The Gift of A Father

By Leonard E. James

The Gift of a Father gives specific things that my father, Leonard James, Jr. did throughout my life that

were truly gifts and blessings to me. He did these things by way of example, teaching and mentoring that have been real blessings over the entire seventy-five plus years of my existence.

Key points in his teachings are:

1. The sovereignty of God emphasizes that everything that man uses in technology and commerce was created by God. We can do nothing apart from our Creator whether we acknowledge Him or not.

2. My father set forth God’s model for manhood by his example and teaching. He emphasized that God set forth the model or pattern in the first two chapters of Genesis.

3. He established that my identity must be set by Godly principles and not by the thinking and behavior of the people and culture around me.

4. He stressed the importance of having a vision for life and to avoid wandering aimlessly.

5. As I entered puberty he impressed upon me the importance of commitment in marriage and a relationship with a female. This means there is more that just sex involved. He set the example in that he was married to my mother for 59 years before his death.

6. Life is filled with traps and snares. He taught me to be careful when dealing with temptations and “bait”.

7. Racism was a major issue while I was growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s. He and my mother emphasized that my success was possible and I had to assume responsibility for it.

8. He raised me and my sisters to look to God’s unconditional love and His Grace even though we made mistakes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887511993

Book preview

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The Gift of A Father

Leonard E. James

ISBN 979-8-88751-198-6 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88751-199-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Leonard E. James

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

God's Supremacy and Sovereignty

My Dirt!

A Brutal Lesson

Insight from the Life of Job

Unwillingness to Acknowledge God

Setting Priorities

Infinity and Eternity

Two Trees

The Most Significant Lie in History

Transhumanism

Definition of Transhumanism

Modern Manifestations of Transhumanism

Major Flaw of Transhumanist Activities

The Bottom Line

A Father's Impact

Godly Model of a Father

What Is a Model?

Relevant Definitions of Model

Biblical Establishment of the Family

Parental Responsibility

Role of Culture

What is Culture?

Culture Cautions

Role of a Father, God's Perspective

Husband and Father as Leader

Basis of Identity

The Watermelon House

Do Not Let Others Define You

Moving to a New Neighborhood

Pistol-Leg Britches

Created in God's Image: Godly Identity

The Grasshopper Syndrome

Vision: Seeing Beyond

Vision and You

Biblical Perspective

My Introduction to Number Theory

Role of the Spirit: Limited Vision and Understanding

A Hundred Years from Now, No One Will Know

The Hanging Door

Vision and Consequences

My Ellis Avenue Limitation

A Flight from Atlanta, Georgia to Houston, Texas

Relationships, Sex, and Dating

Having The Talk

Marriage and Sex: A Godly Perspective

Commitment

Basis for Commitment

Role of Prayer

Hooks, Traps, and Snares

Fishhooks

Role of Bait in Traps and Snares

Unwillingness to Acknowledge God

Beware What You Grab

Addictions

Don't Start the Journey

Bait Deception

Taking a Little Bit of Bait

Playing with the Bait

Repentance and Transformation

What Is Repentance?

What Is Transformation?

Deliverance from Snares

Deliverance from Darkness

Do the Math and Follow the Science

What is Mathematics?

What Is a Proof?

Power of Transformations

Simplifying Transforms

Transforms that Broaden Perspective

Spiritual Transformation: A Major Change

Transformation to Abundant Living

Run the Numbers and Check the Logic

Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Will Figure

Non Sequiturs

Follow the Science: the Scientific Method

Steps of the Scientific Method

Bias

Prejudice

Counting the Cost

Who Is Responsible for Covering These Needs?

Personal Finance

Conclusions

The Racism Trap

Moving Beyond Racism

Critical Race Theory

Race and American History

Identity Politics

Intersectionality

1619 Project

Transfer of Wealth and Income Inequality

An American Idea: Government Is Not God

Dealing with Racism

Unconditional Love

The Ultimate Father

Physical Fathers Are Mortal

Ability to Receive God's Love

Receiving God's Love

Unconditional Love

The Prodigal Son

Call to Salvation

About the Author

Introduction

This book is primarily about my father, Leonard James Jr., a Black man. He was born on June 3, 1926, in Hartford, Connecticut. His mother, Katreen, died in 1930, and my grandfather, Leonard H. James, essentially abandoned him to be reared by a sequence of relatives. My grandfather later started a relationship with a woman, who stated she did not wish to take care of another woman's child. My grandfather then lied and told her that my father was his nephew. This lie persisted until my grandfather's death in the summer of 1964.

In the 1930s, my grandfather enrolled my father in the Piney Woods School located southeast of Jackson, Mississippi. At some point, my father moved to Jackson and completed high school at Lanier High School in 1944. He met my mother while attending Lanier, and they were married in November 1944. He entered the US Army the same year and eventually fought in the World War II battle of Okinawa in April 1945.

After the war, he returned to Mississippi, and I was born in November 1946. He completed his degree at Jackson State University (then Jackson College) in the spring of 1950. Then my family, including my sister, Catherine, born in 1948, moved to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he taught at Longdale High School. (Longdale High School was closed in 1963.) Philadelphia, Mississippi, in Neshoba County is best known from the movie Mississippi Burning, which covers the details of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964.

My parents did not want my sisters and me to enter school in Philadelphia, so we moved back to Jackson in 1952 when I entered Mary Jones Elementary School. I graduated from Jim Hill High School in 1964.

I have a handwritten letter from my grandfather dated May 10, 1964, in which he acknowledged that my father was his son. (A copy of the letter is included.) Nonetheless, he died in the summer of 1964 in Fort Worth, Texas. I recall that my father and I drove from Jackson to Fort Worth for his funeral. When we arrived, several people there were unaware that he had a son. The initial funeral program had him listed as a nephew. After some embarrassing apologies, it was corrected to list him as a son. He had married and fathered a daughter, who, apparently, was unaware that she had a brother. I did not fully understand how painful this was for my father.

One other incident of note occurred in July 1993. My parents, four sisters, and I attended an attempted family reunion in Annapolis, Maryland, at the vacation property of my father's aunt. She was my grandmother's sister. We later gathered at her house in Washington, DC, where I met some of my father's cousins that he did not know. My father had named my oldest sister, Catherine, because he had thought it was his mother's name. It was here that my great aunt informed him that his mother's name was Katreen. The pain on his face was evident though he said nothing.

My father died on November 15, 2003, of cancer after fifty-nine years of marriage to my mother. I was privileged to be able to tell him about key moments in my life where he unknowingly taught me God's principles that led me to a blessed life beyond the dysfunctions of segregated Mississippi and its aftermath. A key instance of that blessing was a forty-two year marriage to my wife, whom I met in September 1964. She died of cancer in October 2010.

The major point of this book is to provide encouragement to parents, particularly fathers, to take their God-given roles seriously and to enjoy His blessings for yourselves and your children. It not only contains lessons I learned directly from my father, but also other things I learned or observed over the years in the light of his teachings and example.

Unless otherwise stated all scriptural quotes are from the American King James Version, AKJV. The table below gives other Bible versions cited herein.

God's Supremacy and Sovereignty

One of my father's favorite fictional stories involves a discussion between God and a skeptic. The dialog of that discussion is as follows.

My Dirt!

Skeptic: I am really smart and believe in science. I can do anything you can do without anything from you.

God: Okay, can you make a man without anything from me or anything that I made?

Skeptic: Yes.

God: Tell me how you would do it.

Skeptic: First, I would take some dirt…

God (interrupting): Hold on. My dirt!

The point of this little story is that all we see and know was created by God. He controls access to everything. We can get deceived by our personal intelligence, education, wealth, or other things. We are not originators or creators of any of it. As physical human beings, anything used to accomplish a task was created by God; we cannot do anything apart from Him. This is true, whether we acknowledge it or not.

The first few chapters of Genesis reveal many fundamental things about creation of the physical universe and the foundations of human civilization.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 AKJV)

The first verse of the Bible tells us about the origin of the physical universe. God created it all. This idea is repeated in the New Testament.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

…

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelled among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, ) full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–3, 14 AKJV)

Nothing exists that God did not create. This is a fundamental idea that we should never forget or ignore.

A Brutal Lesson

Here we can take note of the example of a very rich man from the Bible.

And he spoke a parable to them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

But God said to him, You fool, this night your soul shall be required of you: then whose shall those things be, which you have provided?

So is he that lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:16–21AKJV)

Insight from the Life of Job

The life of the man, Job, is the subject of the biblical book, Job. This book gives an example of a man who is righteous and enjoys God's favor. Satan challenges God concerning Job and receives God's permission to attack him. Satan attacked Job and his family to the extent of the limits that God set. Job's three friends joined him to commiserate, however, many of their comments were hardly helpful. A more detailed discussion of the book of Job is too lengthy for this presentation. However, there are two points that must be mentioned.

Job's Flaw. Job was a righteous man; so much so that Satan could not see his flaws. Job did have one fundamental flaw that apparently escaped even Satan's attention.

So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. (Job 32:1AKJV)

Sometimes, even the righteous can have blind spots.

God Asserts His Sovereignty. As the Job narrative unfolds, God asserts His sovereinty and power several times. Perhaps, the most notable is the following.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up now