In honor of Father's Day, we are republishing a column about fatherhood and friendship that originally appeared on June 2 in the Jackson Sun newspaper of Jackson, Tenn. Gene Fant teaches English at Union University and is the author of "Expectant Moments: Devotions for Expectant Couples," a devotional memoir about the birth of his twins, Ethan and Emily, who are now 11 years old.


A couple of years ago, I started a Facebook account to communicate with my students. Many of them had stopped using e-mail, and this was the only way I could catch them in a timely manner.

After about a year, I started finding some of my own friends, from high school, former jobs and even elementary school.

It was awesome to reconnect, in some cases after 35 years, to see how much their kids look like they did the last time I saw them or to see what they're up to.

It's sort of like having access to everyone's Christmas newsletters, only I get to see them over the course of the year rather than in one simple note.

I think, however, that Facebook might be about to die. My dad "poked" me the other day to see if we could be friends.

So did my aunt, my brother's mother-in-law and a bunch of other folks from the previous generation. This means that it has expanded to two or three generations beyond the basic 16- to 22-year-old set.

Becoming Facebook friends with my dad, however, got me to thinking about being actual friends with my dad.

I am Gene Clinton Fant Jr., named after Dad. I look just like Dad. I have a degree from one of his alma maters. Our voices are eerily similar. We're awfully close, and I call him for insight and advice all the time.

"Friends," however, that's a different matter. We fought like crazy during my teen years.

He held a firm hand of discipline. He made sure that I did not only what I was told to do but also what I ought to do without being told.

He insisted that we spend time together as a family, sometimes in ways that excluded my friends or that contradicted my personal plans.

I know that he was ready to pack it all in on a few occasions and let me figure out what the real world was all about, but he constantly held me to high standards.

He admonished me and he prayed for me, sometimes out loud and lots of times in quiet when I didn't even realize that he was doing it. There's no way I would have called him my "friend" when I was about 15.

It's amazing how much coolness he developed when I was about 22. I learned that my successes on the job and in school were related to his discipline.

I found that my high standards for myself were invaluable. When I became a father myself, Dad suddenly gained extra-cool status, as I found myself echoing the words he had uttered to me.

His standards had become my standards, his wisdom my wisdom. Somehow along the way, we had become friends, not because he had bought me things or given in to my whims in an effort to be my pal, but because he had earned it through demonstrating his resolute love for me.

I always cringe when I hear a parent brag that he or she is "best friends" with a 13-year-old child. More times than not, this means that the parent has bought such friendship at a cost of all authority over the child's life.

If you don't think so, then watch what happens when a teenager's friends try to say something even remotely harsh or corrective to him or her. They are friends no more.

There are seasons to life, and the role of parent is the one that ought to take precedence over our child's most formative years. There will be a season of friendship that is earned, not purchased, down the road.

Of all the friends that I have on Facebook, there are many whom I love. There are a few whom I respect. There are none that I both love and respect quite like my dear friend, Gene C. Fant Sr.


Gene is proud to be "Jr." today, just as he is honored to be a "dad."