[image error]“To be useful,” theologian Carolyn Jane Bohler writes, “a metaphor for God needs to evoke two reactions at the same time: ‘Oh, yes, God is like that,’ and ‘Well, no, God is not quite like that.’”

The metaphor of a divine friend has never really done it for me. Well, that’s not entirely true. When my mother told me I had a friend in Jesus, I felt like I’d struck “key influencer” gold, like becoming besties with the principal or Prince. But as I aged into evangelicalism, the relationship felt too chum...