This is the last of three posts in a series. If you haven’t done so already, please read the first and second parts.

I’ve studied theology and philosophy, trying to understand the death of God in my life. Oddly, the deepest insight came from a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick called The Father Thing (which can be found in Second Variety: And Other Classic Stories ). I first encountered this story in the fourth grade. It absolutely terrified me and I refused to reread it until I was well in my twenties. In this story, a boy named Charles realizes that his father has been devoured by an alien creature, which has assumed his father’s appearance and mannerisms. The Father-Thing does all the normal things that a stereotypical middle class Fifties father does, including reading the newspaper in the easy chair while enjoying his pipe. When he tries to feed Charles to the alien Charles-Thing, he tells his struggling son, “This is for your own good. I know best, Charles.’

In a critical essay on Dick’s short stories Eugene Warren states that “Charles and his friends are in awe of adults at the same time that they are terrified of the father-thing and are determined to destroy it; the chilling situation in which [the above] words are spoken is an image of the child’s terror at the hands of what he perceives as absolute adult authority, seemingly arbitrary authority acting in response to motives beyond his comprehension (p.162).” Like Charles and his friends, this time I preemptively brought down the knife. I severed the connections to the absolute, arbitrary Authority. I killed the Father-Thing in my life. I was ready to begin anew.

There is perhaps one saving grace about this interpretation, and that is that I didn’t kill the true Father. I killed the imposter, the Father-Thing. Perhaps this leaves room for the possibility of finding the true Father, tolerant and compassionate, whole and undevoured. Even as I began this new phase of my spiritual life, I paradoxically continued the habit of praying to my Father in Heaven. But I was never surprised at the silence that was the non-answer I continually experienced.

I discovered a way to reconcile this silence with the possibility that God was quietly listening, through reading Chaim Potok’s The Chosen. Towards the end of the story, Danny, the son of a Hasidic Rabbi, confronts his father. Danny plans to tell him that he has chosen not to follow in his father’s Rabbinical footsteps. He has rejected the path of the tzaddik, or Hasidic spiritual leader, and has chosen instead to become a psychologist. The context for this encounter is that throughout Danny’s youth, his father established a hard distance, a strange silence between them.

During their confrontation, his father gets around this self-imposed silence by confessing the motivation for his diliberate distance to Danny’s friend Reuven, who is also in the room. He says,

What a price to pay when he was older, the years I drew myself away from him…’Why have you stopped answering my questions, Father?’ he asked me once. ‘You are old enough to look into your own soul for answers,’ I told him…he learned to find answers for himself. He suffered and learned to listen to the suffering of others. In the silence between us, he began to hear the world crying.

The Rabbi continues,

I see from your eyes that you think I was cruel to my Daniel. Perhaps. But he has learned. Let my Daniel become a psychologist. I know he wishes to become a psychologist…I do not hear his soul crying? Of course I know. For a long time I have known. Let my Daniel become a psychologist. I have no more fear now. All his life he will become a tzaddik. He will be a tzaddik for the world. And the world needs a tzaddik.

This passage brings me hope. I identify with Danny, who yearns to hear his father’s voice. I have an alternative available to me. Maybe this silence has a purpose. Maybe this silence between Heavenly Father and I is a training ground. When I kneel, I imagine that my Papa, my dear Father in Heaven, can hear my soul crying: “My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me? Why are thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?” Now I ask myself, in the silence that follows can I not hear the world crying? Perhaps my Father’s voice can be found there.

So this is where I am today. My dad has long since re-owned me. It has taken longer for me to re-own him, but after years of cold-shouldering him, I am trying to start my relationship with him anew. I have hope that we will overcome the silence between us. I spend more time in silence now, especially after prayer, listening for the crying of the world, listening for the voice of my Father. I have hope that I will hear him.