God... as a father

So, we all made it through the first chapter. During last night's gathering, we had great discussion about the differing assumptions of what God looks like. God's look are presented in many different lights in our world, in churches, classes, on TV and radio, and even in ideas passed down through the generations. God says he is a father; but what does that mean? What if my earthly father resembles nothing good or I don't get a long with my dad? What if I have a lot of hurt associated with my dad? We all have an opinion of what a father is. Sometimes, depending on our paternal experience, we form a picture of God based on what believe a father to be from our experience, when in fact, God should be the model for earthly fathers.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Ephesians 5:1-2


I wanted to post this section from the book that we talked about briefly last night:

"Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as “Father” at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake. Why would God want to call Himself Father when so many fathers abandon their children?As a child, the title Father God offered an ambiguous haze with which to interact. I understood what a father did as well as I understood the task of a shepherd. All the vocabulary about God seemed to come from an ancient history, before video games, Palm Pilots, and the Internet. If you would have asked me, I suppose I would have told you there was a God, but I could not have formulated a specific definition based on my personal experience. Perhaps it was because my Sunday school classes did much to help us memorize commandments and little to teach us who God was and how to relate to Him, or perhaps it was because they did and I wasn’t listening. Nevertheless, my impersonal God served me fine as I had no need of the real thing. I needed no deity to reach out of heaven and wipe my nose, so none of it actually mattered. If God was on a dirt road walking toward me, He was on the other side of a hill, and I hadn’t begun to look for Him anyway."

-Blue like jazz

Questions
CH-1

• What were some of your earliest perceptions of God?
  
• If you were in a car, driving to meet with God (literally in person), what would be going through your mind? Would you be worried about how he will receive you? Are you excited about meeting him in person? What do you think he looks like?
• Share a story about you getting into trouble as a kid.
• At the beginning of the chapter Donald talks about his father. How would you describe your father?
• In what ways does this influence your view of God as a father figure?