The life and legacy of Dr. James Dobson

Dr. James Dobson passed away yesterday morning at the age of eighty-nine. Best known as the founder of the media ministry Focus on the Family, he was an advisor to five US presidents and one of the best-known Christian leaders of his time.

Many are offering profiles of his life and tributes to his legacy today. However, there is a less-noted dimension of Dr. Dobson’s story that relates to us all, no matter what his direct influence on our lives and families may have been.

From a book to a media empire

Born in 1936 in Shreveport, Louisiana, James Clayton Dobson Jr. was the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers. His parents were traveling evangelists, but he studied academic psychology and came to believe that he was called to become a Christian counselor or perhaps a Christian psychologist. He attended Pasadena College, now Point Loma Nazarene University, then began working at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. In 1967, he received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California (USC).

That same year, Dr. Dobson became an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the USC School of Medicine, where he served for fourteen years. After his teaching career at USC, he spent seventeen years on the staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.

In response to the disintegration of moral principles he witnessed in his clinical practice, he published his bestseller Dare to Discipline in 1970. In 1977, he founded Focus on the Family, leading the organization to become a multimedia empire by the mid-1990s with ten radio programs, eleven magazines, numerous videos, basketball camps, and resources sent to thousands of churches each week. In 1995, the organization’s budget was more than $100 million annually.

At its peak, Dr. Dobson’s daily radio program was carried by more than four thousand stations across North America. His broadcasts were also translated into twenty-seven languages and distributed in more than one hundred and sixty countries. In 2010, after leaving Focus, he created the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute as a smaller but more personal platform to continue his mission with a sharper focus on his personal broadcasts and teaching.

Dr. Dobson was known not only for his family counseling, which influenced generations of Christian parents, but for his political activism as well. He was among the founders of the Family Research Council in 1981, a federal lobbying organization, and the Family Policy Councils, which lobby at the state government level. He strongly opposed gay marriage and nurtured relationships with conservative politicians.

“A strange affinity for the trained mind”

I believe the reach and impact of Dr. James Dobson’s ministry is attributable in significant measure to a factor that is urgently relevant for all American Christians.

Pastors from the book of Acts to today have been called to shepherd families, which includes support for parents amid their challenges. As a pastor for four decades, I met with many families who were struggling in various ways with their marriages, children, and parents. However, I had no secular credentials or academic training to offer them. My background is in philosophy, theology, and biblical interpretation, not psychology or psychiatry. Most pastors are similar to me in training and experience.

By contrast, Dr. Dobson leveraged his secular education, experience, and status to serve spiritual truth and transformation. For someone with his credentials and academic experience to offer Christian resources for parents was somewhat novel and enormously impactful. As an alternative to the highly secularized parenting theories popularized by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Dobson used his expertise in ways that served millions of families.

His example reminds me of a statement one of my mentors once made: “The Holy Spirit has a strange affinity for the trained mind.” The more trained we are, the more useful we can be. And when we employ reasoning and strategies that resonate with our audience, we are more effective in serving them. A secularized society can be helped to follow Christ and his teachings when we use secular logic and credentials to explain his word and encourage its obedience.

“No one was able to answer him a word”

Paul followed this strategy in Athens at Mars Hill (Acts 17:16–34). Knowing that the Greek philosophers he addressed would not care what the Scriptures say, he quoted their own poets and writers (v. 28) to expose the illogic of thinking that “the divine being is like gold or silver or stone” (v. 29), referencing the idolatrous statues that surrounded them at that very moment.

He was then able to pivot to the resurrection of Jesus, leading “Dionysius the Areopagite,” a “woman named Damaris,” and others to faith in Christ (v. 34). Eusebius, the first church historian, reports that Dionysius then became the first bishop of the church at Athens (Ecclesiastical History III.iv). He is venerated as the patron saint of Athens today.

Intellectual excellence is one of the hallmarks of God’s people across biblical history. For example:

• Joseph’s wise management saved Egypt and his own family from famine (Genesis 41–47).
• In Babylon, God gave Daniel and his three companions “learning and skill in all literature and wisdom” such that “in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Daniel 1:17, 20).
• Paul was a student of Gamaliel, the leading teacher of his day (Acts 22:3); even Roman officials noted his “great learning” (Acts 26:24).
• Jesus at the age of twelve was so brilliant that “all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47). As an adult, he debated his opponents so effectively that they “marveled” (Matthew 22:22) and “no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions” (v. 46). In addition, the crowds who heard him “were astonished at his teaching” (v. 33). 

Despite the anti-intellectual current of evangelicalism across recent generations, Christians should be the best scholars, the best doctors and lawyers and businesspeople and teachers, the best at whatever we do. This is because Jesus was the most brilliant person who ever lived (cf. Matthew 12:42), and you and I now have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16) and are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

What God expects and deserves

The same Spirit who empowered Christ now lives in us to empower us (1 Corinthians 3:16). When we submit our minds and lives to him (Ephesians 5:18), we are enabled to “think about” that which is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent (Philippians 4:8). Our Master therefore instructs us: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). He expects and deserves no less.

Pastor and author Jack Hyles noted,

“If a task is worthy of our attention, it is worthy of our best.”

What is worthy of your attention today?

Quote for the day:

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” —Plutarch (AD 40–120s)

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