Dear friend,
Before I get into today's letter I want to share something with you.
For fifty years I have been studying what Scripture says about the times we are living through. I put everything together in one place. The patterns. The warnings. The promises God made to nations in crisis.
It is called The Signs Are Here. If these letters have meant something to you I believe this will mean even more.
You can get it here:
Now let us talk about something that nobody in the mainstream media will touch.
I want to tell you about the most successful war in modern American history.
It was not fought with guns. It was not fought in a courtroom or a Congress or a foreign country. It was fought in television writers rooms and university lecture halls and government policy offices over the course of about fifty years.
And it was fought against one target.
The American father.
Think about how the father has been portrayed on American television for the last four decades. Bumbling. Clueless. Irrelevant. The butt of every joke. The obstacle to his wife's wisdom and his children's growth. From sitcoms to commercials to children's programming the message has been consistent and deliberate.
Fathers are not necessary. Fathers are not wise. Fathers are not the spiritual backbone of anything. Fathers are optional at best and harmful at worst.
That did not happen by accident.
What Scripture Says About Fathers
In the book of Malachi — the very last book of the Old Testament, the final word God spoke before four hundred years of silence — God says something remarkable.
He says He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Or else He will come and strike the land with a curse.
That is the last thing God said before going silent for four hundred years. Not a word about kings or armies or temples or politics.
The last thing He said was about fathers.
Think about what that means. Of all the things God could have chosen to close the Old Testament with He chose to warn about what happens to a land where the father child relationship breaks down.
Not a suggestion. A warning. With consequences attached.
Now look at America.
In 1960 fewer than 10% of American children were born to single mothers. Today that number is over 40%. In some communities it is over 70%. Tens of millions of American children are growing up without a father in the home. Without a male voice of authority and love and discipline and presence.
And we are shocked; genuinely shocked; at what those children are becoming. At the addiction rates and the violence rates and the mental health crisis and the young men who have no idea what they are supposed to be or do or become.
Malachi told us. Four hundred years before Christ. The breakdown of the father relationship does not just damage families. It curses the land.
America is living under the consequences of that warning right now.
How It Happened
I want to be careful here because I am not interested in blame for its own sake. Understanding how something happened is the first step toward fixing it.
The war on the American father happened in three stages.
The first stage was economic. Starting in the 1960s government welfare programs were designed in a way that actually penalised two parent households. A mother with children received more support if there was no father in the home. The government quietly made itself a replacement for the father. Not out of malice necessarily. But the consequences were catastrophic.
The second stage was cultural. Hollywood and the entertainment industry spent decades systematically dismantling the image of the strong responsible father. They replaced him with the bumbling sitcom dad. Then they told an entire generation of young men that strength, responsibility, and male authority were toxic. That the qualities that make a good father — firmness, protection, provision, spiritual leadership — were dangerous and needed to be unlearned.
The third stage was ideological. The academic world produced an entire generation of theory that declared the family itself to be a tool of oppression. That children did not need fathers specifically. That any combination of adults would do equally well. That fatherhood as a distinct role with distinct responsibilities was a social construct to be dismantled.
Three stages. Fifty years. And here we are.
What a Father Is Actually For
I want to tell you what Scripture says a father is for. Because the culture has been so successful at erasing this that many people genuinely do not know anymore.
A father is the first picture of God that a child ever sees.
Not metaphorically. Literally. The way a child experiences their earthly father shapes everything about how they understand their heavenly Father. A child with a present, loving, firm, faithful father has a completely different relationship with God than a child who grew up without one.
This is not my opinion. This is the testimony of fifty years of pastoral experience and the clear teaching of Scripture.
When a culture destroys fatherhood it is not just destroying families. It is destroying the primary pathway through which children come to understand who God is. It is cutting off an entire generation from their most natural access point to faith.
That is not an accident. That is a strategy. Whether the people executing it know it or not.
In Deuteronomy God instructs fathers specifically to teach their children His commandments. Not mothers. Not priests. Not schools. Fathers. In the home. Daily. As a core responsibility of what it means to be a man.
The American church spent decades outsourcing this to Sunday school and youth groups and Christian camps. And fathers let it happen. And an entire generation grew up without the daily faith formation that God assigned specifically to their fathers.
We are reaping what we sowed.
The Signs of Restoration
Here is what gives me genuine hope right now.
Something is happening among young American men that the mainstream media refuses to cover. A quiet but unmistakable return to the idea that being a man means something. That fatherhood is not optional but sacred. That providing and protecting and leading your family is not toxic masculinity but the most important thing a man can do with his life.
I see it in the young men filling churches that their fathers left empty. I see it in the conversations happening in gyms and podcasts and online communities that nobody in the establishment is paying attention to. I see it in the fathers who are choosing to be present when the culture gave them every excuse to be absent.
The enemy overplayed his hand. He convinced an entire generation of men that they were unnecessary and then watched in surprise as those men decided they were done being told that.
A man who has been told he does not matter and then discovers that he does is one of the most powerful forces on earth.
America's restoration does not begin in Washington. It begins when American fathers come home. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually.
It begins when a man sits down at the dinner table with his children and opens the Bible and says we are going to talk about what God says about the world we are living in.
It begins when a father looks his son in the eye and says I am going to show you what it means to be a man.
It begins at home. In the quiet. In the daily faithful presence that no camera ever captures and no politician ever credits.
Malachi promised a curse on the land where fathers abandon their children. But read the whole verse.
He also promised restoration when the hearts of the fathers turn back.
That turning is happening right now. Quietly. In homes across America.
And I believe God is watching it with something that looks very much like hope.
God bless you and everyone you love. Most of all God bless the fathers reading this. You matter more than you have been told.
— Father Thomas