Is God a parent?

Question

Is God a parent?

Sun Myung Moon · Accepted Answer

Most people, even those who doubt God exists, instinctively reach for one word when they imagine a relationship with Him: Father. Jesus prayed "Our Father," and two billion Christians repeat those words every week. But is this just a comforting metaphor, a projection of our human families onto the cosmos? Or is God actually, essentially, a parent—and if so, what does that mean about who God is and who we are? The Principle's answer is direct: God is not merely like a parent. God is our parent, and this is the single most important truth for understanding both God and ourselves. God Is Father — But Not Only Masculine The Bible does call God "Father." Jesus addressed God as "Abba, an intimate word a child uses for its daddy," and taught his disciples to pray, "Our Father which art in heaven" (Matthew 6:9). Paul writes that we have received "the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15). The prophets also speak of God as Father: "Doubtless thou art our father... thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer" (Isaiah 63:16). Yet the very first chapter of the Bible reveals that God's parental nature is bigger than masculinity alone. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:27). Humanity exists as man and woman because we resemble a God in whose nature both masculinity and femininity are harmoniously united. Everything in creation comes in paired characteristics—sun and moon, male and female in animals, stamen and pistil in plants—because creation reflects its Creator. God is the original subject being who harmonizes essential internal character and essential form, essential masculinity and essential femininity, within Himself. He relates to creation in the masculine subject position, which is why we rightly call Him our Father—but the fullness of His nature contains the motherly as well as the fatherly. Scripture also reveals God's motherly heart: As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you (Isaiah 66:13), and Jesus lamenting over Jerusalem, "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings" (Matthew 23:37). God is, most completely, our Heavenly Parent. Why God Chose to Become a Parent Here is the deeper question: why did God create at all? A being of absolute power needs nothing. But love is different from power. Love cannot be experienced alone. Love requires an object partner—someone other than oneself to give to, to care for, to rejoice over. God's most essential attribute is Heart: the irrepressible emotional impulse to love, to give, and to find joy in a beloved. Out of that Heart, God created human beings as His children, the supreme object partners of His love. In other words, God did not create because He was lacking; He created because He was loving. He chose to become a parent because parenthood is the most complete expression of love. This reframes everything. God did not make us to be His servants or His entertainment. He made us to be His sons and daughters, to receive the fullness of His love and to return joy to Him. The joy God sought was the same joy every human parent knows in embryo: the joy of watching your child grow, of seeing yourself reflected in them, of embracing them in love. Genesis records God blessing His children—Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it (Genesis 1:28)—a parent's blessing, entrusting His children with growth, family, and loving dominion over creation. The Tragedy: A Parent Who Lost His Children If God is our parent, then the human Fall was not primarily the breaking of a rule—it was the shattering of a family. When Adam and Eve fell, they did not just disobey a command; they abandoned their Father and attached themselves to a false parent, becoming children of Satan (John 8:44). God's first recorded words to fallen humanity are not a courtroom verdict but a parent's cry: "Where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9). Any parent who has lost a child in a crowd knows that voice. From that moment, God's heart has been the heart of a grieving parent. Every page of the Bible after Genesis 3 is the record of a Father searching for His lost children—calling Abraham out of Ur, weeping over Israel through the prophets, and finally sending His only begotten Son, "that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Salvation is not, at its core, a legal transaction. It is the restoration of the parent-child relationship. This is why Jesus said we must be born again (John 3:3): we must be severed from the false lineage and reborn into God's family. It is why Paul says we are "adopted" as sons and daughters and made "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17). And it is why the prodigal son story is the most accurate portrait of God ever told: a father who scans the horizon daily, who sees his child "while he was yet a great way off," and who runs—un

Is God a parent?

God Is Father — But Not Only Masculine

Why God Chose to Become a Parent

The Tragedy: A Parent Who Lost His Children

What This Means for Us

Living the Principle

Sources and further reading