The Need for, and the Search for, 'Father'

By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jun 13, 2012 - 4:49:56 PM

[Editor’s note: The following article contains edited excerpts of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s address which he delivered on the occasion of “Father’s Day” (Sunday, June 17, 2007) at Life Center Church of God in Christ in Chicago, Illinois, pastored by the Reverend T.L. Barrett. Click here to order this message in its entirety on DVD and CD, please call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200.]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

To all the men who may be reading this: You can’t be a ‘father’ without God. You don’t know how to be a father or a husband without God. And as men, it has been our failure to submit to God that has weakened us in our ability to be a father or a husband. When you rebel against God, you weaken your own power to provide a place for your wife, to provide a wholesome environment for your children.

I am honored to have a few moments to address you on what they call “Father’s Day.” However, The Enemy always has a way of commercializing on our natural love for those who have served us, and served us well.

On “Mother’s Day,” billions of dollars is spent to fatten the pockets of merchants who benefit from our love for our mothers. And last “Father’s Day,” billions of dollars went out of the pockets of poor people who loved their fathers and loved their mothers, and wanted to show in some small way how much we appreciate what our mothers and our fathers have done for us.

But the Bible, in the Book of Exodus (20:12), the scripture teaches us to “honor your mother and father, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord, your God, gives you.”

God didn’t say honor your mother and father “one day out of the year”; but that is an every day work for us to honor our mothers, honor our fathers, and make them to know we love them and appreciate them.

Prepare yourself for the role of ‘father’

My subject is “The Need For, and The Search For, ‘Father’.” Every human being needs a “father”; otherwise, God would not have ordained such. Every human being needs a father, but most humans who are fathers do not generally know how to be that. We think that the sperm that is emitted which produces life makes us a “father,” but the sperm that produces physical life is what starts a man on The Journey to prove what he has learned up to that point, that prepares him to be a “father.”

The Bible teaches in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way it should go: and when it is old, it will not depart from it.” But the question is: What is “the way” that the child “should go”? Since the word should is the conditional form of the verbs “to go” or “should go,” then what are the conditions that must be present in order for a child to go in the way that it should go? And how can it go that way if mother doesn’t know the way? How can it go that way if father is not there to prepare the way?

So when you look at the word “father” in the dictionary, “to father” something means “to create; to found, to originate, and to acknowledge responsibility.” We call old and venerable men “father,” because the word venerable means “one that is worthy of respect or reverence by reason of character, dignity, position or age.”

Father’s Day… There are too few of us around these days who know the real role of a “father.” Well, how can you learn what your role as a father is? Where will you find a book, or something to teach us how to be what all of us eventually become as men? If we live, we are born to procreate, so we become what should be a “father”; but because we have never known a “father,” or we don’t have a guide to how to be a father, we rarely become that.

So I thought I would reference the Bible, the Book of Genesis, and see how to be a father: How to be a producer, how to be a creator, a founder, an originator; how to acknowledge the responsibility that God has put on the shoulder of a man.

Since Genesis is “the birth” or “the beginning” of things, then surely we should find some record in here on how to be a father.

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Well, who is our example for a “father”? If God made man in His own image and after His own likeness, then The Example of a “father” is God. In Genesis, Chapter 1, it teaches that God “created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and God went about separating the firmament from the waters, put light in the heavens … He was busy doing things in preparation for his creatures! God made a way for each creature to fulfill that which nature requires of it.

Now you think about that: There is no “bread line” for worms; there is no “welfare” for sparrows. Even buzzards that live from the dead flesh always have something to eat. Somebody prepared for a creature before the creature came into existence, in order that the creature might sustain the life that The Creator gave it. The Bible teaches that after “six (6) days” of work—while The Holy Qur’an says it a little different, in “six (6) periods”—here comes Adam. But the thing that fascinates me is that after “the sixth day,” God saw everything that He had made and said (pay attention to His words): “It was good; it was very good,” so He didn’t make a “bad” man; He didn’t make a “bad” woman!

But God, for His Handiwork, wanted a man that is powerful. In Genesis, Chapter 2, He said: “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.”

See, no man should be without work, because God didn’t create us to sit around and do nothing! God created the first man to go to work and “till the ground.” When you “till” something, you prepare the land for raising crops by plowing and fertilizing. So God had given man a job; and the fruit of the job would be what he produced from his labor. God was teaching man how to be a father, because no father is better than Our Father which art in heaven.

It is interesting to me that if God made man and said “it was good, and very good,” how did we get into this condition?

God did not make a mistake. He made a man, and the one thing He did for the human that He never did for any creature is that all of the creatures have to obey the law under which it is created. They can’t deviate.

But the human being, male and female: He gives us what is called “free will.” You and I can choose.

A Father’s test for His son

The God, after He made Adam, put him in a garden. That is really nice; fathers should always prepare a place for their children… As men: You don’t have babies and not the wherewithal to prepare a place for them to grow, and an environment in which they can grow in accord with their nature.

God put Adam in a Garden, and He said to him: “Look at all these trees here. You can eat the fruit of all these trees, but I have one here in the middle of this garden, ‘The Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil’—and I don’t want you to eat from that tree.” Now, I have never heard God talk directly, but Adam had a direct communication with God. Then the Book teaches God commanded Adam; so the first act of God after putting the boy in the garden was to give him a command.

But He also gave Adam free will: No man can come to The Father except he is tested or tried, so by every right, God had a right to test Adam. He gave him everything, so God said, “Now I want to see if you appreciate Me.” Every father that makes a way for his child should be appreciated for the effort; so God wanted to know: “Adam, I did all of this for you as a Father would do for a son.” He didn’t call him a “son,” but what else was he? When you make a son and he doesn’t look like your image or your likeness, you are going on The Maury Povich Show… Therefore, if this one was made in the image and the likeness of The Creator, then in Him were the same qualities that are in The Creator. It’s very special.

God wanted to test him. It doesn’t say “I made the serpent,” but if a serpent was there, God had something to do with that. So, “I am going to see now if My servant, My son, will be obedient to My simple command, to show Me his gratitude: Son eat of all of these things, but this tree is The Knowledge of Good and Evil, and you shouldn’t eat of it. For in the day that you eat thereof, you will surely die.” It is very interesting that the serpent then comes…

And snakes—human snakes, or humans that have the characteristic of a snake—are always looking for a way to interpret, or reinterpret, a command of God that will make you or me rebel.

Now what in the world is wrong with Adam, that when God gave him all these herbs to eat, all these trees with fruit to eat, there now is this tree in the middle of the garden which he thought was good for food? As though God didn’t give him food! See, you and I surrender to Satan because he is always offering you something that God has not yet given you; or that God has already given you, but you have “pasted over” what God has given you.

So Adam, a Father to be, was being prepared to be a Father as God was to him, and all of a sudden he finds a reason to disobey. When Adam rebelled he did two things that were the original sin: He disobeyed, and he set up another god beside God.

‘Further what your father’: Knowledge to pass on for future success

To all the men who may be reading this: You can’t be a “father” without God. You don’t know how to be a father or a husband without God. And as men, it has been our failure to submit to God that has weakened us in our ability to be a father or a husband. When you rebel against God, you weaken your own power to provide a place for your wife, to provide a wholesome environment for your children. Don’t come to church and “talk God,” go back home and live God! The more we live God, the more ability we will have to be a father.

Look at the words “father” and “farther”: When you project the seed, or the sperm, you have furthered your existence into the future. So a “father” has to be able to further what he fathers! You cannot further what you father by saying “I love you.” You can further what you father by doing what God did for Adam.

The Bible teaches that God breathed into Adam “the breath of life,” and he became “a living soul.” The Qur’an says it differently: When God made Adam, He taught him “all the names.” When you teach your servant the names of things, you teach your servant the characteristics and the nature of things so that what you teach your servant will allow your servant to rule.

God could not give Adam supremacy over the foul of the air, the fish of the sea and every creeping thing that crawled unless He gave Adam knowledge of those things, and knowledge of himself. So you cannot “further your children” and don’t know how to breath into them The Word of Life from God. When you know God, know His Word—and live your life according to His Word—then you can further your children by The Knowledge that you give them.

But as parents, you won’t be able to stop your children from being tested; from being tried in life. They must develop The Value System of Christ in their own lives so that they can make a choice now whether “I am going to live for him”—or die in rebellion against him.

Obedience to God is the beginning of The Eternal Kingdom

Let us study Cain and Abel: Cain was a tiller of the ground, and Abel took care of the sheep. The Book teaches that there was “no man to till the ground,” so certainly if the first-born was a tiller of the ground, surely that is an honorable profession.

We all have to eat. If you live on a farm, you know farming is “no joke.” So Cain worked the field, breaking a sweat; and when he got the first fruit of the ground, he presented it to The Lord. And Abel, who was tending the sheep, took the firstling of sheep and presented it to God. God accepted Abel’s work and “rejected” Cain’s.

Now here is something I just want to say to the children: Sometimes you may think mom and dad are “rejecting” you if they show displeasure with some aspect of your work. They are not rejecting you; but when you see mom or dad make over one of the children for something that they did to please them—because we are human; we want our children to do things that please us… Well, doesn’t God want us to do things which please Him?

But suppose you do something that you see is good and doesn’t seem to get the favor as something that your brother or sister has done: How are you going to handle it?

In the case of Cain, he misjudged the whole thing. God is so far-seeing; that this is in The Genesis—but He knew way down “The Wheel of Time” that “a sheep” would be “lost.” And “the first born of God” is called “The Lamb of God”; so God took a lamb from Abel not because Abel’s offering was better than Cain’s, but because in the end, when The Rebellious Day is over, a Lamb of God would be born Who would obey God and become The Eternal Father of a Nation that would obey God.

“For unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given and a government shall be upon his shoulder and he shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the prince of peace, the everlasting Father and of the increase of his government of peace there will be no end…”

A “failed father” in the beginning; a “successful father” in the end: That is the beginning of an Eternal Kingdom of God.

The Final Call