Pronouns.
I don’t think God is a gender. He presents himself as a father but he comes to us with the tenderness of a mother. In some of the parables, he is the housewife who cleans the house looking for the lost coin.
~ Max Lucado
pentecost, week 5.
No, not those pronouns. Social pronouns might be a topic for another day. Today I want to talk about the pronouns we use for the divine. For God. Have you noticed that most of the biblical references to God, as well as almost all of our colloquial references to God, are overwhelmingly male? So when (and why) did we make God a guy? And why does it matter?
I don’t know of any theologians who would argue for God being male exactly—although John Piper comes perilously close by contending for an egregiously “masculine Christianity.” The modern Christian men’s movement has drifted far from the days of Promise Keepers, replaced now by the Stronger Men’s Conference when men worship monster trucks, pro wrestling antics, pyrotechnics, and yes—a tank driven by Chuck Norris. Apparently, both Christian men and God “himself” are getting an extreme testosterone makeover.
But back to our question: Why have we made God a guy? Why did the biblical writers use “he” and “him” to reference God? There are a couple different perspectives on this. Hard core inerrantists (who believe that every Bible word choice, tense choice, and grammatical construction were given by God to the writer) pretty well have to take the position that God wanted to be perceived as masculine in the biblical text. Others, like myself, believe that God inspired the ideas that landed in the Bible but that those ideas were filtered through the human perspectives, culture, and vocabulary of the writer. If that’s true, then God didn’t choose to be a guy; guys chose God to be a guy.
It’s not that strange really… The Old Testament revelation of God was deeply rooted in the divine attribute of power, and if physical power is the crux of divinity, then masculinity conveys that quality more than femininity. The Old Testament God was a benevolent power to be sure, if you were on God’s side, but it wasn’t a very nuanced or fully-orbed understanding of God. Jesus came to offer a substantially new revelation, which he did directly and explicitly in the Sermon on the Mount.
“You have heard it said… But I say to you…” Six times in Matthew 5, Jesus reinvents his listener’s understanding of the character of God, and I suggest that Jesus is challenging their innate assumption of God as masculine. In each of these six revisions, Jesus challenges the (male) power of his listeners—the power to murder, the power to commit adultery, the power to divorce, the power to take an oath, the power to mete out a violent Eye-for-Eye justice, and the power to hate your enemy with consequence. All six of these revised commandments are uniquely directed toward toxic masculinity—beginning with how they understand God and subsequently in how they emulate God as Image-bearers. In each revision, Jesus is championing the feminine characteristics of God: emotional restraint, protecting the less powerful, de-escalating confrontation, prioritizing nonviolence, and loving all… even enemies.
To be fair, Jesus continued the use of masculine pronouns for God and chose “Father” as his preferred image for God rather than “Mother.” Jesus seemed to have an intuitive sense for what issues to press on and how far to press. I wish he had pressed further in a number of areas (think slavery, women in leadership, etc), but what’s important is to observe the trajectory of what he is doing: He consistently moves toward more dignity, more equality, more inclusion.
One of the ways he does this as it relates to the “gender” of God is by introducing us to the third member of the Trinity in distinctly feminine ways: the word used for Spirit, pneuma in Greek, is grammatically neuter (in contrast with the Hebrew equivalent ruach, which is feminine), and refers to the movement of air—the breath of humans or the “wind” of the Spirit that Jesus plays on allegorically in John 3. The qualities that he attributes to the Spirit are advocate, counselor, and comforter… all of which are more on the nurturing side of our humanity, the “yin” side. We could rightly call this the (stereotypically) feminine energy of God. A side we have all but ignored through most of church history, despite Jesus’ help with this revelation.
Of course the Spirit also brings power, which is what Pentecost is all about, but it is newly calibrated type of power—a power that integrates masculinity and femininity in a seamless whole. And this is what the church so desperately needs in today’s world: the union of these two facets of our humanity, the partnership between men and women that comes from true Spirit-breathed equality, respect, and empowered collaboration. Not subordination. Not a “masculine Christianity.” Not men’s events that cater to our lowest common denominator and do nothing to help us heal the timeless rift between men and women.
So what pronouns should we use for God? I have attempted to remove every single masculine reference in my languaging of God—not because God doesn’t carry those qualities, but because our image of God has been so distorted by this profound over-emphasis. And I tend to use the pronouns “she” and “her” in reference to the Holy Spirit—not because the Spirit technically is feminine, but because she draws our attention to those aspects of God that the world so yearns for with its violence and brokenness (instigated primarily by men). And because we need every opportunity to revise our own unexamined mental construct of God as “Gandalf with a bad attitude,” as one writer puts it.
Last and not least, we need to understand how a masculine image of God affects the value of women. Within the context of millennia of misogyny of every possible stripe, this is yet one more voice that speaks, and has spoken for ages, that men are more important than women, closer to God-likeness. Many of the church fathers were sucked into this great deception in ways that shock us now… but are more easily understood if God is a guy. Consider just a few:
Woman is a temple built over a sewer…. Woman, you are the gate to hell. ~ Tertullian
[Women’s] very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame. ~ St. Clement of Alexandria
Woman does not possess the image of God in herself…. It is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman. ~ St. Augustine
No gown worse becomes a woman than the desire to be wise…. Women were made either to be wives or prostitutes. ~ Martin Luther
Dark words from such spiritual leaders as these. My point is simply this: When Christian leaders believe or assume or default or simply act or speak as if God is male, women are automatically and irrevocably demoted in value and subject to suspicion. The great calling of men and women to partner together in the service of God, from whom both genders flow, is lost forever. This massive failing of the church must be redeemed and reconstituted if we are to truly love God and neighbor in these days.
growing your soul
How does your soul respond to the idea of reclaiming the feminine side of God?
serving our world
How might the world respond to a church that embodies the best of both masculinity and femininity?
takeaway
God is not a guy.