Prayers for Children to God as "Mother"<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
"Mother God, I'm scared tonight, will you come hold me?"
 
Apparently, this is a prayer for children when they feel afraid according to the evangelical feminists at Christians for Biblical Equality. It is just one of many prayers for children to the Mother-god(dess) taught in Jann Aldredge-Clanton's book, God, A Word for Girls and Boys, page 121.
 
Postmodern evangelicalism has introduced children to the spirit of witchcraft and the occult despite the warnings given to us in Scripture. Satan is the "Mother of harlots" in Revelation 17:5. The "Great Deceiver" is the father/mother god and can take on both masculine and feminine-Satan is the mother (of harlots) in Revelation 17:5 and the father (of lies) in John 8:44. Jeremiah 7:18 says those who worship the "Queen of Heaven" spite God, and more verses forbid "mother-god" worship in Jeremiah 44:15-19, 25.
 
Still, Christians for Biblical Equality, the feminist patron saint of goddess worship within conservative arenas, has taken their foray of "updated language" to our evangelical youth. After all, old fashioned prayers to the "Master" and "King" are far too patriarchal for today's sensitive boys and girls.
 
We are taught that the "Mother-god" prayers of inclusive language will keep the boys from committing the "sin of arrogance" and keep the girls from committing the "sin of devaluing themselves." (God, A Word for Girls and Boys, Aldredge-Clanton, p. 11).
 
 "E-quality"  has gone on to teach via God, A Word for Girls and Boys:
 
"For the sake of these little ones we must change the way we talk about God and about human beings." (Ibid, p. 11)
 
Jann Aldredge-Clanton, featured "Equality Depot" and Fuller Seminary bookstore author, rationalizes:
 
"The masculine language of the church takes literal root in our children. They cannot grasp a theology of God as transcendent Spirit if they hear trusted authority figures in the church constantly calling God 'he', 'Father', 'King'." (Ibid, p. 9)
 
Another suggested prayer for children is on page 23:
 
"God, our Mother, we thank you that you love us so much to want the best for us. Thank you for trusting us enough to let us do things on our own. We thank you that you love us enough to let go of us so that we can learn new things. Stay near us, and help us become all we can be. Amen."
 
Unlike the God of the Bible, this weak god(dess) is far from omniscient. The children are given this example of prayer on page 126:
 
"Have you heard the bad news, God? My grandmother just died…"
 
We are also warned:
 
"Churches have contributed to the low self-esteem of black children by teaching them to sing such lines as these: Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." (Ibid, p. 12).
 
In the lecture "Sophia, Wisdom of God or Goddess of Wisdom?" available via the CBE "Equality Depot" (Tape # ACF290) T.J. Ostrander teaches:
 
"I think that if you want to in your personal devotions address God as "Mother" I don't have a problem with that."
 
Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, CBE Board of Reference, writes to explicate (though, to her credit, she does not teach that we may call God "mother"), walking the tight rope of demarcation between CBE's sway to neuter God for an anti-biblical, feminist agenda and the need to assuage the "patriarchal" acceptance of the God He claims to be in Scripture:
 
"When sexuality is de-spiritualized and God de-sexualized, the issue of the supposed gender of God becomes a nonissue, and the question of whether or not God is male or masculine becomes inappropriate and irrelevant."
"It is true that, in the Incarnation, Christ became a male human. But the theological significance of Christ's bodily incarnation is not that he became male, but that he became human. Christ's maleness is never spoken of in the Bible as having any spiritual significance."
This is false: see Isaiah 9:6-He had to come as a <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Man. It was prophesied that a "Son" would be given, not a daughter.
Furthermore, in this article, Rebecca Groothuis expounds on the Bible's language as if it is a human book, as if the Bible was put together by humans with a private system of interpretation filled with human fallacies and cultural myths instead of being the product of the mind of God. This method of interpretation is how people abuse context and exercise improper hermeneutics:
"Father" was the more apt description for God, not only because a Mother-God would have been confused with the pagan fertility deities of the surrounding cultures, but also because fatherhood presented a picture of God as a person with power and authority–something which, in ancient patriarchal societies, was possessed almost exclusively by men.
The Bible says that "men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:21). There was no limitation in the Holy Spirit's inspiration due to "ancient patriarchal societies." (For more information on proper Bible interpretation hear Dr. Walter Martin's sermon "Hermeneutics, Part 2" available through Walter Martin Ministries).
Mimi Haddad, president of Christians for Biblical Equality, teaches in her article "What Language Shall We Use" :
  "We may speak of God as Father or as Mother."
These evangelical women truly have come to a "self-realization." After all, the founder of the New Age Self-Realization Fellowship taught the same thing! Paramahansa Yogananda concurs in his suggested invocations to the father/mother god found in Metaphysical Meditations: Universal Prayers, Affirmations, and Visualizations, pages 76-77:   
"Bless me Father that the single eye of realization lead me to behold through all the veils of matter the infinite presence of Christ." [sic]
"Divine Mother I will pull away the starry veil of the blue…I will shut off the diverting motion pictures of life, that I may behold Thee."
 
Paramahansa also praised the "Divine Mother" as quoted in his Revelations of Christ, endorsed by Neale Donald Walsch:
 
"Thousands of scriptures declare my Mother is beyond all form and infinite." (p. 135).
 
Neale Donald Walsch calls these Revelations of Christ by Paramahansa Yogananda "a gift to humanity" and "a spiritual treasure to pass on to children of all generations."
 
Like the evangelical feminists, Paramhansa uses Bible verses to support his teaching. A three-page "Index of Bible Verses" is found in the back of the book with Paramhansa's interpretation, for the "ancient science of Self-realization" certainly would be lacking without a demonic "new interpretation" of the Holy Bible, targeted for children.
 
Dwayna Litz
www.lightingthewayworldwide.org