the death of a father and what constitutes good parenting: the cases of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods?

hat tip: some guy who called Colin Cowherd's ESPN radio show...

I don't know much about Michael Jordan's father-- and I probably don't know enough about Tiger Woods' father. But the caller made a provocative point that both fathers had dominant personalities; had a very strong influence on their sons lives; and died when their sons were in their early 30s. In both cases, their sons faced severe problems when unhinged from those rocks. (The caller referred to David Halberstam's book on Jordan. I didn't know Halberstam had written a book about Jordan. I've enjoyed many of his other books.)

Even if the correlation is there, was it causation?

An interesting and provocative question-- with applications to "good parenting" in the short-term and especially in the long-term.

I've often said that my goal is not to get my kids to behave per se. I'm pretty confident that I could get that if I worked at it hard enough and just squelched them.

Instead, I'm after the long-term goal of children who love and fear God-- who are obedient and submissive to God, love and serve others, and so on.

Putting it another way: getting them to behave is a short-term goal; working to build their character and shape their hearts is the over-arching long-term goal.

It reminds me of the unfortunately obscure story of King Joash and his mentor Jehoiada (II Kings 12 and especially II Chron 24). Joash does well when his mentor is alive, but once he dies, it gets brutal. This is a sobering lesson for parenting: getting Joash to behave well when Jehoiada is alive is ok, but it missed out on the far larger goal of Joash's righteousness and godliness when Jehoaida would exit the stage.