportunity to [01:03:00] be a husband and the opportunity to be a father and then to be a grandfather and incredible calling.
And we need to see it that, as that, see it as a calling. What we don’t need to do is come into this from the point of fear, which is so much what’s out there. Fear. I’m not bringing children into this world because of climate change issues or because of the threat of nuclear war, the threat of ai generative ai ending the human race or because I don’t like where our political environment is leading us as a country or whatnot.
And so I just don’t want to bring children into a world like this. That’s always something somebody could have said. That’s always been true across human history, that there were reasons not to have children if you simply wanted to be afraid of what they might face as, as they came into that world. The simple fact is that in so many ways, children are coming into a world right now with benefits, with opportunities unprecedented in human history, a standard of living.
We’ve never seen a standard [01:04:00] of healthcare. We’ve never seen a standard of safety. We’ve never seen relative to crime, relative to warfare. Just, I’m, I’m not trying to minimize the threats that are out there from AI or from genomics, or from nuclear or from all pandemics, the things that are out there, not at all.
But I would definitely want us not to have a spirit of fear. Scripture says, God has not given us a spirit of fear with a power and love and a sound mind. And so the right way to come to parenthood is to do so through the lens of faith, not fear. To say if God is calling me into into marriage and into parenthood, whether that’s a biological child or an adoptive child, and by the way, I think Christians need to be far more interested in adoption than many of them are.
Mark, I, I so commend your daughter for the adoption decision that they made recently. I think that’s a wonderful thing for churches to be endorsing and embracing. It’s one of the great ways that we can respond to the abortion issue is to be encouraging mothers who are facing problem or un [01:05:00] unexpected pregnancies to consider adoption and to be on the other side of that adoption equation and to, and to be holistically grateful for the privilege of doing that bottom line.
Let’s not come into this with faith, but with fear. Let’s understand God’s calling into our lives as being what’s best for us because God is love, his character requires him to do what’s best for us. In the context of family, if we follow his will, that will is always going to be the best for us and for everybody that we influence.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, such a, a good word and a great place for us to land. Our ministry is so much talking about how we can do even greater work, better work to help you as our audience to live a life that is fully equipped to live by faith and not by fear that you would have a life full of overflowing hope.
Rather than a life of despair. And we hope today’s conversation has helped you to do that. We obviously hope that you have a fabulous Father’s Day and that you get to celebrate with family and friends [01:06:00] around that. Let me also give a call out. You may or may not know that we have a partner ministry called Christian Parenting.
You can find their [email protected]. They work with us as a part of our journey and, and team at at Denison Ministries. And you can find additional resources for fatherhood, for motherhood, for [email protected], and we’d love for you to check that out as well.
Thank you for joining us for today’s conversation. We look forward to seeing you next time on the Denison Forum Podcast.
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