He’s a GOOD Father!

My dad is a great guy.  He’s kind, gentle, and easy-going.  He’s always been there when I’ve needed him. There is nothing that is in his power to give me that he has withheld.  In fact, he has at times moved mountains to meet a need for me.  There is no one, living or not, who could have been a better suited father to me than the one God gave me.  As dad’s go, mine is tops (same goes for my mom too, but that’s a post for another day)!


The absence of fathers is of epidemic proportions in the western world.  And I’m well aware that not everyone was as fortunate as me.  But my clinical experience working with trauma survivors for almost two decades informs my view that far more people had good (or at least acceptable) fathers than bad ones.  They weren’t perfect, but the vast majority clearly did the best they could and demonstrated some capacity for love, protection, and care.  


So why then has our perception of our eternal Father, our Creator, Sustainer, and All-in-all, been so distorted to a false image of wrath, anger, and capricious malice?   


The answer is religion.  Religion needs a wrathful judge sitting “up” somewhere, ever-ready to drop the hammer on anyone who would dare look at him crossways.  That fabrication is how religion keeps you subservient (which they misidentify as “humble”), perpetually dependent on the religious system and its carnal remedies for the issues of life…and the life to come.  


There is a generation that is waking up to the reality of the Father’s true nature.  What was that true nature, you ask?  


👉He blesses with provision in excess of what even the best natural father ever could (Matthew 7:11)


👉Not content to let man’s misrepresentations of Him go unanswered, Father sent Jesus, His Son, to serve as THE FULL REPRESENTATION of all that the Father truly is (Colossians 1:19)


👉Even His corrective action after ‘the fall’ was protective and restorative in nature.  Man was removed from the garden to keep him from eating from the tree of life and living an eternal existence with awareness of shame and guilt, something Father never intended for him.  But even after removing him from Eden, Father places guards (cherubim) at the gate to ensure the way would always be clear and illuminated for man to return once he could once again see himself as Father saw him. (Genesis 2:25 - 3:24)


👉And so many more examples I could provide!


Until the ekklesia sees Father through the lens of His fullness as revealed in Jesus Christ, and thus can dispense that revelation to the world, people will remain at best tolerant of, and at worst terrified of, the God they are simultaneously told they are to love.  In psychology there’s a word for the dichotomy I just described, wherein you are expected to love that which you rightly fear: abuse.  


Until we see our Father in the eyes of Jesus, everything else we do is merely spinning our spiritual wheels.   



Passages to Consider:


Matthew 7:9-11

“Do you know of any parent who would give his hungry child, who asked for food, a plate of rocks instead? Or when asked for a piece of fish, what parent would offer his child a snake instead? If you, imperfect as you are, know how to lovingly take care of your children and give them what’s best, how much more ready is your heavenly Father to give wonderful gifts to those who ask him?”


Colossians 1:19

For God is satisfied to have all HIS FULLNESS dwelling IN Christ.


Genesis 2:25

And the man and his wife were both NAKED and were NOT ASHAMED.


Genesis 3:6-8

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.  And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.


Genesis 3:22-24

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword [illuminates a path and cuts away overgrowth that could impede access to the path] that turned every way to GUARD THE WAY to the tree of life.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sometimes Certainty is the Greatest Sin of All

Image
One of the more offensive beliefs espoused by western evangelicalism (and there are many) is the notion that all expressions of the Christian faith preceding it - Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Reformed, et al - were in such gross and debauched error as to render them outside the familial participation of Jesus Christ and indeed worshippers of ‘another Jesus’ altogether.  They espouse this without really considering the ramifications of what they are saying.  If these traditional veins are indeed disconnected from the one true Vine of the church, that would mean that the assembled family of God was absent from the earth for over a thousand years.  Taking it a step further in logical progression, it would be asserting that all of the voices informing our current understanding of the nature of God and His Church are irrelevant as why would we rely on those worshipping ‘another Jesus’ for guidance of any kind?!  So that would mean… The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement which evangelica
Read more

Deconstructing Too Far

“Deconstruction”, when done correctly, is a refiner’s fire burning away that which is faulty or harmful, a gardener’s pruning cutting off those elements contributing to pain and death.  It should never consume the whole nor should it attempt to disconnect the branches from the vine.   While much needs removed, much warrants preservation.  Indeed, like pulling weeds from among the flowers, the purpose of subtracting the faulty is to enable the healthy multiplication of the pure.   A deconstruction process that burns the whole edifice to the ground isn’t healthy and it isn’t helpful.  It’s a form of mass suicide that, by inflicting the same fate on the wheat and the chaff alike, results in the same end as would have been obtained had we never deconstructed at all: misery and death.  (Note: I’m aware there are other, far better terms for the healthy form of ‘deconstruction’.  But I am equally aware that this is the word most commonly used and have adopted it above for the sake of clarity.
Read more

The God of the Illuminated Journey

Image
The God of the Illuminated Journey The faith we experience is not our own or somehow under our manipulative control, to expand or shrink based on our effort or will, but originates from the Source: Father, Son, and Spirit.  As that faith grows, changes, and matures, it remains HIS faith at work in-and-through us.  We cannot multiply it or enlarge its borders.  We cannot order its comings and goings as if it were our subject, obliged to obey our command.  We simply discover it a little bit more each day.   We have, through the fear and intimidation of fundamentalist evangelicalism, substituted the journey with a destination.  By centering the argument on the false dichotomies (or, stated more accurately, false dichotomies as evangelicalism understands and articulates them) of heaven vs hell, saved vs unsaved, right vs wrong, the sunrise has been forfeited for a light switch.  Rather than experience Father, Son, and Spirit through a gradual unveiling of wonder wherein His luminance grows
Read more