I remember being the perfect father.

I could traverse the labyrinth of parenting with my skill and keen sense of direction. When I corrected my children to the right, taught them respect and honor, gave them a satisfactory foundation to be a contributing member of our family and society, my job was complete. They would rise up as young adults and thank me for the hard times of correction and discipline because it made them the mighty men and women that they would one day be.

And then my first child was born.

As long as I live I will never forget standing in front of the warming table in the birthing suite at Wilson Hospital. My daughter had just taken her first breaths and was trying out her eyes in the new and bright world. Nothing before that day prepared me for the immense weight of inadequacy that fused itself to me in that moment. It was not her preparation for the “real world” that I felt inadequate towards, nor her training in work ethic. It was something else that I had never considered beforehand. “Eighteen years,” I whispered under my breath, “to teach you about the God that gave you to me.” I stopped and watched her wrap her hand around my finger, “How am I supposed to do that?”
To this day I am not certain as to why it was that thought that permeated my thinking, it hadn’t been in my consideration even minutes before. But from that day on it has been a driving force behind many of my questions of how to raise this young girl.

Thinking I would just figure it out, I found myself overwhelmed again in the same manner as my second daughter took her first breaths. It occurred to me, as I looked at her, that I hadn’t answered the question I asked myself eighteen months ago at the same table.

“How does someone like me teach his daughters about God?”

As they began to grow up, I tried the best I could to push this question to the back of my thoughts and just get to raising them the way I set out to. When they were wrong I would correct them. When they were naughty I would discipline them. When they were messy I would make them clean up their own mess. When they were good I was neutral because that was just meeting expectations. In all of this, it was the way I handled discipline that first got to me.

Why was it that I was fine suspending Christian graces when it came to discipline?

Why was the fruit of the Spirit something that I resisted when it came to correcting my children? I argued it was out of love but I did not understand agape love. It certainly was not joyful or peaceful. Patience?! Far from it. Kindness.. Goodness… Faithfulness….. Gentleness…… Self-control? Blow after blow this passage crushed me to inadequacy once again. Where was my grace towards my daughters?

What were they learning about God?

One must wonder if the curiosity buried deep within the mind of man is a remnant of what was lost at the fall.
We once faced God directly; the very source of truth and life was in fellowship with His creatures. What more could be known that ought to have been known? Ever since that fellowship was broken by us, we have been bumping around trying to find that solid ground of Eden again.

Even the very existence of disputable matters of reality and theology ought to hint to us that we have lost something that was once quite dear. What was once a knowledge of God has now become a knowledge of good and evil. This being a foreign knowledge to a created being, it has destroyed us. We no longer look at evil with absolute disgust. No longer look at God with perfect admiration. No longer even look at God.

In desperation, we seek to construct the fullest picture of these less-than-fully-known realities. Perhaps this is part of why Paul warns Christians to avoid quarreling over words and disputable matters. Even to the point of each party being fully convinced in their own mind. That drives me crazy! Just tell us if we ought to observe one day over another! Just tell us who the real followers of Christ are! Eliminate the doubt!

Give us certainty.

For many aspects of practical living and theological disputations the certainty never comes. When we challenge Christ to tell us the Gospel he multiplies bread and heals leprosy; pictures and hints. When we question God’s righteousness in saving some and condemning others He ask us who we think we are to even ask such a question.

Perhaps God is not making a mistake in keeping large swaths of reality away from His creatures in their fallen state. Perhaps we do not realize that the sin that resides in us would cause us to despise Him if we were to gain a full understanding of who He is. Perhaps we are meant to trust the Lord with all of our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.

Perhaps our ignorance teaches us that all the answers lie with Someone other than us.

Psalm 139:1-6
O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.