Or the man upstairs…
Or the Big Guy…
Or my homeboy…
The list could go on and on and on. I’m not sure the motivation for wanting to change the name of God. For some it’s a desire to express a way in which we relate to him. One might say “Jesus is my homeboy” because your desire is to express that he is more than a friend. There are many reasons why one might want to call God mother. Some, say they do this in order to blow-up a system of patriarchy. Others might do this to redeem an image of God developed by their own relationship with their mother.
But I would argue that regardless of the reason it is not appropriate (and therefore not helpful) to refer to God as something other than what He has revealed himself. We can only know God as he as chosen to reveal himself. Sure, it might have come out of a patriarchal society and it might have influenced the words used by the biblical authors. But still God has not revealed himself with the name of Mother. Certainly, he reveals himself to have tender and mothering characteristics. But nowhere in the Scriptures does he refer to himself as a mother. Or as “the man upstairs”.
K. Scott Oliphint says it well:
He is to be known rightly only as he reveals himself, and is to be addressed according to his name, not according to some ascription of our own invention. We are not to address God by any other name than the name he has identified as his own. To attempt to tweak the name of God for purposes of cultural (or any other kind of) relevance is not to address God as he has revealed himself, but to address him according to how we want him to be, and thus is to come to him sinfully and in error. (God With Us, 52)
What Oliphint is saying here is that naming God rather than responding to the way in which God has revealed himself is not good because it flips the script. It puts us in charge of God. To name something is to place yourself over that thing. When we go about giving God whatever names we desire, then we are putting ourselves in charge of his identity. And that will never be helpful to us. God is God. We are not.
Therefore, it is best for us to respond to God as he has revealed himself. It is helpful for us to dig into the very names of God and the reason he has revealed himself thusly. Why does God call himself Father and not Mother? Why does God not call himself something distant like “the man upstairs”? Why has revealed himself specifically? Those questions are far more transformative.
