As the West draws attention to the collective amnesia surrounding the profiles of historical fathers, we are moving beyond the fathers portrayed as bumbling fools on shows in the 1980s and 1990s to a new kind of devoted and empathetic father. He is beginning to transition into the strong father he is today.
There's just one problem with this new ideal father. That is, he embodies almost all the elements of the traditional mother, and the essence of the elements has been removed from the historical father.
A prime example of this new depiction is in the hugely popular children's show Bluey. Father Bandit is seen as a constant nurturing and constant playmate for his two daughters, Bluey and Bingo. In fact, he's such a presence that fans of the show often joke about when Bandit finds time to work, and it's clear on the show that his mother has less time to play than his father. is.
Our culture loves this depiction of fatherhood. It removes from the father's character all the elements of traditional masculine fatherhood that we have felt uncomfortable with, while at the same time giving the mother the freedom to go out into the outside world and explore her personal passions. .
Everyone wins, right? Well, it depends.
God created families that would be most fruitful and multiplying, and that through generations of collective effort would conquer and dominate the created order. , created the concept of man and woman.
It depends on whether objective ideals of fatherhood and motherhood exist. Symbolic depictions that seek to reverse these objective profiles, if they exist, are problematic.
Embracing these kinds of depictions, especially in a highly symbolic medium like comics, can go a long way in forming intuitions about the nature of these roles.
Few people today believe that these archetypes have objective ideals. If they're right, and if they personally resonate with Bluey's portrayal of father, mother, and daughter, then everything I'm about to say will be dissonant. And possibly offensive.
So let me say from the outset that even in conservative Christendom, my position is in the minority, perhaps less than 1%. So if you are offended, feel free to stop reading.
Let me state three premises that I believe about this topic. If you disagree with any of these, you probably don't agree with my conclusions.
- Masculinity and femininity are not social or primarily biological concepts, but family concepts designed to create specific dynamics and build highly functioning multigenerational family teams.
- The Bible presents a meta-explanation of masculinity/fatherhood and femininity/motherhood primarily through symbolic figures rooted in the Genesis story.
- Meta-depiction of these roles is good and necessary to give the culture as a whole something concrete to aim for, but we all as individuals need some elements of these roles to be ours. You will find that your desires and even your natural wiring are incongruent.
I derive the first premise from the theological principle of first mention. When God created man and woman, he actually revealed the purpose of gender. It was about creating a family team of sorts.
“So God created humans in his own image.
In the image of God He created him.
He created man and woman.And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'' (Genesis 1: 27-28ESV).
God created families that would be most fruitful and multiplying, and that through generations of collective effort would conquer and dominate the created order. , created the concept of man and woman. Genesis 1 does not yet show us anything about the different roles of men and women, only that they unite to accomplish the purpose of the family.
The second premise is that Genesis gives meta-descriptions of different parts of the family, and these meta-roles are found in the Hebrew names given to people.
“Adam” = human or human
“Eve” = giver of life
But since the focus here is on fatherhood, the most important character is when we meet a man named Abram.
“Abram” = noble father
Abram is literally described in our language as a meta-father. As he assumes this role, his name is once again exalted to Abraham. or the father of many nations.
One of the common struggles of Greek-minded people is thinking that “meta” means ideal or model. Abram is not a perfect father. He is Meta's father. Through the story of Genesis, we understand elements of how God interacts with both the specific father Abram and the concept of fatherhood.
While this idea is very intuitive for people from the Middle East, it turns out to be endlessly confusing for Western thinkers. That is why, of the three “Abrahamic religions,” Christianity is the least influenced by the portrayal of Abraham as a father. And this is a major source of confusion about fatherhood in the West. Jesus referred to Abraham as “Father Abraham” in one of his parables, but outside of a particularly annoying youth group song, Christians do not think of Abraham through the lens of fatherhood. We see him as an individual historical believer.
The lack of symbolic depictions of fatherhood separates the concepts of fatherhood and masculinity from their objective ones, forcing us to follow ever-changing depictions of fatherhood and masculinity invented by contemporary cultural sensibilities. There is a risk of it happening.
This brings me back to the third premise and back to “Bluey.”
I first heard about the red flags of Bluey from my two teenage daughters. My daughters watched the episode after hearing from many Christian families who love the show and immediately understood what was going on.
You may think “Bluey” is a great depiction of fatherhood, but don't be naive about the power of iconic depictions, especially depictions for children.
Their first statement was something like, “They treat their father like a toy.”
Then I watched a three-minute clip of another episode on YouTube to find out what they were so alarmed about.
There are hundreds of interesting elements of fatherhood that can be gleaned from studying how God interacts with the meta-father (Abram), but Bandit is never tied to this understanding of fatherhood. I am sure.
And this tethering is not difficult. You can see it everywhere in the Middle East. I recognize that all the good and toxic portrayals of fatherhood that I have seen from people living in this region come from these stories of Abraham. That is becoming increasingly difficult to see in the Christian West.
We need to delve into the Bible's beautiful balance of life-giving maternal presence with paternal training, territory expansion, and leadership.
However, let me tell you one more thing.
One of the responses I've received is from people who think it's stupid to criticize comics. You may think “Bluey” is a great depiction of fatherhood, but don't be naive about the power of iconic depictions, especially depictions for children.
We spend almost a third of our lives experiencing symbolic representations in our dreams, and most of our entertainment comes from watching stories filled with meta characters and what they symbolize. will be created. Symbols tend to override our consciousness and form intuitions about the nature of truth and reality. These symbols include numbers, colors, animals, objects, shapes, stories, and more. The Bible is full of symbols of this kind, but most Western Christians are completely unaware of their power. After Jesus had fed the 5,000 and 4,000, he asked his disciples, “How many baskets did we pick up?'' and the disciples answered, “12'' and “7.'' , and expected us to immediately understand the symbolic meaning of: what did he do? But that's not the case.
And in the same way, using the color blue to create a daughter named Bluey is completely wasteful for us. It goes beyond our consciousness. If you think about it, I think it's cool that they're reversing gender stereotypes of color. We've been playing checkers with people playing chess, and we've been checkmated over and over again.
Editor's note: This essay was originally published by Jeremy Pyror. on his substack It has been republished with permission.
