Another semester has wrapped up at the school, and church planting continues it’s slow, steady churn. This is the time of year I finally get some breathing room for reflection, and I’ve been turning over the same heavy reality again and again.I’ve sat across from too many men in my home, at the coffee shop, or on campus who carry the same haunted look in their eyes. They don’t say it out loud at first. They talk about work, about their classes, about the snow. But eventually the real question slips out, often in a hesitant, almost embarrassed way: I have no idea how to be a man. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.Whether his father was physically absent, emotionally checked out, wrapped up in his own struggles, or simply never learned how to pour into the next generation, the pain is the same. It isn’t always loud rebellion or dramatic trauma. It’s the hollow feeling of having no map, no model, no steady voice saying, “This is the way—walk in it.” That absence often produces a young man who is allergic to authority, allergic to responsibility, and ends up a checked-out 22-year-old, passing the time with video games and numbness.
The Old Weight We All Feel — It’s Nothing New
The Bible doesn’t sugar-coat the reality of generational patterns. In Exodus 20:5, God speaks of visiting “the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation.” As a young believer that verse unsettled me. It felt unfair. But the longer I’ve been in ministry, the clearer it becomes: this isn’t God being cruel. It’s a sober description of how absence and failure echo forward. This weight is as old as humanity itself. Look at the patriarchs. Judah, one of Jacob’s sons and a key figure in the line leading to Christ, failed tragically when it came to protecting and guiding his own daughter Dinah. I was tasked with preaching a sermon on this for New Geneva Academy, and it’s painful to read how much Judah failed both his sons and daughter. In Genesis 34, Dinah is violated by Shechem. The family’s response spirals into deception and massacre by her brothers Simeon and Levi. Judah does nothing except get mad at the boys for killing these other men:
“Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me odious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and my men being few in number, they will gather together against me and attack me and I will be destroyed, I and my household.”
He doesn’t get upset about Dinah, the rapists father comes, not to make amends but bargain to have Dinah for his son who raped her, and Judah just goes coldly along with it. Judah, as a leading brother, stands in the middle of a household marked by moral chaos, favoritism, and reactive violence rather than steady, protective leadership. He offers no clear example of fatherly strength or wisdom in that crisis. Later, his own failures with Tamar (Genesis 38) reveal the same pattern—compromise, avoidance, and broken trust. The deficit passed forward.
Then there’s King David, the man after God’s own heart. His household became a heartbreaking case study in the cost of absent, passive fatherhood. David failed to deal decisively with Amnon after he raped his half-sister Tamar. He offered no justice, no comfort, no clear moral leadership. That silence and inaction fueled Absalom’s rage, leading to murder, exile, and eventually Absalom’s full rebellion against his father. David’s grief was real, but the family wreckage was already done. His sons and daughter bore the weight of a father who was mighty in battle yet often missing in the home—brilliant on the throne, but distant where it mattered most.
These aren’t obscure side stories. They’re right in the center of the biblical narrative. When a father gives no example, no hope, no training, the next generation doesn’t start neutral—they start with a deficit. The grooves of passivity get worn into the soul. A boy who never saw his dad pray, work hard with integrity, love his wife tenderly, confront evil rightly, or speak the truth of the scriptures over his children grows up not knowing those things are even possible. He flies blind. And without intervention, he passes the same empty hands to his own sons.
Left to ourselves, the cycle rarely breaks. You can’t give what you never received. The next generation often inherits the same void.
and yet God
Centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel found himself ministering to a broken generation in exile. These were the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of a rebellious people. Jerusalem had fallen. The temple was in ruins. Families had been ripped apart. And everywhere Ezekiel turned, he heard the same bitter proverb rolling off their tongues like a national motto:
“The fathers eat the sour grapes,
But the children’s teeth are set on edge’? (Ezekiel 18:2).
In other words: Our dads and granddads sinned. They worshiped idols, ignored the prophets, chased after foreign gods and selfish kings. Now we’re the ones suffering in Babylon. It’s not fair. We’re doomed by their failures. This wasn’t just casual complaining. It was a theology of despair. The people had concluded that their father’s absence of faithfulness, their lack of godly example and training, had permanently cursed the next generation. They felt trapped in someone else’s story, starting from zero with no hope of building anything lasting. God’s response through Ezekiel is one of the most powerful, liberating declarations in the entire Old Testament. The Lord doesn’t soft-pedal their pain or ignore the real consequences of past sin. Instead, He directly confronts the lie that was paralyzing them:
3 As I live,” declares the Lord God, “you are surely not going to use this proverb in Israel anymore. 4 Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die. (Ezekiel 18:3-4)
Then He walks through case after case—father, son, grandson—to make the point crystal clear. A righteous man who walks faithfully before God will live, even if his father was wicked. A wicked son will die for his own sins, even if his father was righteous. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son (Ezekiel 18:19-20). This was revolutionary. In a culture soaked in generational thinking, God was saying: Your father’s silence does not get to write your destiny. Your grandfather’s failures do not own your future. You stand before Me as your own man. The chains of inherited absence and lack of example are breakable—right here, right now. But God doesn’t stop with justice or personal responsibility. He moves straight to mercy and invitation. Listen to the Father-heart beating in these words:
Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct,” declares the Lord God. “Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. “Therefore, repent and live.” (Ezekiel 18:30-32).
This is the hinge the whole conversation turns on. God is not content to leave people in the hollow place of “My dad never showed me how.” He offers to be the Father they lacked. He promises a new heart and a new spirit—exactly what a man raised without example desperately needs. He doesn’t just say “You’re on your own now.” He says, “Come to Me, and I will train you. I will give you what was never passed down.” That ancient word to exiled Israel is still thundering into our living rooms today.
The Rebellion We’re Watching Right Now
Look around and you’ll see this playing out on a massive cultural scale. Our current generation—raised in homes often marked by passive or absent fathers—is in full revolt. They grew up with the same hollow ache so many of us know: little example, little hope, little training. And now they’re rejecting it all with a vengeance. You see it in the “One Piece” revolts—the idealistic, all-or-nothing uprisings modeled after the Straw Hat Pirates who defy a corrupt World Government in pursuit of ultimate freedom. Young men and women binge those stories, then turn the same spirit on their own fathers. They mock the passive masculinity, the emotional distance, the spiritual shallowness they grew up with. “Okay, Boomer” isn’t just a meme; it’s a verdict: “Your weak leadership left us with nothing useful, so we’re burning the map and charting our own course.” Social media feeds overflow with posts declaring independence from “toxic” tradition, from biblical manhood, from any authority that feels like the silent failure they knew at home. I still see shirts on campus that are “down with the patriarchy” and other such nonsense.
But here’s what I’ve learned from walking with these young men—and from my own painful chapter: many of those fathers were themselves products of earlier rebellions. They pushed back against what they saw as rigid or outdated in their dads. Each wave believes it’s finally fixing the previous failure by swinging hard to the opposite extreme. Yet the same emptiness keeps showing up: young men still unsure how to lead a family, marriages starved for vision, kids still growing up without a clear model of Christlike godliness. I know this problem firsthand. I came to Christ through a man who became like a father figure in my life, who revealed himself be a weak-willed man who not only refused the clear teaching of biblical truth but actively punished me for standing on it. What began as a simple desire to honor God’s Word in our organization ended in my exile from His House. The rejection cut deep—not because I was rebelling against him in pride, but because I refused to join him in compromising Scripture and there were many voices who actively condemned it because of “love” or “loyalty”. In that moment I tasted the very absence I had always sensed: a man who could not or would not lead with strength and truth, now weaponizing his weakness against the son who longed for it.
That kind of exile—whether it’s literal or emotional—is what fuels so many of today’s “One Piece” revolts, many of the young men on podcasts who think they know more than the rest. The pain is real. The longing for something better is honest. But the tragedy is that the rebellion often plants the same bitter seeds it claims to uproot. Whether through silent absence or angry rejection, the result is still a generation handed an empty toolbox and told to build anyway.
Breaking the Cycle
Then we come to the hill outside Jerusalem, where the perfect Son—conceived by the Holy Spirit, trained perfectly by His heavenly Father—took on every failure, every absence, every missing example in human history. Paul puts it powerfully: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). Jesus didn’t just forgive sins of commission—He stepped into the gaps of omission. He became the example we never had. That’s why 2 Corinthians 5:17 lands with such hope for men who grew up with absent or silent fathers: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The old vacuum. The old “I don’t know how.” The old fear that my boys will get what I got—nothing. In Christ, the Holy Spirit becomes the Trainer we lacked.
But here’s the part that’s easy to miss: He trains us through other men. The answer isn’t to go it alone in proud independence. The answer is to find biblical men—older, wiser, faithful brothers who walk with God—and submit to them. Really submit. Even when every part of you hates it. Even when their authority feels like salt in the wound of your father’s absence. Even when your flesh screams to run or rebel again. I’ve had to live this the hard way. I’ve had phone calls with the men God placed above me in authority and admitted the same fear that haunts so many of you: “I’m terrified to trust that you actually care about me, and won’t throw me aside when I don’t do exactly as you expect.” It’s humbling. It’s painful. Uprooting a pattern that was driven into you feels like spiritual surgery without anesthesia. But I’ve discovered that real freedom comes only when I stop protecting my wound and start submitting to the very kind of authority I was denied. Those men didn’t fix me overnight, but they modeled what other men couldn’t. They corrected, encouraged, challenged, and prayed. And slowly, the Holy Spirit used their imperfect but faithful leadership to rewire what was missing.
Men who grew up with emotionally absent dads are becoming present, intentional fathers—not by copying what they saw, but by daily imitating what they now see in Christ and in the godly men they’ve chosen to submit to. Young people raised in homes with little spiritual training are turning to Jesus and becoming the first in their line to disciple their own kids—because they first learned to sit under authority they didn’t choose. Women who never saw a healthy marriage are now building them—because they ran to the perfect Father and to the local church family He provided. Redemption isn’t theory. It’s a Person who fills every gap—and He always fills it through His people.
So… Will There Ever Be Such a Time?
Yes.
The time is now—for any man willing to receive what his earthly father couldn’t give from the Father who never fails, and from the biblical brothers He’s placed in your life. It won’t be automatic. Some practical deficits take years of intentional, Spirit-led work—and humble submission—to overcome. But the power that once left you empty now fills you and flows through you. The question is no longer “Will the cycle ever break?” The question is “Will you let it break in you?”
Stop dragging your feet.
The answer is not more independence, more podcasts, or another year of solo Bible reading while you lick old wounds in private. The answer is to find a faithful local Reformed church—one committed to the authority of Scripture, the centrality of the gospel, meaningful membership, elder oversight, and the regular practice of discipline and discipleship. Submit yourself to it. Not as a consumer. Not as a critic. As a son who desperately needs fathers in the faith. Find men willing to punch you—in love—with hard questions, sharp correction, and biblical accountability when you start slipping back into old patterns. Then let them apply the balm and show you love by building you back up stronger, more agile, more able. Your dad’s silence—or the silence of Judah’s household or David’s palace—does not get the last word. Your heavenly Father does.
Go right now to Evangel Presbytery’s church directory at https://evangelpresbytery.com/our-churches/. Search for a church near you. If it’s within driving distance on Sunday morning, stop making excuses and go to it this week. Walk through the doors. Introduce yourself to the elders. Tell them your story. Ask them to disciple you.
Step into the ring, even though it’s hard, ready to submit, learn, and grow, and you will find faithfulness abounds.
Note: Some of this writing is coming from my book I am writing (though, like the first I doubt I will ever publish it) where I am trying to write on authority to help understand my own problems with it. So be on the lookout for more as I finish my writing by the end of this summer!
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