The De-Gendering of God

You'll have to forgive me as I ramble here. I am primarily recording these thoughts for my own peace of mind, as part of my personal process; they are not meant to be theologically sound arguments. I am far beyond caring about theological accuracy as the religious set would have it. For me, God and divinity are more clearly experienced by my own spirit than dictated by some ancient and culturally irrelevant text or some doctrinal surety.

That said, I'll continue my train of thought from the previous two posts.

Humans have always had the tendency to break the divine down into terms we can understand. We attribute a thousand human characteristics to a God who holds none of them. Maybe I'm a mystic at heart, but attempting to define divinity by any human concept or language will fail to bring us any closer to the God we seek. Whether it be gender or justice or mercy or love or faithfulness, our understanding of God is pitifully limited by the best and worst of human language and experience.

The problem with gender inequality isn't that we know God as being male. The problem is that we know God as any gender at all. To say that God is both male and female is inaccurate. To say that God is neither male nor female is too enigmatic for us humans to have a meaningful relationship with, leading us to assign God a gender -- traditionally male. God does not have a form that could be assigned a gender, but 'genderless' suggests to us some kind of eunuch. We struggle to understand a formless God, but there it is, and try we must.

Depending on your view of the bible, you could argue that the ancient Hebrews wrote that God was a "He", and that was inspired of God, therefore it must be true. However, just about everyone knows that Hebrew has no neuter pronoun, so the choices were "he" or "she". Neither was entirely appropriate, but 'he" was more in line with their culture. So "he" it was. If you want to argue semantics, I suggest you look at the Strong's for Genesis 1:2, ruwach, or spirit, is a feminine noun. So you can't have it both ways. If God is a boy, then His Spirit is a girl. The Hebrews could have been inspired to choose a male noun for 'spirit', but they didn't. I believe this was purposeful, with more intention than we might realize, either by God's inspiration or human word selection; evidencing balance, or gender partnership. Not suggesting the possession of actual gender, but as an example for us that one cannot operate independently of the other in the process of creation. God (Genderless) required Christ (male) and Spirit (female) in order to create.

In my math class, we often solve simple equations or conversions using imaginary terms or units. This is to reinforce to us that the process for is not dependent on our understanding of what the equation actually means. Some people simply cannot wrap their minds around this because the numbers and units and terms have to mean something specific in order for them to even begin to tackle a solution. For others, just knowing that there is a process is reassuring enough, even if the end result of that process is meaningless. Neither is ideal; we need both kinds of people: those who believe it is more important to have meaning than answers, and those who believe it is more important to have answers than meaning. 

Assigning God human characteristics is an attempt to have answers. In fact, the bible is full of human definitions of the characteristics of God. For a person who needs answers, this would be a valuable tool. However, for those who seek meaning, it would become apparent that the original text of the bible was still limited by human vocabulary. Often, a trait that was assigned to God, even maleness, was due to such a limitation. For the people who desire meaning over answers, they would say that the vocabulary used to describe God in the bible is thoroughly limited by vocabulary, using our best understanding; but by no measure accurately describing God.

For those who require answers, the bible is often used almost as a scientific text; everything in it is true and verified, at least by God. Because the arguments for gender roles made in religious circles are usually based on scripture, I would tend to start at the beginning using the rule of first mention. It would seem clear in Genesis 1:27 that the creation of male and female genders was intentional and both genders were viewed as equally necessary for what God had in mind -- reproduction, or creation. Even if you believe in evolution, it would seem clear that humans are not the only species to have evolved into dual gender reproduction, and in fact, only a few creatures on earth reproduce asexually. Therefore, there must be some biological practicality in it.

However, when one begins to separate the genders by more than physiology, that is where things break down. The favorite proof-text for female inferiority is "The Fall"; woman (or Eve), fell victim to the wiles of the serpent (evil or selfishness) and therefore she singlehandedly 'broke' creation. Aside from the obvious problems with believing in a literal Eden, a literal Eve, a literal talking serpent, who literally tempted Eve with a fruit that she was not supposed to eat -- there are many other problems with this situation. The reality is the entire story is too complex to successfully defend with any ounce of reason. One must entirely suspend common sense and laws of science in order to literally believe this. A metaphorical understanding can be helpful, but then what is it a metaphor for?

All these arguments depend on what/who a person believes God to be. So I'll go there next.