God the Father

by Valerie Elverton Dixon

The god of our fathers is not always God our Father. The god of our fathers, the god of our biblical ancestors often showed himself in immoral ways. He was a god of destruction, destroying most of the world with a flood. He commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, then stayed the father's hand and provided a ram in the bush instead. This was no moral benefit to the ram. This god hardened the Egyptian pharaoh's heart against allowing the Hebrew slaves to go free and then punishes the Egyptian people for pharaoh's stubbornness. He sent plagues. The plagues included the monstrous killing of the Egyptian first born.

Jephthah's daughter dies because of her father's careless vow, and God is silent. He provides no alternative sacrifice for her. This aspect of god orders genocide and his prophets speak of his wrath against a wayward nation with images of rape: "it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up, and you are violated." (Jeremiah 13:22)

This is the vicious face of an angry death-dealing distant God. There is an eternal space between him and us. The divine and human hand can never touch, except that all too often we humans perceive ourselves as the destructive hand of God. This leads to violence upon violence. This is not God the Father.

God the Father is father to the fatherless, protector of widows, women without male protection in a patriarchal culture. He houses the homeless and liberates prisoners. He has compassion on those who recognize his awesome power. God the Father loves those who keep his commandments with a steadfast love. He is our creator. He is our friend.

When Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, the Christian savior, the Muslim prophet, the moral philosopher, spoke about God the Father, he spoke of a loving parent. This is a God with whom we can have relationship. This is a God who teaches us a radical love. This God wants us to love as he loves, completely, perfectly, to love friends, enemies, and our neighbor as ourselves. God the Father is a god of hyper-morality.

Jacques Derrida, writing about forgiveness, engaging the thought of Vladimir Jankelevitch, refers to an "ethics beyond ethics." This is an ethics "beyond laws, norms, or any obligation." Forgiveness comes from this place. I say: radical love is the fount of such hyper-ethics. We know what is right to do based on an intuitive insight into our own humanity. The moment we know the deepest desires for love and relationship, for sustenance and joy within our own heart/mind, then we know what our brother and sister needs from us. This is the ground in which the Golden Rule - to do unto others as we would have them do unto us - is rooted.

God the Father is the source of this love that asks for compassion and justice and peace. God the Father is the creative force and ethical impulse that requires us to shelter the homeless, protect the weak, welcome the stranger, liberate the prisoner. God the Father is the Being that existed before time began and will exist after time ends, that gives us the capacity to love with a love that erases fear. God the Father is the aspect of God that sends us grace and mercy and peace. He sends these to us through others of us.

http://JustPeaceTheory.com