Conversations With My Sister, Part 3: The Angry Father

If we accept that Jesus was the messenger. Who was the Sender? If he is the Word, who is the Speaker?

Jesus brought a new vision of God to the Jews. He recast the "Distant Angry Lord God" of the Old Testament as the "Personal Loving Father God" of the New.

And for the Jews of his day, it was a comforting and welcome revelation.

But what of today?

Both these images of God are metaphors, as any intellectually honest churchman will tell you. And that being the case, what metaphor would Jesus use to describe God today?

For many people, the "Personal Loving Father God" has, in the course of 2000 years accumulated rather a lot of bad baggage. The image has been used, through no fault of its own—to justify practices inimical to the very principles Jesus articulated. And it has too often been merged with the "Distant Angry Lord God" image...that Jesus tried so hard to dispel.

(Mostly, of course, the Church has been a power for good. But the memory of injustice, cruelty and insult lingers, and taints the misused metaphor.)

How he would describe God to the seekers among us...to help us see him in a brand new way, and inspire us the way he inspired the Jews back in the day? What metaphor would he devise for the 21st Century?

Would he throw women a bone, and include a Feminine aspect?

Bet he would.

The Gunslinger