Years ago, after a college chapel service that featured a sermon about God as Heavenly Father, the person sitting next to me turned and said bluntly, “If God is a Father, I want nothing to do with Him.” She was speaking from a place of deep, personal pain. However, even the worst experience with an earthly father does not change that God has revealed Himself, throughout Scripture and specifically in the words of Jesus, as our Father.
I thought of my friend and that chapel service during last week’s Christian Twitter maelstrom. On Wednesday, the recently announced Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics at The Gospel Coalition published a book excerpt authored by Pastor Josh Butler. The article described a sacred vision of the physical union of a husband and wife, arguing that not only marriage but that physical intimacy within marriage is a type (or picture) of Christ and the Church. In the process, he used terms and imagery that, without additional context, seemed shockingly graphic.