Is God your mother?

I’ve always loved that beginner book by P.D. Eastman where the hatchling bird goes around and asks elephants and boats and steam shovels, “Are you my mother?”  As I revisit the Creation chapter of Learning God’s Story of Grace, I am thinking about Genesis 1:26-28:

So God created human beings in his own image.
    In the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

I remember when a teacher first enlightened me — this verse suggests that both male and female reflect God’s nature. It was the beginning of the end of my picturing God as a cross between Great Grandpa in the Sky and Santa Claus.

The problem of God as mother

This much is true — it is far too easy to lose the femininity of God in the abundance of masculine language in Scripture. That being said, this is where the conversation can get a little crazy. Today, I want to focus particularly on the discussion of God as mother.

Some feminist theologians, concerned that women are marginalized by so much male language for and about God, suggest that we may call God Mother as well as Father.

Many conservative theologians strongly disagree, stating that biblical language guides us, and it names God as Father.

How do we approach this theological difference (and others, for that matter)? I’ll offer 3 suggestions, share some quotes from both sides, then reveal my conclusion on the matter.

Caution in the conversation about God as mother

1. Whichever side you’re on – be humble and kind. Writers and speakers on both sides can be caustic and/or flippant. Always, always, in theological conversation, we need to be “kind to one another.”

2. Study the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth. Don’t merely read what someone you agree with says. Read what the Scriptures say, in the context of all of Scripture and the particular verse and story.

3. Remember that God is the Creator and Redeemer, and we, including our minds, are fallen. In any theological exploration, we may discover something we don’t like or don’t want to be true. At this point, it’s crucial to recall that “now we see in a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face.” We will be called to greater faith – to trust that God’s good and glory is involved.

3 thoughts on God as mother

Check out these 3 resources that suggest God may be called “Mother,” or addressed with feminine language.

• Julian of Norwich, 1342-1416, wrote that Jesus is our metaphorical Mother.
• Elizabeth Johnson, feminist theologian, points out that no language can comprehensively communicate the nature of God.
• Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood, uses the feminine pronoun to remind us that God is not a mere man.

3 thoughts on God as Father

Check out these 3 resources that explain why God should be called Father.

• John Cooper, author of Our Father in Heaven: Christian Faith and Inclusive Language for God, emphasizes the difference between calling God Father or Mother – the Bible names God as Father; it never assigns the title Mother to God.
• J.I. Packer, theologian, author of Knowing God, stresses that the concept of Fatherhood is woven into the fabric of adoption theology. For more on the first two authors’ thought, see Our Mother, Who Art in Heaven.
• Jared Wilson, pastor and author, notes that Jesus called God Father and never Mother.

My Conclusions: Is God My Mother?

1. God is Spirit (Genesis 1:2; John 4:24).
2. There is something about both male and female that reveals God’s nature (Genesis 1:26-28).
3. Jesus called God, “Father,” and taught us to pray to God as Father (Mark 14:36; Matthew 6:9).
4. There are numerous comparisons to God as a mother (Numbers 11:12; Job 38:28-29. See this article for a comprehensive list).
5. God the Father adopted all believers as his “sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). In Christ, there is neither male nor female, so I too as a woman am a “son of God” (Galatians 3:28). (Yes, this is confusing ;-)!! The point is – our gender language fails to fully communicate the wonder of who God is and what God has done in Christ to save people who have presumed that we know better than God.

So, yes, I will pray to God our Father. I will not pray, “God, our Mother.” I will remind myself and others often that God is not a man, that he is definitely not a Bama fan, and that he is often compared to a mother in her capacity to conceive, nurture, grow, and show mercy and compassion.

And…I will need to be frequently humbled and forgiven for holding this position too tightly :-)!