I WAS NOT A GOOD FATHER

Back in the 1950s, Steve Allen was a household name. He was a multi-talented television personality, radio personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer. In 1954, he achieved national fame as the co-creator and host of The Tonight Show, which was the first late night television talk show. 

Mr. Allen was a television pioneer who invented the format of what we take for granted today as late night television, minus the acidic political diatribes. He came up with the concept of an introductory monologue followed by music and celebrity interviews. 

He was different from what we see today in another respect: he was intellectually oriented also originating a TV program called, "Meeting of the Minds,"which aired on PBS from 1977 to 1981. The show featured actors playing guests (Socrates, Plato, etc.) who had significant roles in world history. The guests would interact with each other, playing their parts and with Steve Allen as the moderator, discussing philosophy, religion, history, science, and many other topics. (That sounds like TV from another planet today. (Cerebral)

Before his death on October 30, 2000, Steve Allen talked about his role as a father, confessing, "I was not a good father." But before we get into that, we need to hear his explanation of his earlier life. Steve was a youth during the Great Depression of the 1930s, a time so difficult that it's unimaginable to our pampered lives today. He characterized it as a time when "everybody was poor." 

Steve's father died when Allen was an infant, so he never knew nor had a father. He left home during his teenage years and began roaming around the western United States. He said that he left with $7 and spent $1 a day on food, running out of money in a week. He said that having no food makes a person do unthinkable things--he became a beggar, asking strangers for a dime or a quarter. 

The national anthem of the Great Depression was the 1932 song, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" which is on YouTube. The song spoke the truth as Allen's life demonstrated. 

Some gave, others had empty pockets too. He said that he was reduced to eating garbage and was grateful when he found some, such as the time the found an empty can with a few beans in it. Brushing and blowing away the ants, it was with joy he ate the meager contents.

He said that the depression did something to his generation: they swore that their children would never have to live like they did, so they went about encouraging their children to have savings accounts and giving them things that they themselves weren't able to have which was a natural reaction to their lives in the "Dirty Thirties" as those terrible times were called. 

Mr. Allen said that his generation received all kinds of training, but no instruction in two things: how to be a good husband and a good father. He said that a man should take a wife and be married to her for the rest of his life and that was a good thing. (He didn't.) But other than that, being a husband and being a father--there was no training whatsoever. He compared it to being pushed into the deep waters of marital and family life without knowing how to swim and being told, "Good luck."

He said that his idea of being a good father was to tell your kids you love them, give them a hug, and that was it. Later, he came to realize that was not sufficient, although good in and of itself, but woefully lacking. 

This where Steve Allen and the Bible come into play. The Bible gives the believer the instruction he needs to be both a good husband and a good father: it begins in Ephesians 5:18: "And do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit." 

This filling is letting the Holy Spirit, who indwells the believer, control him. We do this by trusting and obeying the Lord as His Word directs. That is the filling of the Holy Spirit. From that foundational premise, the believer has access to Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and the book of Proverbs with its instructions to fathers.

But here's the problem, one of Mr. Allen's own making: when it came to the Bible, he "drew on the expertise of biblical scholars, theologians, and philosophers to demonstrate that fundamentalist assumptions about the reliability and authenticity of the Bible as the inviolable Word of God simply have no rational or factual basis." 

 He believed that the Bible "contained errors, inconsistencies, and self-contradictions." One might take a guess that "the expertise of the biblical scholars" he consulted was that of those of the higher critical liberal persuasion, not the expertise of Walvoord, Ryrie, Chafer, or Geisler, each one available to him. This is normally the case when experts are sought and quoted; fallen man chooses the wrong ones. 

It's sad that Steve Allen lived with the fact that he was not a good father.