My neighbor has a son who is confused about whether to invite his father to his 8th-grade graduation.\u00a0 The parents are divorced and his dad has only called twice in the last two years.\u00a0 His father has only visited a handful of times over the past twelve years. The father feels that the son should initiate the relationship.\u00a0 The son wants to do what is right even though he feels the father wouldn’t be interested.\u00a0 The father is also notorious for not following through on promises anyway.\u00a0 My advice was to move on with his life and not invite the father that wasn’t based on Scripture.\u00a0 Could you give us a sound answer?<\/p>\n\t
This will be a repeating question as each major event arises in the boy’s life: high school graduation, college, graduation, wedding, etc.<\/p>\n
I hate using the term “father” for such a man as this. He might have contributed the sperm, but he hasn’t acted as a true father in raising his son.<\/p>\n
If the man doesn’t cause problems if he does show up, the polite thing to do would be to invite him to the event, but with the boy understanding that he shouldn’t expect him to show up. The boy is learning to treat others better than he is being treated himself. “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself<\/em>” (Philippians 2:3).<\/p>\n Hard as it is, we don’t do things because of what we expect out of it. “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same<\/em>” (Luke 6:32-33). The invitation shouldn’t be given only to those he expects to come or only to those he expects to send him a gift. He shouldn’t expect that an invitation will open up the paths of communications and give him a father. This is merely the boy being polite to the man who was involved in bringing him into the world. What the man does is out of the boy’s control. But he should never stoop to the level of this man’s behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question: My neighbor has a son who is confused about whether to invite his father to his 8th-grade graduation.\u00a0 The parents are divorced and his dad has only called twice in the last two years.\u00a0 His father has only visited a handful of times over the past twelve years. The father feels that the son…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[173],"class_list":["post-22971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-family"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":27471,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/what-do-we-do-if-a-withdrawn-from-relative-comes-to-a-family-gathering\/","url_meta":{"origin":22971,"position":0},"title":"What do we do if a withdrawn-from relative comes to a family gathering?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"May 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I was just reading your answer to a young man about\u00a0his brother in regard to I Corinthians 5:11.\u00a0 My husband's family has a similar situation with his older brother.\u00a0 His brother claims to still be a believer but left the fellowship at the church my father-in-law planted due to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32053,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/is-it-right-that-a-mother-doesnt-want-the-father-involved-in-their-childs-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":22971,"position":1},"title":"Is it right that a mother doesn’t want the father involved in their child’s life?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Good evening, I have a friend who had sex outside of marriage and she had a child out of it. She feels\u00a0very strongly about not wanting the father to be in the child's life at all because he's not paying child support, he's not coming to visit his son\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1517,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/should-the-father-only-be-addressed-as-yahweh-and-the-son-as-yahshua\/","url_meta":{"origin":22971,"position":2},"title":"Should the Father only be addressed as Yahweh and the Son as Yahshua?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 23, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have stopped using the words \"God\" and \"Jesus\". It has come as a revelation and blessing to me that these words are inappropriate as names for our Father and His Son. There is a whole \"World\" in their names Yahweh and Yahshua. Answer: Oddly enough, God uses the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":38489,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/should-i-just-stop-asking-for-child-support-payments\/","url_meta":{"origin":22971,"position":3},"title":"Should I just stop asking for child support payments?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"April 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I\u00a0 am a single mother with a young son. The child's father and I\u00a0 are not on speaking terms. However, I have started growing closer with the Lord and looking at life differently. 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I was wondering if you have some advice for me in a situation relating to my boyfriend and his family. Recently my boyfriend's stepmother filed for divorce against his father. Scripturally, both parties are in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}