The Sky Father

 

Friend Xerxes persists in imagining the Christian God as a “bearded old man in the sky.” 

This is not the Christian conception of God. It seems to be more common among atheists.

Xerxes complains that image “will get in the way of any other understandings of God that may come your way.”

If so, this bearded sky-father gets in the way of the Christian or Jewish conception of God, it is actually Satanic, an anti-Christ.

And I think Xerxes is right here. The image is sinister.

Christians conceive of God is as a man of thirty or so with Semitic features, not in the sky but in the Middle East. This is how he chose to reveal himself to us.

For Jews, any physical depiction of God is blasphemous—including as an old man in the sky. For this reason, any depiction of God the Father is prohibited in Orthodox iconography. In the West, until about the 13th century, he was only depicted as a giant hand or eye, as seen on the US dollar bill.

God the Father as depicted on the US dollar.

It is true that we do now see the image in some churches, although far less often than images of Jesus. This bearded sky father is famously featured in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo's God the Creator

So where does he come from?

No doubt in part from Jesus’s reference to God as “father.” The father of a thirty-year old man would presumably look at least fifty. 

But this is theologically nonsensical, since God the Father cannot age, and so cannot be any age in particular. Age implies change over time.

There is also one reference in the Book of Daniel, to a figure called the “Ancient of Days.”

“I watched until thrones were placed,

    and one who was ancient of days sat.

His clothing was white as snow,

    and the hair of his head like pure wool.

His throne was fiery flames.”

Is this a vision of God the Father? Apocalyptic literature is difficult to interpret. Different authorities have different interpretations. Orthodoxy says this figure is Jesus. Some say it is Jesus as cosmocrator, world ruler, at the end of time. Indeed, the description of Jesus in the Book of Revelations is similar:

“… someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire”

William Blake saw it as Satan, given hegemony over the earth. 

“Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.’”

Blake's satanic "Ancient of Days," Urizen

 

But if it is God the Father, or whoever it is, there is no definite warrant here for a beard, which is consistent in the iconography, and his throne in Daniel’s dream is on the shore of the sea, not in the sky.

The grey-bearded god sitting on a cloud hurling thunderbolts is, more plausibly, Zeus, the Greek “sky-god” and “father of the gods.”

Zeus

As a pagan god, he is, in Christian or Jewish terms, a demon.

This is not encouraging.

He also seems to have something in common with Santa Claus: both elderly men with long white beards. There is no reason, after all, to portray the real Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, as an old man with a white beard. He might as well be shown at any age. In early representations, he has no white beard.

St. Nicholas of Myrna

There just does seem to be an urge to insert this figure of a bearded rich and authoritative old man as some kind of substitute for Jesus: as an image of the divine, and as a symbol for Christmas. 

"Father Christmas"

And I think, in practical terms, it is a barrier to many to knowing Christ. Especially for those who have had abusive parents, or bad experiences with authority, this image of God as a crowned ancestor has to be sinister.

I suspect bad parents, evildoers, and civil authorities of having snuck it in over time as an actual attempt to subvert and co-opt the Christian message.

Did they do it consciously and systematically? No need to assume so. The Devil works though a thousand, a million, little impulses, through our unreflective instincts.

Gods of Clay

Atheists seem always to refer to the Judeo-Christian God as an old man sitting on a cloud, a divine father. It is this God that they usually reject. They usually seem to make a point that it is this God that they reject, generally as “childish.”

But this is not the Judeo-Christian God.

Christianity has this thing called the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The father figure is only one. You are equally free to envision God instead as a friend, or a baby, or a bird, or a flame. All except as a friend are purely symbolic representations: it is as a friend that he chose to reveal himself to us. The point is to develop a personal relationship of love with God; use the image that works best in this way for you. It is no more intrinsically correct to imagine God as a father than as a lover: a metaphor found in the Song of Solomon, in St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul, and in devotional Hinduism’s Krishna Gopala cycle.

If atheists insist on seeing God as an angry father, and themselves as a child, this probably says something about their family relationships growing up; and perhaps our society’s devaluation of fatherhood; not about Christianity.

As for Judaism, conceiving of God an old man with a long grey beard is blasphemous. God himself is beyond our comprehension, and we must have no images of him.

Feminists, of course, make much of making God feminine; a divine Mother. They miss the point. Unless they are lesbian, Christian women have the traditional advantage. It is sick narcissism to think that it is about gaining power by making God in your own image.

How much power did Christians gain by imaging God as a crucified criminal, then?