Perceptions of God as an Absentee Parent
Try asking the question, “Have you seen the movie Fight Club? ... And the second is drawn from that: our relationship with God is like our relationship to our fathers. ... That’s when I wrote Fight Club”
Is that who God is? Palahniuk continues: “In our culture where fathers are sort of absent, and where father are no longer a huge item of respect, or discipline, or whatever – if we’ve already been using that metaphor to describe God, and then the real thing in society, the father, breaks down, what happens to our idea of God?”
Fred Stoeker, in his book Every Man’s Battle, relates the advice his long-time Christian wife gives him regarding the source of his feelings of guilt and feelings of unworthiness of God. ... “What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God [. ... If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God? ... ] What you end up doing, is you spend your life searching for a father and God” (Palahniuk 140, 141).
At this point Palahniuk, or Palahniuk’s character, draws a shocking conclusion about God. “’What you have to consider,” he says, ‘is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. ... ’ How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate is better than his indifference. If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ... ] Unless we get God’s attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.
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