Six Types of Fathers

My father was a fabricated good father; I have no proper memory of my father. When South Vietnam lost the war, my dad went to prison when I was two years old. My mother told us he visited the family a few times after his release from prison, but I don’t recall those encounters. Dad escaped on a boat to America when I was six years old. Families without fathers were the norm since most kids’ dads were also absent. My mother leveraged the lack of a father figure in the family to compel us to be mature and responsible. Still, the most potent emotional stimulus was that we have an extraordinary father who braved the sea and found freedom; he was preparing a place for all of us.

My mother understood the power of hope. Though we did not have an actively participating father in our daily existence, she harnessed the power of our desires to be worthy of dad’s sacrifice, compelling us to be patient, restrained, and selfless. “Emotionally, these fathers are stable and loving, spending time with their children, meeting their needs for security and affirmation, and seeming to do everything a father should” (p. 113). Frost’s definition of a good father perfectly matched the father my mom crafted. Fantasies are challenging to break when reinforced by an eloquent, loving mother and shared between siblings who are longing for “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Most crucially, this fantasy was perfectly preserved because my father was not there in reality.

When I met my father, the fantastical world my mom composed crashed into my father’s prosaic reality. Though my illusion of hope was shattered, I was already equipped with the fortitude to rewrite a new chapter. The scripture says, “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall” (Isaiah 40:30) because our sinful nature made us “like the grass” (Ps 37:2), we will fail. Unknowingly, my father had an impossible stature to fill — and in my eyes, he failed spectacularly. Unlike an earthly father, the Heavenly Father’s “work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he” (Dev 32:4 ESV). If the idea of a good father existed in my imagination, according to Anselm’s ontological argument (Proslogium), then there exists the best father — my Heavenly Father. Instead of my mother’s misconjectures about my earthly father, I trust the Holy Spirit, who confirms my spirit about the eternal goodness of my Heavenly Father (1Cor 2:11; Rom 8:16,27). My father became the necessary contrast I needed to understand and believe in the Lord’s vision of God, “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you” (Jn 15:9).