If you are a parent, I am willing to bet that prior to your child’s arrival you were told, “You are going to learn so much about God when you become a parent.” I believe this is true. However,…. I want to caution you. If we are not careful, parenting can actually be a sneaky way that we can distort the image we have of God. It’s really about authority and perspective.
This morning I was reading a prominent author who was making a common but serious error. He was talking about God as Father and Christians as sons and daughters. Nothing at all wrong with that, in fact, J.I. Packer said in his classic book Knowing God “What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father.”pg 181. That is awesome. The book I am reading, however, is not. The error with this particular book was found in an upside-down view of authority. He was suggesting that we learn about God as Father and about God’s love of his children through the lens of an earthly Father’s love. So the argument goes “God loves us as a father. I am a father. How do I love my kids? That is how God loves me.” This is the subtle danger of Natural or Philosophical Theology is it not? God begins to be shaped in our own image. So what is the right-side up way to understand God as Father?
Where do we as Christians find our ultimate authority? Well, the Bible of course. In the Bible, we discover what God as Father looks like. In the Bible, we see what God’s love looks like. It is when we gain the Biblical perspective that we as parents, me as a Father, can learn about what I should be and how I should love. I must go to God’s Word to discover what a true Father is. I must go to the Bible to understand what true fatherly love is. Then, by God’s grace I am to be shaped by that image. Me being shaped intoGod’s image is a whol lot better than trying to shape God into my image.
So yes, I have learned a lot after becoming a father. As I look in the Word and experience the Fathering and love of God, only then can I know what kind of father I am suppossed to be.
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