Abba

Synopsis: In this teaching we learn more about Jesus' favorite term for God - Daddy - and wonder why it hasn't stuck. There are historical and very human reasons why we are more familiar with Kingly God, a Judge-Holding-Court, and a an unmoved mover, which have also kept Jesus' term largely unpopular even now. Yet as Jesus followers, should we be following Jesus' lead and letting the term work into our way of being in the world?

How have you been taught to address God? When you pray, what names of God have you used the most?

I think in my early years I simply addressed God as “God” or “Dear God”. For a good stretch when I entered into a season of my faith where I began to “own” it rather than just continue with what I’d been given, I used “Lord” a lot. I have not used “Father” much because it is so gender specific. Also, as a pastor, I know that referencing God as “Father” is deeply troubling to people who have experienced abuse.

Why do we address God with different names? Where did we learn how to address God?

I learned to address God the way I did from my family and tradition. We went to church all the time, so I heard lots of prayers. We prayed before dinner, so I heard those, too. I suppose I adopted a lot of the language from the faith leaders I admired when I began to own the faith for myself.

How has Western civilization addressed God over time across varying theologies?

In general, according to Alfred North Whitehead, we have viewed God as an imperial leader writ large, or the giver and enforcer of moral law, or as Aristotle’s “unmoved mover”. Whitehead recognized that “in the Galilean origin of Christianity there is yet another suggestion which does not fit very well with any of the three main strands of thought. It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds its purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future, for it finds its own reward in the immediate present” (Process and Reality, 343).

When has your understanding of and naming of God been based on your lived experienced?

Especially in the Old Testament, characters described their experience of God with a new name attached to God. There are, therefore, hundreds of names describing their experiences. This is somewhat true in the New Testament as well, but not to the same degree. Personally, my experience has shaped my understanding of God. When I was young, God was more or less a distant God who cared from afar. God’s benevolence was assured, but so were God’s ethical instructions. I was always a little fuzzy about what would happen if I crossed the line – I was instructed that it would not be good news! I experienced a very palpable presence of God in High School that brought God into my very being. God at that point became extremely personal and alive. In college, my experience of God’s grace was overwhelming, and I found myself honoring God as Lord of my life – a willing offering of myself to God’s leadership. As my theology shifted with continual learning and experience, some of the personal nature of God went fuzzy – sort of – it was just different. Today I recognize the expansiveness of God and the nearness of God and am learning to live in and with both.

When have you addressed God based on your hopes?

Sometimes the way we address God says more about our hopes than about God. When we want vengeance, we address God as one who surely agrees with us to exact justice where we see fit. Our enemies become God’s enemies, we think, so we ask the Lord of Heaven’s Armies to enter battle. Human nature is such that we are often blind to this reality in the moment, and assume we are right, which can embolden us to believe any number of things that do not really reflect the nature of God – and actually do harm. Unfortunately, there are unnumberable examples of this throughout history where the name of God was used to bring sometimes horrific hardship on millions of people. Today, God is named as particularly for our nation, creating a divinely appointed nationalism that history warns us will never end well.

Why does it matter how we address God?

How we address God impacts our personal experience and relationship with God individually and can significantly impact an entire culture’s experience as well, for better or worse. How we address God – which is really reflective of what we understand to be the primary characteristics of God – is very, very important and relevant to all of humanity and creation itself.

How did Jesus address God? What does that say about his experience and hopes?

Jesus used the word “Abba” as his preferred name for God. Abba is often translated as “Father”, but that misses the mark. “Dad” or “Daddy” captures the intimacy Abba conveys. This is why it was so controversial when Jesus used it. In his context, God was referred to with great honor – high and lifted up – not with such familiar, intimate terminology. It was as unsettling as it was instructive. Yet this is the way Jesus understood God to be, which informed everything he did, how he saw the world, and how he engaged the world

Why didn’t Abba take better hold?

There were five things that happened over the course of history to detract from Jesus’ Abba (see John Cobb’s Jesus’ Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed).

1. The Vulgate – Jerome’s translation of the Bible into Latin. Although excellent, he translated two different Hebrew words – Shaddai and Yahweh – Almighty and Lord respectively. Viewing God as “Almighty” set in stone the assumption that God is omnipotent even though that’s not really accurate in regard to this naming. Shaddai could literally be translated as “the breasted one”, referring to mother-live qualities of God.

2. The Creeds – Church council answers to very contextualized problems. Instead of simply respecting what they were, they became idolized and viewed nearly as inerrant as the Bible, even when Jesus and Paul had other things to say. For instance, Paul viewed “faith” as trust and faithfulness, but the creeds came to mean the acceptance of ideas and the authority of the church.

3. Anselm of Canterbury – and 11th century theologian. Anselm is the theologian who popularized the idea of Jesus dying to satisfy God’s need of a sacrifice that only God can make (penal substitutionary atonement). Jesus himself did not teach about this and wasn’t part of his primary teaching or mission, yet it has become, for many, the primary reason for faith. This may be startling for many and may even seem heretical. Nope. Just history.

4. Natural law theory – Jesus taught that laws and ethics were to serve human well-being without getting in the way of love for neighbor. Instead, Christians replaced Mosaic law with a complex system that very closely resembled Greek ideologies. God became the Judge.

5. Biblical inerrancy – in our effort to give ourselves religious certainty, we made the Bible into something it was never intended to be. The well-meaning process led to bibliolatry and the sin of certainty. It is nearly impossible to consider questions of what has been established if the establishment itself is deemed perfect by God.

If we are Christians striving to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, what complicates our addressing God primarily as Abba?

Deciding to embrace the evocative name, Abba, as Jesus used to address God is a shock to our system. It goes against dominate paradigms within Christianity, bucking historical and orthodox convictions, and will eventually challenge our egocentric way of seeing the world. When we truly embrace “Daddy” for ourselves, it shapes how we think about ourselves. When we realize that God is not just our “Daddy” but also everyone else’s, it forces us to see the others as equally loved siblings instead of rivals. When we realize that “Daddy” also relates to creation itself in the same way, it surely must change our perspective regarding how we choose to care for the earth we call home.

In light of all of this, how do you wish to address God going forward?