At the beginning of one of my classes this semester, we were asked to write a statement describing our own theological foundation. I wrote the following: “My theological foundation is my personal experience and walk with Jesus – as a child identifying with His suffering and as a recovering adult receiving His mercy and grace through surrender of my will.” We revisited our statements as a class last night after our professor shared her spiritual journey with us.

As I look to the upcoming Holy Week, my statement reminds me of the twisted thinking I once had about God. Like most children, I identified the human characteristics of my own father with those of God. Unfortunately for God, my experience with my own father wasn’t a great one. I rarely felt love from my father, and often felt fear in his presence. I realize now that he was a sick man, an active alcoholic for most of his life, and truly incapable of moving beyond his own self-centered disease to be an all-around great dad. And, while I understand and accept that today, as I child it only served to break my heart over and over again. And there is where the twisted thinking of my childhood actually served to keep me connected to God, even when I thought He hated me (and I hated Him right back).

It was in my fear of my own father where my identification with Jesus entered the picture. I always felt so close to Jesus, no matter what was going on in my life. No matter how much my father was raging or how much my human father’s behavior made me believe that God must hate me, Jesus was still a comforting presence. You see, my twisted thinking told me that Jesus and I had something horrible in common – because His father abandoned Him, too. I remember watching a television mini-series entitled “Jesus of Nazareth” that was aired every year during Lent. I remember watching the actor who played Jesus looking up to a black sky and asking God to save him from having to go through the crucifixion. And, I remember the answer being a silently resounding NO. And, I remember watching Jesus beaten, mocked and humiliated by Roman soldiers. And, I remember watching Him die on the cross as He yelled out, “My God, My God, why hast thou foresaken me?” And I remember knowing in my heart that Jesus understood.

I had no idea then that my connection to Jesus was also my connection to God. The Trinity was three separate things to me as a kid. There was God, the tyrant who enjoyed punishing people. There was the Holy Ghost, who just freaked me out. And there was Jesus, who totally got it. There was Jesus who sat at the table with the people who weren’t welcome in church, and there was Jesus who picked the hooker up from the ground and put the men who were stoning her in their place. Never, in all of the years that I believed that God hated me, did I have a problem knowing Jesus loved me.

This morning, as I write this, I feel gratitude for that twisted thinking of my childhood. It was that twisted thinking that helped to lay the foundation of my relationship with God, through the human life of Jesus. It seems miraculous to me, but I suppose it is just what God does. He takes the crap in our lives and He uses it somehow to bring us back to Him. In the twisted thinking of a heartbroken child, He showed love beyond measure as an abandoned Son.