The father of a family--the only true adventurer...

There is only one adventurer in the world, as can be seen very clearly in the modern world, the father of a family. Even the most desperate adventurers are nothing compared with him.... Everything is against him. Savagely organized against him. Everything turns and combines against him. Men, events, the events of society, the automatic play of economic laws. And, in short, everything else. Everything is against the father of a family, the pater familias; and consequently against the family. He alone is literally ‘engaged’ in the world, in the age. He alone is an adventurer. - Charles Peguy in Clio 1.

(TB)

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Amen...and Amen!!!

"Everything is against the father of a family, the pater familias; and consequently against the family"

Ah, yes, you poor fathers, deprived of your idolatrous "rights" to turn yourselves into mini-gods in the family with absolute authority over your wives and children. That is exactly what the paterfamilias were. Just ask Augustus Caesar. He took the concept of the paterfamilias and applied it to himself and the Roman empire. Here is what he wrote on the back of one of his coins:

"CAESAR AVGVSTVS DIVI F PATER PATRIAE (=Caesar Augustus, Divi Filius, Pater Patriae, `Caesar Augustus, Son of God, Father of
His Country"

Did you see that reference to "Son of God" in there? It's no accident that this guy was the Roman emperor during the ministry of Jesus and Jesus opposed this:

"Matthew 23:9 : And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven."

OTOH, if you want to be a true christian, the gold standard for your behavior is to act more like a MOTHER, i.e., loving and nurturing:

"Matthew 12:50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and MOTHER."

You mean Tiberius, whose coin said 'Divine Augustus, Son of Augustus': Caesar Augustus was not emperor during the ministry of Jesus, and neither he nor Tiberius demanded worship, or to be acknowledged as father (though they might be officially figured as fathers of the empire, its citizens, and beneficiaries, the which might be what Jesus is speaking against since it's truly God who cares over men's fortunes). But it's absurd of you to take those words and apply them against actual fathers, for the scriptures you quote actually speak to real flesh-and-blood men with wives and children with precisely the word 'fathers'; Paul the apostle also speaks of Timothy as 'my son in the faith'; they also order the woman to be subordinate to her man, to be domestic, and says she is not permitted to speak or have any authority over man but be in silence: and in case you've messed up the history here too, such was not the case in hellenized Judaism, or most of the pagan cults and their religious rites, where women could be priestesses and other functionaries, often went about unveiled (while men might do otherwise, whether at a ceremony presided by Pontifex Maximus--the emperor--or in the mere services of a Jewish synagogue).

Fatherhood is the great adventure. After college I considered moving out to Utah for a while, for "adventure". I'm so glad I stayed and became a husband and father -- what a journey it's been! The other would have been a thin veneer of adventure on top of cardboard -- just driving around to new places and boasting about my "adventures". Nuttin' by comparison.

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