Alongside Inc.

Counselor's Commentary: God as the Perfect Parent

     An important and highly encouraging application of the doctrinal area of theology proper (the study of God) is recognizing that God can make Himself known to human beings in a personal way despite the faulty God-images that a child might be bequeathed during childhood. I was deeply impressed with a psychology instructor who shared some-thing of his life history, a history which would have inclined him to be seriously personality disordered, except that his very real relationship with Jesus from his youngest days onward had met many emotional needs normally met by parents. This relationship with the Lord Jesus kept him from a personality disorder which would otherwise have most likely become his psychological “fate.” Genuine childhood faith—especially a real, personal, close relationship with God as Father—can have much influence on the development of a child’s God-image as well as his personal development in the absence of good parenting, thanks to the ministry of the Holy Spirit resident within the child who has accepted Christ as Savior.

A child is capable of a tremendous fantasy life. It is no difficulty for a child to imagine the Lord Jesus walking by his side on the way to school or to imagine God the Father greeting him at the door as he arrives home. These things can be just as real to a child as the absence of the earthly father or the emotional smothering of an earthly mother—perhaps even more real. And the experience of such within the child’s inner world can provide a healthy balance to the realities of his or her earthly home-life. Perhaps that is part of the reason the Lord Jesus placed such a high priority on allowing the children to come to Him and indicated that the only way to see the kingdom of heaven is to do so in a childlike manner. 

A child can be taught basic truths about the person of God - both those aspects of personhood we usually consider maternal and those we traditionally consider paternal - and these truths can become a living reality to the child.  Such learning can come through Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, Christian neighbors, radio programs, etc. We may never know until we get to heaven the degree to which the harm done by inadequate or even abusive parenting has been substantially offset in some children’s lives by their exposure to the gospel and entering into relationship with a loving Heavenly Parent.

But what about those whose relationship with God does not begin during the magical years of childhood, but rather during those later years when walking and talking with Jesus or a Heavenly Father may not seem so real? I would like to suggest that the New Birth may offer a unique opportunity. I believe that in some very real sense the Holy Spirit, upon taking up residence in a new believer, enables the believer to go through some childlike developmental stages in the spiritual realm and perhaps even emotionally in the new believer’s growing relationship with his or her Heavenly Father. I believe that during the early growth of a new believer, especially if there is adequate discipling with psychological sensitivities included, the new believer has a “second chance” to be parented in some important ways, a chance to go through some of the basic developmental stages again, though probably at a much quicker pace than happens at a younger age. Because of this, much psychological and emotional correction can take place as a result of the New Birth and being born into the Family of God.  

The damage of faulty parenting is never completely reversed this side of heaven, but substantial healing can take place as a result of learning to relate as a child to one’s Heavenly Father and going on from there to grow up into a mature relationship with the Heavenly Father. With great tenderness God has declared Himself to be the Father of the fatherless. May those who are neglected or abused by their parents come to experience the Fatherhood of God in a deep way, and may they be able to say with the Psalmist, “When my father and mother have forsaken me, the Lord will take me up.”

  Jeanne L. Jensma, M.R.E., Ph.D., Director of Counseling