The Importance of Good Fathers

I remember having a discussion in a Bible study group a few years ago about another reason that it is important to be a good father.  The discussion revolved around some remarks made by individuals outside the church regarding their view of God as a father.  These men were having trouble with the imagery of God as our Heavenly Father that is prevalent throughout Scripture.  The problem they were having was that they had abusive, uncaring, and unloving fathers and therefore couldn’t understand why God would call himself our father if he loves and cares for us.  The very word “father” conjured up for them a very dark image and so they struggled to separate the qualities that they saw in their own fathers from the qualities that God tells us that he has as our Father.

While I understood the implications of our discussion I never quite grasped the weight of it.  I have been blessed be a father that loves his children deeply and sacrificially.  It was not a great leap for me to liken the character traits that I have always seen in my own father to the traits that our Heavenly Father has, knowing that the latter are untainted by a sinful human heart.  However, a phone call that I received recently helped me to understand the difficulty that some people may have.

 The phone call came from my boss.  There was nothing remarkable about the content of the conversation but I noticed something that I hadn’t before – there was no nervousness or general anxiety stirred in me when the phone rang.  There shouldn’t have been.  I am extremely fortunate to be able to work for the epitome of a great boss.  He is helpful and supportive and genuinely cares about me as a professional and as a person.  The odd thing is that for the first several months I worked for him, I would be anxious every time I would get and email from him or see his name on the caller ID.

This anxiety had nothing to do with him but rather was due to a boss that I had worked for previously.  This previous boss managed predominantly by fear so the mere anticipation of interacting with him increased the anxiety that I was likely already feeling.  When I first started interacting with my current boss I couldn’t separate the description of someone as “boss” from the idea of “boss” I had in my mind and so all the uneasy feelings I used to get were replicated.  It took a long time for me to be able to redefine the concept in my mind to include a person that didn’t stir up apprehension.

After the phone conversation, I was immediately reminded of the conversation about fathers and the parallel was clear.  If a concept like “boss” could be so convoluted in my mind, how much more could a concept with the weight of fatherhood be confused?   This further reiterated to me the importance of being a good father.  I always want the concept of “father” one that invokes positive thoughts in my children and for them to be able to easily understand why God would use fatherhood imagery when he explains how he relates to us.  What better way to display to my children how much God loves them than to exhibit those qualities myself?  There is no way that I can ever come close to loving them like God loves them.  My actions will always be tainted by the stain of sin.  No amount of effort and will power on my part would result in me providing an accurate image for my children of how God loves them.  But God, in continuous acts of grace that I will never be able to fully understand, enables me to love my children in a way that reflects God’s love.  I am eternally grateful for these acts of grace and pray that they continue.