My heart is failing me. I have just finished reading postings on the internet for and against the 
Emerging Church in the western world. I myself find myself keenly identifying with the emerging ideals. It is a clear identification, something that helps me to navigate through a world that doesn't accept me because of my beliefs, the way I spend my money and Sunday mornings. To some of us that is quite a reach. There is too much banter and cutting words being passed to the emerging thoughts and ideals. Both sides are saying good things but they sound just like I did when I was a teenager and my father and I were not understanding each other. I love my father, always have, always will, but we don't always understand each other. That never takes precedent over his overwhelming love and protection for me. I know he would die for me, stand up for me even when I'm wrong and take my side against any enemy of strength, reputation or popularity. I utterly trust him with every ounce of my being and revere him. I need him. He is my umbrella, my home and with him I am safer than with any other in my life right now. I am known and still accepted. I need him. I can go home anytime and will be received no matter my condition.
There have been times when he has hurt me, because he has the ability to more than most. When my hair didn't match up to his preference, my music wasn't really music, my clothing was ridiculous, the things that my small world found great significance in because I didn't know the foundations that really define life as you grow older. I didn't know that fads were passing, I didn't know that what was important at the end of the day for him; bills, mortgages, sickness, cold weather, fear of failure, etc... were hemming him into a world that I wouldn't know or understand until later. I am beginning to understand and I feel like I am at a transition point between being a small world teenager to someday having a family and seeing life through its realistic aging eyes, eyes that understand consequences in a much deeper sense.
I feel the same about these arguments between traditional and emerging generations. They need fathers who love and accept and shepherd this emerging generation of young and misunderstood evangelicals through the maze of what is real and what isn't and in the process is open to learning something new. We don't need you to sit in your easychair that you're still paying for behind your daily dose of reality and peer past it to tell us how ridiculous our new hair color is or how you could've ripped that hole in our jeans for us instead of us paying somebody else to do it. We need fathers, real spiritual fathers, to lead us, to guide us, to listen to us muse, even if we are wrong. The danger is that if you don't, you, being the bigger man, lose the precedent that God has given to you by default to lead, encourage, mentor, teach and
affect for eternity somebody that will outlive you. We need fathers who will love us, give us affirmation, be gentle with us in these difficult early years. It isn't anymore easier for a teenager to be a teenager than it is for an adult to be an adult. You should be happy we're even coming to Church, why scold us for how we do it. There is no bad guy in this; just ask a father who's son has left the Church and how he wishes he could take back some things he said. We need fathers. If you can't listen, if you can't live above the milieu of our self-discovery and you can't be patient, and you can't learn, then I feel like asking you to just please leave us alone, but that's not the answer either. What is? Well why not putting down the paper, getting out of your easy chair, coming to our room and knocking on the door and asking to come in. Please don't say anything about the mess, sit down and just start asking us what we think. We're family.
Philippians 2:1-5 "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ: ..."
ps - these thoughts are general and do not reflect a personal summation of my father and I's relationship. I love him deeply and we are good friends and he has been a good father my whole life.
Here are some links,
http://www.9marks.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID314526CHID598014CIID2249672,00.html
http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2005/04/an_open_blog_po.html
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