I PREACHED IT WRONG: GOD ISN’T LIKE A FATHER

It is youth camp season. Almost forty years ago, the week of July fourth, I was preaching a youth camp in an open-aired tabernacle. In the hot, muggy, bug-ladened atmosphere surrounded by the darkening night, I was pleading with wayward young people using the story of the Prodigal Son. I described the promiscuous son’s having come to his senses as he slept with the pigs. And then his returning home. I emphasized his arrival: “The father did not wait until his son knocked on the door. He saw him coming and ran to meet him. The father did not halt his approach at his son’s distinct swine smell. Nor did he hesitate at the sight of his filthy robe and body. No! The father took his son in a welcoming bear-hug embrace. At his son’s protestations that he was unworthy to be a son or treated as a son, as he begged to be allowed to be just one of his servants, the father declared, ‘No, you are my son! Come into the house. You are more than welcome. And to show it, I’m going to throw a party to celebrate your homecoming’.” “Servants, bring a robe and ring. (and, hopefully, ‘Fill, the bath with water and get several bars of soap.’).” At that point, I entered my message’s plea for those away from Christ. I was appealing to them to come to the altar and surrender their lives to Christ. I declared, “God is like a father. God is like this father. If you come to Him, He will meet you with open arms. He will hug you with those arms. He will take you into His house.” As young people began to flood the altar, I noticed one young lady with her face contorted in misery and defiance. Sitting arms crossed. Distressed but obdurate. Refusing to come with the others to the altar. I watched as some sister went to talk with her and invited her to come to pray. She refused with a vehement verbal barrage and animated gestures. Of course, way up at the pulpit, I had no idea what she was saying. Afterward, what this teenage girl had said in her refusal to respond was relayed to me: It went something like this: “I ran away from home with my boyfriend. I did bad things. I realized what a mess I’d made of my life. Just yesterday, I returned home and asked my dad if I could come back. He yelled at me and told me what a bad person and daughter I was. What a mess of things I had made. What a horrible sin I had committed. Then, he pointed to the door and told me to leave and never come back. He screamed, ‘Get out.’” She then retorted, “That preacher said that God is like a father.” She vexingly and bitterly exclaimed, “If God is like my father, I want nothing to do with Him. I won’t go pray. He would be just like my father anyway. He would not take me back.” Deep in the night last night (Friday), with no waking remembrance of this for years, it hit me. I was wrong in what I preached. I had misspoken when I applied the story of the prodigal son. When I said, “God is like a father. It may be semantics, but what I said is all wrong. God isn’t like a father. There are some bad fathers. God is not like some fathers. Not like many fathers. Not at all. This girl’s father was a pastor. But God isn’t like that father.” Make no mistake. There are some good fathers. Some really good ones. I had one such father. But it isn’t that God is like them. The truth is God is not like a father, but a good father is like God. When the prodigal sons’ father met, embraced, and welcomed his stinking wayward son home, that father was being like God. The heavenly Father. The Ultimate Father. God was not like that father. That father was like God. Oh, to be a father like God. --Pastor Clifford Hurst