God the Father

God is referenced as our Father; Jesus taught us that when He referred to the Lord as "Abba." And the Bible keeps telling us that we are His children. 

The Bible also keeps telling us, as in Hebrews 12:7, that God disciplines us like a father disciplines His children. Therefore, we should not only accept His discipline, but we should learn from it, since that's what it is for. 

True. 

But...

That doesn't mean that everything you experience in life is God's attempt to teach you a lesson. 

There's a lot of this bunk theology out there that tries to claim this very thing. In fact, I'm reading a book right now where the author recounts her experience with the unimaginable, and so far, she has spent all of the pages trying to explain how she just has to come to this place of submission so that she can learn what God is trying to teach her through this experience. So that she can understand why God wants her to have this season in her life. 

Here I sit, reading, and thinking, "What if He doesn't want that for you?" 

Because here's the truth - so many of the things we try to justify as God's good discipline in our lives, as God's desire to teach us something, as the seasons God, for some reason, "wants" us to have...are the same kinds of things we'd be screaming about if we saw them in the headlines. We'd be crying about child abuse, talking about it around the water cooler at work, signing petitions online demanding justice for the little one. 

Yet, we tell ourselves that God just does these things and it's our responsibility to submit ourselves to them so that we can learn something. 

Listen. Hear me on this: 

No. 

God is a good Father, not an abusive one. God does things that build us up, and we're not talking about an army style bootcamp rooted in a model of trauma. If it feels traumatic, God is very well working to turn it to good, but He didn't put the trauma there. You aren't supposed to be thankful for the scarring seasons in your life. That's not what God wants for you. 

So this thing where you feel abandoned and decide that God wants you lonely for some reason, no. This thing where your body breaks and you decide that God wants you disabled and broken, no. This thing where you lose all of your resources and are teetering on the edge of earthly ruin and you decide that God wants you in poverty, no. These things go directly against what God says He wants for you, what God has said is "very good," and they teach you to "submit" to Him as an abusive father, who you are somehow then supposed to turn around and love. 

What's happening is that this world is traumatizing you in its fallenness, in its brokenness, and God is doing everything He can to protect you from it. And to grow you through it. And to love you all the way. You have a good Father in the midst of a traumatic world, not a traumatic Father in the face of a good life. Don't ever confuse the two. 

The next time you're tempted to decide that this brokenness is what God wants for you, ask yourself how you'd feel if you read it in the headlines. If it fills you with righteous anger to think that there would be a father who would do this to his kid, then it's not God doing it to you. Period. 

But keep your eyes open and see what He'll do in response. I promise it will be amazing.