Background information: The following was written as response to a question posed in The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith. On the recommendation of a good friend, I am reading through it and reflecting on some of the questions posed within. The answers given to the questions should be not be assumed to be direct responses to the content of the book. I have enjoyed reading the text even if my answers may at times suggest otherwise.
How would you respond to a person who says, "I have trouble calling God 'Father' because my biological father was not very good"?
I wonder why this is a question that needs answered. Why is it a sticking point that we insist on the gendered nature of God? Is God so small that he insists that 'Father' is the most appropriate nomenclature and is the verbiage we must use, fire of hell awaiting us otherwise?
I understand the perspective that God the Father and Jesus the Son is how it's been since before time was a thing and that God could have chosen to be the Mother and Jesus could have been the Daughter. (And that's setting aside the gender of those who had the power to shape the narrative of the story as it is in its current form.) At the end of the day though, why does it matter?
In the current age, as has always been the case, even well-intentioned insistence on a gendered God is not so many steps from justifications to treat those other genders as second-class. No wonder no one cares much for the Holy Spirit, that part of the trinity whose gender is not so clear as the Father and the Son.
If someone approached me with the above statement, my response would be to encourage while also likely apologizing for inadvertently triggering the person. There is no reason to be over the top about apologizing for something I did unintentionally but I can certainly allow someone the space to not feel they have done anything wrong or to not feel like they have to justify themselves. If they would like to tell their story, I can listen, encourage, and appreciate that someone finds enough meaning in their belief for God that they felt discomfort that their prior experiences may have set up a barrier to deepening that belief in God.
What do I lose if someone else calls God by another name? If the experience of your own father in any way hinders your ability to connect with the peace that passes beyond all understanding, then by all means, call God whatever you want. I am quite certain that if he truly does exist, then He can handle it. God is no more a he than a she or a they and yet God is all of us.
My answer to this question is heavily biased by the fact that I relate much more to the questioner than the one being questioned. Not so much in how I felt I was treated by my biological father, every family has their ups and downs. But rather, I relate through how I feel I have been treated by the church, universal and local.
My experience with the church has been an almost constant exercise in hiding my true self, repressing hurts and putting up with being told over and over that my problems lay in me and no one else. Any fault the church may have is conveniently hidden behind its self-appointment as the word of God here on earth. If God can never do wrong, how could the church then? To accuse the church of doing wrong? You may as well accuse God of being wrong. That's heresy in most churches that I have been a part.
For me, my statement is, "I have trouble calling God 'God. I have trouble saying the name Jesus. I long ago stopped identifying myself as a Christian and to even describe myself as a person of faith now brings a fair amount of cringe to my face. I believe there is more to life than simply existing and I believe there are other lives than these. Heaven is not but returning to the water from which I came as a wave. The most comfort I have found in my life was not in the words of John 3:16 but in contemplation of Ecclesiastes 3:19 - 20."
I do not want to be told why I am mistaken to want to avoid those words and self-identifiers. I do not want to hear why my comfort is missing the point. I only want to hear, "I am sorry. Go in peace."
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