by J. R. Practix

Abba: (n.) (in the New Testament) An intimate term for God as Father.

A friend of mine once said that if you think about God too much you go crazy. He also believed if you lick the back of a frog, it was like taking LSD. He had a lot of ideas. He didn’t mind sharing them. He felt it was his duty to inform the world of tiny pieces of information, even though many of them were yet unconfirmed.

I don’t think it’s how MUCH you think about God that makes you crazy–but some of the beliefs you can land on certainly alienate you from your fellow-humans.

• God is all-powerful.
• God is mean.
• God is American.
• God is Jewish.
• God is Arab.
• God is rock and roll.

Each one of those particular incarnations of the Almighty has its own personality, style and demeanor. I guess of all the choices available, thinking of Him or Her as a Father is pretty good–if you mean father as in the dad we all wish we had instead of the substitute-teacher-figure who ended up in our home classroom.

If God is a dad, who would he be?

My choice would be Harrison Ford as the President in Air Force One. If you don’t remember the movie, even though the plane is hijacked by Russian subversives with really bad accents, Harrison, as the President, decides to stay onboard, fight them and save his family. He does a whole bunch of brave stuff that you know he would not really be able to do, but disbelieving that he was willing would take a lot of the fun away from the story.

Yeah, God could be Harrison Ford.

I don’t know if it would be advantageous to me to think of God as my ACTUAL dad. I mean, I don’t have anything against him. He was a small, German man who normally didn’t say more than six things during the week and five of those were explanations on why he wasn’t talking. No, I couldn’t really tolerate a silent God. You’d always be wondering why He ceased to communicate.

But I kind of like the idea of God fighting for me. I kind of like the idea of God being that kind of Father.

Of course, according to my friend’s philosophy, I’ve already talked enough about God to earn a 72-hour hold at Bellevue.