The confusion is specific. When Christians call God Father, many people assume they are being asked to picture their own dad and then imagine a better one. If your father was absent, addicted, cruel or simply gone, that request fails before it starts, because the only template you have is the one that hurt you.
Your father does not decide whether God exists, but he often shapes what the word Father feels like when you first pray it, and that feeling can quietly limit what you can believe about God. The Bible keeps the word while reversing the comparison. Scripture does not build its picture of God out of human fathers. It measures human fathers against God, and it openly admits that they fall short.
Three people who studied this from very different positions explain why the reversal matters. Dr. Paul Vitz, a psychologist trained at Stanford who taught for decades at New York University, read the life stories of famous atheists and kept finding broken fathers. Dr. Sarita Lyons, a counselor with a PhD in clinical and forensic psychology, watches the same pattern surface in therapy. Dr. Esau McCaulley, a New Testament scholar, grew up with a father who suffered from drug addiction and could turn violent, and he came out of that house believing in God. Each one explains a different step. Taken in order, those steps lead to what calling God Father actually means.