God as Replacement Parent
In a recent post I mentioned an observation that people who have a dishonoring attitude toward their parents often take on, in some sense or another, a “surrogate parent” (or “parents”) to fill the void. As an addendum, I would like to warn against a particularly subtle, deceptive, and destructive way this can happen: when God is put in the position of “replacement parent”.
Now, make no mistake about it, God definitely is the ultimate, true Father of all who have received and believed in His Son Jesus Christ (John 1:12). But that is just as true for those who have a great relationship with their biological parents as it is for those who have a sour relationship with them. His role as true, eternal Father does not replace the role and respect due to the physical, earthly mother and father He ordained to give to each of us. Receiving His Heavenly Fatherhood only intensifies, rather than diminishes, our responsibility to honor our earthly parents in ways pleasing to Him.
And [Jesus] said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”‘ (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:6-13)
I think Americans have a hard time wrapping their heads around the above passage. Did Jesus really scold people for “giving money to God” (we could say, “giving to the Lord’s cause”) rather than to their parents? Yes, that is my understanding of this passage. But doesn’t Jesus command us to hate our “own father and mother…” compared to our love and devotion to Him? Yes, absolutely. I will be the first to acknowledge and proclaim that fidelity to God trumps everything else in life (Matt 10:34-39). So if God wanted you to give your money to the temple rather than your parents, then by all means that is what you must and should do. But that’s not the way He wants it. The way He wants us to honor and obey HIM is through honoring our parents, which includes providing for them in their old age. If you wrap a pious explanation around sinful disobedience to God’s command, it remains just as repulsive, in fact more so; not only is your heart far from the Lord, but you have “covered over your tracks” by honoring Him with your lips. This kind of hypocrisy made Jesus quite angry.
Just as then, so now, the “traditions of men” (e.g. pop-evangelical psychology) reject and make void the commandments of God whenever we (explicitly or implicitly) tell people that it is OK to dishonor their parents because God is now their real Father.
Christian citizens submit to human governments because God the Great King commands them to. Christian wives submit to their husbands because Christ the Forever Bridegroom commands them to. Christian children (including adult, grown children!) honor their parents because the Father commands them to. The Lord’s Kingship, Husbandship, and Fatherhood do not undermine our human-to-human responsibilities. Indeed, because I have a Benevolent King I can deal with the wickedness of human leaders, because a woman is so deeply known and pursued by the Lover of her soul she can live with her husband’s shallowness, because our Father in Heaven raises and cares for us in all the right ways we can accept the fact that our parents didn’t.
When we are not fully satisfied in God, all human relationships go awry because we will inevitably try to extract the infinite satisfaction we were designed for from finite beings. When we are fully satisified in God, then no one can disappoint us because we need nothing from them, the only “need” we have is spread the love, forgiveness, understanding, mercy, grace, and kindness that overflows from us in abundance (Rom 13:8). The image of a “God-shaped vacuum” appears to have come from the following quote by Blaise Pascal:
What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself. [Pascal, Pensees #425]
Our fallen, sinful parents leave a “Father-shaped vacuum” in each of our hearts. When God fills that vacuum we are not freed from the obligation to honor our parents, we are freed to honor them fully, from the heart, regardless of circumstances and without expecting anything in return.