In various books about improving one’s relationship with God I read statements like this, “When you hear the words Father God, what do you imagine God is like? Are you able to differentiate God’s qualities from those of your father?”
In one workbook we use there is a list of qualities, positive and negative, and one is asked to check the ones representative of her father and her mother.
Today I saw this statement on Twitter:
“I once had a friend who said, “Becoming a good man without a father in the house is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box.” Some things you don’t forget. (Shane Bishop Twitter 6/15/21) .
In interviews with applicants to Titus 2’s life recovery residence for women, I ask about whether the individual is spiritual and, if so, what that looks like in her life. After that discussion, I ask them who in their life represented a godly person, or gave them an image of what it looked like to live a “Christian” or morally good life. The answer is very often a grandmother, sometimes a grandfather, maybe an aunt or teacher or, rarely, a friend’s parent, or a pastor or one’s own parent. It may seem reasonable that women with long term situations of chaos and dysfunction would have had a dysfunctional nuclear family. That may be an easy explanation for us to understand one’s lack of a clear, “Good Parent”? view of God.
Knowing this is a high probability and that such comparisons of parents to God may be charged with negative emotions, I rarely try to relate one’s concept of God to a Parent, Father or Mother. Instead I begin where the individual has experienced “goodness,” trying to tap into a positive image of someone they admired or saw as representing a favorable view of a relationship where she observed and, hopefully, had personally experienced kindness, safety, gentleness, generosity, honesty, or other positive qualities. I ask what qualities of the person presented that wholesome, godly model they appreciated. Perhaps then, but more often later in more in-depth intake and counseling situations, I go back to that identified person as we begin talking about one’s understanding of God. I prefer to start from a positive experience of a human relationship a person has known then draw a line to God as one recognizes positive qualities in another rather than starting with an often unknown or poorly understood concept of God and trying to separate God from an association with a potentially negative parental authority figure.
Then if the pain of absent, indifferent, neglectful, demanding, harsh, or abusive parent(s) is present, as it often is, we can default to examining another more positive, redemptive relationship and role model that was placed in the person’s life to enable her to form a picture of what a good and loving God- image might be. It is our first exploration of an ever-present, ever-caring God who does place others around us to care for us and represent His character to us when we’ve “drawn a short straw” in the model- family category.
I’ve seen this approach work many times to open a person up to the value of other attachment figures who have been present to them in the past when parents weren’t. It also helps position them for curiosity and receptivity to others we may introduce them to as mentors, instructors, and friends. It can help establish more openness to trust that they already have known good people and can have healthy, supportive community with others now as adults even when failed primary attachments in childhood have left them with a history of wounded and untrusting relationships in adulthood.
One can see individuals begin to grow and gain confidence in their worthiness for relationships with others when they realize that God has had their back all along in childhood and did not leave them without caring people somewhere in their lives, even if they seemed to be in the margins at times. They were there. They are there now, as well, each one provided according to God’s redemptive plan for our broken lives. As we introduce our students to more and more of the character and attributes of God, in all God’s Trinitarian wholeness, as revealed in Scripture, we help them begin to imagine how those qualities are translated into human character and behavior, through Jesus Christ’s example and through the Holy Spirit’s abiding in followers of Jesus Christ.
Relationships are important in our lives. If we want to help one learn to rely on God as her primary relationship, she will need to see God as the force behind good that is always available to be found somewhere within her reach to comfort, guide, and equip her even in and through difficult and painful circumstances. Identifying goodness present even in our broken human world will bring us face to face with God.
Psalm 27:13: “I would have despaired had I not believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living.”