Kim Davis has been getting a lot of air time. Back when her original incarceration occurred, I thought the whole thing was fairly inconsequential. To be honest, Davis gives me the same vibe as people who have bumper stickers that depict a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish or say “Are you following Jesus this close?” It is not that they aren’t well intentioned people. It is just that I would never hold them up as poster children of Christian witness. Well, tell that to the internet.

Now, tell that to the Pope, who recently met with her, prayed with her, and congratulated her for her courage and her stand for religious freedom. To be honest, the Pope is a classy guy. So, I’m just surprised he dignified this situation with a response like that. Good on him. But is what Kim Davis did really an appropriate way to stand for religious liberty?

So, I will briefly weigh in on the issues around Kim Davis. I admit, I am probably writing about this for the same reason I watch The Bachelor. There is virtually no substance to the story, but I am a big sucker for hoopla, but anyway, here it goes.

So, should a conservative Christian clerk issue same-sex marriage licenses? And while we are at it: Could a conservative Christian bake a cake for a same-sex wedding? Oh for the sake of historical-consciences,  media amnesia be damned: Should the conservative Christian CEO promote gay employees (I’m referring to the  Chic-Fil-A debacle)?

Notice that I am saying “conservative Christian.” I say this because I know just as many passionate liberal Christ followers that have a different interpretation and notion of biblical authority from my own. We all need to make our peace with the diversity the Spirit has chosen for Christ’s body. But if you are a liberal, I am asking you to step into the mind of the conservative. Attempt to understand it as you would want conservatives to understand you (I’ll say more about empathy later). From the perspective that homosexuality is against God’s design and that same-sex marriage is not a biblical practice, I would hope that any liberal understands that there are well-intended, open-minded conservative Christians without a drop of homophobia in them. Conservative Christians are just trying to be faithful to what God is showing them.

So, assume this with me, whether you agree with it or not. Now I ask myself, if I was Kim Davis, what would I do? Please don’t make any bracelets. It is purely hypothetical. It means what would I do in her employed position, so I am not saying literally her – although I will admit to staring at myself in the mirror and wondering: what would it be like to have Kim Davis’ hair?…Anyhow, I digress. What would I do?

I would frankly resign or ask to be laid off. That I think would be the appropriate response if I was in a line of work I did not morally agree with. You cannot be a pacifist and a soldier and just refuse to fire your gun. You cannot be a doctor and work at Planned Parenthood and expect to be paid but never do an abortion. You cannot be a Jehovah’s Witness and be a nurse at a blood donor clinic, refusing to take anyone’s blood. If you do not morally agree with the line of work, don’t do it, much less expect to be paid for doing less work than others.

If you feel obliged not to bake a cake for a gay couple, then you have chosen not to get any money from them. That’s fair. That’s religious liberty and its consequences. We all have the right to act as our conscience dictates. Unless you are Maria Antoinette, withholding cake is not oppressive. However, let’s remember that Kim Davis did not get imprisoned for having an opinion. This is not about religious liberty or free speech in many ways. She got in trouble with the law because she refused to do the legal duty she was hired for. If you don’t believe in the power of the State as something legitimate yet separate from the church, then do what the Mennonites did. Don’t be selective. Demanding the same pay for less work is turning religious rights and freedoms into religious privileges. Again, if you don’t agree with the line of work, the better witness is to resign.

But whether it is issuing a marriage license, baking a cake, or promoting a employee, I fear there is a persistent hypocrisy on the part of these Christians. Licenses were undoubtedly issued, cakes were unwittingly baked, and promotions blindly awarded for heterosexual adulterers of far worse sorts. Where was the integrity of conscience there? Theses events show that conservatives don’t just let us all be sinners equally, but unevenly see LGTBQ individuals as the worse form of sinner. Many conservatives Christians I know don’t just see homosexuality as sin like it is a sin to smoke or work on Sundays. Gay people disgust them. They are a political threat. They are the scapegoat of the church’s dwindling power. It is so much so that far more than all the other sin and injustices out there (including and especially injustices done by the faithful), these Christians see that their professions, in their minds, must be made into soapboxes of condemnation. Hypocrites full of condemnation…Jesus had a few choice words for people like that.

But back the truck up. I have gotten a head of myself. Allow me to compose myself again…

There is an overlooked question here. We have missed something. It is this: can I support without morally affirming? That is the question. It is the distinction that was never made. Kim Davis thought that issuing same-sex licenses means she is 100% agreeing theologically with same-sex marriage. Is that really the case?

By that same logic countless gay youth have been pushed out onto the streets because their conservative parents, in their mind, have been lead to believe that if they materially support their openly gay child they are actually affirming something their convictions condemn. Of course, they continue to delude themselves when they think that if they abandon them, a gay child will obviously then see the love of Jesus. Somehow they think these things logically follow.

Same with the person that refuses to bake a cake or a business that refuse promotions.

The next question is the shocker: Does the Bible actually offer a pattern where support is possible without affirmation? Like many debates in evangelicalism, authentic biblical zeal is dangerously mixed with biblical illiteracy, concocting a cocktail of well-intended bigotry. As the Baptist theologian James McClendon used to say, the problem with fundamentalism is that it is not fundamental enough.

Let us look at the example of men serving unethical governments.

(1) Joseph served the self-proclaimed god, Pharaoh, enabling Egypt to become even more of an idolatrous superpower.

(2) David served the pagan king Achish, providing military support for an enemy to Israel.

(3) Daniel served the oppressor of his people, Nebuchadnezzar (who also claimed deity for himself). It is not that he lacked conviction. When told not to pray, he still did. When his friends were told to bow down to a statue, they did not.

Let’s move on to Jesus…

(4) Jesus performed a miracles for a centurion’s household, healing his servant boy (moreover, some suggest the boy may have been his pederast). He could have told the centurion, “Well that is what you get for occupying land that is not yours. Go home!” He could have inquired into whether there was a pederast relationship between him and the boy. Whether that is the most obvious interpretation or not, the point is Jesus did not ask. He served.

(5) Jesus miraculously made more wine even when people were getting well sauced at a wedding. While the point of that sign is not promotion of drinking (it was the arrival of the “new wine” of the new covenant), Jesus nevertheless made a great bartender.

In each of these examples, the person could have been seen as complicit in helping someone do something sinful: helping the political enemy of the people of God, not to mention enabling idolatry, or worse, even using drunkenness as a grand stand for a kingdom sign. Yet for various purposes, they did so. Joseph and Daniel out of virtue; David out of necessity; Jesus out of compassion and prophesy, etc. All these examples are, of course, dissimilar from the present one in various ways, but I think the point remains:

Christians should have the freedom not to support what they think is sinful. However they are called to serve sinners and service need not be seen as affirmation. Serving others is an act of good witness.

The public sphere is not the church. The fight for political rights are not the same as Christian witness. They overlap some, but they are not the same. Christians would be wise to remember that.

The public sphere is a place where not all agree, and it is the job of the government to regulate relationships to promote common good and common well-being.

Would a Christian want an atheist business to refuse promotions under the notion that they can’t promote someone they thing is deluded? How would a church feel if a company refused to sell them communion cups? Or an atheist government clerk refusing to send charitable status paperwork or ordination papers out of their defiled conscience?

In a world exploding with differences, Christians can have a faithful political witness by merely promoting empathy, honesty, and fairness: something that will work fair better at creating a bottom line of common good and decency than any Constantinian strategy will ever do.

I am going to preach to you now. God’s Word addresses us today afresh as it has for thousands of years:

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love…You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.“ (Galatians 5:6, 13-15).

Charleston, South Carolina. June 17th. 9:05 p.m. Twelve congregants gather for prayer and the reading of God’s Word at Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church. A 21 year old, white, sandy-blond haired man walks in, sits down, and begins to speak with Rev. Clementa Pinckney. They begin to argue, and he stands up pulling out a .45 cal. pistol, aiming it at 87 year-old Susie Jackson. Jackson’s nephew, 26-year-old Tywanza Sanders, tries to calm him down. The man replies, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” Sanders moves in front to protect his aunt, heroically acting as a human shield. He is shot first and drops to the ground. “Y’all want something to pray about? I’ll give you something to pray about,” the gunman cries, shouting racial slurs. He proceeds to pump dozens of rounds into people there. He has to reload five times to continue the premeditated carnage.

The suspect is Dylan Roof, a deranged racist hell-bent on starting a new civil war. This is evil of the most chaotic and unnecessary sort.

Why did God allow this senseless killing? Why did he not intervene?

Why did he not show up to protect his children as a white bigot gunned them down in a house of prayer?

This question was posed to me by a friend, but we ask this question not just for these people but for all who came before them, the greatest victims of history: the martyrs.

While the world cries out for vengeance, we, the spiritual family of the victims, must lament this loss in a different way. We know that the way of Christ necessitates the most costly sacrifice. This makes our laments as bitter as it is beautiful. Every Christian when they are pulled up from the waters of baptism should know that they have committed themselves to a non-violent witness in the face of the powers and principalities of hate and violence in this world. We cannot give into the same hate the fueled this massacre, and we are oddly moved towards thanks for the martyrs are have shown us so great a witness.

We have a resolve to refuse a heart of vengeance that is predicated on the sobering realization that to long for the punishment of sin, egregious sin, against others is to condemn the sin we excuse in ourselves. However, to answer the question, “Why did God allow this?” I just don’t think the question gets answered with this reminder.

A classical apologist would appeal to how we have free will or that suffering is pedagogical. However, I am of the opinion that human freedom is neither this absolute to the divine prerogative nor this desire for our own.

I am of also of the opinion that tragedies and the question of “why?”  do not get answered in Scripture with reason as we commonly understand it. Reason and logic are parts of the good order of creation. Rationalizing evil is to assign it some of the goodness of reason. However, evil must be understood as an absurdity. It has no reason. It ought not to have a reason. An inexplicable tragedy should probably be left as such: unexplained.

We can say that Christ is with those that suffered. We can say God’s faithful are always prepared to take up their own non-violent crosses as Satan bares his teeth. We know that the way of the cross will prevail, and we pray that the martyrs’ lives will work a witness to effect the redemption of those lost in the darkness of hate similar to that of the perpetrator. We know that there will be a day of judgment and restoration as God loves even the perpetrator. We know this because he loved us while we were his enemy. This disarms our hate, pushing us towards the compassion needed to perhaps bring a bit of that much longed for restoration here in our midst today. However, not all suffering is remedial. An omniscient God does not need to test his subjects for he already knows the answer. God does not require suffering, evil, and tragedy to accomplish his will. All things can be used by divine providence to bring about good, and we sincerely hope that good comes out of this evil, despite this evil. However, if God caused the felix culpa, our original fall or this one, in order to enact our redemption, no matter how spectacular, God is immeasurably wasteful.

To ask “why did God not intervene?” (we circle around this vexing question) is not to occasion a place for atheism either. Atheism is too easy. If God does not exist, the brutality of this life is inconsolably permanent. The only response, no matter how undesirable, will ultimately be a paralysis of acceptance. All condemnation of it is rendered as vacuous as any hope beyond it. If God is dead, the stench of the problem of evil still lingers.

But Scripture never sees moments like this, moments where God seems absent, to be a basis for intellectual disbelief. It is a cause for faithful lament. The words of Scripture offer vocabulary to name the groanings of our saddened souls. It compels and allows us to ask similar questions to what reverberates constantly through the Psalms: “How long O Lord?” or as Christ’s cry on the cross, echoing Psalm 22: “Why have you forsaken me?” Interestingly enough, not even Christ, not even his prayer, was answered during his life. An inexplicable tragedy remained as such: unexplained. Only sin required the solution that meant Christ willingly died for us.

God responded three days later with the resurrection, and we wait on that promise. The Christian philosopher Gabriel Marcel once said that the problem of evil and tragedy is not an intellectual problem to be solved so much as a mystery to be lived. How is it lived? The only way, the only respond to our original question might be to say that we pray, we mourn, we resolve live differently. We commit to solidarity, to compassion, to lament, to justice, to reconciliation, and to hope. May we not be paralyzed with apathy or hate or despair.

We live awaiting the restoration of all things. We live trusting the promise of the resurrection. We live waiting on the crucified God as the Apostle of the persecuted churches of Revelation cried out, “Come Lord Jesus Come!”

We dare not dishonor the victims by speaking easy answers or blaspheme our God by ascribing to him the authorship of evil or condemn ourselves to a broken and brutal reality that is beyond hope of repair.  And so, we do not give an answer, we cup our hands to our mouths in the face of divine mystery and tragedy as Job did. And after this we give a response.

We live this response in the lament-filled space of compassion and prayer.

How long O Lord? How long?

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”  (Luke 10:25-37)

First to understand this beautiful passage, we must recognize it is a parable. We ascertain this as a hermeneutic judgment upon the text. Indulge me for a second. Understanding the passage on the Good Samaritan literally would not be to fret about whether historically there really was a man who got beaten up, left for dead, passed by a Levite and Priest, and then finally, a man from Samaria rescued him.  Jesus responds to the lawyers’ question, “Who is my neighbor?” with this story. It references real places and it seems plausible. He never says whether it is a parable. Why would we doubt it to be anything but history? Many so-called literalists worry about texts of Scripture like whether the origin stories of Genesis, the story of Jonah, or the drama of Job are historical and if they are not they are worthless. They would feel obliged to see it necessarily this way because they must read it “literally.” But literal reading of Scripture merely means to read the passage they way it – the letters on the page – intend to be read. To read any passage of the Bible literally might mean reading it as poetry, parable, metaphor, or some complex mixture of the above.

This parable reminds us of these often forgotten hermeneutic considerations. We all intuitively recognize that Jesus is not reporting a historical account and if this story did not historically happen, its truth would be no worse off for it. The parable does this without having any historical reality behind its statements. The story is doing something quite beautiful by displaying a set of figures, patterns of action, mentalities and convictions that transcend times and culture. Jesus is here dismantling the arrogance of the lawyer, who “was seeking to justify himself.” The lawyer wanted a way of excusing himself of his obligation to his neighbors, whom he did not want to care for. We all do this in our broken world of sweatshops, oil sands, racial killings, ISIS and drone strikes. We look for ways to say to those who we do not want to feel obliged to  that “You are not my responsibility. You do not deserve my compassion. I don’t have to care about what you think.”

Thus, the lawyer asks “who is my neighbor?” implying that he wants criteria that will absolve him of his responsibility to certain neighbors (like his enemies) and Jesus answers with a story about a generic man from Jerusalem who got robbed (a situation that the lawyer easily could himself in). Because he was near death (which would make him ritually unclean according to strict reading of the Law), a Levite and a priest pass him by. Yet a man, a Samaritan, who by his ethnicity would be an enemy, had compassion. This implicitly forces the lawyer to ask of himself, “If I was in dire need, who would I want to be a neighbor to me?” Jesus forces him by the figures in the parable to say that he would want all people, including his enemies, to be a help him.

Jesus continues and says “Who do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into trouble?” The man is again rhetorically compelled to recognize that a neighborliness is not an object to be identified – “Who is really is my neighbor?” – but a mentality to embody, a posture of compassion towards anyone we cross paths with in this messy world: “A neighbor was the one who showed him mercy.”

Jesus responds, “Go and do likewise,” which implores the actions of the Samaritan figure to the (non-Samaritan) lawyer, inducing him to think of himself not as the man going from Jerusalem but now as the man going about showing mercy.

Because this is a parable, it transcends its cultural time frame. Because it is the inspired word of God, we know that it does happen in places of need in this world. It is a figure alive before us that we are to live and embody. This parable is real. It is happening now, calling a different world, a different kingdom into our midst. This kingdom transcends the opposed identities that are further the wounds of this world –  rich/poor, male/female, black/white, citizen/immigrant, gay/straight, Christian/Muslim, Western/Eastern, cop/criminal, so on and so forth. This figure obliges God’s chosen ones to be agents of reconciliation and empathy.

This story could be about Muslims lining up to protect Christian churches in Egypt.

It could be about a bigoted cake maker in Indiana who was financially supported by a gay person.

Those stories actually happened.

May we all come to terms with how we can all act like the lawyer.

But may we live the Good Samaritan in compassion and grace.

May we go and do likewise.

Fundamental to our understanding of God is that he is a loving Father to all people with a special and purposeful relationship with those that follow his Son, Jesus Christ. This is that heart of evangelistic faith: that God loves all people as his children, seeks to save all, and in Christ has died for all.

Yet, often the universal parenthood of God is dismissed as a liberal idea in, especially, Reformed-Baptist circles. As I have investigated this interpretation, I have found that it was largely due to the battles between liberal and conservative Baptists in North America. The argument is older than that, but here it took on a particular intensity. Social Gospel Baptists emphasized our common humanity to support a political ethic of rights and responsibilities. We see good examples of this in Walter Rauschenbusch’s classic, The Social Principles of Jesus. While their hearts were in the right place, like many progressives, their hearts exceeded what their exegesis could demonstrate. Moreover, while there are many beautiful elements of the Social Gospel, it too often over-emphasized the political dimensions of sin and salvation and undermined the personal. When they did demonstrate their doctrines with exegesis, they used strongly historical critical methods of interpretation, unafraid to point out inaccuracies in traditional views on certain passages, which offended the conservatives.

In response, the conservatives in turn offered polemics against liberalism, who conservatives worried dissolved the particularity of the church. J. Gresham Machen, for example, dismissed the doctrine of God’s universal fatherhood in his Christianity and Liberalism. However, while the Reformed-Baptists appealed to adoption texts in Paul and John, which does apply childhood relationship only to Christians, this essentially neglected a large sum of Biblical material that did speak of all people as God’s children, glossing the Bible with their own Calvinism. In doing so, the dangerous implication could be that God does not love all people, or if he does, it is certainly in an arbitrary, uneven, and preferential way, saving the elect while damning everyone else.

While Scripture, particularly John (John 8:42-44; 1 John 3: 7-10) and Paul (Rom. 8:14-21; Gal. 4:4-7; Eph. 1:3-6) use the notion of God as Father in a way that only speaks of Christians as God’s adopted children in a very specific way (they will receive the Holy Spirit, conformed to Christ, and will be gloried), this is simply not the only way the Bible, nor even Paul and John use these terms.

For example, Paul does not exclusively see sonship and adoption as pertaining to Christians. In fact in Romans we see adoption used to speak in terms of Israel, who has abandoned Christ, much to Paul’s lament. He writes,

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. (Romans 9:3-5)

Thus, God’s parenthood remains despite disobedience that would disqualify them from fellowship in the church.

 Parenthood of Israel, Obedient as well as Disobedient

As we just saw with Paul, this is where the standard paradigm that only believers are God’s children gets more complex. Israel is understood to be God’s children. Israel is the elected “firstborn” of the family of God (Ex. 4:11). Yet, Israel is understood to be the children of God even in their disobedience. Thus we see this in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Hosea.

(a) Deuteronomy: the Deuteronomist pleads with the people to turn back to God and remember him. “Is this the way you repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?” (Deut. 32:6). Here in Deuteronomy, God is speaking of the creation of the nation of Israel. Creation, election and Fatherhood are connected here in an overlapping metaphor.

(b) Isaiah: This is made particularly explicit in the later part of Isaiah that disobedient Israel is still God’s children:

Where are your zeal and your might? Your tenderness and compassion are withheld from us. But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name. Why, O Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes that are your inheritance. (Isa. 63:15-17)

No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste away because of our sins. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord; do not remember our sins forever. (Isa. 64:7-9)

In John, those who rebel are understood as children of the devil (John 8:44; 1 John 3:10), but this is not the case here in Isaiah. There are different usages based on different theological and rhetorical purposes.

In John, the best interpretation, suggested by the context, is that Jesus is denouncing the character of the Pharisees: They are children of the devil because, like him, they are lying and seeking to murder (John 8:44). Calling someone the “child of the devil” was not to describe their eternal nature (thus making any call to repentance useless) but rather was a way of denouncing their actions (which the Pharisees were self-deceived into thinking were good). Thus, John writes, “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister” (1 John 3:10). This does not mean anyone who is unloving is actually demonic in nature (for that would mean all people before they repented are that, and that would make asking any unloving person to repent as useless). It describes one’s actions now, so that, hopefully, people will change and act more like the character of God the Father, who is loving and righteous.

What is most interesting about Isaiah 63, in contradistinction to John’s more conditional notion of fatherhood, is that Isaiah actually sees the fatherhood of God as so unconditional, despite disobedience, that it is a cause to question God. If God is sovereign, why did he not empower his children to obey? In fact, Isaiah 63 goes so far as to beg God to “return” (which is implicit repentance language) to his compassion. Isaiah 64 acknowledges that if God’s children are disobedient, God is in control and will reform their character like a potter over the clay.

(c) Jeremiah: One of Jeremiah’s usages seem similar to how John uses it. God displays his disdain for how Israel in this time, not unlike Jesus’ context, claimed God as Father but did not obey (Jer. 3:4). God longs to treat Israel as his children, but their disobedience prevents him, which deeply hurts God:

How gladly would I treat you like my children and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation. I thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me (Jer. 3:19)

God wants to treat them with the full inheritance his child would have, but is prevented by their actions. However, there is more than one usage in Jeremiah. Similar to Isaiah, sonship seems unconditional despite disobedience and is the basis of hope of restoration later in Jeremiah:

They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son. (Jer. 31:9)

Disobedient Israel will be led back to restoration because God is their Father.

(d) Hosea: This prophet provides another moving example where God  speaks of his nurturing care for Israel, which inevitably causes God’s heart to recoil in mercy despite Israel’s wrongdoing:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son…It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them…. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?… My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man—the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities. (Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8-9)

The parental love of God here problematizes the standard account of holiness of God. God is portrayed as unable to look upon sin due to his purity or holiness (Hab. 1:13), yet, this image does not prevent, for instance, Christ from “becoming sin” for God’s salvific purposes (2 Cor. 5:21). Here in Hosea, the tender mercy of God is the true display of his holiness despite the sin of the people, who now expect wrath. God comes into their midst, despite their sin, because of his parental love. Wrath is eclipsed by mercy in God’s holiness for Hosea, which seems to be the more accurate depiction of God’s holiness in Christ’s atonement for our sins. God is holy because God is merciful in ways completely separate from our notions of divinity.

The parenthood of God is a cause for both chastisement and comfort for the prophets. Israel is God’s child. Israel should know better, yet the people have acted sinfully. God will punish them, yet because he is a father, he will also restore them.

Universal Parenthood in the Bible

So, while God’s people are understood as God’s children, whether the church or Israel, obedient or disobedient, even these are not the exclusive ways the Bible speaks about his subject. The Bible is not a systemized tractatus of statements. Rather it is a rich anthology that has layers and contours of meaning. The Bible offers different theological usages that are different and distinct but not contradictory. If we read only one contour, which is distinct onto itself, we miss the other ways the Bible speaks on a certain subject. The universal fatherhood of God, in these passages, forms the basis for the inherent dignity humans have as God’s children. So, we will see universal parenthood upheld through several contours: the imago Dei, the sonship of Adam, God’s fatherhood over all families, and God’s role as creator founded on his parental nature. All these contours will be reconciled by fitting them into Christ’ Parable of the Prodigal Son.

(a) Imago Dei: The first and foremost reference to this universal fatherhood is in Genesis chapter one. Many miss it. To be made in the “image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:27) is an ancient way of saying “These are my children” as Adam uses that same language to talk about his son (i.e. Seth in Gen. 5:3). Much ink has been spilled and wasted trying to discern the nature of the imago Dei, when its meaning is displayed four chapters later. It is a very typical way of identifying parenthood. It is the same as a person today looking at your child and saying, “Wow, your baby looks just like you.” It is a statement of parental identification.

This notion of image as a parental-child relationship cannot be dismissed as it is appropriated by Paul to describe how Christ is the son of God: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15). Jesus is the “Son” and “firstborn” as he is the “image” of the invisible God, the three imply eachother. Similarly Hebrews draws this close connection between sonship and image: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3). Only children are in the image of their parents.

(b) Adam as Son of God: Adam is God’s child and in Scripture the parental relationship extends to his offspring in the same way a patriarch is the father over those that would technically be grandchildren. All humans are from Adam and Adam is the “son of God” despite his fall (Luke 3:38 – this passage is a genealogy). All humans are in God’s family as all humans are children of Adam, the son of God. If the fall extends to all people so does this parental relationship.

This becomes vitally important as the Bible communicates that God is “our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4). This is corroborated with the fact that Adam in his curse received also the promise, what some call the “proto-evangelion” (the first gospel), where God promises to crush the head of the serpent (the power and effects of Satan) with the seed of the woman (prophetically seen as Israel and Christ) (Gen. 3:15). The commands not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil along with the curse and this promise are bound together as a kind of covenant, which Hosea 6:7 implies. Thus through Adam, all people have a covenant with God and, more importantly, the promise of restoration. If all people are fallen in Adam, all have the promise of hope in him too.

(c) God as Patriarch of all Families: Thus, Paul says that all families are a part of God’s.  “I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph. 3:14). All families exist like subsidiaries under the auspices of his parental authority much like how a patriarch is leader of a clan of families all related to each other. Thus, Paul in Acts 17:28-29, sees all the people he is talking to (who are pagans) as “God’s offspring.” We will treat this passage in the next section, but some have raised the objection to this passage as Paul is quoting a pagan poet as a polemic, dismissing the statement. This however does not dismiss the fact that Paul sees the statement by the poet as true. Paul goes further to posit our next point that God’s parental relationship is synonymous with his providential work as creator. Paul says in the same passage (thus implying connection), “For in him we live and move and have our being.”

(d) Creator as Parent: Now, Genesis’ imago Dei and Paul’s notion of God as patriarch both are a bit removed from our culture. We need not cite passages that difficult. In the Old Testament, God is a Father purely because God is the creator of everything. God speaks out of the whirlwind in Job and states that all creation is constituted through a parental relationship: “Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens…?” (Job 38:28-9). The implication in all these questions in this chapter is that only God does. All creation is brought forth out of God’s parental love.

We have already noted the overlapping metaphor that in Deut. 32:6 where God as Father is also God as elector and creator. Israel saw creation as an ongoing act in redemption. For example, Isaiah 51 seems to speak of return from exile as an act similar to God splitting the sea in the Exodus for the faithful to walk over, but also, interestingly enough, as an event similar to God defeating Rahab and conquering the primordial choas of the sea as in creation. Return is exodus which is also creation. So also, God is a Father because God procreates or generates all creation as his offspring out of his love as creator.

(e) Prodigal Son as Paradigm: How do we understand this contour in line with the adoption contours in Paul and John? Again different contours need not be seen as contradictory. Jesus offers a good way of understanding universal childhood and adoption in his parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15). Here the son takes his inheritance, functionally disowning himself from his father, leaving his household and squanders it. He begins to suffer from the consequences of his decision and so he realized his stupidity. He returns back to the father, thinking at best he could be his servant. The father greets him with open arms, placing a ring (indicating position) on his finger. The father, in a sense, re-adopts him after the son disowned himself from his father. The father re-adopts him even though, from the father’s standpoint, the son was always still his son.

All humans are God’s children. All humans have rebelled against God, revoking their own rights as children. However, God still loves them as a parent. In salvation, God “adopts” them back into right relationship.

Universal Parenthood as Basis of Ethics and Evangelization

So, why is this point especially important? Here we see the ethical and evangelistic application as God’s Fatherhood over all creation and all people creates an important foundation for both right action and repentance from sin.

(a) Image of God as Basis for Ethics: Foundational to the entire ethic of the Old Testament is the fairness of lex talionis: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Ex. 21:24). What you do to another is the measure justly done back. Now, the Bible eventually moves towards restitution and restorative justice, but the oldest parts use this. This principle assumes the equal value of all human beings. Ideally, to steal from a foreigner warrants the same punishment as if the same amount was stolen from the king since the two are of equal value and the same degree of harm was done. While we see redemptive movement that slowly realizes this ideal with increasingly better justice for slaves, women, foreigners, etc., this progressive movement is predicated on the basis of the image of God. The ethical treatment of humans as in the image of God appear in passages like after the flood account: “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind” (Gen. 9:6). Because all people are in this image, all people are God’s children, and thus, all people deserve dignity such that no one can be, at the very least, murdered due to their lack of value to another and the murder get away with it.  The notion that all people are God’s children, in his image, forms the moral bottom line of the Old Testament ethic.

(b) The Mission and Witness of the Firstborn: Adoption in Paul is not for the preferential treatment of the elect, but rather a call to be the “firstborn” or prototypes that all creation will benefit from. This has his roots in the call of Abraham and the nation Israel. Election takes paradigmatic meaning from Abraham’s call. Abraham is blessed so that “all the families of the world will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:3). Election is not merely election to salvation. It is election of the work of bringing salvation to the rest of creation. Thus, election is not preferential as it entails the possibility of self-denial and crucifixion in order to see the enemies of God reconciled. The children of God exist like Christ, sacrificing themselves to save others.

Coming back to Abraham, Abraham’s descendants competed for the definitive blessing: Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Israel’s twelve sons, etc. While the blessing was a privilege, the blessing carried the duty of care for the rest of the family in the ancient culture. The firstborn, who regularly received the larger blessing, received it in order to be the protector and provider of the family. Now, import this metaphor into the understanding of Israel: Israel is the elected “firstborn” of the family of God (Ex. 4:11), which seems to indicate that God is using Israel as an instrument to guide and bless the rest of his family (i.e. the other nations). As the nations see how God blesses Israel due to their obedience to God’s redeemed way of life, the nations should naturally seek to come to Zion to learn the ways of the Lord (we see this theme constantly through Isaiah). Through Israel as firstborn, the nations should see the character of God as their Father.

Thus, Israel’s firstborn nature is synonymous with his priestly vocation. In the ancient world, the patriarch (usually the firstborn of the family) was also the priest in residence of the family, the spiritual leader of the household. God appointed Israel to be a “kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6). A priest represents others to God and God to others, mediating the relationship. In this way, God’s people were meant to mediate God’s love to the nations as if the nations were the full extend of God’s congregation. Thus, the temple was to be a “house of prayer for all nations” not just for Israel (Isa. 56:7). Israel was called to bring other nations into the worship of God.

It is an arrogant mentality of superiority where Jews tried to use their blessing to extort money from foreigners, assuming that God loves his chosen people more than the rest of the nations. Jesus zealously clears the temple over this (Matt. 21: 12-13). Thus, many have used doctrines of election, whether in Judaism or Christianity, to form a notion that God loves his people more and therefore they can feel entitled over and against those that are not God’s people. Jesus strongly denounces this.

It is this priestly dynamic that forms a crucial structure of the Old Testament witness. Israel’s witness was how God treated them, saving them from oppression, blessing them, offering them a redeemed way of life in the law, but also chastising them when they did wrong. This paradigm was the basis of witness to the other nations. As God has treated his firstborn, so Israel knows the character of God in order to proclaim hope to the nations. God will save because Israel knows God to be a savor. God does not judge without mercy, since Israel has seen the fire of his intense disciplinary wrath as a refiners fire (cf. Isaiah 48:9-11; Mal. 3:2; 1. Cor. 3:10). Thus, based on Israel’s witness, the nations are called to trust God, submitting to his authority, judgment, but also love and liberating power.

Today, similarly, the church proclaims salvation to sinners because, as sinners, the church has experienced unmerited grace. Because a believer testifies that God has treated them with saving love, so they proclaim and hope for this love for all other sinners.

This confidence and witness is rendered problematic in a narrowly predestinarian view. If God’s children are only the elect and not all humans, the Church cannot truthfully proclaim to anyone “God loves you and wants to save you.” If a person is not of the elect, that statement is simply not true. A more true statement would be hyper-Calvinistic: “If you are one of the elect, then God will save you. If not, you are unfortunately damned. All I know is God loves me, and possibly may love you.”

(c) The Scope of Restoration Through God’s Adopted: Thus, the Church through Christ is the fulfillment of this mission and calling to all people and all creation. Christ is the fulfillment of Israel and is the true firstborn (Rom. 8:29). We see here the notion of adoption in Romans coalesce with the other uses.

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory… For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:14-23)

A holistic cosmic redemption of all creation is connected to the redemption found in the glorification of the adopted children of God, the elect. Believers are the “firstfruits,” or to use a modern notion: believers are prototypes. Through the work in the children of God, all creation will be restored. Thus, 1 Cor. 15 offers a comprehensive process through these “firstfruits” for restoring all that has been lost:

Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power (1 Cor. 15:20-24)

While this strand has to be read coupled with the judgment strands that warn that to reject Christ and to refuse to follow him entails “eternal punishment” or “eternal separation” (Matt. 25:46; 2 Thes. 1:9), again, these contours need not be read as contradictory despite them sounding different. The end conclusion is this however: God is seeking to restore all creation and all people (his children) through Christ and his church (those children that have fully realized God is their Father).

(d) Basis for Evangelization: Thus, we see instances in the New Testament where all humans are regarded as God’s “offspring” and this forms the basis for a general call to repentance for everyone. Paul says to the Athenians,

As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. (Acts 17:28-30)

As we have said, while some have attempted to write this instance off as Paul merely quoting a pagan poet for his polemic, this quotation is the crux argument of Paul’s for Athenians to renounce their paganism. Paul is saying, “You are God’s children, don’t debase yourselves worshiping idols. You were meant for more!” If this is the case, the certainty that all people are God’s children forms the foundation of the prophetic call the church gives for all people to renounce idolatry, repent, and follow him. That all people are God’s children is the very foundation of the possibility of Gospel proclamation to people.

Conclusion

Therefore, all people are, from God’s loving standpoint, children of God, deserving dignity and hopefully will realize their place in God’s family, yet it is only Christians that have fully realized that God is their Father in a special way such that they have been adopted into the life of knowing and living God’s plan and character. This plan is a calling to act like Christ, giving up one’s life for others so that all may be blessed. The end result is that all creation will be restored through God’s elect.

After taking a break from blogging for a year or so in order to concentrate more on church administration and my dissertation, I am back at blogging. I was encouraged back to doing so mostly because I get so many questions about different bible passages and topics that a web resource like this is a lot  more efficient. So, I hope to publish my bible study, sermon, and academic notes on this site for other people (pastors and lay people) to be encouraged by.