Opening Words by Molly Gordon 

You can crush Love down, 
bury it, 
cover it over, 
but it will rise. 
It will reach for the sun, and we will reach for each other.

Love will have the final word, even if that word is just a question, a wild possibility, a whisper to rise and follow wherever it may lead.

Prayer

O God of Resurrection Life and Light
We praise and thank you for this day.
This day on which you created light and saw that it was good. 
This day in whose early morning light we discovered the tomb of life was empty 
and encountered Christ, the world's true light. 
This day in which we celebrate the triumph of life over death
and the victory of that Light that darkness can never overcome. 
This is the day that you have made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it. 

Reading John 20:1-2 & 11-16a

1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

Reflection 

In the Easter narrative recorded in John’s Gospel, when the Risen Christ meets Mary, he asks her: Why are you crying?

And on Easter Sunday, it is a question that we are all invited to reflect on.  What are the tears and the fears that you carry with you today? Perhaps they go back years and years. Perhaps they are more recent?  What are the tears and the fears that you carry with you today? 

And on Easter Sunday, we are invited to imagine the Risen One coming to each us in the garden of our lives and speaking our name. He is indeed the gardener, the one who comes to plant seeds of life and love in the pools of our tears.  And to remind us that death and fear are not how the story ends, because Life is eternal and Love can never die! 

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed. Amen. 

Prayers of Intercession 

In the midst of celebrating Christ risen
and in giving thanks for the resurrection life that is within us and all around us
we bring these our gifts and with them our prayers. 
We pray also for the things in our lives
and in the lives of people everywhere
that are trapped in the tombs of death:
For those trapped despair in the midst of loss or confusion
For those trapped in bitterness as a result of hurt or disloyalty
For those experiencing violence of heart and hand in the face of conflict and opposition.

Silence

Wherever death is found
whether in our minds and souls
or in the matter and relationships of our bodies and corporate lives
lead us O God
by your messengers of light
to look for new life, 
not among the dead
but through the pangs of death and beyond it
to the One who is alive forever and ever. 

And in the hope and assurance of the Resurrection, we pause to remember with love, those who have passed from this world into God’s nearer presence.  

AMEN.  ​

Questioning Eternal Hell Part 5: What about judgement and justice? 

Over the past few weeks I have been inviting us to question the Doctrine of Eternal Hell. I have been using as my guide a book by David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, trying to communicate the essence of some of the salient points he makes in the book. 

A question that some may be wondering at this point is:  Is there any justice? Where is the justice?  If the doctrine of eternal hell is potentially incorrect will the abusers, perpetrators and oppressors of this world ever be held to account, and if so how?

In offering some perspectives on these questions, I would like to take us to what seems to be the framework in which most of the New Testament writers worked within.  

In this regard, David Bentley Hart writes that within in the New Testament you will find two seemingly contradictory lists of statements.  

On the one hand, you will find statements that seem to support the idea of eternal damnation. A sample of such verses include: 

    • Matthew 25:46  “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
    • Jude 13 [These people are] wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
    • 2 Thessalonians 1:9 “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might”

On the other hand, you will find statements that seem to support the doctrine of universal salvation: 
    • For as in Adam all die, so in Christ, shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22) 
    • For when I am lifted up I will draw (or drag) all people to myself  (John 12:32) 
    • In Jesus Christ is “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21)

How do we resolve these seemingly contradictory viewpoints with two seemingly absolute statements being made on both sides? 

The way in which advocates of eternal damnation have resolved these statements has been by placing their emphasis on the word eternal as in eternal fire, eternal destruction, eternal punishment.  While on the other hand they have had to do some re-interpreting of the meaning of the word ‘all’.  And so when the Biblical writers mention the word ‘all’ advocates of eternal hell would say that the word ‘all’, doesn’t in fact mean ‘all’, it actually only means a few. When the New Testament writers use the word ‘all’ they suggest that these writers only mean ‘all’ of the elect… or ‘all’ of God’s chosen, despite the fact that the actual references in the New Testament do not in themselves contain any such qualification. 

But David Bentley Hart suggest that the reason that these two sets of statements seem to be contradictory is because for centuries, theologians have been relying on defective translations of the original Greek word aionios being translated to mean eternal, forever, infinite, unending. 

But David Bentley Hart suggests that even thought he word has a certain flexibility of meaning no-where in the ancient world was the word used in that way.  Rather the word had the meaning of ‘an age’ denoting a period of time with a beginning and an end.  Originally it was a word that described simply the life-span of a human being, but later came to be used to describe much longer periods of time. And in this sense the ancient Greek word aionios forms the root of our English word aeon, which although coveys the idea of an extremely long period of time is still a period of time that will come to an end. Some would suggest that by implication the word aionios could be interpreted to mean eternal or forever and ever, but that was certainly not the standard or normal understanding of that word in the ancient world. 

And with this, David Bentley Hart says these two seemingly contradictory perspectives in the New Testament no longer need to be contradictory.  

Instead he says the New Testament writers invites us to see the future as comprising two horizons. The first horizon points us to the end of the age. And within that horizon there is space to understand that there is a cosmic justice according to which all of us will have to give account and experience of the consequences of our actions done in this world.  An accountability that will be experienced as a judgement. 

But the good news is that there is a second horizon to which the New Testament framework points that takes us beyond the first horizon to ‘the age beyond all ages’. And in that second horizon, there is the final promise of the complete healing and restoration of all things.

David Bentley Hart would therefore suggest that all those passages in the New Testament that deal with punishment, judgement and consequences are referring to that first horizon and describe penultimate, but not the final state of affairs. 

While on the other hand, all the passages that point to the final reconciliation of all things, points to the second horizon, the age beyond all ages, when as the writer of Ephesians puts it God “will bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth” (1:10) and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:28 God will be All and in all. 

What does the judgement and accountability of that first horizon look like? The judgement of the ‘end of the age’. 

The fact that the New Testament contains a variety of words, metaphors and images to speak of these things should alert us to the fact that they are ultimately beyond our full comprehension for those of us who in this world see as though through a glass darkly. 

But one of the primary images and the metaphors that is used in the Bible for this process of judgement, and accountability is the metaphor of fire.  

In Mark 9, Jesus is described as saying: Everyone will be salted with fire. The fire in this passage is the fire of Gehenna, one of the words that is usually translated as hell, but the reference to salt clearly suggests that this fire is a purifying and preserving fire that everyone will go through.  We see this image of the purifying fire of Divine Love also near the end of the Book of Revelation. The Kings of the earth, in other words, those who have used power in this world in oppressive and violent ways pass through this fire before the final unveiling of the New Heaven and New Earth where we see them now entering the New Heavenly Jerusalem.  

David Bentley Hart writes that “...though Paul speaks on more than one occasion of the judgement to come, it seems worth noting that the only picture he actually provides of that final reckoning is the one found in 1 Cor 3:11-15, the last two verses of which identify only two classes of the judged: those saved in and through their works and those saved by way of the fiery destruction of their works”. 

If the work that someone has built endures, that one will receive a reward; if anyone’s work should be burned away, that one will suffer loss, yet shall be saved, even though as by fire.

This reference to fire clearly suggests not the fire of eternal, infinite, unending punishment, but rather a potentially painful purification process for the final purpose of realising that second horizon of the complete restoration and reconciliation of all things. It is a process which Paul suggests will be more painful for some than for others, because it is a painful thing to have our darkness laid bare. And for those who have already entered fully into the grace of God made known in Christ, it will not be painful at all but simply and experience of the full light of Divine Love. And so the more we are able to do the painful work of honestly confronting our own darkness, selfishness, anger or greed in the here and now, (traditionally referred to as the word repentance) the less painful it will be later on. And in addition the more we will even now begin to feel and experience the Divine Love and Grace shining upon us and within us.  (This is really the kind of work that we covered in our previous preaching series on the 12 Steps). 

I hope that this contrast has been helpful, between the judgement passages in the New Testament on the one hand and the universal salvation passages on the other hand?  They don’t have to be contradictory or sit in opposition to each other. Instead of placing them side by side, Christian Universalists resolve them by placing them in sequential order, so that while there is indeed room for accountability and justice, however that may be conceived, God’s final word is not judgement and punishment and the unending torture of those who fall short. God’s final word is in fact love and the healing of all things where every tear will be wiped away.  If Eternal Damnation is God’s final word, then God’s final word is pain, cruelty and torture… By contrast Paul reminds us that 3 things remain… three things endure… faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love. It suggests that God’s final word is Love. 

I end with a passage of scripture that if read in the light of these things can be understood to be pointing towards both horizons, the end of the age, and the age beyond all ages. 

2 Peter 3:10-13 
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.[b] That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

One of the questions some might ask: If all are assured of salvation in a Christian Universalist framework, then Why live righteous, holy and godly lives?  But the Righteous is he heavenly life… it is to be in alignment with the wisdom of life and the wisdom and love of God and to be in alignment with our own true nature. The unrighteousness life by contrast is the hellish life.  Unrighteousness us essentially to be out of alignment with the truth of our own being, to be out of alignment with God and the Wisdom of Life. The unrighteous life, the life of disharmony is the very life we are being saved from. By contrast, the righteous life, a life of love, wisdom compassion, goodness, is the life we are saved for… it is the heavenly life that we can already begin to taste here and now the more we open ourselves to the Divine Grace. 

There is so much more that could be said and so on the Sunday after Easter I would like to further explore these ideas a little further. 

The Nature of Human Beings

I have often heard it said that when a mother gives birth to a child, her heart begins to live outside of her.  

The pain of the child from then on becomes the pain of the mother. The loss of the child becomes the loss of the mother. The distress of the child becomes the distress of the mother.  And this is also true of joy and happiness, the joy of the child becomes the joy of the mother and the happiness of the child becomes the happiness of the mother.  

(I do believe that this would also be true of fathers also. One has a sense of this in the story of the Prodigal Son.  The fathers happiness in the story is linked to the happiness of his two sons. When his younger son leaves home and squanders his wealth and his health on wild living, the father cannot rest. Day and night he remains vigilant, waiting for his lost son to come home.  His heart lives outside of himself as he waits longingly for his son to return home. And when the older son refuses to join in the party, again, the father cannot rest. He goes outside to his son to urge him to come in.  As long as the older son remains outside, a part of the heart of the father remains outside also.)

But there is also something significant about the bond between a mother and a child, in light of the fact that a child lives inside the mother for 9 months.  There is an emotional and a spiritual bond.  Indeed there is an energetic bond. 

One of my aunts experienced this bond in a very powerful way. Her daughter, my cousin was pregnant. At the time they were living on different continents. When my cousin went into labour, my aunt already knew, even before the phone had rung to tell her, because she had felt things in her own body that told her that her daughter had gone into labour. Newtonian science is unable to explain that and would pooh pooh it as wives tales, but in the framework of Quantum Physics where everything is connected to everything else at the level of energy, such an experience is in fact not so surprising.  Once to particles have been connected together at a quantum level what happens to one of them in one part of the universe affects the other immediately. If the one particle begins to turn in a different direction, the connected particle will simultaneously begin to turn in the same direction, even when separated by vast distances. 

Human beings are connected to one another in much deeper ways than we have been programmed to think by our materialist, Newtonian scientific world view. 

Over the past few weeks, we have been on a journey questioning the notion of Eternal Hell. 

One of the key arguments that David Bentley Hart uses against the notion of Eternal Hell is the nature of who we are as human beings –   

In the modern world, we have grown accustomed to thinking of ourselves as discrete individuals.  We have come to understand ourselves as completely separate beings. But David Bentley Hart suggests that this view of our humanity and our personhood is in fact not accurate. He writes that the nature of our humanity is in fact deeply inter-connected.  To be a person he says is to be in relationship.  Personhood consists of relationships. 

And Mother’s Day should give us the clue… a mother’s happiness and well-being is deeply connected to the well-being of her children.   And what is true of a mother should ultimately be true for each of us if we truly think about it. 


And it is precisely for this reason that David Bentley Hart believes that the notion of Eternal Hell is so questionable.  The doctrine of Eternal Hell suggests that it is possible for some to be ‘saved’ in the afterlife, and to live some kind of heavenly blissful existence, while there is the potential for their family members and friends, who are ‘not saved’ to live in eternal torment and eternal suffering.  

He suggests that this formula doesn’t in fact add up.  Would it be even possible for a mother to enjoy heavenly bliss while knowing that her child has been condemned to a life of eternal unending torment.  For any among us who are mothers, I wonder if that could even be conceivable?  If a mother’s heart lives outside of her (as indeed I believe would be true of most fathers too), could a mother ever be ‘saved’ to live a blissful life in heaven, if in the back of her mind she was even vaguely aware that her child had made a wrong choice and would forever more live in eternal torment.   This would surely be true, even if her son was a serial murder. Surely such  a mother’s happiness is ultimately dependent on on the complete reformation and salvation of her serial killer son, or she would never be able to experience eternal happiness herself? 

Some theologians who are believers in eternal hell and eternal damnation have tried to do some theological gymnastics to imagine how this might be possible. 

Some have suggested for example that God will cause the ‘saved’ to have the memory of their condemned loved one’s erased forever from their minds in a kind of spiritual lobotomy.  But David Bentley Hart asks what this would really mean?  Would a spiritual lobotomy of this kind not lead to a serious diminishing of the personhood of that mother?  If a mother’s identity is bound up in her relationship with her children, what would happen to the fullness of her personhood if the memory of a child she had given birth to were just deleted from her memory bank? 

This would not be an enhanced life for such a mother. It would surely be a seriously diminished life.  David Bentley Hart asks the question Is not the heavenly life meant to enhance our being and our happiness rather than diminishing it? 

Another way theologians have suggested coming to terms with the possibility of eternal hell is that those who are saved should have no sympathy for the damned simply because such pity is fruitless, just as it is forgivable to avert one’s eyes from a frightful accident on the roads from which one cannot rescue the victims, and to cease to think about it entirely. But David Bentley Hart invites us to ask:  Is this also not in fact a diminished state of people who are unable to feel the pain of others? 

Again, this is surely true even if we were to think of the example of a serial killer. While most of us may not feel sympathy for the suffering of a serial killer, it is surely true that the murderers brother, mother, father, sister, child, wife or friend must think of him and must suffer grief at the thought of what he has become and the end he has reached.  This means suggests David Bentley Hart that our indifference to his fate must also logically be an indifference to their sufferings as well. And when projected onto eternity this would amount to an eternity of indifference to the suffering of others. 

David Bentley Hart asks, Does not the state of hell consist of those who are incapable of showing or feeling sympathy or compassion towards other beings.  If in order to experience the bliss of heaven, the saved are no longer able to feel compassion for those suffering, have they not in so doing  become no different from those living in hell? 

And so David Bentley Hart writes ‘There is no way in which persons can be saved as persons, except in and with all other persons.’  He goes onto to suggest that ‘No soul is who or what it is in isolation; and so no soul’s sufferings can be ignored without the sufferings of potentially limitless number of souls being ignored as well. And so it seems, if we allow the possibility that even so much as a single soul might slip away into everlasting misery, the ethos of heaven turns out to be ‘every soul for itself’ – which is also curiously enough precisely the ethos of hell. 

While it might indeed lead us back into childish and simplistic anthropomorphisms, if the parable of the prodigal son is anything to go by, then God too would never be able to dwell in blissful happiness and contentment if even one of God’s creatures were to dwell in unending torment and suffering.  And on Mother’s Day we remember also the analogy used by the prophet Isaiah who compares God to a mother who is unable to forget the child of her breast: 

“Can a mother forget the infant at her breast, and walk away from the baby she bore? But even if a mother could forget, I would never forget you—never. Look, I’ve written your names on the palms of my hands.” Would it ever be possible for God, the source of all mother-hood, to abandon the children of Her creation to an eternity of suffering and torment? Surely this would not be possible even for God, or perhaps, especially for God? 

I end with a few passages of scripture that invite us to continue to think more deeply on these things

Matthew 18:11-14 – 12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”

1 Timothy 2:4 – “It is the will of God our Saviour that all people should be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

“But God would not take away a life; He would devise plans so that the one banished from Him does not remain banished.” 2 Sam. 14:14

“With God nothing is impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

“Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:8)

​
This week I cam across some rather funny misunderstandings: 

One person writes that when he was around 5 or 6, he was told to watch his baby cousin as she was laid on the couch.  He watched her roll off the couch. Everyone was angry at him. He watched her roll right off the couch. 

Another tells how as a child his mother popped out while she was cooking. She was boiling some potatoes. She said to him “Watch the potatoes” as she left.  He writes: I watched them. They burnt!

But misunderstandings can sometimes be of a far more serious nature: 

This week, I learned the shocking information that a misunderstanding and a mistranslation led to the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During World War II, when asked if Japan would surrender, the Japanese ruler used the word “mokusatsu” which meant “we withhold comment – pending discussion.” However, it was mistranslated to mean “We are treating your message with contempt” when sent to Washington. This mistake spread quickly through the media. Frustrated by what he thought was Japan's response, President Truman decided to use atomic bombs, causing the deaths, injuries, and radiation exposure of 150,000-250,000 people. It is tragic that a mistranslation of a Japanese word could have had such devastating consequences.

Over the past two weeks I have been inviting us to question the notion of Eternal Hell. 

Most of the thoughts in these reflections are taken from a book by David Bentley Hart called “That All May Be Saved”.  David Bentley Hart essentially believes that when the Church began to teach the notion of Eternal Hell or Eternal Damnation, the church began to take itself down a wrong path.  He believes that traditional teachings on eternal hell undermine every other claim that Christians make about God, most especially the central idea that God is love.  He writes that much of the teaching on eternal hell he believes is a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of how to read and translate Scripture. 

In the course of these early arguments in the book, David Bentley Hart examines the theology of John Calvin, one of the major theologians of the Reformation, who had a particularly strong influence on ‘subscribing’ Presbyterians (as opposed to non-subscribing Presbyterians). 

John Calvin's assertion was that God made some to be predestined to heaven and some to be predestined to eternal hell as an expression of God’s Power and Sovereignty. But David Bentley Hart writes, that such a position is based on what he describes as a notoriously confused reading of scripture, based on an inability to read Greek and relying on defective Latin translations.  

And so he describes the Calvinist account of predestination as unquestioningly the most terrifying and the most severe expressions of Christianity. 

To Calvin's credit, writes David Bentley Hart, Calvin makes no effort to deceive us as to his views. Calvin quite openly proclaims that God created some to be the object of God’s love and others to be the object of God’s hatred.  For John Calvin, this predestination of some to be damned and to be the objects of his hatred is nothing more than sheer absolute power exercising itself for power’s sake and therefore comes across as a manifestation of boundless cruelty: that God, of God’s own free and sovereign will would create beings for torturous and unending suffering. What boundless cruelty says David Bentley Hart and goes on to say that Calvin at his worst produces a picture of God as resembling an omnipotent cruel and mad dictator. 

But he writes however that he does not hold Calvin necessarily accountable for this dismal and distorted theology, since in this matter he was the product of centuries of bad scriptural interpretation and even worse theological reasoning. Bentley Hart writes that Calvin differed little in this respect from many of his contemporaries, both Protestant and Catholic alike.  

Where in particular did Calvin go wrong?    David Bentley Hart suggests that Calvin’s primary error is his misinterpretation of chapters 9-11 of Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Like St Augustine a few centuries before him Calvin’s error came in treating chapters 9-11 as comprising a series of separate ideas with separate conclusions, instead of reading these chapters as a whole in which Paul is wrestling with a single question that had clearly haunted him for a long time.  

What preoccupies Paul from the beginning to end of these chapters is the agonizing mystery that the Messiah of Israel has come and yet so few of the house of Israel have accepted him, while on the other hand so many gentiles have.  How can the promised messiah of Israel fail to be the saviour of the people of Israel?  Has God abandoned his promises the people of Israel? 

In the process of wrestling with this question he begins by firstly trying to entertain the possibility that indeed God has abandoned the people of Israel.  What if God has kept some people (namely Israel) solely for destruction in order to show just how glorious his salvation lavished on the people of his mercy.  It is a terrible possibility, and horrifying to contemplate, but for a moment, Paul wonders if this is simply how things are. 

But he does not stop there, because he knows that this cannot be the correct answer. It is so obviously preposterous that he decides that a completely different solution must be found, one that makes sense and in which God remains faithful to God’s promises.   And so writes David Bentley Hart, Paul spends the next two chapters unambiguously rejecting the initial provisional answer that he came to in the previous section, so that he reaches a completely different and far more glorious conclusion, that in the end through Christ, God will bless everyone. 

32  God has given all people over over to their stubborn disobedient ways, so that God can show mercy to all.

And having come to this glorious conclusion, Paul explodes with joy as he says: 

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!...
 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?     Or who has been God’s counsellor?
For from God and through God and for God are all things.
    To God be the glory forever! Amen.

You can almost feel Paul’s joy and his relief as he comes to the conclusion that all will be saved by God’s most amazing grace.  

But this is an answer that he already knew in his heart… For in his earlier letter to the Corinthians a few years before his letter to the Romans, he already came to this same conclusion when he wrote:  

1 Cor 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.   For Paul, God’s saving work in Christ will eventually completely undo the sin and death which all human beings participate in, symbolised in the person of Adam. 

And so, David Bentley Hart believes that Calvinism, makes a monster out of God, because of misreading Paul’s letter to the Romans and building his theology on an idea that Paul himself rejects in his own letter, namely, the idea that God has created some for salvation and some for destruction.  

David Bentley Hart suggests that if it is read correctly, then the story of God in the New Testament a story of infinite and universal love which suggests that God will never leave anyone in the mire of  slavery to sin with all its destructive consequences. God’s intention is to save all.  For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. 

For those who might still be struggling to shake off the ideas of God who is a monster who predestines some to eternal torment, Bentley Hart suggests that sometimes childish imagery – even childish anthropomorphisms can help to bring clarity. And in this sense Christ instructs his followers to think of God, the Great Universal Intelligence of the Cosmos, using the analogy of a human father and in doing so Christ encourages his followers to feel safe in assuming that God’s actions toward them will display something like – but also something far greater than paternal love. 

In Matthew 7:9-11 Jesus says: 

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 

David Bentley Hart suggests that at the very least, when Jesus refers to God in this way, we gain an idea of what NOT to expect from God.  For instance, Jesus implies that God, the Universal Intelligence, will not be like a father who punishes his children for any purpose other than the child’s correction and moral improvement. Punishing simply as an arbitrary display of power over a child created as an object of hatred is not behaviour one would ever expect from a father worthy of the name and therefore should not be something we should expect from God either. 

In addition, Bentley Hart suggests that a father who surrenders his child to the fate of an eternal suffering is surely also not a truly loving father.

He writes: It is surely the responsibility of a father [or parent] to continue to love their children in all conditions and to seek their well being and if need be their reformation and to use whatever natural powers they posses to save their children from ruin. He adds – what a happy circumstance  if a father happens to possess infinite power to do these things and to carry them out.