What does it mean that God is
Father? Aside from the obvious answer that it means God is our Father, there
are many characteristics of God that are encapsulated in the description of God
as “father.” The providing aspect of God, his Kingship and, well you know, that
whole “Him” thing. Books like "The Shack" like to present God as the all-mother
or some such nonsense and dispense with the clearly written words of the Bible
for some gender inclusive (or just as exclusive as calling him father, but
that’s neither here nor there) shtick. But we, as Christians, call God Father.
The aspects of God, his love,
greatness, goodness, gentleness, awesomeness, graciousness etc. are not
qualities that we would necessarily look at and think that God’s a dude, rather
we’d think these cool qualities. But when coupled with his providence,
Kingship, leadership and general fatherly-ness we would need to assume upon his
fatherly nature because, well, he is our Father. As the Provider we his
children are given an old picture of a man bringing home what is needed to
give health, home and happiness to his family. As King we see a God fierce in
battle and mighty to save from the onslaught of demonic hosts and our own sin.
As Leader we see a God who is willing to do what is necessary to take his
people where he wants them go.
But something interesting occurs
when you strip God of his fatherly-ness. He becomes it and it becomes impersonal
and impersonal becomes impartial and impartial becomes careless and careless
becomes graceless and graceless becomes meaningless - meaningless to the point
of irreverence and disregard. So much so that culture uses his name as a byword
and a curse.
Culture has steadily and slowly
attempted at removing God’s personal qualities, namely that he is father. And
we are now, yes, even now, seeing the outcomes of those slow and steady
cultural modifications to cultural Christian understandings. The modern day
fight of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered (LGBT) movement for cultural standing
and inclusion is part and portion of the degenderization of the society at
large which is an outcome of removing God’s fatherly-ness from his personality.
It is also, I believe, part of the reason we see such drastic issues with out
of wedlock pregnancies and fatherless children, as well as the astounding 56 million
abortions that have legally happened since Roe V Wade.
Removing God’s Fatherly nature from
the written word, from our modern understanding of God and our cultural
understand of Christianity has done nothing in the way of help for our economy,
our children or our future. It is safe to argue that homosexuality is not an
economically sound decision because economics is based on buying units, of which,
homosexuals do not produce because they cannot reproduce. The same can be said
for abortion; on an economic point 56 million buying units have been lost thus
far, those are both dollars not being used but also jobs not being created or sustained
by one, if not all, of those 56 million. And statistically speaking a child
born out of wedlock is more likely to live life on welfare than one born in a
married family and is , therefore, a burden on the economy because a non-producing unit is
only consuming.
But father God is and father he
remains. He is father because he has revealed himself as such. He has spoken
clearly of who he is in his word, therefore we see him not as impersonal,
impartial and unimportant; no we see him as personal, partial and vastly
important and this changes everything.
