 
«He will turn the hearts of fathers to the children, and the hearts of children to their fathers - else I will come and strike the land with utter destruction».
Malachi 3:24
This is the last verse of the Old Testament.
It would appear that this was a matter of vital importance for E (the great Editor, as Roberto Calasso defines him);
indeed, the very fate of the earth would hinge on the resolution of this atavistic conflict.
Just to set the record straight, I'm not one of those who think that Christ referred to God as "father" because he believed that God was male.
If Christ called God father and not mother it is because,
perhaps inspired by Freud, he knew how much this relationship needed to be reconsidered and revolutionized.
Freud argued that of all the images formed during childhood,
none is more important to the individual than that of one’s own father.
Yet, it seems that a need of organic nature has introduced an emotional ambivalence in the relationship between father and son.
The child admires and loves his father inasmuch as he views him as the most brilliant
and powerful among the creatures of the cosmos,
but the latter will perturb the son's emotional and instinctual life with his excessive power,
thus becoming a model to be emulated, yes, but also to be done away with, in order to be supplanted.
At the moment, however, it seems that psychoanalysis is under attack because
in the opinion of some, the contemporary father seems to have become quite the bumbling fool on account of Freud.
In order to avoid being killed by their children, fathers play dead at the outset.
There are fewer and fewer tyrant fathers and more tyrannized fathers;
fewer children who strive to please their fathers and more fathers who strive to be what their children want them to be.
And while we are all more or less acquainted with the traumas inflicted by tyrant fathers,
no fewer disasters are likely to be wrought by these tyrannized fathers;
in terms of growth which is first of all independence, autonomy, emancipation of children from parent figures.
Going back to Malachi, in the first case (tyrant father) it is the son who turns his heart towards the father,
in the second case (tyrant son) the opposite takes place.
It is clear that, according to the words written by Malachi, in the present situation the earth is in danger
BUT let's see what Christ thought of this…
Contrary to what is believed, Christ was the first to deal a crushing blow to patriarchy.
How?
He insisted on calling God "father", he always went around claiming that he and his father were one.
And this made the Pharisees very angry, because he, the Christ,
was actually destroying not only the prevailing paradigm concerning God, but also the paradigm concerning the father as a representation of authority.
Christ’s father, at least from the Pharisaic point of view, was much too soft.
The father of the prodigal son, for example,
ends up rewarding the son that messed up, not the diligent son!
This father kneels down to pick up the fallen son and does not crush him,
redeems him and does not condemn him, welcomes him and does not punish him.
Can you imagine what would have happened if people had believed Christ?
The whole sphere of authority of the time would have entered into a crisis.
No one would have continued to acknowledge the authoritarianism of the law
which up until that moment (and even to this day, in some ways)
manifested itself as punitive, coercive and aggressive.
For Christ, the dissolution of this enslavement had its starting point in the father-children relationship,
because the father figure has always influenced the relationship that children have with society.
But what does this mean and how do we turn our hearts towards each other?
It has to do with learning to look at ourselves for who we are and free ourselves from the prejudice that the role carries within itself.
So that fathers do not see in their children the effect of who they are as fathers,
and children do not see in fathers the cause of who they have become as children.
I'll explain it more clearly: We are neither the sum of the blunders of our fathers, nor the sum of the blunders of our children.
We are much more than causes and effects.
And if the father represents the past and the son represents the future, the meeting point must always be the present;
we should therefore learn to live our relationships in the present
so that our choices and actions can find meaning and fulfillment today.
So, fathers.
It is foolish to think that your children will be better tomorrow if you are “worse” today: harsh, strict, distant.
So, children, it is just as foolish to believe that you would be better had your fathers been different,
you are better already.
