Show Us The Father...

I have been thinking a lot recently about the relationship between the Father and the Son. Here is what the Scriptures say:

Jesus said to [Thomas], “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Phillip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Phillip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves” (John 14:6-11).

I must admit that certain spiritual practices do not seem very Christian to me. Some of these practices supposedly help Christians “see” the Father have a relationship with the Father alone. However from John 14, it is clear that Christ is quite insulted by this because it fails to recognize the fact that the fullness of God has been manifested in the person of Jesus. Thus, those who want to do the Father’s will only have to look to the Son. It is not correct to try to unite our spirits with some divine, omnipresent energy. It is not correct to start with the Son and try to go beyond to the Father. The Son is not an intermediate being that we must go beyond to understand God more fully. If we want to understand the Father and do his Will, we follow the Son and his will. When we attempt to unite our spirit with some spirit in the sky, we create our own God, a God similar to a Hindu or Buddhist deity where each god is one aspect of the divine being. Christ is not one-third God, nor is he only an aspect of God. All that the Father wills, the Son has manifested. Those who want to go beyond Christ do not seem to understand that Christ is the fullness of God. 

So, when we ask like Phillip, “Show us the Father” we are telling Christ that we do not know him.

Genesis 10-12

In today's reading we read about the building of the Tower of Babel. From this account, we learn something very essential about our faith. Trust in God in all things, lest we think we can do everything ourselves and lose His favor. Here is God's response to the building of the Tower:

"The Lord said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they will do will be impossible for them' " (Genesis 11:6).

God did not want the ancient people to become proud and forget their God, and He knew that the success of building the Tower would convince these ancient people that anything was possible without the help of God. God is testing us. We must praise God in good times and in bad. Will we be ready to rely on Him when we attempt something, whether mundane or extraordinary?

There is a greater story though that has just begun: the story of Abram. Abram was old and yet he trusted God enough to leave his homeland for a place foreign to him: Haran. Abram and his family became Bedouins in a world so unsafe and harsh. From Haran, Abram and Sarai moved to Egypt when the famine at Haran was unbearable. There, Abram did not present himself in a righteous way before Pharoah. Abram allowed Pharaoh to marry Sarai. His explanation: Abram was afraid that Pharaoh would get so jealous of the former that he would kill Abram to take Sarai. Abram was certainly not blameless, but somehow this man was chosen to become the father of the great nation: Israel.

(Tomorrow's reading is Genesis 13-15)