Alexander in Ingmar Bergman’s film “Fanny and Alexander” encouraged the ghost of his “good” father (who looks disconcertingly like Adolf Hitler) to stop haunting him, to go on to heaven and convince God to kill his stepfather.  The ghost of his “good” father counseled, “You must be gentle with people, Alexander.”

I’ve been enjoying a mini-Ingmar-Bergman-film-festival on DVD.  First, I watched “Persona,” Bergman’s reflections on his own guilt and hypocrisy raising children, told through a mute actress who had a child reluctantly to complete herself as a woman, and the nurse who cares for her.  Then I watched “Wild Strawberries,” a sober consideration (if not a lament) of a life spent solely for one’s work and personal achievement.  I think of these as Lutheran films, not because they are propaganda for the Lutheran Church, but because Bergman considered his films a dialogue with his childhood and that childhood was dominated by his Lutheran minister father Erik.

I looked forward to “Fanny and Alexander,” because it was the film where he dealt most intimately with the problem of his father.  I was disappointed when the first copy arrived broken in the mail.  Then with the second copy I was put off a bit by the plot.  It seemed to me like Bergman avoided the issue with his father rather than confronting it directly.  The problem was not that Erik Bergman was an evil stepfather who married Ingmar’s mother after his “good” father died.  The problem was that Erik was both the “good” father and the evil stepfather.  The sumptuous joy and luxury and the grey austerity are recollections of one home, not two.

I got over the plot in time and simply enjoyed the imagery.  Though Alexander was not really as close to his “good” father as he was compelled to be close to his evil stepfather, he was ultimately haunted by both.  And his desire to kill the evil stepfather is also God’s desire, if I may reunite the evil stepfather and the “good” father as one man born of the flesh and of the Spirit.  That’s why the “good” father’s advice touches me so, “You must be gentle with people, Alexander.”

Everyone born of the Spirit, born from above, is liable to the situation Paul described in Romans 7:15 (NET), For I don’t understand what I am doing.  For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate.  My father could go from happily singing a hymn to screaming hysterically at us in no time at all.  I thought I could be a foster parent.  I thought I could help someone.  An autistic child defeated me in the most fundamental way a man can be defeated.  He shattered my self-image as a kind and loving man.  My wife lost confidence in me and, I think, in God to a certain extent.  I certainly lost confidence in God for at least the remainder of our marriage.  And my children witnessed it all.

I am thinking about forgiveness here as a way of being gentle with people.  But I’m trying to reach something beyond my ordinary conception of forgiveness.  When I have a bad encounter with the sinful flesh of someone born of God I shouldn’t think, “So that’s what you’re really like.”  This is false.  What the person born of God is really like is the new creation, washed, cleansed, buoyed-up, and carried along by the Spirit of God, not the sinful flesh I happened to experience.  So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin,^[1] Paul concluded with gratitude to God.