If God were your Father, you would not be trying to kill me. Can we claim that we are sons and daughters of God and still engage in acts that are ungodly? This seems to have been what was baffling Jesus in the Gospel Reading that we have just heard. Jesus found humorous the claim by the Jews that they were God’s children while at the same time they were busy plotting on how to get rid of him. He challenged them to explain to him how two contradictions (plotting to kill another person while claiming to love God) could peacefully co-exist. If they were indeed God’s children, then they had to prove it by their conduct. On their part, the Jews also found Jesus’ challenge to them as laughable. Had they not been always considered as God’s sons and daughters? Had they not always enjoyed the pleasures and privileges that characterize this special relationship? It was not as if they were re-inventing anything, or worse, fabricating something that had not always been there. Moreover, God had always approved of their way of life (religious). Why was Jesus seeing a problem where there wasn’t any? The Jews stood their ground and refused to yield to Jesus’ challenge.
What was going on with the Jews was not unique to them. They were exhibiting the symptoms of the disease that is ailing the human race. We members of the human race have devised a means of creating God. Because the Lord God would not bend to our commands or fit in the model that we have of God, we have ended up creating our own God, one whom we can manipulate. We have created a God who has no problem with killing, hating, lying, unnecessary competitions and jealousy, and wishing others evil. By asking the Jews to look deeply in their claim of sonship, Jesus was simply inviting them to prove by actions what they believed (or rather claimed to believe). If they truly believed that God was their Father, then they had to start behaving as God’s children. God is loving, merciful, kind, compassionate, and forgiving. Anyone who claims to be God’s son or daughter must also exhibit these very qualities that God has.