God is Our Parent

I have some maxims I live by . . . little nuggets of truth that have served me well over the years. I don't talk much about them, but there are always there, in my head, rearing their neon sign when something in my life, or the lives of those around me, goes wrong.

One of those maxims goes like this: If you continue to treat a child as if they are the center of the universe, eventually they begin to believe it.

Today, in my class with Brueggemann he took that maxim from an 80 m.p.h. fastball to a 98 m.p.h (high and tight).

In certain sections of Torah, where God is depicted as a parent, we "Hall-Mark-ize" the stories. The discussion took several interesting turns and then came to a climax when Bruggemann told us about the work of D.W. Winnicott, an English Psychiatrist.

Winnicott's conclusion/contribution could be summarized this way: The health of almost any child is dependent upon a mother (parent) being "good enough"--that is, in the early days of the child, the mother must give herself over completely over to the health of the child. He defines "good enough" as being present, attentive, caring, present, and responsive. If the mother is unfit, psychopathic, negligent, absent, unsympathetic, the child (as an infant) will know within the first two weeks following the birth.

If the mother does not respond to the child's acting out. The child learns to act out, or perform in order that the mother will respond. Within the first month, the baby has developed two "selves" . . . the real self and the artificial self.

At about two years of age, the child must withdraw this constant attention lest the child become a narcissistic child who comes to seminary and can't handle an A-. We see this in some suburban parents who coddle and hover over their children who make them feel (which they believe) they are the center of the universe."

Is Yahweh a "good-enough" mother? This is question running underneath the story of the Old Testament. At times he comes near and pays intense attention to the children. But God also understands that as the child grows, he/she must learn to learn to walk without the constant attention of the parent.

For the contemporary church, many pastors and ministers have to learn how to deal with people who have been abandoned by their mothers and fathers and need "constant parental attention."
Ministers spend an inordinate amount of time trying to feel a need/missing space that they could never possibly fill.

By the way, a "not good enough" mother/father might be a stay-at-home mother/father, a working successful woman/man, a woman/man who lives in both worlds. The point is not to argue about social class warfare that exists in American and British culture . . . but to point out the central element of a parent's relationship to their child and the way in which our cultures are reaping the benefits and tragedies of abandoned children.