Inheritance: Who's Your Daddy Part Three
One of the strangest metaphors that evangelical
christians use in describing the relationship between man and God is that of
inheritance. From the first, the concentration on the Loving Father makes a
strange sound in Western ears: Fathers are not, by archetype and as a rule,
doting, loving and protective. They, after all, have work to do. The Big Empty
Spot in evangelical mythology is the Mother. Given the chance, europeans will
run breathlessly to a female figure (the Blessed Virgin Mary) as intercessor and
soft-hearted granter of mercy. Christ is supposed to be the intercessor with the
Father
(nobody
prays to the Father), and God is infinitely merciful--but let's be serious. Who
are you going to talk to--the Big Cheese or Mom?
The beneficence of a Mother god is
completely understandable: from the gift of life to the milk of the breast to
the care that young children, comfort, love, warmth, security, and solace all
are what the Mother gives. But insofar as Protestant evangelical christianity is
concerned, the Female simply does not exist. The loving Father, the loving Son,
even the elegant ethereal Holy Spirit is male. Not even by inversion--the Devil
is male too. No, like the snapshots after a divorce, that powerful human
spiritual experience is just scissored out of every picture. The most powerful
love most of us ever experience is not appropriated but
denied.
And so instead of all the mothering
metaphors that could be used, time and again, in order to hint how wonderful the
promised existence for the faithful will be, time after time they fall back on
that most peculiar of
metaphors--inheritance.
There's one thing
really wrong with the use of inheritance as a Wonderful Gift: it's a gift you
only get upon the death of the
father.
What, I may ask, is the good of
having this utterly fabulous inheritance if the old geezer won't kick it? You
can probably sit around at the old man's place, dependent on his generosity for
a fatted calf now and again (and not getting it when your friends come by), but
if you want to have the use of some of that capital to actually accomplish
something while you're young enough to get somewhere--well, we know how
that
story ends, hmmmm?
It's Saint Paul who starts
this--we faithful are co-heirs with Jesus. But big deal! Ol' Shaddai shows no
signs of even slowing down, does
he?
Roman Catholic Christianity allowed
the Female into the church, as Holy Mary, Mother of God--and in some ways She
nearly took the Church over. She could be beautiful and richly clothed, while
doing the same thing to Jesus would be pretty close to blasphemy. She could be
kind and warm and understanding--something that's hard to associate with the
wounded writhing bleeding figure in a loincloth of the crucifix. But along with
the opulence of the church and the hierarchy, the Blessed Virgin was thrown back
by the Reformation into the manger.
And so instead of the natural,
generous, abundant, prerational good of the mother, we have the eventual,
conditional, abstract, rationalized good of the father. And a thousand thousand
kindly faced preachers (all male) to tell me that of COURSE he loves you! He
loves you unconditionally! (less'n of course you sass 'im...) It's a wonderful,
marvelous gift that he's got for you--really! He really has it, and it's for
you!
And when you think about it, the
whole apocalyptic vision at the end of the Bible (as re-edited and
re-interpereted by Hal Lindsay) that is so much part of evangelical faith is
missing one important figure: God the Father. Woman in scarlet dress-check.
Honking big sea monster-check. Li'l Baby Jesus all grown up , having worked out
and in an extreme cyborg exoskeleton--check. Dad--Dad? Hey Dad! Anybody seen
Yahweh?
The apocalypse is the final
pageant--battle between Jesus and Satan, with continents exploding and the sky
rolling up like a windowshade--where Jesus and the faithful finally come into
their inheritance. In short, the evangelicals are looking forward eagerly to the
Death of God.
They can't admit that, of
course, even though that's where all the metaphors point. Christians become born
again as little children, destined to play around in the Mansion of their Father
forever and ever. But they're children both without a Mother and without the
prospect of adulthood. They can't grow up and claim the inheritance they've been
promised--because that involves the death of that father. (which of course they
wish for in their Left Behind
fever-dreams.)
I was wrong to say that
nobody prays to the Father--but they only do so when using the prayer Jesus
wrote himself. Paul never talked about being devoted to the Father, and it was
all downhill from there. How many churches are built to the Father? Not very
many, I'd guess. He probably comes in eleventh or twelfth, maybe ahead of St.
Rocco, if that. And why should they? What Jesus is supposed to have saved us
from, according to many theologians, is not Satan, but Dad.
But the infinitely kind, infinitely sweet,
infinitely caring Father that preachers talk about (and his similarity to the
Good Five Cent Cigar), for many people only serves to show up the emptiness of
that vision, that torn paper edge where the Mother should be. And lots and lots
of men (mainly) telling us that that Father's love is superior to everything
else, that that rational, conditional, and eventual love is utterly sublime,
even when our very cells hunger for something else.
And even they can't keep it up forever. Even
they fantasize of an inheritance. Even they fantasize of the gift God will give
us by dying and leaving the place to us. Because, even though Jesus walked the
earth, teaching and healing, and bringing mercy and redefining justice, starting
with Saul of Tarsus on down, the only thing they wanted from Jesus of Nazareth
was
his
inheritance--the gift we got upon his
death.
That's why, despite thousands of
years of solemn doctrine, I keep looking for the other halves of those
photographs. I bet she was beautiful--and I think it would explain a
lot.
Posted: Monday - June 25, 2007 at 06:53 PM