Like all dads, I make my fair share of mistakes. I try my best with my kids, but I am quite far from perfect. But despite my imperfect parenting, I think I’m a pretty good father.
I believe I communicate my love to my kids pretty well. They all know that I love them deeply and would drop everything to be there for them in a moment’s notice. They all know that I am proud of who they are and that no matter how big the mistakes they make, they will never, ever be rejected by me. My commitment to them is utter. They may intentionally cause me pain on occasion and I may react to it, but I will never turn my back on them. I tell them I love them on a regular basis and I gaze on them with joy, listening to and soaking in their accomplishments and dreams. I ache over their sorrows and struggles.
I expect nothing less than that as a father. This is simply what fathers do and I would be a disappointment to myself if I felt less deeply and loved less practically. And I hope my kids expect this of me as well, because I want them to live in the comfort of knowing my endless commitment to them.
My kids are the greatest part of me. They are my highest pleasure. They are the living, breathing love of my wife and me.
But it occurred to me recently that for some strange reason, I don’t expect God to love me so deeply and endlessly as I love my kids. I realized that I think of myself as a better father than the Father.
Theologically, I don’t believe I’m a better father than God. But in the way I relate to God, I expect far less love from him than I expect from myself toward my kids.
I know that God isn’t just a better me than me, which is how so many people think of God (far too often we think of God as just our best traits multiplied and our bad traits minimized). Even so, I know that my love of my children is but a fraction of God’s love of me and the rest of his children. And yet, there is a part of me that doesn’t believe it.
There is a very real part of me that expects God to be disappointed in me, shaking his head slowly from side to side. There is a very real part of me that still hides from God like Adam and Eve, trying to cover my shame when I know that he wants to cover me himself. There is a very real part of me that believes I haven’t worked hard enough, prayed often enough, read the Bible enough, shared my faith enough. I know that there is no earning the love and favor of God. I’ve never really tried to do that.
What it is is this: I impose my unhappiness with myself on God.
I disappoint myself and then I multiply that, believing that my disappointment is a fraction of God’s disappointment. Again, this isn’t front of mind stuff. This is what goes on in the hidden recesses of my soul.
But then I encounter those amazing biblical words emeth and chesed, which we translate as truth/faithfulness/integrity and mercy/lovingkindness. These beautiful Hebrew words together describe the Father’s heart toward his children. They express the depth of his covenant loyalty toward us, the down in the gut commitment he has toward those he has tied himself to with eternal bonds of love.
Does God shake his head at me? Of course, he does. All fathers do. But I know he does so more out of humor than out of frustration. And those frustrated shakes are so temporary, quickly replaced by not-so-temporary emeth and chesed, those eternal qualities of his relationship with me, with us.
I am a good dad. But God, he is a better dad than I am.