Fatherly Training and Imitation: An Introduction to Fatherhood + Catechism Recordings

History is the Father’s union with his people from infancy to maturity. We are not meant for milk only but to grow to eat from our father’s rich banquet.

Chapter One
Imitating God

“Every real thing is a joy, if only you have eyes and ears to relish it, a nose and tongue to taste it.”

 –Robert Farrar Capon

 “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

– C.S. Lewis

God looks at history as a Father. For the children of God, history is not a cruel master. The Father’s steadfast love moves his children from glory to glory and ultimately to a place of exaltation at our Father’s side. But though history is not cruel, it is also not safe towards the children of the most high God. Much like Aslan, history is not safe for us, but it is good.

History offers streams of living water to those who love the God of history (Ps. 1:3). But to the ungodly, it displays a dangerous God who is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). In the beginning, God made us as his image-bearers and put us in a garden to play with all sorts of safe animals. There was an innocence to the life of the garden. Man was not corrupted; animals were not as fierce and violent as the creatures we see in the National Geographic episodes. But man’s fall in the Garden was violent. It plunged humanity into a violent and dangerous world. Man and beast no longer played in the games of Eden, but the beasts of the field roared in fury when they saw the sons of Adam.