Ever been confronted with the question
" what’s God like?"
Now it’s not the sort of question that comes up very often but sometimes, just sometimes it might.
Maybe you’ve been walking down the street and someone come up to you asked this question.
Maybe it’s been at work over the smoko room table,
Or when you’ve been talking to you’re neighbor.
What’s you’re response been.
For Me - if I think about an answer it usually means I end out shrugging my shoulders and saying - " God is like....... .......God is like.........errrrr God?"
or maybe - if I give a clued up theological answer with all the jargon I’d end out saying -" well God is Like .............God?"
Put in a situation like this it’s hard to know what to say.
And when we have to think about an answer it’s often difficult to come up with one.
Our words often fail us.
If we didn’t think to much about an answer then we would probably just say "God is like a Father".
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It’s funny that when we think about it
we will often stumble over what to say God is like.
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Jesus on the other hand was quite deliberate in his talking about God.
So if we were to ask Jesus what God is like?
Jesus would give us a deliberate answer-
"God" he would say "is like a father."
At the time of Jesus, Jews also faced some problem about what to say God is like.
The Jews would often compare God to a King,
they had an earthly King so to compare God with a King was an obvious thing to do.
This image would have started to fade away though during the exile, and so by the time of the Roman invasion the God as King image must have been shattered completely, as they no longer lived under a Jewish Monarch of their own.
Instead they were a captive audience to the Roman Senate who abused them,
took away their land
and kept them powerless.
If Jesus had said God is like a king then we would probably join the Jews saying
"well if he’s anything like my king I sure would hate him!".
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Today we face a similar problem,
Once upon a time to say God is like a Father was acceptable.
But in todays society there are a lot of fathers who have an awful lot to answer for
Before me and Maureen came to Auckland we lived in Thames and spent a lot of time working with youth there.
Not you’re normal kids that you see in churches though,
who have grown up there,
but kids that have grown up in broken homes,
spent time on the street,
and been in and out of institutions.
Most of these guys didn’t know what a good home was.
They certainly didn’t have good fathers.
To these guys a father had a whole different meaning.
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He was the bloke who was banged up in prison for messing around with little boys.
The man who walked out on them to go and live with another man leaving them with nothing but unpaid bills and debt.
Or the man who can’t keep his hands to himself.
When I said last Sunday that I some times feel that fathers day should be renamed bastards day it was these guy’s I was thinking of.
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Now I realise that not all fathers are like this
but these seem to be the ones we hear about most.
You can probably see then why to say God is like a Father does not have the same ring to it.
The follow up question to our answer that God is like a Father may then be
" No I’m serious about this tell me!
what’s God really like?
Because if he is anything like my father I sure would hate him?"
to talk about God as a father today seems almost laughable.
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When Jesus said God is like a father
he was not talking about some patriarchal tyrant,
neither was he talking about a father that can’t keep his hands to himself,
and he certainly didn’t mean a father who has nothing better to say than shut up!
No the father that Jesus meant was something different.
Infact the words he used said it all.
ABBA
If you can
try to imagine a young child being snuggled up in his
fathers arms,
wrapped in blankets
all warm
and safe in a loving embrace.
Now try to imagine what the child would say
----------- "daddy".
This word DADDY is what Jesus meant when he said ABBA.
That’s the kind of father that Jesus meant God was like.
A daddy loving,
reliable,
tender,
and caring.
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As a child
Jesus would have grown up under Joseph his step-father.
Now we don’t really know much about Joseph accept he was a carpenter.
But if Jesus had grown up in the same type of home as your average Joe Bloggs Jew,
then much of his time would have been with Joseph.
From an early age he would have followed Joseph to the work shop and worked beside him there
- Joseph’s little mate-
The first time Jesus split his finger Joseph would have been there.
The first time Jesus got a splinter Joseph would have been there
The first time Jesus built something by himself Joseph would have been there.
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It’s this kind of relationship that Jesus had with his step father, that is reflected in his relationship with his heavenly Father.
- And so God is like a daddy.-
today as times have changed so have fathers-
With the dawn of industrialization came progress
and with progress comes the new role of fathers in society.
No longer do we join our fathers in the work place,
on the farm,
or in the shop
instead they go out to work by themselves,
and return home, the sometimes invisible,
tired,
silent fathers with no spare time-
It almost seems that these characteristics that say daddy
loving,
caring,
reliable
and tender have gone.
These positive characteristics are now seem so hard to find.
Work pressure,
financial pressure
and money pressure have often squeezed them out of the male character.
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So what’s God like then?
Well Maybe just maybe God is like a Mother.
These positive characteristics that Jesus associated with daddy are still around.
In fact the word Jesus used
"ABBA"
could be said to describe mothering qualities.
Now Feminists would love this,
there claim is that if God is male than male is God.
To say God then is like a mother will end this male domination
But there is a problem with this also.
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God is not female anymore than God is male,
We can not pin a sex on God like a tail on a Donkey !
As men and women we are sinful
it’s an unavoidable element of our nature.
The problem then with all this God talk is that words often fail us to describe God.
When we say Father, what do we really mean?
Who has set the definition as to what we mean by these words?
How do we set a definition as to what these words mean?
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if It is through our experience,
then our experiences of our fathers will influence how we see God
To experience a father who is loving and tender to you may mean that you see God as a loving and tender father. MARK OVERHEAD
In a way we superimpose our definition of father on to God,
a definition that is of our own making,
and that suits our purposes.
The reverse side of this is that If we see a father as a fat,
MARK OVERHEAD beer swilling
slob
then we may superimpose this image on to God also.
The end result of doing this is religious schizophrenia.
So we give God a personality that suits our needs and our experiences.
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Fortunately though our knowledge of who God is,
does not dependant on us.
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It is God who revealed to us God’s character,
and it is God who has revealed to us that God is like
ABBA
A loving, tender, protector.
We need to stop superimposing our definitions of what father means on to God
and let God superimpose on to us his character.
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To me that God has revealed to us his character is Good News.
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My God and you’re God is not a patriarchal tyrant,
but a Loving father that we can approach like little innocent children.
He is not a father who will not send us away,
but a father who will tell us to come closer,
A Father who has more love for us than we could possibly imagine.
Our God is a Father who loves to hear us whisper
DADDY.
