Update:  This post is now a year old, but since Father’s Day is coming back around again and I’m getting back on track with these posts, I wanted to refresh it.  There was a lot of good feedback last year on it, so maybe it will be helpful to you.

Before Fathers Day slips away, I wanted to share some thoughts for and about dads.  We live in a culture that in some ways reveals a proper, if partial, picture of what fatherhood is; in other ways the picture of fatherhood is distorted and misleading.  Undiluted faith involves a right understanding of what it means to be a father, and that comes in part from understanding The Father – our heavenly Father.  This post is a brief exploration of just some of what God our Father does, and what that means for dads today.

When we take a Trinitarian view of the family, we understand that God the Father is called “the Father” for a reason.  Fathers today can actually learn more about their roles through pondering His.  How God the Father acts can show dads how to act.

God is the Ultimate Mr. Fix It

If you take a step back and look at the scope of human history from the Bible, this picture of the Father emerges.  God takes our problems, our messes, our unsolvable disasters and does the impossible with them.  To our “credit,” we have a knack for getting ourselves into those sorts of situations.  The largest of these began in the Garden of Eden with one act of defiance, and the ugly maw of sin continues to leer at humanity with its jaws gaping open at us in mockery of our foolishness.  What can we possibly do about that?  We’re like a pelican in the middle of an oil spill, completely lacking the ability to clean the crude off our carcass.  This is where our Mr. Fix It Father steps in.

“But God…”  That’s how the Bible puts it in Romans 5:8.  In the middle of our sinful predicament (“while we were still sinners“), God stepped in and “demonstrated His love toward us.”  God sent His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins, making the biggest mess in history both fixed (by Christ’s once and for all sacrifice) and in the process of being fixed (when believers receive glorified bodies and sin and death are ultimately thrown into the lake of fire).  And in the Bible there are countless other messes that God fixes along the way.  God fixed the mess Joseph’s brothers made when they sold him into slavery.  He fixed the mess made by Jonah when he ran the other way.  He fixed the mess the Apostle Paul was making on his way to Damascus.  Our God is the ultimate Mr. Fix It.

Every time dads clean up the messes of their children, they emulate the Father who fixes.  Those messes could be jelly on faces, tables, clothing, and walls.  Or maybe they are the result of misbehavior in school, teen pregnancy, a suicide attempt, or any other multitude of crises that develop. And while dads may not have all the answers, they can turn to the One who does, because the Father always has the plan.  Men today are the fixers – the primary shoppers at hardware stores, the owners of tools, the ones under the car changing the oil before they get on the ladder to repair the shingles – and our culture does a decent job at portraying that, too.

God takes a long view of any given situation

The fixes can take a lot of time, too.  Remember, Joseph’s fix came about twenty years after the mess, and it took thousands of years for Jesus to come after that first sin.  This is a reminder that God is known for His patience.  Even though He is holy and cannot stand sin, He has the forbearance with His people in their sinful state.  As a foster parent, I see a lot of “fixes” I want to make with my kids, but the reality is that there is too much to fix at any given time.  I end up fixing the more pressing matters.  Then I realize that while I think I’m fixing them, God is actually fixing me still.  He is building up a certain patience within me, deepening a compassion that isn’t based on surface behavior but on unconditional love.

While some people point out the judgment of God and make Him out as a capricious God who looks for opportunities to send judgment, the opposite is true of our patient God.  I heard a sermon today from Pastor Alan T. Neiman of Lakeside Fellowship Church in Vero Beach, Florida, and he described God from the parable of the Prodigal Son as having “open arms” waiting for His children.  In fact, He is what Timothy Keller calls the Prodigal God, because of the overflowing grace God so prodigiously (going back to the initial meaning of prodigal) pours out.  God woos His children back to Him and knows it may take time.  Dads who exhibit the patience and steadfast consistency with their children are just like their heavenly Father in this way.  The Father stays in control without imposing His will.  Any dad who exhibits grace and patience – especially in the difficult situations – is showing a picture of the heavenly Father.  There are times for discipline, of course (just ask my kids!), but mere discipline is a misleading and incomplete picture of God.

The Father’s love outweighs His dignity

God is motivated by His love and not His standing.  He is like that father in the Prodigal Son parable who ran – an undignified act for any man of good standing in that culture – because his love for his son was simply too great for anything else.  He endures scorn from His children and the obvious counter-intuitive nature of the gospel itself.  1 Corinthians 1 describes God’s plan of salvation (“the message of the cross”) as foolishness – His foolishness.  He used a foolish-looking plan to rescue us.  It is a messy plan, full of blood and gore that leaves God looking ridiculous and humiliated.  The result, however, is a thing of beauty that shows God the Father rolling up His sleeves and embracing His children, whom He has redeemed in the most amazing way.

How far are fathers today willing to go in their love?  They demonstrate their love when those loving acts can leave them looking silly and yet don’t prevent them from still doing them.  A week ago I was headed to a conference, one where I wouldn’t want to look foolish in front of others (is there any other kind?).  My kids were by the pool swimming, and one of my daughters got out of the pool, wrapped herself in a towel, and plopped in my lap.  I knew what was going to happen, but I cherished that moment of holding my little girl in my arms.  Sure enough, once she got up I was left with her wet imprint on the front of my shorts and the appearance that I had a rather embarrassing accident!  Love must outweigh dignity in order to be true, fatherly love.

Today or tomorrow, thank the dads that you know.  Tell them you are thankful for the ways their fatherly actions point us to God the Father (perhaps in ways I haven’t even mentioned).  Express how different they are from the dads portrayed in sitcoms on TV.  Thank them for not bowing to the pressure of ads to men that tempt fathers to focus more on their own pleasure than the well-being of their own family.

Happy Fathers Day!