Are We Becoming Like our Daddy?
by Andy Perry

Every once in a while I hear my son Carson make a remark which reveals his desire to become like me. Someday I’ll drive the car. I’ll be big someday! Will I shave someday, Dad? His comments make me smile to know that he wants to grow up and do the things I do. In short he wants to be like me.

I rarely hear comments like that from a child without contemplating the Bible’s analogy between us and God . I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3) Not only was Jesus exhorting His disciples to approach the Father with childlike faith but to become like children whose nature it is to imitate their fathers. Becoming like our heavenly Father is God’s agenda for our lives. Of course the total transformation does not occur immediately at the point of conversion. The process of sanctification, which we might define as the life-long journey toward becoming spiritually child-like, will not be complete until heaven. Nevertheless, this is God’s ambition for each one of us. How are we doing? As you think about your own heart and life, how clearly are you learning to reflect the heart of the Father?

One aspect of His heart which the Bible expects us to emulate is revealed in Paul’s introductory praise to God as he opens his second letter to the Christians at Corinth. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.... (2 Corinthians 1:3) From Genesis to Revelation the God of the Bible – our Father – reveals Himself as the Master of Compassion. He is The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.... (Exodus 34:6) Through Jeremiah we learn that ...His compassions never fail. They are new every morning.... (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Compassion is a universal ethic resonate in the hearts of even the ungodly. Mothers have cared tenderly for their children in every age and in every society regardless of religion. Still, in its truest form, compassion is a distinctly Christian response to God’s creation around us – human and otherwise – because its source is His very character. That character is uniquely ours to mirror in this life by the power of the Holy Spirit.

One does not need to look very far to find examples of hearts bereft of such compassion – unbelieving hearts refusing to mirror the heart of God. A disturbing example is the moral philosopher Peter Singer. In his book Rethinking Life and Death he argues that all creatures should be judged and valued based upon their own self-awareness, including their ability to communicate such self-awareness to others. As one critic points out, “Handicapped babies, needless to say, do not add up to much in this moral arithmetic, nor do the comatose, terminally ill, or mentally retarded.” Dr. Singer writes:

To have a child with [a disability] is to have a very different experience from having a normal child....For some parents...bringing up [such] a child [is] a rewarding experience in a thousand different ways. But for other parents, it is devastating.
...for our own sake we may not want a child to start on life’s uncertain voyage if the prospects are clouded. When this can be known at a very early stage of the voyage we may still have a chance to make a fresh start. This means detaching ourselves from the infant who has been born, cutting ourselves free before the ties that have already begun to bind us to our child have become irresistible. Instead of going forward and putting all our efforts into making the best of the situation, we can still say no, and start again from the beginning.

This is all part of Professor Singer’s argument for reordering social ethics which he holds up as a ‘New Ten Commandments.’ The above statements help under-gird his new fourth commandment: ‘Bring children into the world only if they are wanted.’ The good professor, you must know, is not merely some pro-choice propagandist. He would have his fourth commandment equally applied to healthy infants months out of the womb. Anyone proving an excessive burden to anyone else is free game for potential extermination. After all, we the burdened deserve a ‘fresh start’ and to ‘cut ourselves free’ from such inconveniences as individuals with learning disabilities and bed-ridden elderly relatives whose lives are simply too expensive to maintain.

That’s Dr. Singer – and a growing number of secular thinkers in our day. Their words repulse and shock us awake. But to what purpose? I believe God’s design is that we His children might be awakened to a new and deeper consideration of our own attitude and treatment of God’s creation.

What does truly Christian compassion which mirrors the heart of our Father really look like? Certainly it looks like more than merely refraining from Peter Singer’s Nazi-like disregard for human life – even the vast majority of unbelievers are repulsed by that! Surely embodying God-like compassion should flow over into all of our interactions with all of His creation which He made not merely for our indiscriminate use but for His good pleasure. If indeed, as we like to say around Trinity, all of life is worship, then worship certainly must encompass our attitudes and treatment of all God has made. What does that look like? I have been wrestling with that question for a number of months and look forward to discussing it with you further at the final session of The Worldview Club, Sunday night May 23 rd at 6 p.m. My hope is that our time together will help stretch us toward more perfectly mirroring our Father’s heart.