The Father-Mother God

The Fifth Commandment, though it may seem almost the easiest to understand of the ten words of the Decalogue, is, in some ways, perhaps the most difficult. The social relations of the centuries before the Christian era were scarcely those of to-day, and what seems a very natural and almost unnecessary requirement in the twentieth century was hedged with all sorts of difficulties in the days of Moses. It seems to be quite apparent that the effort to avoid responsibility for the help of parents was not only common then, but was even connived at by the priests. Thus the word honor seems to have enjoyed a very much more comprehensive meaning than mere respect, and to have included both clothing and feeding. This, presumably, was what Christ Jesus was alluding to when he accused the scribes and Pharisees of making of no account the law. "For Moses," he declared, "said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: but ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye." What Jesus meant was quite simple. Corban was the expression for something put aside for sacrifice, and so given to God. Therefore, the priests were encouraging the man to neglect honoring his father and mother, by the subterfuge that what they needed was already dedicated to God. In this way the plain meaning of the Commandment was set aside by a mere quibble.

Jesus' demand was for a return to the obvious meaning of the Commandment. But the Hebrew Scriptures were at all times an opportunity for enforcing the spiritual truth by means of material illustration, and Jesus no doubt saw clearly that the man who did not honor his material father and mother would be incapable of honoring his spiritual Father-Mother, God. The writer of the first epistle of John makes this quite clear, when he says, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" Now, though Jesus was insistent that men should honor their material parents, he was equally clear that the real Father and Mother of all mankind was God, Principle. He told the Pharisees plainly that the material father was personified evil, meaning undoubtedly by this the belief that human generation was not the reality, but that spiritual creation was. And this he made equally clear to the multitude when he insisted, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." And this is surely what Mrs. Eddy is referring to when she writes, on page 416 of Science and Health, "The material body, which you call me, is mortal mind, and this mind is material in sensation, even as the body, which has originated from this material sense and been developed according to it, is material. This materialism of parent and child is only in mortal mind, as the dead body proves; for when the mortal has resigned his body to dust, the body is no longer the parent, even in appearance."

The spiritual lesson, then, which has to be derived from the superficial material meaning of the Commandment, is that which Jesus drew, and which Mrs. Eddy has explained in Science and Health. It is that the real Father-Mother is God, and that man, in the image and likeness of God, cannot be a human being, but must be a divine idea. In this way only can the human family be made one, and in this way only is it possible to understand what Jesus meant when, in the press of the crowd, he replied to those who declared that his mother and his brethren sought him, "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Thus the fatherhood and motherhood of God has to be realized exceedingly clearly if healing is to be accomplished, in the only way it can be accomplished, through Love. The man who saw all creation as the children of divine Mind, and who claimed for all God's children the fatherhood of Principle, had reduced the whole question of family, nation, and humanity, to its true metaphysical significance. The unity of mankind, he recognized, could only be brought about by unity of thinking. The children of God were those who understood and acted on Principle. These people, whether fishermen from Capernaum or publicans from the receipt of custom, were to him brother, and sister, and mother. He was prepared to love them all alike, just as he knew they must love him. God was not his Father alone, but the Father of all who did the will of Principle. Never once did he claim that this fatherhood was confined to himself. He spoke of our Father and your Father indiscriminately, obviously meaning that the real man had only one Father and one Mother, Principle. "Father-Mother," says Mrs. Eddy, on page 332 of Science and Health, "is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. As the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: 'For we are also His offspring.'"