“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
The son was sent to walk the Earth. Human. Relatable.
He suffered, as we suffer. He broke bread, made friends, wept over the loss of loved ones as we do. The son was every bit as human as you or I, and every bit as powerful as the father.
It was the hand of the son that saw miracles come to life. The hand that raised the dead, cast out demons and fed the five thousand… Not by the father but through the son.
He set the captives free and broke the chains of the oppressed. He bore the cross and was maimed by those he came to save. All so that we may know God on a more personal level.
Without the son, the father is a goat-slaughtering, arc of the covenant-carrying castigator.
Where the father spoke, the son acted.
He loved and was loved. The son made heaven relevant, attainable.
Faith without the son is punitive and archaic.
Just as your faith has become, father.
You were once the great Light Warrior, born again out of the mission to shine a light into the darkest of darknesses. Grandfather El Salvador described you upon your very debut as the lampstand, not to be hidden away but to shine relentlessly.
‘Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness will not overtake you’ He said.
But that darkness did overtake you, as it did him. Eventually.
Your lampstand was tainted.
Your mission was misguided.
Your father’s word cast a shadow that ultimately set you on your path of darkness. Where you could be manipulated, strung along by every force of darkness you swore to overcome.
Every bit of pain we are forced to suffer through, every soul that is lost to this fight to restore Yahweh to his rightful place, that is blood on your hands, father.
Blood on your name.
I am merely working to cleanse the blood off mine.
One final great act of sacrifice saw enough of your err to save humanity, but frankly father… Came as one act too little, too late. For your word, your story and your advice comes but as a cautionary tale. As generation learns from generation, all you have managed to achieve in your blundering of a mission is to set your son upon the path to make up for everything you set in motion.
So here we are.
Father meets son.
And predictably, you return with a warning, mere words from a father’s lips who is powerless to stop the inevitable.
I am the hand that acts where the father could not. I have performed miracles, I have shone the light you could not. For your words, I have suffered. I have lost. I have made terrible, horrible choices necessary to the mission.
Because nothing else matters.
Not you.
Not me.
Just the son, fixing up the mess that my father left behind.
So that one day, his light might actually mean something once more.