Question:  Dear Greg,

            I have a friend who has a distorted view of God the Father.  She confesses to be a Christian and loves Christ, but does not see God the Father as a loving god.  What scriptural verses can you give me for her?

            Annette

Answer:  Dear Annette,

            This is a problem for many people today because their earthly experience with their physical father has been less than satisfying or rewarding.  Some people have had such negative/traumatic experiences that they cannot even pray to their “heavenly Father”—for to do so would impute to the perfect, loving and merciful God, imperfect and fallible humanity.  Thus, they must frame their prayer to Christ.

            There is nothing wrong with doing so.  We are not commanded to address every prayer to “our heavenly Father.”  And, in many ways, we should understand that God is not at all like a human father.  God is completely unlike human beings.  We are imperfect, sinful, created, and subject to time and space.  God is perfect, without sin, uncreated, eternal, and not at all a part of our world and reality of time and space.

            The only reason that God often reveals himself as Father is an attempt on his part to accommodate himself to us—trying to explain in our language and in our reality who he is.  After all, any attempt to explain himself to us using his reality and his “language” would be meaningless to human beings.

            Human fathers (and mothers for that matter) are not a perfect analogy for us about the nature and attributes of God.  So there is nothing wrong with praying to God without using the term “Father”--or to Christ for that matter—for Jesus Christ was and is God.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht