Reflections by Joseph Ostrander
As we embark on the new teaching series about God the Father I most certainly can appreciate the broad spectrum of reactions that such a teaching can evoke. If, as Chris pointed out, only Jesus knows the Father and those that Jesus chooses to make the divine introduction and connection, there could be some surprising discoveries awaiting us ‘round the next bend of Coastland’s gently flowing community river…
If Jesus perfectly mirrored the Father’s character, and if He accurately expressed the deepest feelings of our Heavenly Father towards us in the Lord’s Prayer, then the meandering downriver pace we will be taking over the course of the next few weeks should allow us plenty of time to unpack the grander implications of this enigmatic Person of the Trinity Jesus claimed to represent perfectly…
I do believe this particular journey of discovery is unlike the teachings about the person of Jesus and the Holy Spirit we were recently blessed with, because “The God-Father” seems to have suffered the stigma of all the generic misconceptions of who God really is. God the Father gets the bad rap for all the wrath, and natural “acts” of calamity and destruction that can be ascribed to His impatient and disappointed attitude towards the obstinate and disobedient human race. It is this god-father that you best respect, blindly obey and whose perceived enemies are now your enemies…
Unfortunately, those non-believing critics that decry the angry, lightning bolt throwing caricature of a mob boss or bad-cop vengeful deity can be the better judges of divine character than those hyper-judgmental Christians that not only insist their god is Judge, Jury and Uber-Executioner, but they take vicarious glee in expecting to be granted front-row seats to a divine bloodbath that exceeds the most gruesome movie or video game reenactment of Armageddon 10.0! It has always struck me as the ultimate irony that many of these hyper-judgmental Christians also condemn those very same violent and gruesome movies and video games as being ‘demonic’ and desensitizing…
Yeah…go figure…
{sigh}
This theological dissonance is being addressed in this current series on the Heart of our Heavenly Father. It is very timely and a much needed review of who this deity is that Jesus claimed to know perfectly, and an oft misunderstood Father that Jesus wishes to properly introduce us to…
As one of my more profound theological Ostrander corollaries states: “Our degree (level) of trust we have in God will be directly proportional to what we believe about Him.”
Think about it...
Amen.