It was 1979 and I was sitting in class in a
Towards the end of last week’s message I started talking about some of the ongoing effects of experiencing abusive relationships during our childhood. I talked about how, if your parents abused you, you will expect bosses or teachers (or pastors) to abuse you. If you had a parent or parents for whom nothing you did was ever good enough, you will transfer that experience to other authority figures and you will feel that you never “make the grade” no matter how hard you try. I didn’t mention it last week but, of course, once we start talking about these things, we can’t avoid the fact that the ultimate authority figure that we transfer these experiences onto is God himself.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be seeking to respond to a number of questions that I’ve been asked to address, questions that cluster around the common theme of recovery from childhood abuse. So this week’s question is: “Given that our image of God is largely based on the quality of our parents, how can we envision God as a loving parent when our parents haven’t been loving?”
This is our starting point. Our experience of fatherhood does, in fact, shape our understanding of God. We need to accept this. We may think it’s unfair. We may wish it were different. But this is the reality. We need to look it in the face. If we don’t look it in the face and own it then we’re stuck. We can’t move forward.
For me, the biggest issue that I carried over from my experience of my own father to God was believing that God was there. Not so much in the sense of God actually existing, although I did struggle with that quite a bit. My problem was with believing that God was there in something other than an abstract way. That he was involved in my life. That he cared about what I did or didn’t do. That he was there for me. Because my father was never there for me. Because, for most of the time, he simply wasn’t there.
His income supported the family (so, strangely enough, I’ve never really doubted God’s ability to look after my needs) but if I were to add up all the time he was home in my entire life, including the three or four months just before my Mum died, it would come to about two years out of the 21 years from my birth to his passing away.
You can see why I had a problem believing that God wanted to be involved in my life.
That’s my story. I don’t know how your parents failed you. That they failed you I have no doubt. Just as I have no doubt that each one of us who have children have failed and will fail as parents in some way or other. That’s called being human parents. That’s why we need the grace of God to raise kids, and why kids need the grace of God to put up with their folks.
Most of the ways that parents fail their kids can be dealt with over time. But some things qualify as catastrophic failures, among those would be things like abuse, desertion, abandonment. The kinds of thing that leave deep and lasting wounds in children that they carry with them into adulthood.
This is the starting point; but it can’t be where we remain. To simply say “I can’t call God “Father” because I had such an abusive, or absentee, or controlling, or whatever, parent as a child” continues to give that parent power over your life. We need to start where we each are; there isn’t anywhere else for any of us to start. But we also need to move on from there if we’re going to gain freedom.
The goal is to reverse the process. What do I mean by that? We want to reverse the process so that, instead of our experience of parenthood shaping our experience of God, our understanding and experience of God’s character shapes our understanding of parenthood.
That’s possible because God really does exist. He’s not just the product of our projecting our father image into the sky. In Ephesians 3 Paul says, For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth derives its name. (Eph 3:14-15)
That’s a powerful verse. It says that the idea of fatherhood, or parenthood, doesn’t start with us and then we somehow project it onto God. It actually works the other way around. God defines what it means to be a father (a parent) and then every expression of parenthood on earth is some kind of reflection of that.
Which leads us to the question, What kind of reflection? If this is true, and I believe it is, than all parents are a reflection, in some way, of the father heart of God.
They may be a wonderfully clear reflection. The kind you get in the best of mirrors that they put in telescopes for studying the stars.
Or parents may be like the mirror on the Hubble telescope that NASA spent billions on to put it in orbit around the earth, only to find that the main mirror had flaws in it that distorted the image.
Or they may be like one of those mirrors you find in funfairs that distort your face and body until you become totally unrecognisable.
Even if you had the best parents in the world, they would only be a two dimensional reflection of the much richer, multidimensional original parent, namely God.
That’s all very well you might be saying,
but how does that help us change? It’s a bit like when Nicodemus said to Jesus,
“Surely a
person cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” We could equally say “surely you can’t undo all of that history and
start from scratch with a new father image.” Is it even possible to
reverse the process? We certainly can’t go back to being children and learn all
over again what it means to have a parent. That influence will always be there.
If it’s going to be changed it needs to be changed by something much stronger
than our history.
[In
When the tide is low, the
Our early years as children may not seem
much in comparison to the rest of our lives, but the first 5-7 years are
crucial in forming who we are. The small streams that start off 450 miles away
in northern
In the same way, we can’t turn the clock backwards. We can’t change the hurts (or for that matter the joys) of our childhood. They will always be with us. But they don’t have to define who we are, or who we will become. Because there is a power outside of us that is greater than the force of our histories pushing us constantly downstream. That power is God’s Holy Spirit at work in our lives to change us so we look more like Jesus every day.
OK. That all sounds very good; but how does
it work? How do we unleash the power of God to change the direction of our
lives and to make us more like Jesus? It isn’t by striving to “do better.” And
it isn’t by trying to find someone to “fix” our problems. The answer of God’s
people, whether the Jewish people or the church, has always been, “look at
God.” 2 Cor 3:18 says, “And we, who with
unveiled faces all contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed
into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is
the Spirit.”
We are shaped by what we focus on. That’s why it isn’t healthy for kids to spend hours watching violent movies. They are shaped by what they focus on and they come to believe that violence is an acceptable solution to problems. As we focus on God and his character we are ourselves changed and shaped by that process. It begins to reverse the flow in our lives. It isn’t flashy or showy. Most of the time you can’t see it at work, any more than you can see the gravitational field of the Moon. But you can tell it’s there by its effects.
That’s why it is important to put our lives under the influence of scripture; whether we read it, or listen to it, or hear it preached. Scripture has power to reshape our perceptions and our experiences of God. And in the process it can set us free from bondages from our past.
Let me give one example. In 1996 Marilyn and I were invited to be worship leaders for the staff retreat of another organisation. The speaker was a man by the name of Alec Brooks, and he was speaking from the first chapters of Genesis. The first day he spoke about God’s greatness. The second day he spoke on God’s goodness. Then on the third day he spoke on God’s grief, on how much it hurt God to see his creation twisted and how much it hurt God to see people hurting and dying.
A friend had to stand in for me and play guitar for the end of the session. I was bawling my eyes out. Not just crying, but great heaving sobs that went on for more than an hour. You see, as Alec spoke from Genesis, God had shown me that he had wept over the death of my father 18 years ago, but in all that time, I had never shed one tear. In fact, apart from when Jason almost died in 1989, I hadn’t cried for over 25 years, since I was about 15. (Every time I cry in the pulpit it is evidence of God’s grace.)
And so I wept. I wept for my father’s death. I wept for the lost years when he was never there. I wept for all kinds of things that I didn’t have words for, and still don’t.
If we want our warped and damaged images of God’s parenthood changed we need to go to where we can get a clear picture of what he’s really like. That means allowing the Word of God to shape our lives and experience.
So what is God the Father like? Let’s look briefly at the passage that was read this morning.
1 May God arise, may his enemies be
scattered; may his foes flee before him. 2 As smoke is blown away by the wind,
may you blow them away; as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish
before God.
You may be surprised that I chose a passage that begins with God arising and scattering his enemies. People often feel uncomfortable with the idea of God punishing people. But God’s strength and power are directed against those who would do evil, and God’s compassion and care for those who are defenceless. I never had a Dad who would step in and defend me against bullies, or even teach me how to defend myself, and so it took me years to learn how to stop being a victim and instead to be strong for others.
If God isn’t powerful and able to move
against those who do evil he is basically no better than the United Nations.
I’m not a UN hater like some people, but the reality is that, as a body, the UN
is powerless to stop evil (like the genocide in
God isn’t like that. He doesn’t do deals. He doesn’t do plea bargains. He is totally committed to helping the defenceless against those who would hurt them. (By the way, that usually happens through the work of his people, rather than direct intervention. If it doesn’t happen more often then maybe we need to ask if we are doing all that God would have us do.)
It’s because God battles evil that the righteous – those who trust him – can rejoice and party and praise his name. And what do they praise his name for? That he is “A father to the fatherless, (that’s me, and many of the kids in this neighbourhood) a defender of widows, (women who have to raise kids on their own) is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing.” He takes people who are alone and he places them in community. This is what God is like.
Reflecting on God’s character in scripture is certainly the most effective way of redirecting our lives and overpowering the hurts from our pasts, but it isn’t usually how the process starts. It usually starts with good mirrors; people who accurately reflect God’s character in their own lives. People like the summer students who have been seeking to reflect God’s character into the lives of the children they serve in the kids’ programmes this summer.
For me it was a man by the name of Marijn Heijnen.
He was my boss when I worked in a youth hostel in
1. We all have the same starting point: Our experience of parenthood shapes our understanding of God
2. The goal is to reverse the process so that our understanding of God shapes how we see parenthood.
3. We do that by reflection on God’s character as father, as we see it in scripture and in the lives of godly people
So, if you’re struggling with the impact of your childhood on your image of God, let me encourage you to stop looking backwards and to look at Jesus, God in the flesh, and allow the Holy Spirit to use scripture to give you a new image of parenthood.
And if you’ve been walking with God for a long time, and you have learned to trust him as your father, then perhaps he is calling you to be one of those people who mirror his character into the lives of others. Consider developing a mentoring relationship with someone younger or less experienced in faith and help them to discover the God you know as your loving heavenly father.