When God made the world He made it to include pictures for us. God made metaphors, parallels, little pieces of things for us to understand more about who He is. Take marriage, family, and authority for example. He invented each of these, and they are all representations of a small piece of God.
In Ephesians 5:21-33 we see the marriage of a man and a woman as a picture of Christ’s love for His church. The two work together as one. There is authority and love in perfect balance. The husband has authority, but because he loves his wife so much he will never abuse that authority. Rather he will use it for her benefit. This is how Jesus loves His church. Jesus is the one in charge and gets to say what we do, and He loves us so we can rest assured that what He tells us is good.
Now take for example God’s construct of a family: a married man and woman with their children. Between the man and the woman you have the love and authority in the marriage we mentioned above. Between the parents and the children we see another kind of love and authority. Jesus talked about human love for our children, and how much more God loves us as a Father in Matthew 7:9-11 and Luke 11:11-13. Paul tells children to obey their parents right after talking about marriage in Ephesians 6:1-4. Because the parents love their children, they will not abuse their authority over them and will teach them well about God.
In Romans 13:1-7 we find that even governmental authority is God’s idea. When used the way for which it was designed, we find that this kind of authority is made to punish evil and keep the obedient safe. It is there to keep order. We are to submit to the higher powers. And remember that Paul is writing this to Christians persecuted under Roman rule. That isn’t to say you obey government over God (Acts 5:27-29), but it is to say that the order God designed into authority is to be followed to show others His glory and power in your life. This kind of authority is another piece of what God is like. He gets to make and enforce the rules, but because He is righteous He will not make and enforce the wrong things (Psalm 11:5-7).
Really all of these pictures are things that we have corrupted, but they are still pictures and you can still see what they are supposed to represent. Yet the further along time we go, the more ruined these pictures become. Satan doesn’t like these pictures. He doesn’t want us to know about God or see any shred of what God is like. And the more we depart from the way God designed things to work, the more our societies and the more individuals will continue to fall apart. God will preserve and display His pictures without our help, but He does let us decide whether or not we will be a part of that preservation and display.
I would like to encourage you to do more study on these things. Study the Bible and look at the way God designed things to work. Study why He designed them to work that way. Look at even more relationship types and see how the Bible uses them to show us what God is like. These are all beautiful things, artistically crafted and placed!