Why a multipersonal God?

This morning, my wife caught our four-year-old Ethan doing something he knew was wrong. The evidence? He immediately began crying and ran to me for protection. Mom arrived on the scene and started asking him why he had done what he did, which wasn’t a major infraction but obviously enough that he was worried what would happen to him.

Well, he just kept crying, so I put my arm around him and told him that he didn’t need to be afraid. “Just tell mommy why you did it.” It took a little while, but eventually he settled down enough to tell her, “Because…I…wanted…to.” Both of us knew that this was a case where punishment would be pointless, so she just explained to him again why he couldn’t do that.

In the end, what he really needed was for me to hug him and give him enough security that he could bring himself to tell the truth about what he had done. And in that moment, it felt very much like we were playing God in the best possible sense. She was disciplining him even as I was giving him enough safety and comfort to endure that discipline and trust that both of us still loved him.