Most people believe in some kind of God. God is that which we give the highest priority in our lives. We can make a god of anything that we worship, i.e. give worth or value to. People worship at the shrines of all kinds of gods. Many today believe in themselves and have made a god of their self-definition, their self-made identity. So we have many choosing their own gender or sexual affiliation. But what is the God Christians profess to believe in through the Apostles’ Creed. God is described as “the Father Almighty”?
For some people the image of God as Father is a problem. When people have experienced inadequate or abusive relationships with men, and their fathers in particular, they find the image difficult. Modern feminists reject patriarchal images to describe God. They would change “Father” to a neutral term like “Creator”, or want to include “Mother” in the title. Let me try to respond to these concerns by sharing what Dr Klyne Snodgrass, professor of biblical literature at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago has to say about them.
First of all, the use of the title “Father” has nothing to do with maleness. God is not a man. We do not say “I believe in God the Male Almighty”. Analogy is always limited. Gender does not provide an appropriate description of God. The title “Father” has to do with origin, love, security, and care. It is a relational, not a sexual term.
Secondly, we must remember that all language about God is metaphorical. There are matriarchal images for God in the Bible but they are rare, and when they do occur, are similes (using “like” or “as”), which seems to place them in a different category from the use of “Father” as a specific title. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15) “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” (Isaiah 66:13)
Thirdly, while practice may be changing quickly, in English masculine language has the potential to be generic, but feminine language is specifically feminine.
Fourthly, the use of Abba and the frequent use of “Father” by Jesus and throughout the New Testament (and the church’s history) makes the term too important to cast aside. The relational aspects of “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” are too important to be replaced by “Creator,” “Redeemer,” and “Sustainer.”
Fifthly, use of feminine language for God is particularly open to abuse because of associations with birthing and nature, as is evidenced in the ancient fertility cults, and in the modern new age movement. (The NIV Application Commentary, Ephesians, p.185)
The idea that Jesus, and the early church preferred the title “Father”, because they were sexist, or simply reflecting their culture is not borne out by the historical facts. The fatherhood of God was not a major expression in Judaism compared to other names and titles for God. In the Greco-Roman culture the pantheon of gods included the mother goddess who was very popular, Hera or Juno. There was also Artemis or Diana, the twin sister of Apollo, Athena or Minerva, patroness of art and war, Aphrodite or Venus, the goddess of love, and Demeter or Ceres, the goddess of the harvest. Baal was the great fertility god of the Canaanites who was linked with the goddess Ashtoreth, or Asherah . The uniqueness of the Hebrew religion was its monotheism in the surrounding sea of polytheism. Jesus revealed God to be primarily relational. It was a revolutionary description of God when the God was conceived to be distant and aloof from humanity. To call God Father and not balance that with a female deity was going against the prevailing culture.
In John 14:5-14 Philip asks Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father.” Jesus answered, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father….Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?” He talked about his relationship with God as Father, and his disciples’ relationship with the Father. Jesus was the earthly expression of the Father.
Freud maintained that belief in God as Father was the projection from our experience of earthly fatherhood of our need to have an ideal father. Paul, on the other hand, writes in Ephesians 3:14,15 that the fatherhood of man is derived from the divine fatherhood. “I kneel before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and earth derives its name.” The Scripture says that God as Father is not a notion that we project on God from our culture and experience. Rather, our earthly fathers, and families, are a flawed reflection of God’s fatherhood. It is only through the work of the Holy Spirit that we can call God our Father. “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” (Romans 8:15,16)
“Paul is saying not only that the whole Christian family is named from the Father, but that the very notion of fatherhood is derived from the Fatherhood of God. In this case, the true relation between human fatherhood and the divine fatherhood is neither one of analogy (‘God is a father like human fathers’) nor one of projection (Freud’s theory that we have invented God because we need a heavenly father figure) but one of derivation (God’s fatherhood being the archetypal reality).” (John Stott, God’s New Society, p.134)
Jesus gave us the enduring description of God as Father in his parable of the Prodigal Son. Helmut Thielecke, in his exposition of this parable, called it the parable of The Waiting Father.
“The ultimate theme of this story… is not the prodigal son, but the Father who finds us. The ultimate theme is not the faithlessness of men, but the faithfulness of God.” (The Waiting Father, p.29)
The father in the story lavishes his love on his grasping son. He gives him his inheritance before he deserves it, just as God gives us all the promise of life to use as we will without restriction. He waits patiently for him to return home. When he arrives back, broken and defeated, repentant and humbled, he welcomes him with open arms, and restores him to favor with a great celebration. That is the picture of God as father in the Scriptures. It is the picture of God as love almighty.
The fatherhood of God reminds us that our existence, physically speaking, is dependent upon him. He is Father by virtue of generation. Our life flows from him. Yet he is also our Father who raises us. It is one thing to be a biological father, but many biological fathers do not raise their children. They are no father to their children. Yet the Father Jesus describes is the one who is always in relationship with us. He wants to be with us, alongside us, to help us become all that we are meant to be.
Some children are raised by fathers who adopted them. The biological father is nowhere around, but the adopted father becomes the real father of the child. Howard Edington, of First Presbyterian Church, Orlando, wrote a book entitled, “The Forgotten Man of Christmas” in which he spoke of Joseph, the non-biological father of Jesus. He calls Joseph the designated father. He writes,
“The term ‘designated father’ is my own. I understand it to mean ‘designated by God.’ I, too, am a ‘designated father.’ Because our three children are adopted, I have long been sensitive to the fact that there are two ways in which you can be a father. You can be a father of someone, and you can be a father to someone. To be the father of someone is simply a biological function. It has no great significance in and of itself. However to be a father to someone means to care for them, to love them, to teach them, to play with them, to provide for them, to be tolerant when intolerance would be easier, to be patient with them when impatience would be more natural. It is infinitely more difficult to be a father to someone than to be the father of someone.” (p.54) God is our adopted, designated father, fulfilling all those characteristics.
The Fatherhood that Jesus referred to is not that of every creature, but of those who are his sons and daughters by adoption. “How great is the love the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called children of God.” (1 John 3:1) We are children of God by grace and not by birth. “To all who received Jesus, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:12,13)
The analogy of God as Father reminds us that we are all feminine in relation to God. We are members of the Bride of Christ. We talk of Mother Earth and Mother Church. We relate to God as in an intimate relationship of love. Jesus chose to reveal the nature of our relationship to God as our Father. As his disciples, we are called to remain faithful to his teaching rather than change it to suit our preferences, as congenial as that may be. While admitting the problem, we should try to resist allowing our negative experience of human fathers, or men in general, or male ecclesiastical or secular hierarchies, influence our relationship with God. God our Father is the champion of women, and we are created male and female in his image. Women and men are equally precious in his sight. If we see the nature of God the Father revealed in Jesus then every woman and mother is affirmed, and every man should respect every woman.
We profess to believe that God is Father Almighty. God by definition is all powerful, yet he restrains his power to allow the universe to function, and choices to be made. Evil exists because God does not fully exercise his power. Just as a father has to let his children make choices in order to mature and learn, God does not seek to control us. Human society is a web of choices in which we impact one another. God’s power is exercised in and through the complex relationships in which we find ourselves. But just as a child seeks his or her father’s help, so God gives us the opportunity to pray. It is through prayer that he chooses to exercise his power, as well as through the process of cause and effect in nature. Paul tells us to pray that we might be strengthened with the power of God’s Spirit to know the extent of the love of Christ. For God the Father is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask and imagine, according to his power which is at work within us. (Ephesians 3:16-21)
Jesus reveals God as a generous father who wants to give all that he has to his children. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” (Luke 11:11-13) When we profess belief in God as Father, we say we believe in the gift-giving God.
What is your conception of God? What is your relationship with God? Do you see that God wants to have a personal relationship with you, and loves you, as a father loves his children? What a wonderful God to believe in, to rest your whole weight on, to trust with your life!
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