The Malachi Mandate: Man’s marching orders

In some ways, I have been preparing to write about fatherlessness for most of my life. My father drowned when I was 3 years old, and I have spent much of my life longing for him. The truth is, I never really understood what I was longing for until our first child, Jaime, turned four years old. I will never forget that moment. I was pushing her down a hill on her tricycle, and we both were laughing wildly. Suddenly, this thought came to my mind: My daddy was gone by this time in my life. There was no laughter in my life at 4 years old, only loneliness and confusion.

Every day since that tricycle ride has been a continued revelation of my life absent of fatherhood. I am 67 years old, and I can’t remember a day when I didn’t miss my dad. Every time I had a crisis, I thought, “I wish my dad were here.” He would know what to do. My office is filled with mementos of places I’ve been, books I’ve written and things I’ve accomplished. On the entry wall of my office is a picture of my dad. I hung it there strategically to remind myself that my father would be proud of me if he could see the man I’ve become.

We live in the most fatherless generation in the history of the world. This statement isn’t just a commentary on society; it’s painfully personal. Over half of the children in America today are born out of wedlock, left without a father. Furthermore, an entire movement is trying to “normalize” having two mommies and no daddy or having two daddies and no mommy. It’s hard to stand by in silence when you have lived the deep pain of a dysfunctional family and understand the plight of losing a parent. Yet our society is trying to normalize brokenness so deep it defies logical explanation. The hope is that normalizing immoral lifestyles will remove the intense shame of living in sin.

That’s like saying that if people stopped shaming you for smoking, you wouldn’t get lung cancer. Society has become convinced that the guilt of immorality is externally generated and will lift when the world around it agrees with its behavior. Yet Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is the one who convicts the world from the inside out: 

“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:7–8).

We can run, but we can’t hide.                                    

The Malachi Mandate 

In the book of Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem had been broken down for 141 years, and the Jews had been unsuccessful in rebuilding the walls for 94 years. What the Israelites couldn’t accomplish in 94 years, Nehemiah did in 52 days! 

How did he do it? First, he surveyed the walls and developed a strategy to rebuild them. But what he did next is stunning. He made the reconstruction of the walls a family affair. He put families to work together on the section of the wall closest to their houses. Each day, half of each family worked on the wall near them, while the other half protected their workers with weapons of warfare. The following day, the family members who had posted guard duty the day before would work on the wall, while those who had worked the day before would protect the family workers.                             

Like Nehemiah, we must survey the broken walls of this generation, recognize the side effects of what has become the new PC (politically correct) culture, and look at the resultant deconstruction of the family unit. But our ultimate purpose as men is to inspire the Malachi Mandate — to build bridges of reconciliation between the generations that will facilitate the restoration of fathers and their families. 

Excerpted from Uprising: The Epic Battle for the Most Fatherless Generation in History (Chosen Books).