Now it is eonian life that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Him Whom Tou dost commission, Jesus Christ
Johns Account 17: 3, Concordant New Testament
The first time I ever heard God referred to as "Daddy" was while I still walking the halls of the mainstream church. A few of my friends had taken to affectionately calling God their Daddy. I'm guessing out of respect or from genuine heart-felt admiration. Whatever the reason, whenever I tried to look upon the Lord in that way I couldn't do it without a mixture of emotions. See, calling God daddy brought back years old memories of my own father who had never been a part of my life. I would transfer all of the ways that my dad had let me down upon my heavenly Father. In this way, I was unable to speak of the Lord in loving, relational terms. I a lot of ways, God had responded to me just like my dad had for so many years. When I prayed, He would seemingly listen but then once again turn His back to me. My relationship with God often centered around how good I behaved. If I was a good son, my life would be easy. However, as often happens, when my life got difficult, the common Christian church based response was that I had somehow done something to upset Daddy. Just like my earthly father, when I misbehaved I was punished of ignored by Him. Referring to God as Daddy was akin to linking Him to the negative behaviors of my own father. This is an all too common issue for those of us who have not had the best relationship with our own parents. The love aspect simply is not there. We hear the word Daddy and we immediately think of the negative instead of the Fathers love for us. For its part, the traditional church has prospered this thinking by constantly speaking to the separation of man and God. See, man is a sinner, and God cannot be in the presence of sin. They point to the words of the apostle Paul in Romans to remind us of our failure {Paul to the Romans 3:23}. Yet rarely is the Fathers grace through Christ which Paul speaks to in the following verse mentioned {Paul to the Romans 3:24}. Yes, we were at one time sinners, but Jesus has accounted for that on the cross. It is Jesus who took the burden of sin upon Himself on that cross {Paul to the Corinthians (2) 5:21}. God commissioned Christ Jesus for the cross that He would restore the love relationship He once had with His children {Johns Account 3:16-17}. This is what our loving Daddy has done for us.
He who is not loving knew not God, for God is love
First Epistle of John 4: 8, Concordant New Testament
When you consider what too many believers have gone through, it is easy to see that it is not the Father who has fostered a false relationship with His children, but our own perceptions of who He is. Once we know the true nature of the Father, calling Him Daddy will become natural for us. This was not easy for me, but eventually, with the help of a few good friends, I was able to see the one true nature of the Father. That nature, as spoken to by the apostle John, is love {First Epistle of John 4:8}. It is God who loved us enough to create us in His own likeness {Genesis 1:27}. It is God Who refused to allow us to rest in our sin, but gave His one and only Son as a sacrifice for us {Paul to the Romans 6:10}. It is Jesus who, through His act of selfless love for us, died on the cross {Johns Account 15:13}. These are not the acts of a callous, uncaring and distant father, but a loving Daddy. I won't suggest that those who have suffered through a bad relationship with their own parents will easily forget their past. However, what I am suggesting is that it was never God with Whom they shared a bad relationship. The Father has always been there, waiting for us to return to Him. The Father desires a loving relationship with His children, and He is lovingly waiting for us to return to Him.
~Scott~
2 comments:
Concerning your statement about God being called “Daddy,” I have some information for you that may be helpful. In 1971 it was a Lutheran pastor, named Joaquin Jeremias, who first translated the word abba, which is normally translated “father”, to the word “daddy”. He had studied the Hebrew and concluded that “abba” was the word used by little children for their father. He thought this was the most common usage of the word. However, after much more research and comments to him by other scholars, he decided that he was wrong, and declared the word’s most common meaning in the first century was “dad”, in the truest sense of that word (signifying a relationship of intimacy and trust for a father, not childish dependence). So, for whatever it's worth, whenever people say God is “daddy”, they're wrong! God is their “dad” and all that it means.
Scott my friend, my original intent was to show that we CAN refer to Him in a intimate way as our Father. He has always been an intimate part of us (Genesis 1:27, John 1:1-4, John 14:20). To suggest that we cannot refer to God in a intimate way as our Father I believe is a false narrative. It is God who desires that intimate relationship with each of us 😊
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