As you know, many of us fall into the trap of projecting our experience with earthly fathers onto our relationship with our heavenly Father. If you had an amazing father who encouraged you, was affectionate, and who displayed patience and unconditional love, you had a rare experience and you probably have a very positive and warm view of God.. Most of us had an experience with fathers that fell short of that and it is not unusual for us to carelessly slip into a tarnished view of God from time to time by seeing him as our earthly father. When my view shifts in that direction, my faith falters a little, my prayer life cools, and my security wobbles because I begin to doubt God’s love and care for me since my earthly father was not so kind, loving, and available.
Satan has worked overtime to damage fathers all over the world and to malign the idea of fathers in general. Somewhere along the line, we exchanged the idea of the wise Jim Anderson of Father Knows Best (50’s sitcom) to fathers being made in the bumbling image of Al Bundy in the more recent sitcom Married with Children. Now fathers and men, in general, are characterized as inept, abusive, or toxic. The Woke movement is working to make sex (more likely men) irrelevant and unnecessary. Even the new Barbie movie subtly pushes that agenda. Although this is a strategic move to destroy the family as God designed it and to weaken culture across the board, it is more insidious than that.
Because we tend to first understand our Father in Heaven through our experiences with earthly fathers, this cultural movement to vilify the masculine gender is actually designed to alienate us from a heavenly Father. One of the essential parts of the ministry of Jesus was to reveal the Father to us. In the gospel of John, Jesus declared, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn. 14:9-11).
When I begin to drift in my view or my affection toward my Heavenly Father, I need to go back to Jesus who came to demonstrate the heart of the Father. Where the Son had compassion, the Father had compassion. When the Son was excited to heal, the Father was excited to heal. When the Son expressed unconditional love, the Father was expressing the same. When the Son rebuked or warned, the Father also rebuked and warned. If we are going to love the Father, most of us will first need to love the Son. He is more real, more concrete, and was immersed in the things we are immersed in.
One of Job’s complaints to God in the midst of his suffering was, “Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as a mortal sees? Are your days like those of a mortal or your years like those of a man” (Job 10:4-5). In other words, Job was arguing that God could not fairly judge us because he did not know what it was like to be a man, to be mortal, and to contend with the flesh. After Jesus, we cannot make that argument. Jesus is our great High Priest who knows what it is like to live on this planet and to suffer at the hands of wickedness. He knows wat it is like to face temptation and the attacks of Satan. He knows what it is like to be tired and hungry, hot and cold, disappointed and betrayed. But now…if he knows then the Father fully knows as well.
So, if I begin to see God as an angry or distant father who doesn’t truly care about the things I am suffering, I need to go back to Jesus. If I begin to see him as a score- keeping God who is waiting for me to earn his love, I need to go back to Jesus. The more I know Jesus, the more I know the Father. They enemy has worked hard to distort our view of the Father through the lens of our broken fathers on earth. Jesus is our reset for that distortion. When you begin to doubt the Father, spend more time with the Son.
