God the Absent Father

Marco Mazzoleni, God the Father?

Not exactly absent...

(Image from Wikipedia)

In an article somewhat flawed by what I consider its partial misapplication of Robert Bellah's findings in Habits of the Heart, the prison chaplain Charles Colson remarks:

When I walk through the nation's cellblocks, I speak to kids about God the Father. They look at me as if I'd said a dirty word. Most don't know who their father is. They're like feral children, devoid of any kind of moral instruction. (Charles Colson, "Community of Memory," Christianity Today, October 2007)

I don't think that this reaction is due so much to "radical individualism" -- which is what Colson takes from Bellah and uses to explain criminality -- as it is to absent fathers.

Now, these absent fathers might be radical individualists, yet they might not be, so I'd be careful about drawing too direct a connection on that point.

But I can understand the kids who react to the word "father" as though it were a "dirty word," for this word "father" lacks the resonance for me that it has for those who grew up with present, caring, reliable fathers.

"God the Grandfather" sounds better to my ears. I can't vouch for the kids in prison...