I was sitting in a Bible study listening to someone talk about God as Father when I started to get an uneasy feeling. “I think of God’s kindness the way I think about a parent’s kindness. It’s expected so much so that when we see parents being unkind to their children, it’s uncomfortable.” The small university classroom was filled with somewhere between twenty and thirty college-aged students, and I started wondering: for how many of these students was this metaphor way off?
I’m an English literature major, and I’m extremely fond of critical race theory and feminist literary criticism. One of the principles that always surprises me about these disciplines is their commitment to inclusion. For the most part, they seek to break down definitions, terms, ideas, and ways of thinking that are divisive. And when it becomes clear that a term that has been popularly used by either discipline is too divisive, the theorists stop using it, instead electing better, more inclusive terms.
Sometimes I worry that this is a principle that American Christianity hasn’t learned.
God is not just Father. He is Judge (Psalm 7:11); He is Master (Colossians 4:1); He is King (Psalm 10:16); He is Lord; He is Creator (Isaiah 40:28); He is Lover; and then in Christ, He is Teacher (Matthew 19:16); He is human (Romans 5:12); He is Son (Matthew 16:16); He is Brother (13:55); He is Husband (Ephesians 5).
One of the reasons God presents himself in so many ways is because each of these comparisons is imperfect.
Judges are not always fair; masters can be cruel; kings can be corrupt; creators can waste their talents; lovers can be selfish; teachers can be wrong; sons can be ungrateful; brothers can be spiteful; husbands can be abusive; and fathers can be unloving.
Too often, especially in American Christianity, we want to box God in.
We want to place Him within a certain metaphor and Christianity with Him. The problem with boxes (besides the whole thing where they limit God’s limitlessness), though, is that they are man-made. They are constructed on the things we know, the metaphors we are most comfortable with. It’s as if we take something that makes sense to us and try to universalize it.
We say, “God provided me with a spouse so surely He will provide one to you as well.”
Or, “I felt called to missions work. I bet you will be, too.”
Or, “I love my church. I don’t understand why you don’t like it here, too.”
More and more, as I have learned to walk with God, I find myself thinking “Who am I leaving out?” Jesus tells us to proclaim the Gospel to all nations, or, in other words, to everyone.
So when I describe God solely as Father, am I leaving out those who don’t know their fathers or those who have shaky relationships with them? When I associate my middle-class existence in America not with the wealthy in James’s letter, but with the poor, am I leaving out those who my own wealth hurts? When I tell people God wants them to get married, am I leaving out those who want to remain single or who God has blessed in other ways?
God is big. He doesn’t leave anyone out. His story is for everyone.
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Spencer Smith is a senior at Ohio University. He has a heart for the mid-west, believes the world can be and should be changed, and thinks that he has more in common with Ryan Gosling than most people might first think. Right now, he is working on seeing God in all that he does. Read more of his thoughts here.
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