Seeker

Is it OK for Christians to address God as 'Mother'? My short answer is 'yes' because the Bible uses many female metaphors for God. Similarly it is OK to address God as 'Father' because the Bible uses many male images for God. My longer answer is: it's complicated! It's complicated because God is neither woman nor man. God is Spirit. That is the witness of the Bible and of the tradition of the Church. We cannot know God except through revelation by God, who is neither male nor female (biological sex) and neither feminine nor masculine (gender - a cultural construct). It is further complicated by traditional expectations of how Christians should address God in worship. I am not saying we should stop praying to God as 'Our Father in heaven'. That is an important image of God as Father that Jesus gives us in his pattern prayer ('The Lord's Prayer). That 'father' image is also there in the Old Testament. It is memorably ampli...