Jesus used the metaphor of a loving Father to describe God. There are many other ways God is portrayed in Scripture. Tower, rock, fire, cloud, storm, and loving mother, just to mention a few. In The Shack, God was portrayed as an African-American female. That image was scandalous, because the default opinion of many evangelical Christians is that God is a male, presumably white. God is neither male nor female. These are all metaphors. Metaphors are words used to express ideas and/or thoughts. Richard Rohr says, “metaphor is the only way one can speak of God.” Words, even though they are naturally limited to our human language, are all that we have to work with.