Father’s Day might be behind us for this year, but the impact of fatherhood is always huge, and it runs very deep. In my latest Federalist essay, I examine the power of the father-child relationship: “You are Twelve Men:” A Story of Fatherhood. It’s an account of Francis Bok’s Escape from Slavery.
Imagine — if you can — what it must be like to be a seven-year-old boy who witnesses a massacre, and then is captured by one of the killers to serve as a slave: In addition to enduring beatings, hunger, and degradation, you are completely isolated from anyone with whom you can talk. The loneliness enshrouds you. It goes on this way, with beatings and degradation, for ten solid years. You are finally able to making a harrowing escape.
In Sudan, from 1986 until 1996, Francis Bok survived this unfathomable assault on his dignity and his childhood. How? What sustained him and essentially saved him? Answer: Calling on the memory of his loving parents, especially his father who instilled Francis with strength and trust in God. Francis’ father would tell him: “You are twelve men!” In the words of Francis:
"I told myself that I must stay strong. My father would want me to be strong. . . they could not touch my thoughts and dreams. In my mind I was free, and it was there in that freedom that I planned my escape. ‘God is always with you,’ my parents had told me. ‘Even when you are alone, He is with you. . . . When you ask God for what you need, He will help you . . .’ Alone at night sitting in my hut, I remembered that. My father once said to me, ‘Even when you are one, you are two. If you are two, you are three.’ I was really muycharko. . . I began to believe that my father had been right: I was really ‘twelve men.’"
The question we must ask is this: If a father can have such an impact from the grave on a child so alone and oppressed, how dare anyone devalue fatherhood? In fact, this question is not rhetorical, because the answer is real. It's in Francis's own words above: His father's love empowered him. It made him free. Unfortunately, those who seek to control us see this as a problem, and a threat to their sense of power. So these forces are always trying to separate us from those who truly love us. How dare they? We need to stay aware of -- and fight -- these constant and insane assaults on our relationships.
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