Yesterday me and my mom were talking about if everyone viewed God as their “father.” I mentioned to her that some refer to God as “She” or “They” , but she thinks that most people do that to be politically correct, and that because the Bible refers to God as the Father, it would be an offense to God to call God anything else. I personally love the idea of referring to God as “Them”, but I don’t think my mom would agree. Do you have any rebuttals/ways to introduce her to it?

queertheology:

queerlychristian:

Hi there! A lot of people respond similarly to how your mother did when they first are introduced to the notion that God might be called more than “Father,” more than “He.” Hopefully with time she’ll get it a little better. 

Here’s a passage from God’s Tapestry: Reading the Bible in a World of Religious Diversity about a not-dissimilar conversation between the author, W. Eugene March, and their mother (for the entire passage, see this google-books link):

‘ Some years ago I received an unexpected phone call from my mother. She was clearly agitated and thought I would share her concern, a theological concern. She was agitated about the language that had been used in fashioning a prayer to God in a study book that she and other women in her congregation were using.

…The issue was a prayer on which feminine metaphors were employed to describe God’s love for Israel. Wombs, labor pains, and nursing at nurturing breasts were used in a prayer to God. When Mom and her Bible study friends read this prayer, the explosion was not pleasant. And not surprisingly, an unofficial ‘denominational’ publication circulating widely in her congregation fanned the fire of my mother’s zeal to denounce perceived heresy.

It took me several minutes to get her calmed down enough for us to talk reasonably. When I did, I asked her to read the offending prayer to me. As she did, I recognized the clear influence of Isaiah. I said, “Hey, Mom, that language is straight out of the Bible.”
She said, “It is not!”
I said, “Yes it is!”
“Is not!”
“Is too.”

Finally, I asked her to get her Bible and we had a long-distance Bible study of some selected verses from the book of Isaiah:

For a long time I have held my peace,
I [God] have kept still and restrained myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in labor;
I will gasp and pant. (Isaiah 42:14)

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice with her in joy,
all you who mourn over her –
that you may nurse and be satisfied
from her consoling breast;
that you may drink deeply with delight
from her glorious bosom.
For thus says the [Holy One]:
I will extend prosperity to her like a river,
and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream;
and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child
so I will comfort you;
you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:10-13)

After she had read those verses, there was a long pause, and then she said, “When did they put that in there?” “It’s been there all along,” I replied. “Well,” my dear mother continued in a somewhat subdued tone, “why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” That is one of the questions that prompted this book. There are so many misconceptions about what the Bible does and doesn’t say, so much ignorance among otherwise well-educated, capable people. In my experience, the people in the pews are often well ahead of the clergy when it comes to the matters that really count in the way we order our daily lives and structure the communities in which we live. Their attitudes are usually based on what they recognize from their own experience of life. But they need knowledge about the support the Bible can offer and encouragement and permission from their leaders. They often think that what they believe must be heretical or offbeat, since no one assures them otherwise. ’

[end passage]

God exists beyond human language; They will surely not be offended to be called by a variety of terms. God has been called mother and midwife and Woman Wisdom for millennia, in Hebrew scripture before Jesus was born as well as in the earliest of Christian communities.

So when it comes to the fear of causing offense over different words for God, whom are we scared about offending? God? or other humans?

Here’s a post that talks about why we might call God other things beyond “Our Father” (we can keep calling them our Father as well!)

Here’s another post with similar stuff, including links to Bible passages. Because the Bible certainly does call God father, but also mother, and midwife, and rock, and light, and so much more. Lots of gendered language, lots of abstract and non-anthropomorphic language. The more variety we use, the closer we may get to just how big God is.

Here’s a post arguing that God is a woman, God is nonbinary, God is trans. (This one might be a little bit beyond what your mother’s ready to embrace right now, so I’d save this one for her for much later or just enjoy it for yourself.)

And our whole God beyond Gender tag contains even more stuff! Good luck helping your mom explores this. God is so much vaster than our human minds can fathom, but starting to explore many ways of thinking of Them helps. 

“why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”