Even though he's our Father, some believers treat God's on-field presence as an irritating but necessary part of the game's structure while secretly hoping our Father The Ref pays more attention to our opponents and how they play than he does watching to see if we're staying in bounds or lining up in an illegal formation.
During the game we tell our opponents The Ref is always impartial, unerring and perfect, while at the same time expecting every judgement call will go our way, just as we expect a great spot after every play.
Because The Ref's our Father, we get frustrated when he rules our passes out of bounds or calls us for being offsides or penalizes us by moving life's ball backwards.
If we think God's missed a call we feel it's perfectly OK to gripe, complain and throw our helmets on the ground, and that it's our right to throw a red flag on the field and demand that God stop the game and take a timeout so he can review the action on Instant Replay and see where he made a mistake and blew the call.
That's pretty arrogant, but what's most wrong with all those perspectives?
What's wrong is that God's not a spectator watching our game from the bleachers, God's not on the field as a referee to make sure life's always fair and God doesn't show up on game day to play on our team. And we certainly don't have any right to question The Creator's calls.
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God doesn't show up once a week to watch or referee our game; God's there 24x7x365 because he owns the team, because he created the game and because the rules and the playing field and the stadium all belong to him.
As believers we're on the field for him and belong to his team. Not vice versa.
