Her.
When Kellie and I moved from Greensboro to Boone five years ago, we left a city with over 400 churches to a town with just a few dozen. Among the many solid churches of Greensboro, we struggled to find one that felt like home, so moving here we weren’t optimistic. Imagine our surprise when we found a church family that felt more like home than any we’ve known for decades!
One of the great joys in our current faith community has been hearing many Sunday messages from women and enjoying the unique grace and perspective they bring to our journey with God and God’s people. You may have noticed that in some of my recent blog posts, I have championed the evolving face of church and faith (including a provocative reference to the Holy Spirit as “her”): Among the many important facets of that conversation, equality of men and women has been at the forefront of our attention for a decade or two.
But this isn’t really my topic today; I simply refer you to an incredible organization called Christians for Biblical Equality if you’d like to know more. I mention gender equality among the human family as introduction to today’s topic on gender equality within our understanding and experience of God!
Did you see that one coming?
Gender equality in God? Yes indeed. You’ve probably heard the old quip that we don’t know who discovered water; we just know it wasn’t fish! And so it is with many of our doctrinal assumptions: its ubiquity makes it unquestioned.
You probably wouldn’t say that God is male specifically, but what does your mental image look like? When we stop to think about it, we know that the spiritual realm transcends gender, and further, if we stop to think about it, we would affirm that God created man and woman to jointly express the fullness of all that God contains within the divine person. So why is all our languaging and interior imaging almost exclusively male? Well, for starters…
The biblical authors chose male pronouns for God the Father.
The second person of the Trinity came into the world as a human male.
Even the Holy Spirit winds up with male pronouns (strangely, as we will see).
It would seem that the Bible has deliberately cast God in a male light. And even today many respected spiritual leaders have overtly reinforced that view. Why?
Here are a few reasons that occur to me:
The ancient world was indisputably a patriarchal culture. Power was synonymous with maleness. So any reference to ultimate power naturally flowed that direction.
Even within our understanding of biblical inspiration we recognize that divine revelation was filtered through the culture, education, and language of each writer.
The conservative confirmation bias of institutionalized religion (both Judaic and Christian) is hardwired to resist change in all forms, despite the fact that our Founder was a revolutionary.
If those things are true, where does it leave us? And what are the ramifications of ignoring the issue altogether?
Christian leaders who are advocating for marginalized and victimized groups today (whether that be along lines of race, gender, religion, sexuality, etc) are recognizing that our view of God directly impacts our view of our fellow humans. If God is white, then it’s an easy move to oppress our black or brown sisters and brothers. If God is male, excluding women doesn’t seem so bad. Making God look like me, it’s easy to think that God endorses whatever I want to do. History has certainly borne out that connection when most of the world’s violence has occurred underneath a religious flag.
So is God also really feminine…or is that some kind of dangerous, eastern, new-age thing? I would say that recognizing both the masculine and the feminine in God is essential to relating rightly to God’s heart and God’s people, and here are a few biblical and historical perspectives that lead us in that direction:
Throughout the book of Proverbs, “Wisdom” is personified as a woman and the exemplar of divine guidance. Without question, Lady Wisdom is an emblem of the feminine divine…as supported by two early Church fathers, Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus, and reinforced by Jesus in Mt 11:19.
Despite the unwieldy masculine pronouns, the word for the Holy Spirit in both Hebrew (Ruach) and Aramaic (Rucha), the language Jesus spoke, is feminine…and “her” nurturing character and role are characteristically feminine with labels like “comforter,” “counselor,” and “advocate.” Historian Susan Ashbrook Harvey considers the grammatical gender to have been significant for early Syriac Christianity: "It seems clear that for the Syrians, the cue from grammar—ruach as a feminine noun—was not entirely gratuitous. There was real meaning in calling the Spirit 'She'."
Both Old Testament and New Testament authors feel compelled at times to use feminine descriptions to describe God’s tender heart for the nation of Israel (Deut. 32:11; Mt 23:37; Lk 13:34).
The divine name for God El Shaddai literally means “God of the breasts.”
If you’re looking for more, Mike Morrell offers about a hundred more references here.
So okay, there are feminine references to God in the Bible. Tell me again why this matters? To me it matters because overly-masculine, overly-aggressive representations of God across the last millennium have fueled many injuries and abuses within the Church (think Crusades, slavery, Salem Witch Trails, and far more than I have space to mention). To our dismay (I won’t use the word “shame”), it is often secular culture that champions the imbalances and injustices where the Church ought to be taking the lead. For example, the goddess movement has been a non-Christian effort to reconnect with the relationally-nurturing, peace-initiating, planet-championing dimensions of God… because Christians have by-and-large neglected it.
What would it look like for today’s Church to embrace the gender-fullness of God? I’m not sure—but I’d sure love to see it. I’m taking my ever-so-humble start in that direction by referring to the Holy Spirit as “her”…merely as a reminder to widen my view and experience of those qualities of God that our world needs so desperately right now.
Contemplate
Consider the words used to describe the Spirit’s role as a Comforter, Counselor, and Advocate in the book of John. Spend some moments considering how you have experienced God in these ways in your recent circumstances…or where you need God in one of these roles right now! Journal your conversation with God, in petition or thanksgiving.
Takeaway
Your image of God matters.