As a father of four and a father-in-law of two more, I feel my role as a father much more viscerally than ever before. So what IS a father? I've given that some thought of late.
Perhaps what we miss -- perhaps what is most bothersome -- about fatherlessness and all of its consequences are that it perpetuates a lie about who God is.
A rather obscure but important study conducted by the Swiss government in 1994 revealed some astonishing facts with regard to the generational transmission of faith and religious values.