The Father

by Elanor

Dang it, I can't manage posting more often than once a month!! It's so strange how fast the weeks go by.

Monday nights I'm helping to lead a women's Bible study on Knowing the Heart of the Father, by David Eckman. In this study, we're discussing how family upbringing, specifically the relational patterns that are formed between us and our parents within our first decade, create misconceptions of God's character that are hugely difficult to overcome later in life. No father is perfect except the one in Heaven--and, more importantly, we as children are self-centered and immature--so no matter how affirming and loving our earthly fathers are, we are going to emerge from our childhoods scarred to various degrees with the belief that we are unlovable.

I say this to preface a revelation I had last night as Edwin and I were driving home from Bible study. Edwin led the men's group discussing the same topic, and he did an exercise with them: 1) List characteristics that describe parent-child relationships (loving, domineering, reward-punishment, etc). 2) Name all the roles of God that you can think of (The Teacher, The Punisher, The Father, etc). 3) Which role best describes who God is to you?--not the way you know He should be, but the way in which you actually relate to Him.

We talked about the guys' different responses to these questions. My attention was not fully on the discussion, since I was a little bit distraught because of a conversation I had had with my own father after the women's group was over. My dad had been critiquing one of the Joint's logistical policies, and although he was doing so in a completely respectful way, I resisted--I always resist when he critiques. In the car with Edwin, I tried to examine my instinctual, illogical reaction--but the only way I could do so was by indulging it. I said, "I don't like it when my dad critiques everything." And then I made the connection: because of my dad's tendency to analyze the world, I see God as The Corrector. To me, God sees things that are wrong and shows how they should be right.

There are MANY good things about growing up with this being my instinctual view of God. It means I believe God is good, God is always right, God knows what is best for me, God is interested enough in me to teach me when I am doing something wrong, God will take the time to show me how to do the right thing. I am intensely grateful to have an earthly father who has made it easier for me to know all these things about God, because knowing them has enabled me to live my life by faith.

And I was intensely glad to realize how my view of God falls short of the Father He wants to be to me. If I see God as The Corrector, I expect Him to always be critiquing things. And, the funny thing is, even though my dad never critiqued me when I was growing up, I think the fact that he critiqued so many things made me afraid he would critique me, too. It is this fear that I carried over to my view of God: I subconsciously act as though God, The Corrector, is constantly critiquing me. And so in my mind, I constantly critique myself. I am always looking for perfection, and I always see its lack.

My challenge in knowing the heart of my Father is to realize that He does not critique me. He looks at me and sees, not a wrong answer that needs to be made right, but a radiant daughter that He would give His life to claim as His own.

I experienced the love of the Father today in the way that it should be. After class, I met Winnie at a Boba cafe. We had an incredible conversation about class, church, and God. I got to know her so much better in only an hour and a half. The best part of this conversation was that I felt we spoke to one another as equals. She was not meeting with me in order to minister to me, nor was I to her--because we both knew the other one did not NEED our help. We both have our own individual communities and support systems; we both are growing in our relationships with God; this one conversation over Boba was not going to be the difference between life and death. We met together because we like each other. We enjoy spending time together. God wants to spend time with me like that. I keep going to Him with an agenda: "God, teach me this, help me with that, correct my life here and here and here!" And that is good, and some of my most cherished memories of God are when He has corrected me in some way or another. But God wants to spend time with me because He likes me. He wants to take walks down Telegraph Avenue. He wants to grab coffee in the morning before class. He wants to sit on the couch with me and not even need to say anything. He wants to be with me because I am His daughter.