MEAN,
DANGEROUS, AND ANGRY

Topics: Blessings; Child Rearing; Children; Encouragement; Fatherhood; God

References: Psalm 68:5; Proverbs 22:6; Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6–7; Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21; 1 John 3:1

The seventeen kids who shot classmates in schools in various parts of the United States had one thing in common: a problem with their dads—a conclusion drawn by the FBI after studying the high school shooters in Paducah, Kentucky; Pearl, Mississippi; and Littleton, Colorado.

“When a man doesn’t get along with his father, it makes him mean; it makes him dangerous; it makes him angry,” writes former NFL pro Bill Glass, who has thirty-six years of prison ministry experience. Glass continues:

On the day before Father’s Day, I was in North Carolina in a juvenile prison. I ate lunch with three boys. I asked the first boy, “Is your dad coming to see you tomorrow on Father’s Day?” He said, “No; he’s not coming.”

“Why not?”

“He’s in prison.”

I asked the second boy the same question and got the same answer. I asked the third one why his dad wasn’t coming, and he said, “He got out of prison about nine months ago, and he’s doing good. I’m proud of my father. He’s really going to be a good dad to me, and he’s going to go straight.”

He was protesting so much that I could tell something was wrong. So I asked, “How many times has your father been here to see you since he got out nine months ago?”

“He hasn’t made it yet.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he lives way, way away.”

“Where does he live?”

“In Durham.”

Durham was only two hours away. I had come fifteen hundred miles to visit the boy, but his dad couldn’t come two hours? A lot of fathers are really deserters. When I’m in a prison, I always challenge inmates to bless their kids. If you want to keep your kids out of prison, bless them.

—Bill Glass, “The Power of a Father’s Blessing,” Christianity Today (January 2006)