God As Father…

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. ~Ephesians 6:4

There’s an entire section at the end of Ephesians that sort of an instruction manual for interpersonal relationships. Chapter five discusses the relationship between husbands and wives, chapter six opens with relationships between parents and children, and then continues with a discussion on how slaves and their masters should relate to one another. There are a lot of people who object to the passage on slavery, using it to prove that either the Bible is outdated, outmoded and irrelevant to modern society, or that it flat out supports, even advocates slavery. Often pastors will use this passage to discuss how employees and employers should relate to one another – how we should interact with our bosses and with our employees. Still, that’s not quite what I want to talk about here. I want to look at this one verse here, the one that addresses fathers, directs their behavior, and see what that tells us about the character of God.

Wait a minute, you may be saying. I’m stretching. Maybe. Possibly. But stretch with me. Go back to chapter five with me. As Paul discusses the relationship between husbands and wives, he says “[T]his is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.” Meaning that Paul is applying the comments about marital relationships to our relationship with God… I’m not sure it’s that large a stretch to apply this next piece, also, to our relationship with God.

If God is the Father, a role in which He is cast throughout the Bible, in particular by John, who declares that God has lavished great love upon us by adopting us into His family and calling us His son, then what can we learn about God from this instruction to fathers? When God tells fathers not to exasperate their children, what can we glean from that about Him? Is He perhaps telling us that He does not purpose to intentionally exasperate us? That it is not His purpose to exasperate or frustrate us just for the sole purpose of doing so? When we are frustrated with God, is it perhaps instead because He is attempting to do as He has instructed our earthly fathers to do, and raise us training and instruction of the Lord?

It can be hard for us to wrap our minds around what a good, right, godly relationship with our fathers is supposed to look like. All too often, children are growing up in homes without both parents there in the sort of relationship God intended for children to flourish in. Sometimes, this is because one of the parents is absent, either because of divorce or death, or sometimes it’s because we’re working so hard to meet the physical needs and wants of our kids that we can’t be there as much as we want to be. Whatever the reason for the lack, seeing the relationship that God wants us to model our relationship with Him upon is becoming harder and harder.

How do you learn to how to relate to God as Father if you’ve never had one? How do you learn to relate to God if your primary parental figure has been an abusive one, manipulative and twisting your view of authority figures? How do you learn to trust someone that Christianity touts as all-powerful when your experience of the powerful has been, at best, absent, or at worst, abusive and hellish? How do you reconcile the God of Christianity with what you’ve known all your life?

This is exactly the challenge I’ve faced in my life. I had a father, and it wasn’t that he was a bad father; indeed, I tend to idealize and idolize him. But because of the situations in our lives, he lived two states away, and I didn’t get to spend much time with him. I saw him for a month in the summers, but one month out of twelve isn’t much time at all. And for all my father tried to do, for the longest time, I held myself out of his reach, and I’ve only recently realized what I’d done to us both in the process.

It was my mother, though, who shaped my view of authority and thus my view of God… and it wasn’t a complimentary view. I came to expect that authority was always waiting to “get me” and looking for the next opportunity to rain down punishment or withhold grace. I believed I had to earn grace and approval, that I had to measure up against an impossible standard… and since in many ways, this is actually something that Christianity teaches… that all have sinned, and fall short of the grace of God, that all our righteousness is as filthy rags, that none is righteous, no, not one… well, it all seemed to jive. I had a mother who was always waiting to get me, whose approval I could never earn, and God whose love I could never earn either.

Is it any wonder I was suicidal? The very faith system I was raised in seemed to doom me to failure, and my mother was digging the pit deeper.

The problem, though, is that God isn’t waiting to “get” us. He’s not malevolent, waiting to rain down His wrath upon us, looking for excuses to exasperate and frustrate us just because. I grew up believing I was inherently unlovable; God waited patiently for me to see the truth and learn that He’d loved me all along.

That’s the truth, Beloved. No matter what kind of parents you had growing up, no matter what your experience with authority or parenting or the lack thereof, God is a good, gracious, and above all, loving parent. God loves you. Let me say that again, and before you read any farther, I want you to just rest in that, to just bask in this one truth: God loves you.

At the beginning of all things, God created time, created existence itself, created this world and all the marvels we see around us, the mountains, the trees, the plants, the sun, moon, stars, all the distant galaxies, the planets, the smallest insects and the great squids and whales that swim in the sea. And then, Beloved, God created us. God breathed into us some of Himself, making us to be like Him, triune in nature, with a physical body and conscious will and an emotional spirit. He poured into us the blueprints for nearly infinite diversity in DNA, and set us free to make our own choices. God walked with us in the garden, talking with us, just enjoying our presence, delighting in the communion we had together.

And Beloved, all of the rest of our relationship has been about one goal: How does God bring us back to the garden? How does God get us back to that place of beautiful communion, where we delighted in each other’s presence? How does God teach us to fall back in love with Him the way we did at the beginning, the way He has from before time had meaning?

This is the God I’ve come to know. Not the God my mother taught me to fear. Not the one I feared was waiting to get me, to punish me for all my failings and faults. Not the one she modeled that was abusive and manipulative. Not even the God I saw in my father, the one who loved me, but was limited in his scope and abilities.

No, Beloved. God is instead the all-powerful creator of the universe, the one who spun it all into motion, and then who woos me, the Lover of my soul. He is the one who created all things with a plan for their redemption in place. He pleads for us to turn from our wickedness and then rejoices at our obedience. And then, Beloved, he tells us, with a smile on His face, that we can trust Him, that He doesn’t frustrate us intentionally.

Oh, Beloved… are you tired? I’ve been there. I’ve been there so many times. The lover of your soul is waiting, His arms outstretched, waiting for you to accept what He has to offer. He is the parent you never had, loving you as you’ve never been loved, more than you can imagine. I took the risk, Beloved, and I have found him so faithful. Won’t you join me?