Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

A son or daughter is flesh, and not a shirt. I am not a father but as a son I know how visceral the relationship between the two is. Thus parricide is a monstrous crime, just as pedophilia between a father and a daughter is, as in the case of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who kept his daughter in a prison cell for 24 years together with three of the seven children she bore him.

Our human condition is deeply questioned by cases such as these. How much iniquity are we capable of? It was not a father who was affected by drugs who threw his child out of the window nor was it someone illiterate living in the slums of the world who enslaved and abused his own daughter. The former is a lawyer in Brazil™s most modern metropolis and the latter is an Austrian electrical engineer.

People express uncontrolled indignation in cases such as these. Hundreds flock to seek vengeance by standing outside the homes of the accused. The media keeps stirring the news for seldom do they get such press. How can a father kill his daughter or mistrust her by jailing, torturing and raping her?

”Curtain they say in the theatre when changing acts. Are you a Christian? Do you believe that God the Father assassinated his Son on the cross because he was offended by our sins? What sort of a god is that who demands the death of His own Son as reparation to placate his own anger? Why isn™t that god cursed just like the fathers mentioned above? Why must we accept that the most horrendous of all parricides took place at Golgotha? How can we reconcile the idea of the God of Love with the belief in a god of parricide who sends us Jesus so that he can be arrested, tortured, humiliated and nailed on a cross?

In literary hermeneutics we have what is known as the migration of the senses, which the ancient Greeks called dipticon. We see it in stained glass windows in churches “ Moses on one side, Jesus on the other. To an observer the meaning of one is transferred to the other “ Jesus is the new Moses. This migration of the senses comes about when we compare the Old and the New Testaments.

Genesis (22:1-18) tells that Yahweh demanded that Abraham sacrifice his only son Isaac as proof of his faith. The patriarch climbed the mountain prepared to kill the boy. When he was certain that Abraham would not hesitate in the act of parricide, Yahweh was satisfied, he took Abraham™s hand and avoided Isaac™s death.

God himself is supposed to have handed his Son over to death on Calvary for the redemption of our sins. If God practises parricide, why is there so much indignation when one of our own kind practises it? This theological view gives us the conviction that we are sinners. Guilt. However, we should experience, above all, the grace of being sons of God. Love.

Biblical authors projected into their writings categories which were part of the culture they breathed. Abraham, who was reared in polytheism and was accustomed to worshiping through offering the first fruits “ from the harvest to the first born “ discovers, on the mountain, that contrary to other gods, Yahweh does not want death, he wants life. ”I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore (22:17). When he discovers that Yahweh is the God of Life, Abraham does not sacrifice his son.

By the same token, Jesus was not killed by the will of God but by the wickedness of men. The cross is not the culmination of a tragedy whose script was written “ or wished “ by a perverse and parricidal divine author. Jesus died as a political prisoner, assassinated by decision of the powers which dominated Palestine in the First century. He dared to announce, during Caesar™s reign, another reign – God™s. He dared to ”profane the Temple at Jerusalem, calling it a ”den of thieves (Mt.21:13) and attacked money changers who did business with the consent of those responsible for religious services.

The God of Jesus was not a despot. He was a loving Father whom the Son called ”Abba (Mk 14:16), an Aramaic word which means ”Dear Daddy. Jesus did not come to point his finger and accuse us of being incorrigible sinners. He came to reveal to us that ”As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love (John 15:9)

In spite of our sins there is salvation because God is a loving and merciful Father/Mother. We were created in His image and likeness and from Him we receive, in our spirit, His Spirit. However, we must love one another as we are loved by Him.

*Frei Betto is a writer and together with Leonardo Boff, wrote ”Mística e Espiritualidade (Mysticism and Spirituality) (Garamond.
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ABOUT THE AUTOR

He is a Brazilian Dominican with an international reputation as a liberation theologian.
Within Brazil he is equally famous as a writer, with over 52 books to his name.  In 1985 he won Brazil™s most important literary prize, the Jabuti, and was elected Intellectual of the Year by the members of the Brazilian Writers™ Union.

Frei Betto has always been active in Brazilian social movements, and has been an adviser to the Church™s ministry to workers in Sáo Paulo™s industrial belt, to the Church base communities, and to the Landless Rural Workers™ Movement (MST).