(07/40) Does God operate like a helicopter parent?
Let's talk about the "helicopter God" and three reasons why God's guidance doesn't normally operate this way. (Oh, and a special giveaway for one of my subscribers.)
As part of Hear from God in 40 Emails (or Less), we’re exploring the four views of how God guides us: absentee God, helicopter God, cool God, and free-range God. You can read the introduction here.
I have a confession: Sometimes, I’m a helicopter dad.
There, I said it.
When my kids are in the backyard, it’s not long before I find myself shouting commands like, “Stop that,” “Get off of there, “Do it this way,” “That’s not what chalk is for,” and “Don’t eat the bird seed.” (Yes, I’ve said that.)
The constant barrage of communication is just as exhausting for me as it is for them.
If I’m not careful, I’ll continue hovering right into their teenage years and beyond. Even minor decisions will become opportunities to tell them what I think they need to do, and they’ll be anxious to make any decision without first getting my input—if they don’t push me away altogether.
Maybe, that’s what you imagine God’s guidance is like.
He’s a helicopter God.
Dallas Willard calls this the “message-a-minute” view of God, and it’s one of the mistaken views of how God speaks to us.1 Seeing God as a helicopter God reduces him to some kind of divine GPS that’s telling you exactly what to do next and reduces you into the human equivalent of a driverless car.
The helicopter God is actively speaking to you about every one of the hundreds of decisions you make in a day—decisions like:
Which shirt should I wear?
What should I eat for breakfast?
What’s my coffee order?
Should I turn right or left?
What should I watch tonight?
Just like me, the helicopter God is constantly yelling, “Stop that,” “Get off there,” “Do it this way,” “That’s not what chalk is for” and “Don’t eat the bird seed”—all from heaven’s back porch.
On the grid, the helicopter God is the high personal guidance and low freedom view of how God guides us. Why? He’s high on personal guidance because, unlike the absentee God, he is actively speaking into your life at all times in all kinds of ways. But, he’s low on freedom because the helicopter God hovers over your every move and doesn’t leave you any room to make decisions without his input.
What the Helicopter God Gets Right
Like the other alternative views of how God’s speak, thinking of God like a helicopter God isn’t all wrong. God is often speaking to you more than you might realize, and he enjoys talking with you about your decisions.
It’s good to long for more conversation with God.
Frank Laubach, one of my recommended guides, is famous for experimenting with hearing God’s voice and recording his experience in a series of letters to his father. In one letter, dated January 29, 1930, he summarized his goal, “My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will, to make this hour gloriously rich.”2
That’s a good goal.
He wanted to know if it was possible to have an ongoing conversation with God throughout his entire day. He wanted to bring God to mind every minute of the day, and he called it his “game with minutes.”
This practice changed his life for the better.
I’ve tried this practice as well, and I’ve seen the benefits of it in my best moments. And, in one of the final emails in this series, we’ll explore what a life of actively listening for God’s voice, beyond just the big decisions, can look like at its best.
But, there’s also been moments when, in my attempts to live like Laubach describes, I’ve found myself overthinking my every move—suffering from a form of decision-making paralysis until I sense God speaking to me.
Maybe, that’s you, too.
Three Reasons Why the Helicopter God Gets It Wrong
God is interested in your daily decisions, even the small ones, but that doesn’t mean he’s actively speaking into each one. There’s a practical, biblical, and developmental reason why.
On a practical level, it’s simply not feasible. Many of the decisions you make don’t leave you enough time to stop and wait for him to speak before you make the decision. Sometimes, you just need to tell the cashier you want a double cheeseburger with a side of fries so you don’t hold up the line.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that God doesn’t care what you order at a restaurant. (He does, and, honestly, many of us should take the risk of consulting God too much rather than too little.) I do mean, though, that most of the time God has probably already put enough wisdom into you to make an intelligent decision without additional input from him.
On a biblical level, there’s not much evidence for this kind of guidance. Yes, God guided Israel through the wilderness with a cloud by day and a fire by night (Exodus 13v21), but that was for a season. According to Dallas Willard, even Jesus, who only did what he saw the Father doing (John 5v19), didn’t seem to operate according to this view.3
Beyond the practical and biblical problems with it, though, there’s a bigger problem with viewing God as a helicopter God—and, it’s developmental.
Studies show that the main problem with helicopter parents is that they stunt the growth of their children into adulthood. Julia Lythcott-Haims, in her book How to Raise an Adult, says that when parents fail to teach their kids how to make decisions on their own, kids struggle when they find themselves in situations where their parents aren’t there to help them. It’s not that parents should ignore their children every time they ask for help, but that they should give them space, as often as possible, to develop “the ability to live without us.”4
Now, of course, your goal isn’t to be able to live without God’s involvement in your life (and, in a very real, he is always there to help you as we’ll talk about), but God also wants to develop you into the kind of person, full of God-given wisdom and Spirit-filled confidence, who can make many of your daily decisions without constantly needing to ask him, “God, what should I do?”
E. Stanley Jones, a missionary to India, writes, “Obviously God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be the primary purpose of the Father. He will guide us, but he won’t override us.” Then, as if he’s predicting what every study would one day say about helicopter parents, E. Stanley Jones goes on to say, “Supposed a parent would dictate to the child minutely everything he is to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime.”5
Yes, God guides us personally—that’s what this series is all about—but not at the cost of “stunting” our development as people.
That’s the main problem with the helicopter God, but there’s still one more wrong view of God to explore in our next email (and it’s the one I believe we’re most prone to in our cultural moment).
Miss a post? Get caught up here. Or, start with the first email.
Dallas Willard, Hearing God, 76.
Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic, January 29, 1930.
Dallas Willard, Hearing God, 76.
Julia Lythcott-Haims, How to Raise an Adult, 86.
Quoted in Dallas Dallas Willard, Hearing God, 34.