What image of God works for you or at least sticks with you? Is God a wellspring? Is God the ground of all being? Do you find refuge in God as a strong fortress?  Quakers have plenty of options including some that are peculiar to us: Spirit, Spirit of Truth, Truth, Light, Inner Light, Inward Teacher, Divine Teacher, Love. In the Bible you can find God as a rock, a shepherd, a fortress, a mother bird, a mother bear, and consuming fire. It took me quite a while to find an image of God that worked for me and I wonder if you faced that too.

Maybe you feel the need for something more personable. Do you connect with Christ our Brother or Christ our Friend? I admire Jesus as a sage teacher and try to follow his ways, but I have a hard time talking to him. God is all of these images. Yet, none of these analogies can fully capture who God is.

Jim Palmer, a writer on spirituality without religion explains:

“We do not begin with ultimate reality as it is in itself. We begin with the world we know, the bodies we inhabit, the relationships that formed us, the authorities we have obeyed, the fears we carry, and the desires we cannot escape. So it should not surprise us that early human images of God often look like enlarged versions of human beings: a ruler, a father, a warrior, a judge, a king, a protector, a lawgiver. These images are not random. They reveal the categories through which human beings first tried to make sense of mystery.”[i]

It’s Father’s Day and you can probably already sense where this is going. If I say God and you say the Father Almighty, then there’s a good chance you grew up in a credal tradition. This phrase appears in both the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. A similar version is in the Athanasian Creed. 

Even if you come from a Christian tradition that does not recite the creeds, you may still find the phrase Heavenly Father or one of its variations familiar: Father who is in Heaven or Father who art in Heaven. This was one of my earliest understandings of God. God as Father is one of the dominant images of the Divine in the Christian tradition. When someone asks you to think of God do you imagine an old man with a beard and flowing robes? Even if you are a birthright Quaker, you may still have grown up with God spoken of as He/Him.

Here’s a few more phrases: Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6), Father of Lights (James 1:17), Father of Mercies or Compassionate Father(2 Corinthians 1:3), Father to the Fatherless (Psalm 68:5), Father of Spirits (Hebrews 12:9) and Father of Glory (Ephesians 1:17). The Google AI, Gemini, counts “well over 250 references to God as Father in the Bible including 10-20 references in the Hebrew Bible and 200+ references in the New Testament. The Gospel of John alone includes more than 150 references. 

Despite the many other analogies and names for God, Father is an enduring concept. Over time it has become problematic. When we have a negative image of God this has a reciprocal relationship with unhealthy and abusive fathers. People see God as unhealthy and abusive and see that as authorization to be that way themselves. People who grow up with unhealthy and abusive relationships with their fathers find themselves unable to relate to God. They think if my father is this way so too is God

In order to break that cycle, we must first admit that God is not literally a father. The problem arises when it becomes a dead analogy. People have heard it so long that they literalize it and forget it’s a metaphor. God is many things to us.

A study called “Concept of God and Parental Images” examined the relationship between images of parents and the image of God and they found that

“The image of God, as expected, contains both characteristics, [maternal and paternal] the paternal characteristics being more accentuated than the maternal ones. The [paternal] account for 51.5 per cent of the image. The image of God is especially strong in basic paternal qualities of knowledge, strength, power, justice, authority, model, law, and order. Fathers tend not to be rated so high on these qualities as in those reflecting more concrete action, giving directions, taking initiative, making decisions.”

It is intriguing that while the participants in the study connected paternal characteristics with both God and human fathers, they did not connect the same characteristics with both. Even when talking about paternal characteristics, God was described as judge and authority. Human fathers were seen as being involved in participants’ lives in more concrete ways. This issue shows that the problem is not that God is analogous to a human father, but our perception of what kind of Father God is.[ii]

Another study on images of God worked to go beyond denominational characteristics to reach personal understandings of God. They combined 6 various characteristics to describe images of God falling on a scale from “God as a partner or friend and see him as relatively distant from earthly affairs” to “God in more authoritarian terms (God is a king, father, judge, and master) and believe that God takes an active interest in the world and them personally.” [iii]

A significant oversight seems to be the possibility that God could be both emotionally close and involved in our lives.

The first study suggests that the problem with describing God as a father seems to have issues not so much from being like a human father who is involved in our lives, but that God as father is characterized by strength, power, justice, authority, law and order. Acceptance, love, and warmth are categorized as maternal, but these could easily be desirable in a father as well. 

The second study ties God’s involvement in our lives with God being authoritarian. Can God be involved in our lives in concrete ways without being authoritarian? If we connect God as father to being judgmental, punishing and having impossible standards then that’s a problem.

In their book, Good Goats: Healing Our Image of God, Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and Matthew Linn lay out the problem with people’s image of God in several ways. They start by telling a story out how you would react if a family member demanded that you visited weekly and love him under threat of torture. We might profess love and do what he wants, but underneath it all we would loathe him. If we see God the Father this way then it’s no wonder when people have a hard time relating to God. 

On Jesus’s relationship with God the Father, they explain how much of a caricature today’s understanding of atonement is. Jesus has to argue the Father into forgiving us and God demands Jesus face suffer torture and bleed to earn that forgiveness. This would not be a good and loving God nor a good and loving Father. Surely God is not like this. In my mind, God the Father wept when Jesus died. He could have even been crying out in agony. What’s more, the Heavenly Father did not need to be talked into wanting a relationship with humanity. The reason Jesus died was systemic evil and not some deal with a bloodthirsty Father who craved or demanded suffering. 

If we see God as abusive it becomes harder to call the people in our lives to account when they cross that line. If you have an abusive father, that does not mean that God is abusive. God the Father can be there for you when your human father cannot give you what you need. God the Father as a strong protector may be what you need in this moment. 

In Good Goats, the authors tie the way that we become like the parents “we adore, even with all of their faults” to us becoming like the God we adore. On that basis they caution us against seeing God as self-righteous, constantly seeing mistakes and errors in everyone else. If we believe God is that way we will begin to find flaws and mistakes in all those around us.

Further, they contend that our willingness to wage war, particularly nuclear war, connects with our vision of God. They say, “If my God can send God’s enemies into a hell inferno then I can send a nuclear inferno on my enemies.” If we see God as endorsing the slaughter of our enemies, who is going to hold us to account for lacking in mercy and turning away from justice?

Tying our image of God to a healthy relationship with a human father would actually improve our image of God. The problem is what sort of Father God is. Christians generally agree that God is good, but what does that mean? Some Christians go so far as to proclaim that God is love (see 1 John 4), but is that the same as loving? God as Lawgiver is well-attested. Think God and Moses or the book of Leviticus. How could bringing the concept of Law-giver help us to rehabilitate our image of God as Father? How can we have a healthy image of God the Father?

Remember that God loves us. In Good Goats, the authors ask us to see God as loving us at least as much as the person who loves us most in the world. Soaking in that affirmation and acceptance from God would go a long way towards making us emotionally healthy. If we can truly take this in, then it will help us grow and show mercy to people who let us down. What if instead of trying to be worthy of God’s love we accepted that God already loves us?[iv] If God loves us then we will grow to love the people around us.

We know God set out commandments, rules and laws. It seems to be the main thing some people know about God.  This ties into the paternal images of God being connected to law, order, and justice in participant responses in the study, “Concept of God and Parental Images.” The question is what we take from our inheritance of these commandments, rules and laws from our spiritual ancestors. Do we see these as the same concrete guidance we see in human fathers? If we see the Heavenly Father as setting up standards, rules, and expectations for His children then it is natural that a good human father will do the same. 

Children are happier and healthier if they have boundaries and know what is expected of them. To have a good relationship with God we need to know God’s expectations. If we believe that God is good then these expectations will not be unreasonable or impossible to fulfill. God will not ask us to do what is wrong. If you believe God is asking you to be unkind, cruel or unjust it’s time to re-examine your understanding. We have seen parents that have impossible standards for their children and can see how dysfunctional that is. Why can’t we see that in our image of God?

Psalm 68 describes God as Father to the Fatherless. If you were raised with little or no relationship with your father, then you can lean into your relationship with God. 2 Corinthians 1:3 describes God as the Compassionate Father and God of all comfort. Picture yourself as a child going through your most difficult moments. In your mind’s eye see God as a father holding you when you cry or with his hand on your shoulder as you step into a difficult situation. You can heal yourself in the now by imagining that support back then.

I worry that my work has taken me away from my son too much. I would like to have been more present for him. This is something that has been going on for at least three generations of my family. My father is more present than his father and I hope I can continue the trend. Even as I believe we are getting better across the generations, I hope that my busyness has not left my son with a sense projected onto God that God is not there for him.

I hope that God fills that gap. I hope that having a Heavenly Father who listens and gives you advice can be transformative. As Quakers we believe that we can get leadings from Spirit in the here and now, not just in biblical times. Like a father, God can give you guidance. If you have no one to talk to then like a father, God can be your listening ear. God is at least as good as the best human father we know. 

God is beyond what it is to be a good person, but that does not make God constantly in a posture of judging and disappointment. If we have a healthy image of God, then God can teach us to be good fathers and good people. God is not literally a father. God is both our Father when we need as well as many other things. As Jim Palmer says, “The question is not whether we can speak of God without human projection. We cannot. The question is whether our language remains open enough to be corrected by reality.” Let your understanding of God lead you forward. If your understanding of God is not leading you to be a better person and allowing you to know God’s support in a time of need then it’s time to reassess the understanding of God you have built.

Queries:

• In what ways has seeing God as Father helped you or hurt you?
• How does your image of God affect your behavior?
• How have significant people in your life affected your image of God?

---

[i] Jim Palmer, June 3, 2026 Facebook post

[ii] Concept of God and Parental Images by Antoine Vergote and Alvaro Tama Yo, Luiz Pasquali, Michel Bonami, Marie-rose Pattyn, Anne Custers Institute of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain

[iii] Pg 11, “Images of God: The Effect of Personal Theologies on Moral Attitudes, Political Affiliation, and Religious Behavior” by Christoper Bader, Chapman University and Paul Froese, Baylor University

[iv] pg 70 Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber