One of the hardest days out of the year for me is Father’s Day.  For those of you who don’t know my story (and if you stick around long enough, you will- I post bits and pieces amongst the theological issues), I have never met my dad. Some days are harder than others.  It’s not debilitating most of the time; weeks go by without it bringing a halt to everyday activities. Weeks turn to months. The feelings of sadness are usually always there, but its nothing that really keeps me from functioning. But then there are days where the pain gets to be soul-crushingly unbearable. One of those days hit a week or so ago.

Everything just stopped. Which, thank God, happened on a day that I had off from everything. Thoughts kept plaguing my mind- “What does it feel like to be hugged by your father?” and “Does he ever even think of me?” and “I just want to tell him I love him, even if its just once.”  Fathers, I plead with you to realize now just how far reaching the emotional effects you can leave on your son.  They need you.

Certainly, there are deep emotional issues that arise out of this. Let’s be sure here, though, that it’s not abandonment leads to a harder life. The emotional pain is not harder in my life than in someone elses. It’s just different. Different issues lead to different problems down the line that must be dealt with, well, differently.  A lot of you can’t relate to my problem, yet you somehow feel like you can empathize with the root of the issue. That’s because you can. That being said, there’s a larger issue that is intertwined- it’s not just an emotional problem, its a spiritual problem. Its a philosophical problem.

Let me see if I can explain.  We all have a world-view, whether we are consistent or not with it.  I, and many of my readers, have a “Christian world-view.”  Our world-view gives us answers to questions such as, the existence and nature of God, an understanding of ethics, a view of history and the future, a view on human beings, an understanding of truth, and so forth. One of the other issues a world-view deals with is “how do we gain knowledge?”  It’s this idea that I want to tackle. Yes, this will tie together. Hold on for the ride.

One of the common theories throughout history on how people gain knowledge is that all knowledge is gained through our senses: seeing, tasting, touching, smelling,  and hearing.  Many people have subscribed to this idea and at first glance it makes sense. I know there is a tree outside my window because I can see it.  Many philosophers, theologians, and people who have no idea what philosophy or theology is have held this view.  Thomas Aquinas, following in the footsteps of Aristotle, held to this view.  Aquinas was one of the finest Christian theologians and philosophers of all time, but I have to disagree with him here. As you will see, this disagreement is why I am at times inconsistent with my own world-view.

Most people who hold to Aquinas’s (and Aristotle’s) view on knowledge do so because they believe that the universe and nature is all there is. Therefore, knowledge must come from perceiving the universe and nature.  However, if a Christian holds this view they are being inconsistent. They are inconsistent, because any knowledge of God or Jesus they hold as a Christian did not come from observable things- it came from special revelation from God Himself. This revelation is supra-natural, that is, it comes to us from outside of nature, because God is outside of nature. To say “Jesus is the messiah” and “we can only know things through our senses” is inconsistent.  I affirm that there is knowledge we can get from ways other than empirical observation.  So how am I inconsistent? And what does this have to do with God?

One of the problems with Aquinas’ view can be seen with an example. In order to understand the concept of “love,” we see it play out before us. In the lives of others, between our parents, in our own lives.  We see what it is like when someone loves someone else. John, in his first epistle, says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  The one who says we can only know through sense experience is then forced to say that the only way we can understand the love of God is to come to know love through seeing people loving each other, and then applying that knowledge to God.  This poses a problem. People are sinful and incapable of perfect love.  Human love falls well short of divine love, and the empiricist must then consider God’s love by way of analogy.

I argue that it is actually the other way around.  Because God’s love is perfect, and because He has created us imago dei, that is, in the image of God, we are born with an innate knowledge of love.  We can then recognize love in others lives and our own.  The real analogy here is not in understanding God’s love for us, but in understanding our love in light of God’s perfect love.

Here is my inconsistency.  Sometimes, I view God’s “fatherhood” in light of my own experiences.  I apply all of the crap (that’s the technical term) from my “relationship” with my father to my relationship to God.  When He reveals Himself supra-naturally through the ancient Scriptures as a Father, instead of seeing that as the perfect ideal of fatherhood, I project my idea of father that I recieved through experience onto Him. Sometimes I project abandonment. Sometimes I project a sense of not being loved. I get it backwards. I make God’s fatherhood the analogy, and not the other way around. I make God the image of our relationships, not the other way around. Imagine the confusion when I come across the promises He gives:

Father to the fatherless, defender of widows—
this is God, whose dwelling is holy.
Psalm 68:5

This of course, means that I construct an idol every time I do this. Lord, forgive me. Father’s Day is always hard on me, because I come face to face with two things:
1) It’s been twenty-four years and counting of silence on Father’s Day from my human father. I yearn for the day where I can tell him “Happy Father’s Day!”
And, 2) Will I make God an Idol again this year? Or will I celebrate Him as He is? The Perfect Father, of perfect love, who gave His Son for us.

This Father’s day, let us view each other in light of imago dei. Let us celebrate our fathers with the love and compassion that we should, but at the same time, we should not relegate our Holy Father to some sort of second place in our worship services this weekend. Let us be thankful for the image we have, and infinitely more-so for what the image points to.