When the Bible’s Metaphors and Images Are Scary

Preface

A couple weeks ago I published an article about using the motherly and feminine images in Scripture in counseling someone struggling with the concept of God’s fatherhood due to past child abuse at the hands of their earthly father. This article was written to counselors and focused on the way that we as human beings receive and respond to biblical images. It was not a careful delineation of the different kinds of images that are present within the text of Scripture. In retrospect, I should have more carefully delineated the way I used the terms “image,” “metaphor,” and “picture” within that article. I am grateful for robust theological discussion as we seek to refine the way we talk about God and experience his care. Systematicians and counselors need one another as we seek to be clear in our beliefs and helpful in our practices. We must always strive to be biblically and theologically faithful.

This article is an expanded version of the first article, with more care taken to address the distinction between different forms of metaphors and images for God within the Scriptures. Further, I write as one who is Trinitarian and confessional to my core. I reject and have always rejected dangerous and unorthodox feminist God language that would find it acceptable to call on or pray to God as mother. God describes himself in his word as caring for us in a motherly fashion, but he is not mother and should not be referred to in this manner. I wrote the original article with the same confessional commitments as I write this updated version; this version simply brings to the forefront those confessional commitments. I am grateful to teach at an institution where every faculty member wholeheartedly affirms the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 and the Abstract of Principles. These commitments were a significant influence in my decision to leave another institution and join the SEBTS faculty in 2023. I’m grateful to stand alongside faithful men and women who have devoted their lives to training the next generation of Great Commission missionaries, educators, counselors, and pastors.

When the Bible’s Metaphors and Images Are Scary

The Scriptures brim with all kinds of metaphors, similes, and word pictures to describe God and his work. [1] God has designed us to resonate with picture-laden ways of describing reality. We feel God’s unshakable strength as he compares himself to immovable rock. We feel the deep guttural rumble of God’s power as he calls himself a lion. We feel his tenderness when he comforts us with rod and staff.

Our connection to these metaphors and images is influenced by our experiences of encountering them outside of the Bible. We connect with God deeply as lion because we have stood by an enclosure in a zoo or animal park and felt in our chests the fierceness of a lion’s roar. We grow in appreciation of God’s stability and unchangeableness as we think of El Capitan or the rugged majesty of the Rockies. Metaphors and images expand our view as they breathe emotion and understanding from one arena of life into another, creating fresh ways to see what has already been seen.

What If the Metaphors or Images Are Scary?

But what of when a person’s experience of a metaphor or image is profoundly negative? A person who has been mauled by a lion experienced its strength, but that strength was directed towards their harm. Their experience of that metaphor may have become cluttered, a mix of understanding what the Bible teaches about God paired with persistent emotional difficulty as talking about lions brings back into focus an event they’d much rather forget.

This tangled mix is the reality of living in a fallen world. Pictures may become clouded by our experiences, just as clouds may shroud our ability to pick out the constellations in the night sky. The sky has not changed, but our ability to see the stars aright is impinged upon by something standing in the way.

It’s easy to overlook trouble with a metaphor that is only occasionally used in the Scriptures such as God-as-lion. A person who finds lions terrifying may shudder and move on to the next passage. But what do we do when a counselee struggles with the image of God-as-Father? This trouble is especially important because God’s fatherhood is no mere metaphor but stands as the proper name for the first member of the Trinity. Wrestling with God’s fatherhood is not wrestling with a mere word picture, but something essential to understanding the true nature of God himself. God has revealed himself as Father and Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9).

So how can we functionally help someone who says, “I know that God is Father and that he’s my heavenly Father. But when I hear that term, I have a negative, visceral response that I cannot shake. For eighteen years of my life, the term ‘father’ was a synonym for pride, cruelty, and violence. I know God’s different than that, but that deep-in-my-belly feeling won’t go away.” What do we do when a counselee’s experience of their father makes all fathers – earthly and heavenly – feel unsafe and untrustworthy?

Answering this question requires careful consideration and care. On the one hand, we know that our experiences never change the truth of who God is. God is Father – the good and perfect Father – regardless of how we experience that term in light of our life’s story. On the other hand, we also know that God’s engagement with us is progressive in light of our limitations and weaknesses. Jesus once looked to his disciples and said, “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now” (John 16:12). In the same way, counseling often requires making decisions about what biblical pictures to lean into first.

God’s multifaceted presentation of himself through a wide number of metaphors and images means that when one of these causes significant distress, we may often get to the same truths about God through other avenues. Rather than immediately trying to change their gut reaction to the term “father,” we can begin by asking, “What door can we step through into this person’s life at this moment that allows them to experience God truly and richly?”

God Describes Himself to Us in Motherly Terms

One metaphor that God reveals himself through that may be of significant help for survivors of child abuse at the hands of a cruel father is that of a loving and caring mother. God is not a mother, but he uses motherly language to describe his love, his compassion, and his protection in many places within the Scriptures.

Consider the following three examples:

1. God’s Deep Love

Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save.
Isaiah 46:3-4

2) God’s Tender Compassion

As a mother comforts her son,
so I will comfort you.
Isaiah 66:13

3) God’s Fierce Protection

I will attack them
like a bear robbed of her cubs
and tear open the rib cage over their hearts.
I will devour them there like a lioness,
like a wild beast that would rip them open.
Hosea 13:8

All three of these passages frame God’s strength, compassion, protection through feminine word pictures. God carries and bears and comforts his children like a mother. He defends them like a bear robbed of her cubs. These character qualities are neither masculine nor feminine, yet they have different hues and textures placed in feminine language rather than masculine.

The Christian tradition has a long history of emphasizing God’s tenderness and compassion towards his distressed people through emphasizing this thread.

John Calvin writes in his commentary on Isaiah 42:14,

By this metaphor he expresses astonishing warmth of love and tenderness of affection; for he compares himself to a mother who singularly loves her child, though she brought him forth with extreme pain. It may be thought that these things are not applicable to God; but in no other way than by such figures of speech can his ardent love towards us be expressed. He must therefore borrow comparisons from known objects, in order to enable us to understand those which are unknown to us; for God loves very differently from men, that is, more fully and perfectly. [2]

Luther similarly and warmly affirmed that God “sweetly…transfer[s] a mother’s experiences to Himself.” He “cares for us with an everlasting maternal heart and feeling.” [3]

To be clear, mother is not a proper name for God, unlike Father. [4] We do not lead clients to pray to “Mother God,” as doing so is unbiblical, and it improperly confuses the distinction between who God is (Father) and how he relates himself to us. Still, we also recognize that our understanding of who God is would be less full and beautiful without these mother-metaphor passages. Our God certainly thought so! A client who has a dangerous relationship with their earthly father and a safe, caring relationship with their earthly mother may be helped by leaning into the feminine metaphors God provides of himself in his word as a way to feel his compassion and care. [5] In time as they progress in understanding sanctification, they should come to delight in the wonderful truth that God is Father, a wonderful Father they can know, love, and embrace.

Conclusion

As our clients connect with God’s great love and care through the wide variety of metaphors and images in the Scripture, their experience of this good Father will help overshadow their memories of cruelty from their earthly father. God is the great Redeemer, both of our souls and of the pictures he uses of himself that get eclipsed by our painful experiences on earth. The broader our ability to draw from every picture painted by the Divine author in the Scriptures, the broader our help will be as we seek to minister to God’s people.

 

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[1] This article is about the counseling process and not a detailed treatise on God’s trinitarian relations and ontology. However, it is important to note at the outset that there are different kinds of images and metaphors for God. In this article I will use “metaphor” to refer to those descriptions of God that are not ontological (like lion) and “image” to refer to those that are ontological (like Father).

[2] Calvin’s Commentary on Isaiah 42:14. Quoted in Bob Kellemen, “How Do We Counsel Someone with a Distorted Image of the Concept of ‘Father’? December 11, 2024.

[3] Lectures on Isaiah, Chapters 40-66, Luther’s Works, Vol 17, 139, 183. Quoted in Bob Kellemen, “How Do We Counsel Someone with a Distorted Image of the Concept of ‘Father’? December 11, 2024. https://rpmministries.org/2024/12/counsel-father/.

[4] The Second London Baptist Confession (1689) helpfully details the intertrinitarian relationships in 2.3, “In this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided: the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son; all infinite, without beginning, therefore but one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations; which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on Him.”

[5] As with all counseling, this approach is not the only way to help a client struggling with the term “Father.” God uses many different methods to draw our hearts and understanding after him. For a moving account about one author directly engaging with the term “Father” to redefine his own challenges due to an abusive father see Jonathan C. Edwards, “Is God the Father Like My Father?” The Gospel Coalition July 20, 2016. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/is-god-the-father-like-my-father/.