The Judge

"Perhaps it's time I wrote about Fathers and Sons, in memory of my boy, my precious Hamnet."

MARTHA: 

Hamnet? 

SHAKES-SPEARE: 

That's him. 

MARTHA: 

HamNET? 

SHAKES-SPEARE: 

What's wrong with that? 

There’s a fatherly aspect, so here’s what God as a Father is like. 

• You can enter into a covenant with it, so you can make a bargain with it. 

Now, you think about that. Money is like that, because money is a bargain you make with the future. We structured our world so that you can negotiate with the future. I don’t think that we would have got to the point where we could do that without having this idea to begin with. 

You can act as if The Future’s a reality; there’s a spirit of tradition that enables you to act as if the future is something that can be bargained with. 

That’s why you make sacrifices. The sacrifices were acted out for a very long period of time, and now they’re psychological. We know that you can sacrifice something valuable in the present and expect that you’re negotiating with something that’s representing the transcendent future. That’s an amazing human discovery. No other creature can do that, to act as if The Future is real, to know that you can bargain with reality itself and that you can do it successfully. It’s unbelievable. 

• It responds to sacrifice. 

• It answers prayers. 

[ I’m not saying that any of this is true, by the way. I’m just saying what the cloud of ideas represents. ] 

• It punishes and rewards. 

• It judges and forgives. 

• It’s not Nature. 

One of the things weird about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that God and nature are not the same thing at all. Whatever God is, partially manifest in this logos, is something that stands outside of nature. I think that’s something like consciousness as abstracted from the natural world. 

• It built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. 

• It’s too powerful to be touched. 

• It granted free will. 

• Distance from it is hell. 

• Distance from it is death.

• It reveals itself in dogma and in mystical experience, and 

• It is The Law. 

That’s sort of like the fatherly aspect.

"Everyone Wants Atticus Finch Until There's a Dead Hooker in The Bathtub."

The Son-like aspect : 

• It speaks chaos into order. 

•It slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. 

• It finds Gold. 

• It rescues virgins. 

• It is the body and blood of Christ. 

• It is a tragic victim, scapegoat, and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. 

• It cares for the outcast. 

• It dies and is reborn. 

• It is The King of Kings and hero of heroes. 

•It’s not the state, but is both the fulfilment and critic of the state. 

• It dwells in the perfect house. It is aiming at paradise or heaven. 

• It can rescue from hell. 

• It cares for the outcast. 

• It is the foundation and the cornerstone that was rejected. 

• It is the spirit of the law.