Tuesday, January 30, 2007

God Gender and Language, Part I

Sunday there were conversations about gendered language for God, and problems surrounding calling God “he”, “Father” and “Lord”. What follows are my own reflections stemming from those conversations though they do not reflect those conversations.

I remember in seminary when in a course on reconciliation and conflict and community building the professor challenged my attempt to opt out of the category “white male”, because I don't so identify. She simply responded with but Larry you are a white male. We went back and forth on this issue for a while with other students chiming in. I asserted that her insistence on my “owning” the label simply reinforced a system of categorization that was not only arbitrary but oppressive to her (as Black and female). She pointed out though that my lack of identification did not change how the system we were both in categorized me and thus that I benefited from this system of categorization since there is privileged status in so being labeled. I admitted that yes that was true but then I was a "white male" who did not identify as such. My professor did not argue with that distinction. I still believe that "white male" is empty when it comes to who I am, and I also admit my professors point, as long as I am part of a system like ours I need to admit how that system classifies me and the benefits I receive because of the system of classification. I have begun here because issue is not only of how language effects ones experience of God but the suggestion, at least in the conversations, was that most peoples experience of God is currently not only gendered but gendered by for and in the image of the "white male." Based on self-examination I find this experience and notion of God as male as Incomprehensible. I want to claim that my understanding has little if anything to do with a "white male" conception of God or the image of god as a "white male." Yet at the same time I want to take seriously what was being communicated in our conversation and that is that in one way or another most of the other people in the conversation in the least struggle with having an image of God as male or masculine. In this I think we all can agree the image God as male is problematic especially for women but also for men.

I have no image or concept of God, gendered or other wise that I am attached to exclusively. Though I have always encountered God by the Name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the revelation of God in Scripture, and in the Word made flesh Jesus Christ. None of these things has ever been taken by me as giving us a male or masculine notion of God. I have addressed God as "He", as "Father", as "Son", but never pictured a man nor imagined I was encountering someone of the same gender as I. I have also (for as long as I can remember) read and known of scriptures that describe God as responding to God's people in maternal ways, but never imagined God as feminine, or female or as a woman. I believe this is because I was taught that God has no gender, or more to the point is beyond our categories of gender and sex, and thus God is not even androgynous. God is not even some mixture or male and female. So it was surprising and a little disturbing to hear people say they had an image of God as male or masculine and that this had been inculcated to them in childhood by those who were to teach them the Faith.

Given the above it is perhaps not surprising that I wonder if replacing "She" for "He" or even alternating between "He" and "She" in our address of God in public would actually get at the problem. For if we see a woman or conceptualize God as female when we say "She" we have the same problem just matriarchal or matrilocal rather than patriarchal or patrilocal. We still are carrying an image and concept of God that is not God. We have the same problem if we were somehow able to conjure up a concept of God as androgynous. God is not gendered or sexed and this does not mean that God is both genders or both sexes. Rather it means God is beyond our concepts of Gender and sex. Thus a mystic may describe Jesus as mother, this is saying something other than gender or ability to give birth etc. Though the claim is that something about motherhood is appropriate to the person of Jesus Christ even though he is male. this should alert us to a greater complexity of the language of the Church than our current understanding and struggle are willing to admit. We want a solution but the tradition of the church actually hands us back a problem, our problem. I will say that problem is idolatry.
(continue reading Part II, LEK 2/02/07)

6 comments:

  1. Oh debates like this make me so glad I'm Hindu. Where God is male and female. And elephant-headed. And blue. And whatever floats his/her/their boat.

    Form is not what matters, but essence.

    -Angeli

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  2. Angeli,
    I can appreciate that sentiment. And While I as a Christian can agree that essence matters, in part because of the incarnation of God in the human Jesus of Nazareth I cannot say that form is not what matters.
    The mixture of these two things certainly as your comment points out means that these sorts of debates are simply always present in Christian faith: We may not know the essence fully but the essence is also something particular (a particularity beyond our reach granted). Specifically the essence is personal and not abstract and not empty.
    Then there is the notion of idolatry in the Jewish and Christian understanding of humanities responce to the divine, your list that concludes with "whatever floats his/her/their boat." from the Hebrew prophets perspective (and thus also the Christian perspective) is precisely the definition of idolatry.
    But then this is due to the assertion that God (this essence we speak of) reveals God's self to us throught particualr persons Sarah and Abraham, Moses (I am that I am, the name that is unpronounceable), In Jesus of Nazareth, who gives us the Name of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But you probably now all that.
    So, we agree on the importance of essence (but then probably not what that essence is) but disagree on the meaning of form. Form can be mistaken, thus the debate.

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  3. Exactly.

    Form in the monotheistic religions does hover close to idolatry! The form *matters* in the Abrahamic tradition. We Hindus know that the form is *not* God. It's a human idea of God, not God itself.

    This is where I think the historic misunderstanding between our two religions comes from. You think the forms are what we worship! We think you conflate the human idea with the divine truth, sometimes mistaking one for the other! Very messy.

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  4. You say you "wonder if replacing 'She' for 'He' or even alternating between 'He' and "She" in our address of God in public would actually get at the problem". Certainly it won't solve anything outright, I agree. However I do believe that the metaphors we choose directly influence how we perceive the world.

    If we spoke of god exclusively as a flame, then I wager that it would seem bright, warm and a little dangerous--even if we were never "inculcated" to believe it so. If we spoke of god exclusively as a tribal leader, I reckon that it would naturally come to be associated with wisdom and protectiveness, as well as vengeance and war. So, I feel that to choose not to speak of god as a male, even metaphorically, will likely have consequences as well--it will make god seem less like a human man.

    Personally, I try to use "it", although that may not fit into your theology very well (that pronoun is a bit cold, I'll admit). And yes, all the non-gendered English human pronouns have their share of flaws... Ze, &c.

    Too clumsy to call it ein sof all the time, I suppose...

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  5. Angeli,
    Thanks for the explanation from the Hindu end. And I hope you realize that I do understand this about Hindu belief.
    That said, I must distance myself from the Biblical and monotheistic understanding of Christianity and Judaism to not hear "Form is not God. It's a human idea about God, not God itself." as a type of idolatry, even knowing that the Hindu does not worship the form.
    But this probably means that we understand God in essence differently, and there's the rub and we suddenly have much more of a potential mess.

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