Christianity Today: Dads, Provoke Not Your Children to Wrath’—Even the Fussy Toddler, by Seth Troutt (Pastor, Ironwood Church (Phoenix); Author, Authentic Masculinity (2026)):
Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.” … The King James Version even famously translated this passage as “provoke not your children to wrath.” … Paul gives a similar command in Colossians 3:21: “Do not embitter your children.” But as anyone who’s recently interacted with any toddlers, most kids, or some teens can attest, these can feel like impossible commands. …
So what did Paul have in view when he gave these instructions to fathers?
As a relatively new dad myself—my kids are 6 and 4—I’ve wrestled with these texts and Paul’s heart behind them. What I’ve concluded is that Paul has three things in view: (1) remember the goal of fatherhood, (2) recognize that correction must be the capstone—not the foundation—of fathering, and (3) allow the means and methods of God’s fatherhood to trickle down into your own fathering.
In Colossians 3:21, Paul warns that when dads parent provocatively, the kids “will become discouraged.” Discouragement is the shriveling of the soul, self, and spirit. Fathers have the capacity to squelch the image of God in their kids, making them feeble, insecure, and ignorant. A father has the power to cause a spirited child to lose his or her spark, to make a courageous child a coward.
This is not the goal. Fatherhood is not meant to be like breaking a wild horse, promoting subservience and dutiful compliance. A good father should be the wind in his children’s sails.
That’s hard to do if you’re focusing on taming your children, but it’s a natural result of doing what Paul describes in the second half of Ephesians 6:4: “Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” The root of the Greek word translated as “bring up”—ektrephō—could also be translated as “to feed” or “to nourish,” and is shepherding language (as it appears in Gen. 47:17 in the Septuagint). We want our children to grow, to be well-fed, and to be “strong and courageous” (Josh. 1:9). This is not merely physical but emotional and spiritual as well. …
I don’t want to feel simply good or bad; I want to deal with reality. I want to compare myself to God the Father, admit I fall short of his glory, be assured of grace, and then labor to do the best job I can for the well-being of my kids, not the well-being of my self-esteem.
When I was writing my book Authentic Masculinity, I developed the ABCs of fatherhood: affection, blessing, and correction. It’s a three-tiered pyramid, with affection as the foundation and correction as the capstone. …
In my experience, fathers embitter and exasperate their children when they treat correction as the foundation of parenting. That’s wrong. The foundation is affection rooted in delight that faithfully images the love and character of our Father in heaven. Cold and distant drill sergeants who demand obeisance will not connect with their children as the Lord wants.
The modus operandi of fatherhood in the first century was aloof, belittling, and controlling. In these passages, Paul is laying out a countercultural vision for the household of God.
But this new vision is not just about actions. It’s also about our internal disposition toward God. We naturally relate to our children how we imagine the Lord relates to us. When we perceive him as aloof and demanding, our kids will feel the trickle-down effects of that relational reality. When we perceive him as silent and distant, our kids will have dads who are inclined to the silent treatment and quiet rage.
If we want to mature as fathers, our first step is to meditate on how our heavenly Father showers us with affection, blessing, and correction. This is the heart of Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17:23—that we would see that the Father loves us “even as” he loved Jesus.
The Father loves you as he loves the Son!
What a delight it is to be delighted in by the Father. To be blessed by him and disciplined by him is a privilege only grace can explain. May our children receive our fatherhood with the same sense of joy
The Free Press: ‘Toy Story 5’ Is a Love Letter to Fathers, by Liel Leibovitz (Editor at Large, Tablet magazine; Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute):
From an industry that usually portrays dads as fools or tyrants comes something rare: a portrait of fathers as tender, flawed, frightened, and profoundly human. …
[D]ads, our long, national nightmare is finally over: We now have an on-screen dad capable of … empathy and then some. His name is Woody, and he’s a toy; maybe you’ve heard of him?
By now, of course, the mere mention of Woody and his franchise, Toy Story, may provoke even Pixar’s biggest fans into asking whether we really needed a fifth chapter in the series. The answer, I’m thrilled to report, is you betcha: No. 5 is easily the best of the Toy Story films, a surprisingly deep, frequently hilarious movie that has more to say about the current state of human affairs than anything Hollywood has produced in ages.
It’s also a remarkable meditation on fatherhood. …
Woody, still voiced by Tom Hanks, is wearing a flowing red poncho now that looks suspiciously like a muumuu, and the movie wastes no time showing us why: The trim, boyish dude has gotten, well, rotund, and now needs some way of concealing his princely gut. He also has a shiny bald spot right at the center of his pate, so shiny it literally blinds the other toys. …
[S]ince tottering off with Bo Peep at the end of the previous film, Woody now spends his days rescuing toys that were ditched by children in favor of iPads. … Woody, in short, is a dad now, a father figure to hundreds of toys lying untouched on rugs, under beds, and in backyards, watching with silent terror as their formerly imaginative and attentive kids sit on the couch and glare at screens all day.
And being a dad, as anyone who has ever had the profound and supreme privilege will tell you, is deeply joyous, truly terrifying, exhilarating, and exhausting in equal measure—because if you’re doing it right, eventually you’re going to come up against the following shattering realization: Our kids grow up, and, try as we might, we don’t get to decide how or when that happens. All we can do is be there to help them along as best as we can.
This beautiful and true sentiment is expressed, pretty much verbatim, by Woody’s female toy equivalent, cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack), but it’s Woody himself who embodies it most perfectly in the film. You’d expect Hanks, who has won 413 Oscars (give or take a few) and is pretty much alone on the list of people for whom virtually all Americans would trade their real-life dad, to show more panache, more pizzazz, more heroics in his role. Instead, he gives what may be a career-best performance: subtly leading by example while leaving others around him, toys and humans alike, plenty of room to grow. …
Woody offers wise advice, emotional support, and unparalleled know-how when it comes to just about every problem. Then, he gingerly steps aside so that his children, both figurative (the other toys) and literal (Bonnie), can shine.
Gone is the old Woody, that insecure and possessive young jerk we met 31 years ago, back in the halcyon days of 1995, when the series first launched. Father Woody understands that life is neither a sprint nor a marathon but a relay race, and that a father’s only job is to pass on to his children the values, the courage, the confidence, and the love they need to go out there and make their own way in the world. …
Toy Story 5, to its immense credit, has no patience for … mirthless politics of gender and power, of bickering about who ought to do what and why. It rides right past decades’ worth of chatter about toxic masculinity and other nonsensical, insufferable ideas responsible for so many of the worst entries in popular culture these days.
Instead, the film’s take on fatherhood is as basic as it is timeless: A dad, it argues, is basically a cowboy, there to serve and protect and uphold law and order and then, when the time comes, tip his hat and ride off into the sunset, knowing that the young ’uns he left behind now have all it takes to conquer new frontiers.
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