Wise parents nudge their children away from dependence toward freedom, for their goal is to produce independent adults. Lovers, however, choose a new kind of voluntary dependence: possessing freedom they gladly give it away. In a healthy marriage, one partner yields to the other’s wishes not out of compulsion but out of love. That adult relationship reveals, I believe, what God has always sought from human beings: not the clinging, helpless love of a child who has no real choice, but the mature, freely given commitment of a lover.-Philip Yancy, Reaching for the Invisible God, P. 223
What do Calvinists think of this? I imagine they would pretty much stick with the part about God treating us as children. Certainly much of the language of the bible is like this: God’s relation to the nation of Israel, etc. However, some of it really isn’t. The church as the bride of Christ. Do you treat your bride like a child? Not unless you’re an ass. So why does God use that imagery over and over again if he still means to treat us as children in all our relating? I don’t think that’s what the Lord is looking for in the church, as mentioned above.