By Jack Worthy
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-907992.mp3
Dallas, TX –
As we prepare to celebrate Father's Day Sunday, commentator Jack Worthy offers a unique take on being a father.
This Father's Day, the church going among us will likely hear a reference or two made to our "Heavenly Father." In most congregations, calling God "Father" passes without much consideration, neither contemplated for a deeper meaning nor criticized for some implicit sexism.
As a churchgoer, referring to God as "Father" usually fails to offend or excite me. However, this month marks my first Father's Day as a father myself, as well as my second term as a graduate student in counseling. My callings to both fatherhood and therapy have deepened and complicated for me the idea of having a Father Almighty. My own dad never inspired divine comparison. Not that he isn't worthy of respect. But despite his high morals and magnificent beard, I never confused him with the character we discussed in Sunday school. It wasn't until I had my own children that the divine qualities of fatherhood were revealed to me.
My boys are now one-year-old, and those guys depend on me for every need. And they arouse in me a peculiar sort of love, a love characterized by a tenderness and responsibility I've not previously encountered. My authority feels godlike, but not empowering. Rather, I'm humbled by it, called to be my best self.
Knowing this love, I see how one might reach out into the void and pray to find a Heavenly Father who feels toward you as you feel towards your little ones a Heavenly Father whose love of his children elicits his most sensitive affection.
Still, I cannot uncritically adopt this notion of God as father. My schooling has led me to consider our Father in Heaven in psychological terms, and my psychological analysis complicates any flattery intended in our theological language.
A colleague of mine recently loaned me a book about treating clients with self-absorbed, narcissistic parents. The book features assessment tools designed to identify the self-absorbed mom or dad. In reading the characteristics of a narcissistic parent, I found myself uncomfortably considering the idea that the God of my faith might be...diagnosable. Consider these questions in light of your understanding of God:
Does the parent view the child merely as an extension of himself, existing only to serve or bring honor to the parent?
Is the parent intolerant of the child's values and beliefs, insisting the child adopt the parent's views?
Does the parent constantly seek admiration and attention?
Some might say that God, being God, has the right to demand our conformity and worship. This may be true, but such doesn't change the devastating effects of being the child of a self-absorbed parent. Are we believers volunteering to be the children of a narcissistic Father in Heaven? How do we resolve both the beauty and the darkness inherent in thinking of God as a parent?
In my estimation, our sacred texts move along a spectrum where, on one end, God behaves as the worst sort of self-absorbed parent, and at the other end, the image of God reflects our gentlest, most dignified moments as moms and dads. The prophets projected on to God the worst and best of creaturely existence. And so do we.
This Father's Day, I find myself reaching out into the void, needing connection to one at once powerful, tender, and safe. And I pray that, for my children's sake, the God I might find will save me from being self-absorbed.
Jack Worthy is a graduate of Austin Seminary and currently a student in the counseling program at Southern Methodist University.
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