Like Father, Like Son?

Note: This entry has a lot of sentimental value.

"Ask a little boy who he wants to be like when he grows up and his answer would most likely be, “I wanna be like my daddy!” Ask that same little boy who is his role-model and he will mention his father. To many sons, their father is the image of who they want to become and who they aspire to be. To me, my father is the image of everything I do not want to become, a person I do not aspire to be.

I do not hate my father. The Bible says in Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother…” We have several similarities: I look like him, we have similar hands, I’ve discovered that I laugh somewhat similar to the way he laughs, we are both laid-back, and regardless of how much we eat, we never gain weight. These, among several others, are things of nature, biological, unchangeable. Because of our similarities, there seems to be a tendency for society to assume that if my father walked down a certain path, naturally, because I am his son, I too will walk down that path. Thus far, I have proven that assumption otherwise; for example, my father never graduated from neither high school nor college and I have done both. He has taken taxi-driving as his career choice. On the other hand, I have chosen to pursue a career as a theologian.

As a child my father was not a major part of my growing up. My parents were separated while I was yet young. Their separation was not marital but physical: my father left Venezuela en route to the United States in search of a better life, leaving my mother, my sisters and I behind. The plan was for him to work in order to reunite us with him some time later. During the long years of separation, my father briefly visited twice. At the early age of eight I did not realize how important his presence would have been for me, therefore I relied on the presence of my mother to show me how a man should be like. A young boy cannot look up to his mother for guidance on how to become a man. Instead of playing with remote-controlled cars, part of my early manhood included fighting with a life-size doll belonging to my older sister and trying on my mother’s dresses and shoes with my two sisters.

By age ten I learned that my father had broken the seventh commandment and that he’d dragged me into a situation where I had to witness it shortly after arriving to the States. After almost ten years without knowing my father, I finally found myself living in a small Brooklyn apartment with him and his lover and her daughter and my older sister. Because of my mental innocence, I could not fully understand everything I was daily being exposed to. “I thought he was married to my mother…” “Why did he kiss this lady on the lips?” “Why is her stomach getting bigger and bigger…?” Although these thoughts crossed my mind, I refused to understand the reality, my reality. Shortly after, I began to gain a clearer understanding of what it took to be a man and so I began my pimpin’ career as an eleven-year old, with a girlfriend in church, school, and around the way.

Life took my father away from me for another three years and reunited us again by the time I had reached fourteen. By then I was not so mentally innocent; I had eaten of the fruit of life’s hardship and my eyes were widened. By that time, too, my mother was no longer living alone in Venezuela. She had managed a way to reunite herself with the rest of her family in New York. For the first time in almost fifteen years I lived in what seemed to be a normal family: father, mother, and sisters. Because of my father’s mistake, however, the relationship between he and my mother was destined to cross bitter waters. In my eyes, he never took responsibility for his actions or offered an apology adequate enough for what he had done. Instead, he insisted in incorporating his mistake into his family’s everyday life and insisted on pretending that things were on good terms, and insisted...

I recall some “man-to-man” conversations my father and I have had and he always managed to say, “Son, you have to be a man. A man blah blah blah…” by the time he’d reached that far, my mind kept saying, “It takes a man to make a man."

This essay was written a few years ago for an English composition class I was taking, and my professor loved it.

The key is the introduction:

"Ask a little boy who he wants to be like when he grows up and his answer would most likely be, “I wanna be like my daddy!” Ask that same little boy who is his role-model and he will mention his father."

Matthew 5

In this chapter, Jesus broke it down for his disciples. After he hit them with what we know as the Beatitudes, he plunged head first into some touchy things, cuz' he got it like that!

In other words, he hit them with what I'll call the "Forget What You Heards":

"You heard the commandment that says...But I say [screw that!]..."
"You heard the law that says...But I say [screw that too!]..."
"You heard they told our ancestors...But I say [screw all of them!]..."

Obviously Jesus didn't say screw this or that, but he surely preferred his way of doing things, cuz he got it like that!

In the "Forget What You Heards" Jesus was presenting the disciples, and all those who had gather to hear him speak, a new lifestyle, a new way to think, a new way to speak; a complete makeover. He must have noticed that they were not striving to be like ultimate role-model, you know, the big G.

And like I've said time and time again, Jesus never leaves us hanging; so he points them in the perfect direction:

"But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." Matthew 5:48

I cannot imitate anyone else here on earth and expect to be perfect. Achieving perfection is not impossible for humans, because Jesus is actually encouraging us to be perfect! I know I don't want to be like my dad, but I sure as heck want to be like my Father: perfect!


Enjoy "He's My Son" by Mark Schultz