am I God's child?
considering humankind as divine offspring
My belief in God as my Parent empowers me with agency, dignity, and hope. I recognize that parenthood language is a limited, figurative way of referring to the Divine, which may pose challenges for folks who have difficult relationships with their parents.1
However, the relationship of divine parent to human child is one of many analogies which helps me locate myself in the vast cosmos. I find it helpful in reconnecting me to my Source.
The origins of creation
Relationship is predicated on otherness. The Other does not originate in our brains like a hallucination or an imaginary friend; therefore, we can experience them in their separateness and find points of connection.
In the first of two Hebrew creation myths (Genesis 1.1-2.3), the first acts of creation involved separation—light from darkness, heaven from earth, sea from land. The ultimate separation is between Creator and creation. But this boundary need only imply distinction in substance and being (what philosophers and theologians refer to as ontology), not presence or proximity.
By creating that which is not God, God created space for creation to be fully itself and also to enter into relation with God.
God called the interwoven nature of all things “good,” demonstrating that differences are sacred and that every created thing is uniquely imbued with purpose.2 Many (but not all) Christians believe that divinity cannot be equated with everything that exists (pantheism) but is present in everything (panentheism).
In this framework, divinity is waiting to be perceived and experienced by the consciousnesses that Consciousness gave birth to.3
The image of our Creator-Parent
In the first biblical creation story, we learn that we are all born in God’s image and likeness—regardless of our gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, ability, or any other factor that subdivides humankind (Genesis 1.26-27). The author of Acts reports the Apostle Paul confirming this to a crowd in Athens that all humanity is the the offspring of the Divine (Acts 17:28).
Quoting the ancient Mediterranean poets Epimenides and Aratus, the fictionalized Paul proclaims, “‘For in [God] we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are [God’s] offspring.’”4
Humankind exists in perpetual relatedness to the Divine by virtue of our existence. This is not an assurance of ongoing relation but of ontological origin and likeness. If we cannot ever fully separate ourselves from the physical likeness of our biological parents, how much stronger is our connection to our loving heavenly Parent?
The human relation to God
This universal lineage does not imply that every human has a conscious relationship with our Source. However, being divine offspring would suggest that we are all much more dependent on our Origin than we imagine—whether we have the language to describe that innate connection or not.
Even confessing that God is our Parent does not mean that we entirely understand what we are saying. For Christians, the life and teachings of Jesus inspire the miraculous knowledge of humanity’s honored place in the cosmic household.
And just as human parents are not parents until they conceive, birth, foster, or adopt a child, it is the relatedness of God the Child to God the Parent that first makes God a Parent. Graciously, God-become-human teaches human beings to refer to God as our Parent so that we may experience a Mother who is always near and kind to those she has given birth to.5
We are all already God's children, but through conscious relationship, humans enter into an expansive awareness of who we really are. Embracing your identity as a child of divinity is a lifelong adventure. If you want, try meditating on this affirmation:
I am God’s child; I carry the image of my divine Parent.
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Author’s note: This post was written on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
Janet Martin Soskice, “Calling God ‘Father,’” in The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, accessed December 19, 2020, EBSCO, 68.
Lisa Sharon Harper, The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right (Colorado Springs, Colorado: WaterBrook Press, 2016), Kindle, 31.
Cynthia L. Rigby, Holding Faith: A Practical Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), 158-164.
Acts 17.28 NIV. Bracketed content my own to substitute he/him pronouns for God.
Soskice, “Calling God ‘Father,’” 77-79.