Advent III | Everlasting Father

Several years ago I was mentoring a kind young man. He was very smart, a successful college athlete, teachable, and sincere in his desire to grow spiritually. I remember him mentioning that he’d been helped by a book exploring the idea of the father wound, and was especially keen on seeing his own father wound healed. His parents were divorced and his dad did seem to be a real piece of work.

There were certain self-destructive patterns in this young man’s life; burst of growth and confidence followed by periods of regression and tragic lostness. Running perpetually in the background was his complicated relationship with his dad.

As his graduation approached, the complexity of this relationship assumed the foreground. The events and gatherings surrounding his commencement had become a contested space for his parents; what had previously been a demilitarized zone began to flare in conflict. My friend was the epicenter of the conflagration, and it was taking its toll. We spoke more and more candidly about what was going on, especially the outbursts of anger his dad was exhibiting. Still, we spoke in generalities, and I counseled him from these generalities. But things were clearly very bad.

At one point he alluded to the types of angry texts he’d been receiving from his dad in response to perceived slights or offenses. “What does he say in these texts?” I asked.

“It’s pretty bad,” he answered.

“But what is the general message? What is being communicated?” I wanted to understand the nature of these transmissions and the double-bind my friend was laboring to negotiate.

“You want to read some?” he asked. I paused for a moment. Though I have mentored many men and women over the years, it is rare to have such direct access to the personal tributaries of their lives – especially from parents. This is holy ground.

“Only if you felt ok with sharing them and thought it might help me have a better sense for what you are dealing with.” I replied. I could tell this was increasingly hard for him to convey.

“I’m ok with it,” he said. “As long as the language doesn’t bother you.”

“I’m fine with some bad language,” I said.

He pulled out his phone and fiddled with it a bit, finding the last exchange with his dad. He handed it to me and the pixelated screen tore like a gash into the Inferno. As my thumb moved from top to bottom, scrolling down message after message after fiendish message, my eyes welled with tears.

“Is this typical of him?” I asked, glancing up to meet his eyes.

“Yeah.” he said. “This is pretty much the way he’s always talked to me.”

“I know you know this,” I told him in a solemn hush, “but this is very abusive.”

“I know,” he confirmed.

Every single word – hundreds of them, discharged like rounds from an assault weapon – were targeted to kill my wonderful young friend: a malicious, menacing, profanity-polluted barrage issuing from the screen of this man’s phone; issuing from the deranged soul of this man’s own father.

The father-wound. He knew – we know – but not the half of it. We deprecatingly call these “daddy issues” to conceal that these wounds are as ubiquitous as they are mortal. “Your wound is as deep as the sea,” wrote the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, “Who can heal you?” (Lam. 2:13)

Can Advent?

Isaiah’s Advent oracle announces a mysterious character with mysterious names. A child born to us radiantly piercing through gloom, darkness, degradation, and oppression; a son given to us resplendently shedding joy, light, glory, and peace. The prophet would have us call this magnificent boy by strange names: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God and, as all we father-wounded horde must confront, Everlasting Father. The promise of this name hits our ears and hearts with equal parts thrill and trepidation. Does it not?

The bane of the father-wound syndrome not only involves a rupture in our deepest sense of self the likes of which only a father-figure can inflict¹ but also a damage to our perception of the type of figure who alone might bring healing: a father. If it were seen pathologically, we might call it autoimmune. Put simply: the father wound makes us very unsure about fathers.

Your experience of your father may not be as brutal as that of my young friend. Or it may be far more brutal. My friend would say that the stuff he shared with me was only the tip of the iceberg with his own dad. This wound can result from fathers who dominate, dictate, lambaste, abandon, abuse, betray, neglect, or even die. The question is: what did I need from my dad that he couldn’t or wouldn’t give? (Or how did he take when I needed him to give?) The father-wound often takes the form of a monumental question in our lives that goes unanswered and seems unanswerable.

Advent suggests an answer and, simultaneously, confirms what my friend and the rest of us unconsciously suspect: our daddy issues are actually everlasting father issues. But where to begin? With the message the father-wound has brought with it. As John Eldridge (the author of the book my friend had been reading) writes, “every wound, whether it is assaultive or passive, delivers with it a message. The message feels final and true, absolutely true, because it is delivered with such force.” Countless harms and losses may have been suffered through these wounding events—many irreparable and irretrievable—yet their most enduring legacy is the spin they put on our stories; a spin that so often becomes a death spiral. If you thought for a bit and pulled out a piece of paper right now, you could probably scratch out the gist. For each of us, Advent might be the plot twist!

The Hebrew word everlasting is not a sterile descriptor of duration, but might be translated “of old” or even “forever.” It is an idea that looks back as far as can be conceived, then does the same looking forward: a father with no beginning and no end and, importantly, no disruption. A never-failing father. And of course the title of father—abba— is reciprocal in nature. There are no fathers without daughters and sons. That there is an Everlasting Father means that there are everlasting children; beloved ones at that.

Augustine (one with a decidedly messy relationship with his own philandering father who died when he was seventeen) describes how God might bind up our wounds “healing sometimes by the principle of contrarity, sometimes by that of similarity.” In this regard, Advent does double duty. We find that, yes, we are indeed wounded in a fatherly way, thus the wound takes the shape of a father. Yet it is just the shape of this fatherly wounding most needing contrarity. The wound is jagged and jarring in its dissimilarity to our mysterious and primeval knowledge of the father for whom we were meant. The prophet’s words break like dawn pouring through these rips and rifts; the illumination of another land and maybe a murmuring voice.

Henri Noewen writes, “I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love wherever it is heard.” This true voice of love, he later adds, “is a very soft and gentle voice speaking to me in the most hidden places of my being.” The pulsating contrarity of the voice speaks again and again, “beloved.”

Noewen concludes,

Here is the God I want to believe in: a Father who, from the beginning of creation, has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing, never forcing himself on anyone, but always waiting; never letting his arms drop down in despair, but always hoping that his children will return so that he can speak words of love to them and let his tired arms rest on their shoulders. His only desire is to bless.

The prophet’s oracle is for all who “walk in darkness” and those who “live in a dark land” (Is. 9:1-7); a word of a glorious hope for “Galilee of the Gentiles,” that is a land of those from every family. A little boy, our boy, come to be our Everlasting Father! Isaiah called him by the name Immanuel, “God with us,” though we came to know him as Jesus. This may problematize our trinitarian formulas: the Son is called the Everlasting Father? How does that work? If anything, this should remind us that behind all the accommodations of our human language and concepts, the triune God would encompass us in an everlasting father-love tender and immense enough to bind up even the deepest father-wounds.

I’m sad to say my friend has had his share of lostness since our times together; there is scant evidence that things ever improved with his dad. We are, all of us, among the walking wounded. Both scripture and epigenetics attest to the fact that the sins of the fathers are visited upon many generations. Wounded people wound people. I see this in my complicated relationship with my own dad, knowing full well that this was the same with his dad and his dad’s dad. I know as I write that my own wounds will be passed down to my kids and through the generations. I’m afraid this never gets less complex.

Brennan Manning was known for his writings on this topic, publishing the landmark book Abba’s Child in 1994. He wrote, “My identity as Abba’s child is not an abstraction or a tap dance into religiosity. It is the core truth of my existence.” While this is true, Manning spent his life devastatingly crippled by the wounding of his own alcoholic and absent father. Through many personal defeats, including countless relapses in his fierce battles with alcoholism, he sought imperfectly to claim this identity. But it was eternally his regardless.

Henri Noewen also suffered numerous terrible bouts with depression throughout his life, wandering from the Father’s love and becoming again “a lost soul,” something he termed “the pathology of darkness.” He would liken the Christian life to a “long and arduous” journey home. My therapist has called it a life-long conversion, and I think he’s right.

But this is Advent’s message for my friend and me, for Brennan and Henri, for St. Augustine and you and everyone else: you are beloved by the Everlasting Father. It is a love that never falters or diminishes. Advent’s child shall be called Everlasting Father that we may be emboldened to reclaim our identities as beloved children. Time out of every human mind, this father-love has extended itself to our race, and it is ours to inherit for days without end. Even now, as you read these words it extends to you and into your father-shaped wound.

John, who in his own Advent telling referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” wrote, “Behold what manner of love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God; and so we are.” John laments that we, with Jesus, are unknown as such; and thus mistreated—wounded. Yet the beloved disciple is emphatic! “Beloved,” he writes, “we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” (1 Jn. 3:1-3)

We must keep in mind that Advent is an uncompleted arc: this child has come, he has manifested the everlasting love of the Father, he has borne our griefs, carried our sorrows, and we, by his wounds, can find healing. But Advent’s glorious Son and Father shall return again decisively, restoring us entirely to ourselves and to Himself. The everlasting father-wounds of a thousand generations shall cure instantly in the loving encounter.

This is the overture of Advent. The Everlasting Father bids us lay claim to our belovedness. It is a light spilling out through our father-wounds by which we may stumble our way home—to what Augustine called “the realm of love”—ending, in Noewen’s words, the “destructive search among the wrong people and in the wrong places for what can only be found in the house of my Father.”

Advent restores us to our senses, uttering the final, absolutely true, yet gentle word beloved; beckoning us homeward to the house of the Everlasting Father, where his outstretched hands ever await.

His only desire is to bless.

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1. I’m actually not convinced this is exclusive to fathers versus mothers or simply parents and caregivers, but, for the sake of the name Isaiah presents we will discuss this with regard to the father-child relationship. Some differentiate father-wounds from mother-wounds. In fact, John Eldridge, in the book I believe my friend was reading at the time, writes, “No matter how good your life may have seemed to you, you live in a broken world full of broken people. Your mother and father, no matter how wonderful, couldn’t have been perfect. She is a daughter of Eve, and he is a son of Adam. So there is no crossing through this country without taking a wound. They may come from other sources–a brother, an uncle, a coach, or a stranger. But come they do.” (Wild at Heart chapter 4) ↩︎