Dear Logan,
Where do
I begin but with the truth? As a child, my father was never there for me. I was
raised by my mother and the absence created by my father. The latter informed
the former. I was not able to spend as much time with my mother because she
worked several jobs at once to fill the financial gap created by my father’s
absence. I was also raised by my Grandfather and grandmother, persons whom I
hope to share quite a bit with you in the future about. I expect that by the
time you are old enough to read this and make sense of it, that they will be
with our Lord.
I want
to write this to you, and make a habit of it. As for us, I intend to be very
present in your life. I intend to be the one to give you to your mother the
moment you enter this world, and I intend to be there the day you find a wife
and marry, and all that is between. However, I know that nothing is guaranteed
in this life. For every moment I wished I had had with my father when I was a
child, I write this as a way to pass on instruction to you, to share our family
history, and to give you a point of reflection in that point in future history
(hopefully many years away) where I too become old and pass away.
When
coupled with the memory of physical time spent together, I hope this serves as
a point of guidance in your life, and serves as a guidepost for our future
family history. It will be my journal to you, my first son, but also a corpus
of thought that I pray our family carries with it to whatever end. In short,
this is my heart and soul, poured out on paper. Not a substitute for my the
physical presence I promise to give through the years of your life, but a
supplement to it. Something that helps you make sense of your life, your
passions, and a tradition you may choose to share with your own kids someday.
At times it may come across as distant and stoic, more thoughtful than
relational. At other times it may come across as very personal and of no use to
anyone accept as an account of persons who, by your time of reading this, have long
since passed. Both elements are vastly important. You cannot shape the future
properly without understanding your past. Logan, this is your past. This is the
key to your future.
So where
do I begin but with the truth? In the days that I write this, truth has become
a nebulous word. If someone does not like the “truth” which one person
declares, they simply use an adage that what is “true for you may not be true
for me.” In some cases, this works with the way reality turns; in other cases,
it is simply a way to appease a person’s conscience so they are not convicted
by some governing reality, while also being a way to proclaim that no governing
reality exists.
This is
not the way the world truly works, however. In order to understand the meaning
of life, you must first understand the principles that guide it. In certain
fields, this is accepted, and we call it science. In other fields, this is
questioned and we call it religion. For the one who knows, however, both find
harmony in a central Identity.
The ancient Hebrew, a culture well
documented to be an integral part of the history of our world used to hold to a
concept called “wisdom.” “Wisdom,” asserted that God Himself created our world
in an ordered fashion, according to His own being. He created the world to have
certain rules. Some of these rules come into focus as “scientific” knowledge,
like the study of inertia or gravity. Others, however, have to do with moral
law. The world gladly accepts the first, while does all it can to negate the
power of the other. The ancient Hebrews (as well as many generations that
follow through to today) believed that just as God created gravity to guide the
movements of the planets and the falling of feathers, God also created a moral
order within us. This is why almost every culture in existence has found it appalling
and criminal that one human would eat another; and yet why it is debatable by
only a few that it is criminal for a human to eat a deer.
For those who follow after wisdom,
the understanding that God created an ordered universe after Himself is the key
to understanding life. It is what guides them when the social milieu says that certain
things are now considered acceptable that were not years ago, or in the history
of the world. The idea that God created a certain way to live life is where we
begin. For this, my son, is the key to reality.
“In the beginning, God created…” are
the first words we are greeted with in the greatest body of writing of all. It
reminds us there is some ONE behind history, and that our lives are not
meaningless or random. This fact also allows for people who get to know the ONE and to get to know how He created the world to work. The further you follow wisdom
on this path, the more likely you are to be happy, fulfilled, successful (though
not always in the eyes of society), and whole. It is also, in this present
world, the very thing that will bring about persecution, mockery, temptation,
and consequences for failures.
When you follow after the hard and
narrow path that God created, you bring both trials and joys you cannot imagine
along with you. But, make no mistake, there is order to this world at chaos. This
is why persons from time immemorial have found that when you “take up your
cross,” as our Lord said, you will find both the death of that “real” life that
the world presents to you, and the rebirth of a life that brings peace,
wholeness, love, joy, and fulfillment.
My heart for you today, my son, is
that you find this path in your own life, and lead others along it. Hopefully,
the Lord willing, I will have been a guide to you in this. However, I am flawed
and fallen in a world of sin, like the rest of us. So, I may have failed you in
some or many regards to this. This fault I accept as my own, as a result of
whatever times that may come that I do not take my own advice and take up my
cross, and follow wisdom’s call. God gave us a great gift of free will, and in that gift the ability to disobey Him, to follow after a siren's song, and to hurt those we love. But without it, we could not love in truth.
Let this writing, then, fill in the
gaps between what I teach you, and what I sometimes do. Not that I plan to
follow a path other than the path God created, but that through the efforts of
the devil and the pain of indwelling sin, this may happen in small or large
ways. This is why the Scripture tells us to, “examine yourself daily, to see if
you are in the faith.” It is also why I feel writing the best mode of
communication to your future self.
Take with you this truth first. God
is One. God is Love. God is Holy. And from this Being, God created. And you, my
son, were created in His image, just as you bear mine. You were created to seek
truth, to love boldly, to act wisely, to judge discerningly, and to live in a
manner that follows after the path of wisdom; which is a path, you’ll find,
that goes through many patches of weeds, and ends at the feet of a crucified
rabbi, the selfless Love that both created us all, and redeemed us when we fell.
This is the greatest truth. The
governing truth. This is the basis for your life, my life, and all those who
will take the blinders off for long enough to see what is declared to us in
nature, and not what is preached to us on the screen. My heart for you today,
my son, is that you find this Truth, and that The Truth shall set you free.
Live your life for Him, for it is the only life worth living in the end.
In the midst of study,
Your Father.
January 13th, 2012.
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