Getting Past Father/Son

Father=Whole/Son=Part of God

Not being Christian and already having had some experiences of God before I became a student of the Course I had a hard time with the Father/Son language of the Course. Some women have had a hard time with the masculine-gender-only aspect of the Course, but my issue was with the humanness of it. In this world father and son are distinctly different people yet in the Course I’m supposed to see Father and Son as One. A father is outside his son, yet I’m supposed to see the Father within the Son. Moreover, I have never experienced God as a parent in any form. God simply is for me. This aspect of the Course’s language made the Course’s message seem distant from my own experience.

Eventually I learned to look at the Father/Son language in another way: Father=Whole/Son=Part of God. God is Whole and Christ is Part of God. The separated “sons of God” are the separated “parts of God”. Some may find this too impersonal. Some prefer to read Father/Son as Parent/Child. Some change the gender to the feminine: Mother/Daughter. But I find the impersonal to bring clarity because the personal always involves ego and I’m trying to sort out what is ego and what is Spirit. And my experience of God’s Love is not the warm and fuzzy of the personal but the pure and joyous of the Spirit.

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Comments

carrie genevachild said…
I was surprised that I did not have difficulty with the masculine gender only, and all the references to Father, Son and brothers.

I just thought of it as Helen's language. Holy Spirit meets us where we are and uses our language.
2:02 PM
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