It was probably about thirty-five years ago, before I had children of my own. I was part of one of those retreats, popular back in the seventies, where people were organized in small groups and each session began with an "icebreaker," a question to get people opening up and sharing.
Icebreaker questions were typically innocuous, involving minimal risk, maybe like an appetizer to stimulate the appetite for more in-depth conversation. So I wasn't expecting the depth of emotion that this question would open for me: what are your three happiest memories from childhood?
When it came my time to share, my responses came easily. First, swimming at a lake in summer when I was eight or so, when my dad would let my little brother and me stand on his shoulders and dive into the water. Second, walking hand-in-hand to a pond near our home when I was probably only four years old, when my dad helped me scoop masses of frog eggs into a jar so we could bring them home and watch them develop from tadpoles into little frogs. And third, body surfing at the ocean with my dad and brother when I was maybe twelve.
Someone in the group noted that there were three common themes in all the stories: water, vitality, and my father. For some reason, the third one surprised me. I had gone through typical teenage tensions with my father -- tensions common during adolescence and especially so during the sixties and seventies. But here I was, on the other side of those tensions, epitomizing childhood happiness in memories of closeness with my dad.
Like most Christians, I address God as "our Father in heaven" as Jesus taught in the Lord's prayer. I'm sure my positive experiences with my dad (86 now and still going strong) make that language and imagery positive and meaningful for me. I don't think of God as the stern parent, dominating and rigid, commanding obedience, threatening punishment, managing rage. I think of God as the one who places me in a bountiful, joyous world of lakes and ponds and crashing seas, one who swims and surfs with me, one who introduces me to a world of wonders.
I've met many people for whom father-imagery evokes little beyond the dread and oppression of patriarchy -- either in their personal experience or our common history. In light of the ongoing impact of patriarchy, I understand why father-imagery is problematic for so many people. That's why (as I describe in the early chapters of my book Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in Twelve Simple Words) I'm all for balancing and integrating paternal images with other images for God -- such as God as loving mother (see Isaiah 49:15 and 66:13), God as shepherd (Psalm 23), God as friend (James 2:23), God as gardener (John 15), and so on.
As someone who has grappled for years with how we imagine, name, and relate to God, and as someone who takes the Scriptures seriously even when I'm willing to acknowledge the problems I find there, I have a hunch about the New Testament's emphasis on paternal imagery for God. Just as we are careful to use maternal imagery to balance and soften the potentially negative dimensions of dominant paternal imagery, paternal imagery was used to balance and soften the potentially negative dimensions of dominant kingly imagery in the time of Jesus.
And kingly imagery, similarly, balanced and softened the potentially negative dimensions of the monstrous imagery for God that were dominant earlier in the development of human theological consciousness.
So I must remember that all human imagery and language for God is contingent, that no single term or picture can be allowed to reduce God to an idolatrous cartoon. With that in mind, I can joyfully remember the best things about my dad on father's day, and know that every good thing in creation gives us a window into the mysterious and majestic heart of the Creator -- a mother's faithfulness, a wise king's splendor, a gardener's insight, a friend's companionship, a shepherd's protection ... a fire's wonder, a starry sky's grandeur, a mountain's substance, the wind's invisible power, water's life-giving power ... and a father's delight as he plays with his boys.
What we love most in life bears the signature of God, and in appreciating those things, in remembering and celebrating them, in loving them, I believe we are in fact loving God.
Radhanath Swami: A Swami and His Father
Interesting how some try to chain that to a book-lawgiver.
Like this isn't exactly what god represents? God is the ultimate symbol of patriarchal oppression.
The Christians have a very bifurcated sense of 'God:' They conflate a single tribal lawgiver, as seen through a book, *with* 'God' as in Everything. (This is probably why Jews have historically learned no good comes of writing or speaking that name)
If you look a little more closely at what's cited, though, 'Father' is not fondly-remembered in terms of rules, prohibitions, or 'omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence,' but rather, for so many, in terms of what we Pagans call 'right relationship' with both experience and the natural world.
I don't have too many of those memories from my own father: I think he was too busy trying to live with and reconcile to himself and reality somehow, to Christian expectations. Christians are taught to do that: hang the whole universe on some idea of 'Father The King and Order of The Universe' ...ie, paterfamilias: but know deep down, even appeal to, a sense that 'God' as 'Father' is wilder, more natural, more *personal to life* (Not 'personal as authority, judge, punisher, and etc etc, etc) ....In just those ways uncomfortably-grafted onto that 'Book-father.'
At least that's how as a Pagan I see it. The face of 'The God' that call 'Father' well, where I got my memories of time in Nature.. My birth-father, I respect now for other reasons.
Yes, I know you could cite a long string of Bible verses to justify your point of view. Every one of those verses, in my opinion, is the creation of a writer from a time when the "vengeful God" view was accepted as the norm. Enough violence has been commited in the name of God! it's time for a new image of the Divine.
BTW, and not to be a smart alec, but I read somewhere that your god spent 3 days atoning for everyone's bad behaviors, for all eternity. Would you say that math wasn't his strong suite?
~Clarence Budington Kelland.
http://thegreatquotes.com/2011/06/fathers-day/
what is it about religion that wants to make god in their image?
could it be that our minds just cannot get a handle on an infinite source of all that is.
by making this god in our image we can then have a god of wrath, a god that demands atonement, a god that punishs us, a jealous god, a god that has chosen people and nations, etc.
most atheists are made by such attributes of the human mind.
as souls with time and experiences we come out beautiful souls; perfect expressions and reflections of god.
the materialist focuses on the physical aspects of life. the reality of life are expressions of the infinite which most define as spirit. every soul is a unique "collection" or degrees of awareness and unawareness in their thoughts and actions.
this variation makes every soul unique, indeed everything is unique even a snowflake. the infinite source of all that is is not in the "business" of manifestating clones or duplicates of itself.
it is the necessity of this infinite to create by manifesting its potential in infinite expressions. to do this requires degrees of unawareness and unawareness leads to errors that most call sin.
in the awareness of "god" all are innocent. ouch that took original sin right out the door. naw the human ego wallows in the idea of original sin; this leads to guilt and guilt is self confirmatory to the ego. ie look at me I am separate from god.
Some notions of god are relics of the Bronze age. Probably the monstrous ones. But they had been replaced by the kingly ones already by the time the Bronze age was done with.
And then the kingly ones turned out to be one-sided as well and needed further balance, brought about by the imagery of the Lord's prayer.
And then you have trinity, and the interpretation of church as "body of christ". Which has analogs in other religions as well.
I don't see anything deadly in that trend.