Finding My Father
On the morning of November 2, 1956, my father, Clifford James Coughlin, died suddenly of an MI (myocardial infarction) while lying in bed with my mom. He was only 43 years old.
Today's medical community would peg him as a likely candidate for a heart attack: smoker, diabetic, overweight, stressful job as a small-town newspaper editor. But his death sent shock waves throughout the close-knit newspaper community in northern Illinois. One editor, after hearing of my father's untimely death, wrote in his column, "it makes you want to shake your fist at God".
Instantly, his death made my mother a single parent. She dutifully retooled her education and became an elementary school teacher. My maternal grandparents did their best to fill in the parental gaps in my life.
Just shy of my third birthday when he died, I look back at his death as the single most influential event shaping my personality next to coming to faith in Jesus Christ at age 19.
In high school, some friends began talking to me about Jesus. They talked about praying to their heavenly Father. Even when I trusted Jesus as a college freshman, the concept of God as my heavenly Father eluded me.
There is truth in the idea that an earthly father shapes our image of God. But even the best Christian fathers fall short of the ideal. Hebrews 12:5-11 talks about God's discipline of us as his children for the purpose of sharing in his holiness (12:11). The writer alludes to earthly fathers as an example but concludes in 12:10: "They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best".
So, what God as my Father should I believe in? The faint memories of my biological father? The harshness of a stepfather after my mother remarried? The caricature of a God who resembled my perfectionistic and legalistic tendencies?
None of the above.
As I write this, I'm approaching fifty years of being a Christian. Fifty years! Here are two concepts that have shaped my view of God as my Father.
First, theologian J.I. Packer was once asked to sum up the Christian life. He replied simply: "adoption through propitiation". In layman's terms, we become part of God's family because Jesus took upon himself on the cross the full wrath of God that we deserved for our sin. God was satisfied with Jesus' perfect sacrifice on our behalf, enabling us by faith to join his family as sons and daughters of God (John 1:12).
As I've written before, I read Packer's book, Knowing God, early in my Christian life. It shaped my thinking about many things, but especially about God as my heavenly Father.
Second, one passage in Romans 8 has helped me immensely in ordering my thinking about God as Father:
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!' The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. (Romans 8:15-16 in the English Standard Version)
The dearest life relationship is to call God my Father through the Holy Spirit indwelling me. The same Holy Spirit confirms in my spirit that I belong to the Father. And because I've been adopted into God's family as his child, I now share all the rights and privileges of being a legitimate son. I need not fear God ever casting me out of this family. I no longer dread his condemnation. I have found the Father.
Or more importantly, the Father has found me.