God Describes Himself as Father and More

God describes himself as our Father.  It is interesting to me that God did not describe himself as our Mother. In the picture, this is the softest most gentle father possible. It is number 1 on google.  Why pictured so soft?  God could have said he is our mother. He is a Spirit. I have already written about the problem of grace with not enough truth. Today my topic is related somehow.

In the Bible, I can see that God can show softer love than a mother and tougher love than a father. He spans the whole range of love.

Often mothers major in soft love and fathers in tough love. When mothers see fathers too tough then they are softer to the kids to make up. Then the father sees a need to get even tougher to balance of too soft.

Mothers need to come towards their husbands and fathers toward the mother so that the two can find agreement on when to both be tougher and both be softer.

God is expert at knowing when to be tough and when to be soft. Jesus shows both so clearly.

God Describes Himself as Father and We Can See It

Churches often have a picture of Jesus with lambs or with small children. In a church, I have never seen a picture of Jesus with a whip and dumping over the tables of the money changers. Note in the pictures I provide, that Jesus is a gentle shepherd with a lamb while the Bible says he is a brave shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. This means he jumps in front of the wolves and lions. That picture of Him as the manly brave shepherd I cannot find.

I also cannot find a picture in the churches like Jesus with a whip. In the picture, Jesus is whipping the people while the Bible makes it clear he used the whip to move out the sheep. I cannot find such an accurate picture at all. Furthermore, I cannot find any picture of Jesus dumping over their tables with the coins scattering. I am sure they wanted to kill him for that. In my mind our images show where we are.

We never see Jesus carrying lambs in a soft setting in the Bible, but we have those pictures – easy to find on google for example –  and he twice drove out the money changers, and we have no picture like that.  Jesus got furious with the Pharisees, and said they were sons of the devil.

We Seem to Show a Very Soft Jesus

We lean toward seeing Jesus as pretty feminine, and then we wonder why the church is filled with women.

Paul the Apostle said use all gentleness and humility, but his actions were anything but. Further, he made no apologies even for telling Peter off in public.

Many of the great men of the Bible were soldiers like Abraham, Joshua, and David for example. God calls himself our Father and we still make him soft – generally soft.

I think we need to move the balance point on how we see God a little more to the tough side to see him as he really is. He did describe himself as our Father.