5. Joy: God is Mother Too
Some people are persuaded first by biblical argument. Others need to see what a belief actually does in a person’s life before they are ready to examine the theology behind it. I believe doctrine must ultimately stand or fall on Scripture, not on personal experience. But after making the biblical case, I also think it is worth asking what kind of fruit a belief produces.
For most of my Christian life, I knew many beautiful and true things about God. I knew God loved me. I knew He was Father. I knew the Holy Spirit was real and active. But when I came to believe that the Spirit is not merely an impersonal presence or vaguely understood third person, but God our Mother, something in my understanding of God became fuller. God did not become less familiar to me. He became more beautiful. I experienced greater joy in knowing the Spirit personally, greater wonder at the image of God in both women and men, and a deeper sense that femininity itself reflects God.
The longer article linked below tells that story more fully. It does not argue that good fruit proves the doctrine. The biblical case for the Spirit as Mother is developed elsewhere on this site. Instead, this article asks what changed in my relationship with God once I began to believe that case—and compares the fruit of a predominantly masculine understanding of God with the fuller Father-and-Mother understanding I now find in Scripture.
And the predominant fruit of the Spirit that I associate with my deeper understanding of God as both Father and Mother is: JOY.
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