by Pastor Paul Clark
It was a damp and dismal November day when my father was buried. There I stood, a seven-year-old boy, in a small cemetery on top of a hill in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. To this day, I can visualize that cemetery and almost feel the cold drizzle against my face. Standing alongside my weeping mother and my grandmother, surrounded by many friends of my father that I barely knew, feeling the raindrops mingle with the tears on my face, hearing the guns discharge during the military honors—it all comes back to me to this day. The date was November 14, 1963. My father had served in the United States Army in World War Two, having been among those valiant ones who fought at Normandy. A land mine exploded, and my father was severely injured, his body filled with shrapnel. He was shipped back to England for a long hospitalization, then discharged back to the States, where he received the Purple Heart for his service. That Purple Heart is a treasure to me now. But, at that time, standing there under those gray and weeping skies next to the gaping hole in the ground where my father would soon rest, this seven-year-old boy tried to make sense of it all. My dad had survived Normandy, only to succumb at age 40 to pancreatic cancer.
Then, slightly over one week later, on November 22, we were suddenly released from school, having received the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. The nation was plunged into mourning. For my family, it added to the shock and sadness that we were already experiencing. What a November that was!
The death of a parent certainly is a difficult thing for a child to experience. But at least I was old enough to know my father. We went fishing together. I enjoyed many piggy-back rides on his strong shoulders. Both of us having a common love for trains, we often climbed the steep embankment that led to the Railway Station Platform in Latrobe, waiting for one or more of the many freight or passenger trains to come charging into town. A year before, we had even been able to go on a family trip to California together, including a visit to Disneyland. I am thankful for that. My sister was only a year old at the time of his death. My father’s death robbed her of the chance to have those experiences and memories. There are many people who may have never really known their father or their mother at all.
The point of this is not simply to share a bit of my life but to consider the wisdom of God, who instituted marriage between a man and a woman, for the procreation and raising of children. Though in this fallen world, families are far from perfect, and children are not always raised under ideal circumstances, nevertheless God gave children a mother and a father for a reason. They contribute to the formation and development of a child, each in their own unique way.
In nearly every culture around the globe, and throughout time, the family has been understood as the central unit of human civilization. But now the family is under severe attack. In a culture now dominated by a woke agenda that seeks to free humanity from any religious or ethical boundaries, parental rights are being challenged and even forcefully undermined. Many who hold high positions in government, education, and social services believe that the State has a higher position than the parents in deciding how children should be raised and what they should be taught (or not taught). We have seen this across the country, with bold parents who speak up at school board meetings to defend their children from being force-fed dogmas of gender identity, sexual deviancy, toxic masculinity, white privilege, and so many other earmarks of the woke culture. Yet when parents dare to speak up, as is their right, it is often they who are attacked, slandered, and even perhaps have charges leveled against them.
The Lord does not bring children into the world to place them under the control of the State. The Lord placed children into families for a reason. Fathers and mothers are called by God to nurture and bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord. Children are to honor and obey their father and their mother. It is true that, due to the terrible reality of sin in this fallen world, a parent may not live up to that expectation and may even abandon or abuse their responsibility to their children. Many single moms have had to deal with the reality of struggling to bring up children alone. But then it is necessary for there to be another father or mother figure to be part of that child’s life and to help them understand what it means to be a man or to be a woman. Life is messy in a sinful world, but parents are still the ones given the vocation by God to raise children. Children do not belong to the State.
Therefore, parents must stand strong against any effort to take away their right to raise their children. Be involved in your children’s education; stand against any indoctrination of woke ideologies that are being forced upon them. In one of the most extreme examples of usurping parental rights, we must stand against those who wish to allow a girl to have an abortion without her parents having a say in the matter or even being informed of it. Parents must speak up, stand strong, and defend parental rights against an overpowering government that seeks to assume the responsibility of raising their children and teaching them what to believe.
Whatever our past experiences within the family, both positive and negative, God uses them to shape who we are. That cold, dreary November, as through tears I watched my father’s coffin being lowered into that dark, wet hole and as the nation mourned the loss of its president, the Lord God was still on His throne. He heard our cries; His ears were opened to our prayers. He used that November, as He does all things, in shaping who I am today. He does this for you also, dear friend. In and through Christ Jesus, God directs all things for your eternal good. He knows your hurts and your fears, and He listens to your prayers. He has covered you with the holy blood of His Son, who paid the total ransom to set you free. He has made you His own in Holy Baptism. You are HIS now. Your past, your present, and your future – all have been sanctified, made holy, and blessed with new hope and direction. We cannot escape our past, but we can learn from it. Best of all, we can forgive, even the failures that parents—ordinary sinners, after all—may have committed against us. We can forgive because we are forgiven of our sins and our failures. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
Thank you, Dad, for the service you rendered to our nation. Thank you for loving my mother. Thank you for being my dad. You are and always will be my hero.
Pastor Paul Clark is President of Lutherans For Life of Michigan.