Both theologians and mystics agree, anything we say about God is more wrong than it is right. God is so much more, so much beyond human language that whatever words we use will inevitablly fall short of the reality we are attempting to describe. Islam captures this reality by invoking the “99 names of God.” The Christian tradition, because of how Jesus described his relationship to God, has enshrined “God the Father” as the primary image of the divine. The Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does. The prayer Jesus left us uses the image of “Our Father” as our point of contact. However, the Christian tradition also demonstrates that too great an emphasize on the metaphor of “Father” can distort our understanding of God. The Bible uses other images for God as well. Can a mother forget her infant,
be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. God is father and mother, height and depth, beginning and end, transcendent and imminent. We have to embrace the wideness of God to become closer to the mystery.
