Read 1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child,I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up,I put away childish things. (NLT)
C.S. Lewis once said that if our concept of God is wrong,then everything else in our faith is also wrong. How we see God determines all else. So it is vital we get our ideas of God right. Not that we can ever ‘figure him out’,but we can be sure he has revealed enough of himself to enable us to trust and love him.
Our false concepts of God can go as far back as our childhood. Young children who have experienced harsh or neglectful authority figures will likely carry such ideas over into their thinking about God. To tell a grown-up person that they can trust God as their heavenly father might arouse all sorts of issues for that person. Their idea of ‘father’ might not be at all benevolent. To tell them God won’t let them down when their own authority figures did let them down might be a hard message to get across.
So we need to heed Paul’s teaching in our text today. Hard though it may be,we are to put aside the childhood distortions that may have come about through imperfect parenting or nurturing. Or that may have come through unwise and unbalanced teaching from well meaning but misguided Christians in our younger days.
The safest and surest way of doing this is to focus on Jesus,who is God spelling himself out in a language we humans can understand.
Blessings
David Reay
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