Fatherless

Jesus was fatherless. Joseph had died before he could arrange a marriage for him. If Jesus was indeed her oldest son, Mary will have shared her worries and concerns with him. He may have been a surrogate father to his younger siblings, trying to fill a hole in their lives that no one could fill. Together Mary and Jesus will have arranged their schooling (his brother seems to have had some training), their jobs, their marriages, and perhaps even their funerals, as child mortality was high. Meanwhile, Jesus grew older without a father or children of his own.

Jesus was not the only one missing a parent. In a time when older men married younger girls, often more than once (often after a first or second wife had died in labour), many children grew up with a stepmother or without a father. But Jesus felt he was not alone. Already as a young child, the words of the Psalm 27:10 were a reality to him: “When my father and mother leave me behind, the Lord is there to lift me up.” He felt the presence of God as a father; so much that he believed all people to be brothers and sisters. And brothers and sisters are to stand with each other even if they don’t like each other very much.

God is love

Today, we may think that the word father excludes the feminine, and that it stresses too much the authoritarian side of religion. You might say that a father in antiquity was not necessarily sympathetic to his children. But that was not the experience of Jesus and his friends. For them, it was not the question whether God was like a father or a mother to them, but whether he was like an emperor or a father. Whether he was to be served out of fear or to be loved in return for his love to us. John actually wrote it down: ‘God is Love.’ In other words: the underlying principle of a life-sustaining universe, a good society and a healthy personality is not just any ‘God,’ but one that we can call ‘love.’

The apostles did not think they could resemble God in appearance, for no one has ever seen God, but they believed they could recognize his character and impact in each other’s love. That is why, in Genesis 1:27, when God creates Man in his image, he creates them ‘male and female.’ Ancient creation myths describe the gods as kings and queens, as members of the jet-set and the elite. But in the Genesis, all people are created in in his image. Not as humans per se, not as male or female, but in our capacity to love each other and to bring forth life.

For me, a transforming miracle happened when my first child, a daughter, was born in the changing South-Africa of 1995: she made me a father. When I held my daughter in my arms, I felt a love that was completely different from the way I had loved my parents, my friends or my wife. They all loved me as at least as much as I did love them. But now, for the first time, I experienced a love that did not expect anything in return, that accepted this child as she was, and that involved me completely. As I stood there, I felt the unquestionable love of my parents for me – even though they were far away in The Netherlands, and the unconditional love of God for me. I could not have grasped how much they loved me before experiencing it myself. This was a deeply instinctive love, like the love that makes a mother rabbit fight off dogs when these threaten her young ones. But it did not stop there. As I was walking across the hill that separated us from the printer of the baby announcements, I felt united with all these black, brown and white people around me: ‘you all have felt something like this when you held your child in your arms for the first time, - or your mother or father did when they held you.’ As my children grow older, and as I start to expect love and help from them, some of that pure love is lost. Without remembering the miracle, I become that authoritarian father again and again. But if John speaks of God as a father, then he speaks of the one who loved us before we even knew who he is. And we love him, because he first loved us.

In a world that liked to portray the gods as the jet set of antiquity, among people who spoke of ‘God’ as the mightiest king, Jesus stressed his fatherly love. It was this spirit of being God’s children that he passed on to his friends as they learnt to address God in the hearts as “Abba, Father!” Not just with words: in the life and death of Jesus, his friends discovered the type of father that God is to us. We will meditate on the crucifixion later, but for now I would like to stress that God wants us to open our hearts to him and to each other, not to ‘kill our animals’ as sacrifice to him. The crucifixion is his act of love to us, to show us how much pain and shame he is willing to accept to make us open our hearts. God does not want fear and punishment but love and an open heart. You are like Jesus to him: even when everyone despises you, when you are tortured and executed as a criminal, when you feel God has forsaken you, you will find him there with open arms to lift you up. That is why you can be confident: you saw how God loved Jesus. If you are afraid of God’s judgment, John tells you this: the experience of his love can drive away that fear of punishment. Even in the day of crisis, when you feel God should judge you as falling short, you may know that you are, indeed, forever loved.

Finding love in heaven

The astounding thing about faith is not the idea of God: as we saw God’s ‘existence’ is a matter of definition. It is not even the idea that the principles that determine under which a universe can exist and produce sentient life, are like the principles that determine how a community of intelligent beings can flourish, or how my organism (body, soul and spirit) can live a happy and meaningful life. The really astounding claim is that these principles are best understood, applied and embraced when we think of them as a benevolent person. That is the core of Jesus’s experience: that ‘God’ is like the loving father he no longer had.
And Jesus was right; he still is. As we considered earlier, ‘God’ cannot be tested, but faith in God can be. Indeed, psychologists have tested the impact of faith (or no faith) in God as a loving parent, or as a mighty judge, or as an impersonal force in various studies. Most studies show that faith in God as a loving parent in particular has the most positive correlation with emotional development, coping abilities and medical recovery.

I don’t mean to say that the idea of God as a loving father is a uniquely Christian concept. Jesus was after all a devout Jew and developed his understanding in a Jewish context. But the friends of Jesus were amazed when they saw the intimate way in which Jesus interacted with his heavenly Father. They were even more amazed when Jesus opened up that same experience to them. True, Muslims would be reluctant to address God as “Father,” as the Fatherhood of God is a key differentiator from Christianity. Yet, when they listen to a Surah from the Quran, they are addressed in a way that conveys the providing and loving characteristics of God: ‘In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful.’

Finding a father/mother in heaven means finding a father/mother in your heart: a loving face and a guiding voice. Parents, each in their own way, leave an imprint on their children. In their comforting and guiding love, they leave behind, what psychologists call ‘the loving face’ and ‘the guiding voice.’ These accompany us when we become adults and start to lead our own lives and perhaps raise children of own. Some may associate the loving face with a mother’s soft features and the guiding voice with a man’s imposing sound, but really the only thing that matters is the enduring love of whatever parent to leave a positive imprint.
You may meditate some time to remember instances from your early childhood when the love of your parents comforted you and guided you. Don’t be afraid, even when you have stronger memories that are negative: research has proven that a relationship with a loving God can heal people from their inner demons that criticize, accuse and condemn us. Perhaps you have altogether lacked a father or a mother. It is not easy, but a deep and prolonged experience of faith, hope and love can help you. The followers of Jesus found healing when they discovered that they too could have a relationship with God in the way that Jesus had a relationship with his heavenly Father. That is why so much of Christian worship (Christmas, Easter, Baptism and Eucharist) is meant to make us relive the experience of Jesus.

Loving here and now

Bad religion can ruin your soul. Any healthy form of religion brings people within that safe and uplifting zone: where they feel God’s loving presence and hear his guiding voice at the same time. His loving presence alone would reduce us to self-indulging spiritual toddlers, unable to build solid relations and communities. His guiding voice alone might make us critical of ourselves and others, destroying our relations and communities. It is in the combination that we can grow as his children to fully developed men and women, resembling him in our capacity to love.

This is why in the Thora, God does not only ask Moses to transmit to the children of Israel the guidance of the Ten Commandments, but also to make the priests bless them regularly (Numbers 6:24-26) with the following words:

“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”