The problem with words

I have been talking with some one about 'our Heavenly Father' and you would think this would be edifying and helpful. But there is a problem. It is not an obvious one either. You see, we each have quite separate concepts, and this difference might never be discovered. In our case, though, it has been.

So I have felt challenged to express in simple words what Christians believe about God.

The authority for describing God as 'our Heavenly Father' comes directly from Jesus. He gave this pattern for prayer:

'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' (Matthew 6:9-13, using the New International Version translation)

So Christians pray to God, the Creator of everything, as 'our Father in heaven', our heavenly Father, because Jesus taught us to. But Jesus taught also as follows, in a conversation with a Samaritan lady about which was the correct place to worship God: ' ... a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.' (John 4:23-24, also NIV - but emphasis mine)

The nearest we get to knowing God's name in the Old Testament is the occasion when Moses was commissioned by God to lead His people out of their enslavement in Egypt. Moses asked (quite reasonably) 'Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask, "What is his name?" Then what shall I tell them?'

He got this reply: 'I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you."' (Exodus 3:13-14)

Above every other description we could ever hope might help us understand who God is (for this is what a 'name' is) we are taken back to this simple, yet profound, thought. God simply is. Words cannot do him justice, they will always be less than the whole truth. As Isaiah was moved to proclaim: 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.' (Isaiah 55:8-9)

This transcendence of God, who is the source of everything physical and so beyond everything that is physical, would cut us off from Him, were it not for the incarnation of His Son, God in human form. 'The word was with God, the word was God, everything was made through him ... the word became flesh and lived for a while among us' as John tells us in the opening of his gospel. Which is why Jesus could say: 'I and the Father are one.' (John 10:30), and when asked by Philip to 'show us the Father, and that will be enough for us', replied: 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say "Show us the Father"? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?' (John 14:8-10).

We who are physical, who have bodies, needed the physical to help us perceive the One who is spirit, who is beyond the physical. But we must always remember that this time of the Son's physical life was intended to be swallowed up in something beyond physicality. It was only 'for a while'. We now have the risen Lord. So Paul reminds us to keep focused '... not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.' (2 Corinthians 4:18)

So we are no nearer having a description of God; no adequate 'names'. But some help is offered with human ideas, especially that of the most perfect father any human could ever be, and the knowledge that the source of all being (the word) 'became flesh and lived for a while among us.' Those of us who wish to have a picture in our mind of 'the Father' must look to the Son. We know nothing of the physical appearance of Jesus, nor can we ever. The gospels do not even mention his height, his weight, the colour of his hair or eyes, nothing. But all his actions and all his words, they speak volumes to us about the very Father He taught us to address like children.