Rick Warren says in A Purpose-Driven Life that “Every human being was created by God, but not everyone is a child of God. The only way to get into God’s family is by being born again into it.” I beg to differ. The words which follow are offered to encourage thought and discussion on this theme.

Not Pinocchio

By Walt Marston

I find it interesting that I have friends who see their relationship to God in two fundamentally different ways. The difference may be primarily that of perspective, but it certainly affects the way we see the world and our relationship to God and each other.

One set of friends sees God as a potter and us as the clay, or God as a master craftsman and us as created objects. The others see God as parent and we as his children. I love all my friends, but I agree more with the second group.

The story of Pinocchio comes to mind and helps to shape my view of this. I do not believe we are mere Pinocchios, made as puppets to be manipulated by our Creator (and maybe later magically transformed). We are truly sons of God, born with our heavenly Father/Mother’s DNA.

If we were just created in the “image” of God as an object or a toy for God’s amusement, we could not in any sense be responsible for our actions, because we truly would not have the ability to choose.

We tend to see the seeming separation from God as real. In fact, it is only real in our consciousness, and this is the source of all our problems. We sin because we see ourselves as sinners, distant from God, unworthy to be called sons of God. We all fall short, miss the mark, sin, but sin is a deviation from our begotten nature, not the essence of it.

This can be a difficult concept to grasp – how we are “one” with God in the same way that a child is “one” with its parent. But, I think the truth of this is summed up in the first words of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus taught us to pray – “Our Father.”

I believe that our humanity depends upon our divine parentage. We cannot be fully human without recognizing the divinity at the core of our being. This is what Jesus demonstrated so completely.

As in the story of the prodigal son, the father never forgets that we are his child. We run off and waste our inheritance, but we are always forgiven and welcomed back, because our Father always knows that we are his and his bounty is ours if we will only claim it.