I see a phenomenon currently in our culture. Men and women shirking their God-given responsibilities and again, I am puzzled.
But the one I want to focus on is the 'dead-beat' dad syndrome. Why do we have dead-beat dads anyway?
I guess the simple answer is that we are all sinners, including the dead-beat dads. But that still doesn't answer a lot of questions. How can a dad leave his children without support? How can a dad not love his children and want the best for them? Do dads who have had several women during their lifetimes, ever wonder if any of the children out there might be theirs?
But why would a dad be a dead-beat dad? Beats me! I see it everywhere. There are women who are raising children, and have to go out to work or build a career so their children will be fed and clothed.
I am totally against divorce, but I have seen amicable divorces where the ex-husband sees to it that his former family is taken care of, especially the children. If we have to have divorces, why can't they all be like that? Are dads capable of turning off their emotions when it comes to their children?
What I see, is what I just wrote above, where fathers leave their wives, many times for another woman, and just stop any payments to the woman or the children he fathered. Do these dads realize what kind of damage they are causing for their children? Do we realize the ramifications down the road of what this kind of thinking and living out will result in?
I could think of a number of divorce cases (and I know it is not always the man who is at fault) where parents have divorced and children are affected. I think of one in particular. Authorities says that divorce does not harm children. While it is true that sometimes children from dysfunctional families are able to pull themselves out and do everything in their power to overcome their circumstances, and children from 'normal' homes turn out bad occasionally, children do seem affected by their parent's divorces. One case I know of, where a very intelligent son came from a divorced home, and is now on drugs and back and forth in prisons. All that potential and now the young man lives in an illusionary world. No one can tell me the divorce doesn't hurt children. It does. It affects them, whether we want to believe that or not.
The main reason, I believe, that we shirk our responsibilities today, is simply because we are selfish, and we live in a society where selfishness is encouraged. In some places, it is even taught that God will give into our selfishness as well. People can get away with crime and there is little fear of God in our land today. Fifty years or so ago, people understood how life worked. They could put two and two together and see that when they made a wrong decision, there would be consequences. Not so today. Today, we go to court and lie, and get away with it. Most murders never are solved. Rape is rampant. Men basically do whatever they want, and so, that's what they do. If a man wants to sleep around, he'll find someone to join him. If he doesn't want to pay child support, he just doesn't pay. Then the ex-wife has to press into the law to get him to pay.
Men, if you are a dead-beat dad, I would like to ask you a question. What is it that you are doing with your life anyway, that is so important or money consuming that you don't want to pay money for your children to be able to have the things they need? If you have a job, where is your money going? What are you spending it on? Is that so much more important than the future of your children? Can you see beyond today into the future of what your children will be like, or what they will have missed because you chose to spend your money on something other than their welfare?
In writing this article, I am well aware that there are women who are shirking their God-given responsibilities as well, so I don't mean to be picking on men only! These questions really apply to all of us, but they just look a different way in different situations.
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