Dad/father is one of those words that we take for granted. Everyone knows what a dad is. But in our upside down world, we can no longer assume what a father is. In our brave new world of invitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, no fault divorce, and same-sex marriage, who can say what a father’s role is?

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of England’s High Court of Justice, recently said that society should “welcome and applaud” the collapse of the traditional family. At a lecture at the University of Liverpool, Munby said, “In contemporary Britain the family takes an almost infinite variety of forms. Many marry according to the rites of non-Christian faiths. People live together as couples, married or not, and with partners who may not always be of the other sex. Children live in households where their parents may be married or unmarried. They may be brought up by a single parent, by two parents or even by three parents. Their parents may or may not be their natural parents. They … may be the children of polygamous marriages. ... This, I stress, is not merely the reality; it is, I believe, a reality which we should welcome and applaud” (“England’s Top Family Judge,” Breitbart.com, Jun. 3, 2018).[1]

I strongly disagree with Sir James. We don’t welcome and applaud the collapse of the traditional family because western civilization is based on that model. That traditional family model was based on the Bible, and without that model, the family descends into the chaos Sir James describes.

Unlike Sir James, we have a clear biblical picture of how the family should operate. And today, being Father’s Day, I want to reinforce the biblical model of fatherhood.

I want to consider a statement that Joshua made shortly after the conquest of the Promised Land to see what we can learn about fatherhood.

Let’s consider several principles about fathers and fatherhood we can glean from this passage and from a few others.

[1] Quoted by David Cloud, Friday Church News Notes, June 8, 2018 - Volume 19, Issue 23.