It is the question which I am still somewhat struggling with: Should the picture of God as a person - and more precisely, as a father - have a distinct place and be above all other metaphors for God that we find in the Christian tradition? In other words: God is portrayed variously in Christianity: as a rock, as a wind and/or spirit, as a fire, a vine, a tree, a lion; and then, of course, as a father, a mother, as a groom, a close friend, etc. many social/personal pictures. Is the father picture in any way privileged? Should it be?Privileging the image of the father in comparison with other pictures of God in Christianity is usually taken for granted. 'Our Father who art in Heaven': this is often understood as a rock-solid fact describing God himself directly. Other pictures of God are then thought to be 'only' metaphors, as if 'father' would be something else than a metaphor.
As Janet Soskice reminds us in her book Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender and Religious Language - referring to Paul Riceour's point - the title 'father' or 'daddy' for God had a surprise and subversive element in it when Jesus used it. This is at the very heart of what this metaphor is supposed to do. By using it so extensively and involving his followers into this language, Jesus was forcefully bringing home the point about God's intimate closeness to everyone; God is not distant, not anti-human, not available for religious or political establishment to 'use' Him. Instead, he is everybody's God, he is approachable, he is Abba-'daddy'.
When this important, indeed crucial, work of the father-metaphor is lost on us, 'father' becomes a fixed and eternalized part of God's nature in a way that is open to multitude of abuses and misunderstandings. And since the history of the extensive use of the father metaphor in Christianity brings with it a multitude of religious and moral errors, we should remind ourselves today more than ever that 'father' is just one of the metaphors for God. He is also a rock, a wind, a lion. Decentralizing the father image from its too fixed place in our God-talk and thinking about God can only help our real worship today.
It certainly made my faith more real and at the same time much less susceptible to the edge of the Freudian critique of theism - the criticism which has not, as much as I see, lost its power even today, however persistently it is declared to be old hat.
And most importantly, only when we decentralize the father metaphor from our God-talk, can Jesus' talk of God as a father (together with the Our Father prayer) again strike us as surprising. In this way, this fantastic metaphor can again do some of the work for which it was designed to do.
