Restoring Mom
Our English words patriarchal and paternal descend from the Latin word pater, father. We know about patriarchy—society organized around male domination, often to the point of excluding women—but paternalism is restricting the freedom and autonomy of others under the guise of protecting their own welfare. The US started out patriarchal but not paternal. We didn’t allow women to vote until 1920 but also didn’t collect income tax until 1913, generally leaving people to fend for themselves for better or worse. Today, we’re thankfully much less patriarchal, but much more paternal.
On Mother’s Day, this is something to consider, because the church also been shamefully patriarchal, reflecting the culture around it. But since scripture does appear to portray God as male, is God patriarchal and/or paternal? We may wish God to be more paternal, happy to give up freedom for better risk control…but patriarchal? Male?
Though we won’t find Mother God in the scriptures, the Hebrew mind couldn’t conceive of father without mother. In their very language, father meant “strong house” and mother, “strong water,” the glue that held the family together. There could not be one without the other. God was seen as father in creating the heavens and earth around us, but the Hebrew words for spirit, kingdom, wisdom, presence, were all feminine—spirit was “she” and kingdom was “queendom.” There was no God short of the full spectrum of attributes we see between father and mother, and the wisdom, compassion, intuition, devotion of God is portrayed over and over in both testaments as a God in labor, giving birth, nursing, comforting, caressing.
Jesus always led with mother first, breaking ritual and social barriers in order to establish compassionate relationship before he ever instructed paternally. Father may symbolize strength, but without Mother, there is no reason to be strong. Scripture shows us a necessary and complementary balance, but more essentially, that we will never know Father God until we first experience God as Mother. All of God.
God is an eternal oscillation between mother and father, a paradox we can never resolve.
