Why is God the Father more popular than God the Mother?

[Hiwaunis]

God actually has no need of a sex, that is a human definition and we apply the concept of god because of our own weakness, not because of anything god actually is or is not. So the question is, having been nurtured by a mother, or not, as adults, why the hell do we still need these concepts?

Something seems terribly wrong here...

Pranam,

Although our goal is not to need these concepts it is human nature. I can see Shiv, Vishnu, and Brahma Dev as giving but I have a problem envisioning Father being warm, soft, caring and comforting. I associate those qualities with Mother.

Om Shanti,

[satay]

Namaskar Hiwanuis,

Pranam Satay,
Are you a devotee of Shri Hari?

Om Shanti

I have been thinking about this question ever since you posted it, however, sorry to disappoint you.

I still can't find an answer!

[OmSriShivaShakti]

God has no gender as he does not occupy a corporeal body. But I think the reason why most people like to think of God as male instead of female is that men are dominant (in the home and also society) therefore anything to do with power or authority is usually represented as being male. Also, strength, authority, and power are usually designated as masculine qualities. And since God cannot be submissive to anyone (like a woman is submissive to a man in a relationship), God is usually presented as male.

[dhruva023]

why God can not be submissive?

[rcscwc]

It is not correct to say that God is purely male.

tvameva mata pita tvameva tells that God is Mother and Father.

Prajapati, Vishnu and Shiva are incomplete without their female principles. In fact Shiva is conceptualised as Ardhnarishwar too. In Hindu thinking, male/female principles of God are inseperable.

But in abrahmic god is purely male and is underlined as such. Women, therefore, do not have place in their spirituality.

[Spiritualseeker]

Namaste,

Paramahansa Yogananda would say to call upon God as the Mother in some of his talks. He said the Mother is easier access than the father.

[bhaktajan]

One cannot approach the Father God without first receiving approval by the mother.

To approach Krishna --first one must achieve the blessings and good-favor of Srimati Radharani.

[bhaktajan]

Lord Çiva’s duty is very dangerous because he has to employ the energy of goddess Kälé (or Durg&#228.

In a popular picture the goddess Kälé is sometimes seen standing on the prostrate body of Lord Çiva, which indicates that sometimes Lord Çiva has to fall down flat in order to stop goddess Kälé from killing the asuras.

[Eastern Mind]

Namaste: In my opinion, gender is basically irrelevant to spiritual life. We are not a body that has gender. Identifying with one's own gender leads to identifying God as having a gender.

I remember when I first realised people (the actual being within) were basically genderless. I was 17 and started noticing that girls had brains too. (Sounds stupid now, but the reality of raging hormones leads one to believe something else) So I developed a few friendships with a few people of the opposite gender, eventually marrying one of them.

God has no gender. Gender is there as a means of procreation, creating physical bodies for souls of all varieties to inhabit and have earthly experience to allow for the path to continue. This is God's creation, but to create or emit does not imply you need a gender. Does a musician need a gender to create a song.

So I think if you see gender in God, then you also see gender, or rather overfocus on gender in people. I believe that Shaktism crept into Saivism because of a guilt complex about the way women were treated. But that's another story.

Aum Namasivaya

[sunyata07]

Namaste,

While I also believe that God has no gender, I can understand why man has envisioned a male or female perception of deity. Originally, it was used as a form of abstraction, a convenient way for people to conceputalise this force as a person with a gender, a name, etc. Psychologically, I believe in their being able to see God as a father or mother figure it helps devotees connect to them better. At the end of the day it is probably completely useless, because God is ultimately neither male nor female.

The idea of God the Father was popular in the Abrahamic faiths largely because of patriarchal societies in the West. The father archetype is a figure one usually associates with positions of power or leadership. In our male dominated societies, the father is the breadwinner, the head of the household, the one who makes the decisions. Historically speaking, the man of the household was the master of everyone else living under his roof. Was it not natural then for most people (especially those coming from Abrahamic backgrounds) to perceive an all-powerful God as male? With the exception of a few cultures, females have always been the submissive figures, either to a father, a brother or a husband. The simple answer is that when man discovered religion early on he tended to associate this omnipowerful, omnipresent Being with his own father.

But to counter this, Hiwaunis, while I honestly don't see God as generally being just one or the other, I do feel a lot more emotionally invested in God the Mother than God the Father. Even when I was raised Catholic I tended to direct my prayers towards Mother Mary than Jesus Christ or just God "the Father". I worship both aspects equally, but God the Mother stirs love in my heart with less time and meditation than God the Father. I think of all the types of love you can see in this world that exists between people, there is probably no love that is more pure or selfless than a love a mother has for her child. I also associate all things tender, loving and merciful with a mother aspect of God than with a father.

But it's perhaps good to have a balance sometimes. If we grow too attached to the idea of God with a gender, we lose sight of what He/She encompasses. This is why I love depictions of God as Ardhanari, who is both Shiva and Shakti and who we, in our limited human understanding, perceive as being separate halves of a whole when in fact they are indivisible:

OM Shanti