On Fathers II

Goodness is a dangerous thing in the midst of men. A child is quickly taught by his elders to keep a wary eye when dealing with his peers to avoid the pits they had once fallen into. It is hard to find real love from one human to another, more so in these times. Christ himself prophesied, because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. Men and women have waxed so cold to one another, eating each other up, plotting and conspiring to make downfall the order of the day. It has become expected. Yet, there is no love without goodness and it cannot be said that one expressed affection without shining the light of benevolence.

The situation of a mother with her child is one anomaly. Philosophers say that a society that does not hold the symbol of the mother and her infant as sacred falls apart in time. This is because the one thing that shines the light of the divine amidst our filthiness is embodied in the love of the mother for her child. She really has no other thing to give her offspring than goodness even if her understanding of goodness is most probably skewed; in her heart, this child must only know the light of tender affection. But, the mother was not the only one who caused the existence of this infant (the infant being a type of all people who ever lived), it has a father too. Yet, all too often the goodness of the mother smothers out that which the father could ever muster. Why this is so often the case is a matter for examination but this much has been made clear over the course of mankind, the goodness of the mother which smothers out the father’s presence, also smothers out the child itself.

Let’s take a look at a father in the Bible. His name was Solomon. He was not just the father of a child but of a nation. On a fateful day, two prostitutes, new mothers, brought a case hastily to his court for adjudication. You see, the night before, one of them, by the account of the other, had smothered her newborn to death in her sleep. Upon seeing the mishap, she had then taken the living child from the breast of her housemate and replaced it with her own dead child. The next morning when the mother of the living child had awoken to suckle her baby, she of course saw the child was dead. She was horrified. And yet, she looked closely upon the child and saw. ‘This is not my child,’ she cried, ‘That bitch has taken my baby and replaced it with her dead child.’ Now, of course, it was her word against the alleged culprit’s so naturally, the matter feel on the lap of the young father and king.

You must see there is something peculiar here about the loving embrace of a new mother from the goodly kind and the malevolent kind. For, just because a mother loves her child does not negate the dysfunction of her interaction with it, as the birth of her child cannot change who she always was. But there remains a remedy to the situation: it takes two to make a baby and it of course follows that it takes two to raise one. This is where Father Solomon comes in.

Solomon could hear these two women, of a rather questionable vocation, claiming a living child and rejecting the dead one and was probably made to think, one of these women is a murderer and a liar and the other is guilty of being an close associate of a murderer and a liar, should either of them even be allowed to be mothers in the first place? What fate such a child would be sentenced to if I give it to one of these monsters? What certainty is there that, even if I do hand it to the rightful mother, she would not end up smothering it to death in a less literal way in the future? So he decides, ‘Cut the baby in half, give each half to the both of them, let them bury their babies.’

Now, here is where the ball drops. One of the prostitutes cries out in anguish, ‘No! No! Please, my lord, do not do this! I beg of you. Don’t kill my baby!! Give it to her. Give my baby to her. Let her keep it. Just don’t kill my baby.’ And the sword stopped mid-flight. The young king looks upon the broken woman and says, ‘She’s not a monster. She’s the mother of the child. Give her her baby.’

One must wonder what made that harlot sacrifice her child that way, just to prevent it from dying. What made her give up her baby to the culprit, relinquish her motherhood just so the child could continue to enjoy the light of life? That is the proof of true goodness. Unless, the mother is willing to give up autonomy of her offspring and let the seeming rashness of a father’s wisdom determine its growth, she will ruin her child. Her wisdom is inadequate, her affectionate bears its form of insidious darkness which is stroked when made an idol. The end is death.

This is the case I make for a space for the unique goodness of fathers. That the soul of the child might not be forfeit. But this is concerning the child. How about the father himself? What becomes of him if he is kept from being a father of his children?