Tags
Christianity, culture, faith, fathers, healing, relationship
Many people struggle with the somewhat patriarchal notion of “God the Father.” I’d say women struggle, but two of the most well written articles suggesting that God is female were actually written by men.
Somebody asked why it matters. Can’t God just exist beyond gender? I’m not trying to tell anybody how they must perceive God, but I am compelled to explain why it matters. First of all it matters because of scripture, because of the words written there, Adam was created first, in God’s image. God is the Father in scripture on purpose. Christ was a man, the disciples were men. The angels are men. Women are not forgotten at all, women figure very prominently in the bible, a fact that is really quite miraculous given the times.
It matters too, because of what it says about us as a people, what we are saying when we fear embracing the concept of God as a loving Father. That father fracture and what it reveals about us as a people, permeates every aspect of our society. We’re living in a culture full of broken homes, single parents, rampant divorce, people alienated and separated from their fathers, wounded by their fathers, in fear of their fathers, feeling rejected by their fathers. Men feeling lost and confused because they aren’t sure what their role is anymore.
It’s very difficult to have a personal relationship with God the Father when you have nothing to relate it too, or worse, negative ideas of what Fatherhood is all about. Yes, we can try to give God a genderless persona and avoid the whole issue entirely, but when we do that it is a bit like trying to cover up a raging infection with a band aid. We deprive ourselves of the healing that is possible when we are willing to look at the truth.
For women, our fathers, or lack thereof, will really color our future relationships with men in general. Those relationships with men color how we raise our sons, how we perceive our own selves, our relationship with God, the type of communities we create, on and on it goes, springing forth from one small fracture…
My own Father and I were separated in a custody battle when I was 3. I didn’t see him again until I was 13. It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s and we began to heal that relationship that I truly came into faith fully. What I came to realize is that my father is actually a good half of my identity, of who I am. That’s a scary thing to confront if you had an imperfect father, and perfect ones are extremely rare. But once I began to forgive and to sense the love there, suddenly God the Father came into focus. That same love was reflected back in my husband and had an awful lot to do with making it possible for our marriage to work at all. If I had remained detached from my own father, unable to relate to God the Father, unwilling to embrace half my identity, my poor husband would not have stood a chance. I would have perceived him as the enemy far more than I already did.
It’s a really difficult concept to express, but a large part of our identities as women actually come from men. We carry our fathers within us, we give birth to our sons, we build these marriages with men, this idea of one flesh. Men are an integral part of who we are as women. God is also within us, as the Father, as Christ, male. There is a spiritual symbiosis there between women and men, we are not really separate entities.
I know there can be awful men in the world that leave lots of scars behind. Women don’t really forgive men for their sakes however, we do it for our own. Long ago I knew a woman who had an atrocious father, lots of reasons why she should have completely rejected the idea of men having any role in anything ever again, but she didn’t. She decided to forgive him and he had since died, so we went to a cemetery. I really thought she was nuts, just let it go, put it behind you. She told me something I’ve never forgotten however, she said “I have to forgive him because he’s half of who I am. If I reject him, I only bring half of myself to Christ.”
That’s why it matters.
When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, he responded with, “Our Father. . .”
LikeLiked by 1 person
LOL, now that’s a good point. So simple, I missed it 😉
LikeLike
God being male or female as I said on the last post, does not affect salvation. We are saved by a belief in God and Christ, not by believing in a certain gender of the diety. I certainly don’t think of God as a woman. I refer to God as a man. Always have. But to argue about gender for God misses the point from both sides. We are commanded to love each other. We are commanded to love God. That is all. Why should we as Christians be threatend? God is not threatened. God isn’t worried. God did not say, “Refer to me only as a man or I don’t hear you.” It is not there.
LikeLike
I don’t think I’ve said any of those things. No mention of being denied salvation, nothing about God being threatened, no statement about “Refer to me only as a man or I don’t hear you.” Someone else may have said those things, but as far as I know, I haven’t.
“We are commanded to love each other. We are commanded to love God. That is all.”
I think we were also commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves. “As ourselves” is kind of a key piece there. It is extremely difficult to love ourselves while we are also busy trying to reject ourselves.
LikeLike
Agreed. We need to love ourselves. I included that portion in my response to your last post. But the answer to finding that peace is not the same for everyone. Arguing about God’s gender is not going to help a woman who is struggling with her role in Christianity find love and acceptance. When we are focusing on that we are losing sight of the bigger picture of who God is.
LikeLike
From Genesis 1:27, “So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them.”
Consequently, within God, are both masculine and feminine.
The Bible first presents God, the Father, as Law Giver, Law Enforcer and Judge because man is really like the worst imaginable wild child and needs to be governed.
(Notice that the powers of God to rule over men are the same as those that comprise powers of government. Tyranny occurs when all the powers of God to rule over men, are in fact usurped by a single man, single group of men or single institution. The Founding Fathers made sure to design a government that would not allow the power of God to rule over men, fall into the hands of tyrant oppressors (Dr. Larry Arne, President Hillsdale College).
Consequently, the power to rule is considered masculine in the Judeo-Christian view of things.
And that is how God, the Father first manifests Himself to mankind in the Bible.
Then, later Jesus, the Son, also masculine, revealed the Trinity, God as family (Pope John Paul II).
But we see in the Mary, the Holy Mother, the will of God in feminine form. Jesus submitted to the will of his Mother (The Temple when Jesus was a child and Cana where Jesus performed his first miracle ahead of schedule).
Since the feminine aspect of God is found in human women, it is critical for civil society that women be strong, disciplined and virtuous.
Otherwise men become murderous, brutal, wild, greedy, fatherless, just like they were when God first stepped in to save mankind.
Feminists need to quit quibbling about the gender inferiority of women when women are in fact the embodiment of the will and generosity of God.
LikeLiked by 3 people
If you’re an Atheist however, it doesn’t really matter since we don’t believe in these deities anyway. God can be transgender for all I\we care or don’t care.
What if our “God” is some super advanced alien life form that created us in their image as much as we have made our imaginary creations from our image (or shall I say imagination)? What if this “God” is a genderless being incapable of meiosis or reproduction known to us and we have to label it as one or another gender just because our comprehension of anything so radically different than ourselves is just impossible for our limited mind?
LikeLike