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All Fathers Fail but One
“I just read this in Tolkien’s letters to his grown children: ‘I live in anxiety concerning my children, who in this harder, crueler, and more mocking world into which I have survived must suffer more assaults than I have … I have brought you all up and talked to you too little … I failed as a father. Now I pray for you all, unceasingly, that the Healer shall heal my defects.’
Joseph Pearce, Tolkien’s biographer, comments: ‘One cannot help but feel that Tolkien was being unduly harsh in seeing himself as a failure as a father. Whatever shortcomings he exhibited must be countered by the mitigating pleas of those who remembered him as a loving and conscientious parent.’
Pearce was still young when he wrote that. When he gets as old as Tolkien was when he wrote his letter, he will understand, and perhaps write one like it to his children. What parents can look back and be satisfied with their own efforts? Only shallow and materialistic fools. (‘My kids never lacked any toy that other kids had!’)
Good parents are never satisfied with their efforts to love and understand their kids, but they are satisfied with their kids. How can we be satisfied with the results of our efforts but not with our efforts? Because the good in our kids now is due 1% to us, 2% to them, and 97% to God’s grace.
There is only one perfect Father. And even His kids mess up. All of them.”
~Peter Kreeft
“I just read this in Tolkien’s letters to his grown children: ‘I live in anxiety concerning my children, who in this harder, crueler, and more mocking world into which I have survived must suffer more assaults than I have … I have brought you all up and talked to you too little … I failed as a father. Now I pray for you all, unceasingly, that the Healer shall heal my defects.’
Joseph Pearce, Tolkien’s biographer, comments: ‘One cannot help but feel that Tolkien was being unduly harsh in seeing himself as a failure as a father. Whatever shortcomings he exhibited must be countered by the mitigating pleas of those who remembered him as a loving and conscientious parent.’
Pearce was still young when he wrote that. When he gets as old as Tolkien was when he wrote his letter, he will understand, and perhaps write one like it to his children. What parents can look back and be satisfied with their own efforts? Only shallow and materialistic fools. (‘My kids never lacked any toy that other kids had!’)
Good parents are never satisfied with their efforts to love and understand their kids, but they are satisfied with their kids. How can we be satisfied with the results of our efforts but not with our efforts? Because the good in our kids now is due 1% to us, 2% to them, and 97% to God’s grace.
There is only one perfect Father. And even His kids mess up. All of them.”
~Peter Kreeft
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