Your Thoughts About God

I've been preaching through Proverbs 1-9 since the beginning of the year. I've not tried to cover each chapter, but have focused more on either the familiar theme or familiar verses out of the particular chapter on tap for the week. This week's sermon on Proverbs 6:16-19 allows me to try to help our folks understand the nature of God in addition to identifying some things that he hates.

I hear it said so often that a person's view of God is shaped by their relationship with their father. It's repeated so much that it seems to be regarded as gospel truth. But I wonder about that.

While God is our Father, He is also Creator, Judge, Ruler, etc. I think we're missing something if we emphasize God's paternal role over the other aspects of His nature. Our dealing with sin has a lot more to do with our understanding of God as the Sovereign Lord than our view of God as our Father. I realize that these cannot always be separated, but is it possible that our evangelical culture's soft view of God is the result of focusing on trying to understand God in the wrong way? In Psalm 50:21, God tells a wicked person (I'm paraphrasing) "You thought that I was just like you." I suspect that even our people - and us along with them - fall into that trap. What think ye?