The Book: On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are / quote 12 of 101

God the Father has become ridiculous

Frankly, the image of God the Father has become ridiculous—that is, unless you read Saint Thomas Aquinas or Martin Buber or Paul Tillich, and realize that you can be a devout Jew or Christian without having to believe, literally, in the Cosmic Male Parent. Even then, it is difficult not to feel the force of the image, because images sway our emotions more deeply than conceptions. As a devout Christian you would be saying day after day the prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven,” and eventually it gets you: you are relating emotionally to IT as to an idealized father—male, loving but stern, and a personal being quite other than yourself.

Saved 30 December 2015 / www.goodreads.com ↗

#fathers #emotions #image-of-God #parents #images

Related / other sources, sharing tags

Dismissing a child's grief over a goldfish

How might the attitudes of discouraging or ignoring emotions play out in real life? Imagine that the family goldfish, the only pet your 3-year-old son Kyle…

Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) #emotions #death #parents #children

Handling emotions predicts a child's happiness

Parents face many issues on a daily basis in the raising of kids, but not all of them affect how their children turn out. There is one that does. How you deal…

Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) #emotions #happiness #parents #empathy

Let children see you make up after a fight

Even in an emotionally stable home, one without regular marital hostility, there will be fights. Fortunately, research shows that the amount of fighting…

Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) #marriage #children #parents #emotions

Over-attentive parents smother attachment

Emotional surveillance comes with a caveat, however, for it is possible to give too much of a good thing. In the late 1980s, researchers were somewhat…

Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) #attachment #parents #emotions

Sleep loss makes new parents hostile

Sleep-deprived people become irritable—far more irritable—than people who are not. Subjects saddled with sleep debt typically suffer a 91 percent loss in…

Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) #sleep #emotions #marriage #parents

Teaching a child to name jealousy

“I don’t like it,” the 3-year-old muttered to herself as the guests left. Miserable throughout her older sister’s birthday party, she was now growing angry…

Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina) #emotions #feelings #language #parents