I recently had a dialogue…
with someone in which I said something that he quickly called me on. But I have begun to wonder whether the point of contention is one worth arguing about…
I will soon be embarking on returning to school for my Masters and, for that matter, in a subject wholly separate and different from my undergraduate major. And in a roundabout way, the person I was engaged in a dialogue with asked me if I was excited about school. To which, I replied saying
…no ordination here or at least not that i can foresee but i obviously leave myself open for God to lead me where he wants…after all, i didnt even think i would get into a Princeton program, let alone go…
To which, he replied
he? lol…God is gender-neutral, my friend…lol. that’s cool, though.
I was initially taken aback. Then I snarkily thanked him for the knowledge lesson and continued with our dialogue, which was rather terse after the aforementioned interchange. I didn’t want to necessarily delve into the point of contention he countered me on because this “dialogue” was a cyber one, i.e., it occurred on Facebook and who likes having cyber arguments…? But I felt that my curt retort was response enough. Nevertheless, does he have a point?
Of course, I recognize that we live in a society that is wholly patriarchal, even in our religious leanings and practice. However, specifically with Christianity, there is an understanding, as written in the Bible, that Jesus Christ walked this Earth in the form of a man as per his epithet, the Son of God (Matthew 26:63-64). Now, if you believe in the Trinity, there is a further understanding of Jesus Christ being an offshoot of his Father (masculine word) and that the Holy Spirit (neutral word) was/is the Paraclete, the Comforter, when Jesus no longer resided among these earthly dwellings. Thus, by those standards – one in three and the three as one – could it perhaps be safe to assign the male gender to God? In no way am I presuming that this stance is the be all and end all of this debate but with that evidence, is it far-fetched? Furthermore, the statement that God is gender-neutral perhaps does as much compartmentalizing as my referring to God as ‘he’. Here is what I mean:
By stating that God is gender-neutral, it suggests that God is neither he nor she; God has no gender. Or it suggests that God is both male and female, with no respect to being more of one than the other. Those categorizations, in and of themselves, do box God into a specificity that does perhaps seem more equitable or embracing of his total creation, man and woman, but also still assigns something to the being that we cannot know and yet perceive in order to further assert that we understand the complexity of God. But what’s funny about this whole dialogue is that I actually think that assigning a gender to God affirms not only why God, as revealed through Jesus Christ, came to Earth, but also makes us feel better about our own personal relationship with our maker.
As a man, if I choose to say that God is a ‘he’, that is in part due to my own interpretation of God, i.e. my personal exegesis of how IseeJesus. As well, if a woman chooses to refer to God as ’she’, she is completely entitled to do so. Likewise, there are women who continue using ‘he’ for God (I know a couple; one even wrote a song about it) and I have no doubt that there are men who say ’she’ for God. (I know two men here and here in particular.) So the idea that through my own interpretation of God’s gender specificity someone else can give me his/her personal interpretation as “universal truth” not only reduces my own comprehension of who God is, which is why he came (because God was not seen the same way by everyone God encountered and for that matter, God did not leave everyone the same way God initially found them), but also leaves my thirst for righteous interpretation quenchless. After all, God moves (and works) in mysterious ways, his/her wonders to perform. And God even admonishes
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)
So what happens when the “truth” turns out to be nothing more than a fiction for and figment of our imagination regarding someone whose thoughts are so infinitely higher than ours that we cannot even fathom the infinite greatness and knowledge of the numbering of even the very hairs on our heads?
And in the end, though I referred to God as a ‘he’, it doesn’t mean that when I am fatherless, he is not my Father; that when I am motherless, she is not my Mother. For you see, unlike mortal man, God cannot be boxed in. God is malleable and through omnipotence, God can be whatever I need God to be, whether it be male, female or simply the light of my world. So, as I embark on this new stage in my life, I will continue to leave myself open for God to exhibit divinity in my life and hope that where he leads me, I will follow.
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