Rev. Dr. Devin Strong

Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church

I have written a lot of papers in my life—long ones, short ones, theological ones, academic ones--but the toughest paper I have ever written in my life was a position paper that I wrote for an Advanced Placement English class in high school.

Each paragraph had to meet very specific criteria and had to be a very particular length, plus or minus five words. It took weeks to write. My dad, who was a teacher at IBM, took me to his office several times so that I could write and rewrite this paper on the rudimentary word processor that he had access to at work. 40 years later, I still cherish the gift of time that he gave me.

My dad was bright and hardworking,, funny and athletic. I loved the intellectual conversations that I had with him and my mother around the dinner table. From my dad I learned curiosity and perseverance, confidence, and self-respect. My father was also an active alcoholic throughout my formative years. Neither a sloppy drunk nor physically abusive, dad was never unemployed or arrested, but he was frequently impatient and emotionally distant.

I write this not at all to say “poor me!”

Indeed, almost all of us come from noticeably imperfect families, and I was blessed to have a rich group of friends and mentors who generously gave me what my father could not. As a young adult, I was also able to watch my dad get sober through the ministries of Alcoholics Anonymous and his dedication to that work. He remained in recovery for 26 years until his death in 2019 at the cruel hands of Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia.

Some people resist the frequent masculine imagery for God in the Bible and are bold enough to say that such language does not work for them because every time they hear the church speak of “God our Father,” they are reminded of the less than perfect male role models in their lives. I get it because I, too am an imperfect male. Our picture of the capacities of the Almighty are naturally limited by how we see love and power embodied here on Earth.

This is why I am judicious with my use of male imagery for God in my preaching, teaching, and praying. Jesus was, of course, male, and some people see the Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, the Comforter, as female, but God is neither female nor male.

You and I strive to live the best of God’s so-called masculine and feminine attributes in our gender, so use all the adjectives and images that I can to give our limited minds a vision of the deity.

Even after decades of sobriety, my own dad did not know how to connect deeply with me or others, but I believe that he sincerely wanted to. He often used bravado to cover what I think were deep feelings of inadequacy and loneliness. I grieve that, and I miss him every day.

As Father’s Day approaches, let us give thanks for all of our fathers and all of those father-figures in our lives. I remind myself, and all of you, that each of our parents did the very best that they knew how to at the time. And even if you were blessed with near-perfect parents, our God loves you even more than they ever could!

God loves you, and so do I!